“We’re producing a cognitive hierarchy, and, increasingly, the spoils of the hierarchy are going to people who are in the cognitive stratosphere, so to speak. It’s one thing to be really smart. It gives you an edge in a complex society, especially one that’s changing very rapidly, like ours. But if…”Tagged: IQ, Cognitive Elite, Cognitive Hierarchy
“I think we have been able to box in the more unfortunate elements of the right. That’s probably a consequence, mostly, of moral deliberations undertaken after World War II. We seem to have come to a pretty general consensus, I would say, that claims of ethnic or racial superiority place you outside…”Tagged: World War II, Philosphy, Identity Politics
“Let me lay out one of the personality differences between men and women, because it’s worth understanding. You might say, 'well, there can’t be personality differences between men and women, because that’s anti-feminist.' It’s like, 'no, it’s not. We might have to actually understand that there are…”Tagged: Gender Essentialism, Gender Differences, Suicide, Aggression
“I’ve studied personality differences between men and women for 25 years and written papers on the topic. It’s actually an area of expertise of mine, and substantial expertise, too—and not pseudoscience expertise, thank you very much. I’m not a pseudoscientist. My publication record puts me in the…”Tagged: Gender Essentialism, Gender Differences, Pseudoscience
“I don’t really think that masculinity is in crisis. I think that, to the degree that masculinity per se is regarded as toxic, that will produce a crisis, which isn’t the same thing. I think there’s a crisis of meaning, let’s say, in our culture, but that’s not new.”Tagged: Masculinity, Toxic
“It turns out that differences in aggression and agreeableness also predict differences in interest. So it turns out that men are more interested, in average, in things than women are; and women are more interested in people, on average. That’s actually the biggest difference that’s been measured…”Tagged: Gender Essentialism, Gender Differences, Suicide, Aggression
“The political is a tiny fraction of the world, and what I’m doing isn’t political: it’s psychological, or philosophical, or theological. The political element is peripheral.”Tagged: Politics, Philosophy, Psychology
“The problem with books and videos is that you can’t do anything else while you’re doing them, right? When you’re reading, you’re reading. When you’re watching a video, you can be distracted, but you have to pay attention to the video. But, if you’re listening to a podcast, you can be driving a…”Tagged: Podcast, Books, Videos, Media
“First of all, they said playing a clip of Jordan Peterson was like playing a clip of Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos. I thought, 'well, let’s go a little easy on the Hitler comparisons, there, guys. You might want to save that for when it’s really necessary, because you don’t use…' It’s sacrilegious to…”Tagged: Adolf Hitler, Milo Yiannapoulos, Sacrilege
“I was a smart kid, and my head was full of ideas that I hadn’t earned. I could lay them out, but that doesn’t mean that they were mine or me.”Tagged: Self-awareness, Ideas
“People like to imagine that they would be Schindler in Schindler’s List, but that’s wrong. The probability that you’ll be the perpetrator is much higher, especially merely the perpetrator that’s ensconced in silence, when silence is not the appropriate thing.”Tagged: Schindler's List, Conformity
“I was interested in the great atrocities of the 20th century: the ones that were committed on the right and the ones that were committed on the left. But I was interested in it psychologically. What that means was, had I been there, what could have I done to not participate? So that’s what I’ve been…”Tagged: Atrocities, Holocaust, Holodomor, Nazi Germany, Gulag Archipelago
“…the narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think we’re stupider than we are. People have a real hunger for deep intellectual dialog, and that can be met with these new technologies. That has revolutionary significance, and that’s starting to unfold.”Tagged: TV, Dumbing Down, Intellectual
“I started to understand that many of the things I was saying weren’t true. I didn't really believe them; they weren't really my thoughts; they made me feel weak, when I said them.”Tagged: Self-awareness, Conformity, Self-Deception
“thought, 'well, what am I supposed to do, now that I hit a million views? How am I supposed to conceptualize that? What is this YouTube thing anyways, that was once a repository for cute cat videos? What does it mean to have a million views on it?' So I really started to think about it, because…”Tagged: Youtube, Podcast, Gutenberg
“That’s the most common form of lie: passive avoidance; willful blindness. That’s the most common form of deception, although, active deceit can also play a role. If you contaminate the structure of your Being with false information, with deceptive practices, and you willfully blind yourself, then…”Tagged: Lie, Willful Blindness, Self-Deception
“Nietzsche said that Christianity developed the sense of truth to such a degree that it died at the hands of its own construction. I think that’s brilliant. I think it’s absolutely the case. And so you can see the Enlightenment as part of that: the spirit of truth was highly developed, and that led…”Tagged: Nietzsche, Christianity, Enlightenment
“Yeah, well, there’s this dawning awareness that, out of a plethora of heroes, the ultimate hero will emerge. Think about this psychologically. Just think about it psychologically. Imagine that what human beings are trying to do is abstract out the ultimate patterns for modes of Being. So what they…”Tagged: Heroes, Ubermensch, Christ
“Well, it’s been my experience as a clinician that, the more serious the events that you’re discussing with people, the more the language shifts towards what you might describe as the religious. So, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder—that’s a good example—or cases of serious child abuse or…”Tagged: Good And Evil, PTSD, Religion
“People often ask me, 'do you believe in God?' I don’t like that question. First of all, it’s an attempt to box me in, in a sense. The reason that it’s an attempt to box me in is because the question is asked so that I can be firmly placed on one side of a binary argument. The reason I don’t like to…”Tagged: God, atheism