Dawkins didn’t really answer Alex’s question. His answer is question begging. Alex asked him, “How can you know what you believe is true.” Dawkins responded with, “Believing true things makes me more likely to survive”. His response assumes truth and begs Alex’s original question.
@emperor_diazepam Yeah they don't want to teach logic in schools these days because they'd have to answer for it when they realize all major religions (as clasically practiced) are full of them.
This is why I love people like Alex and Dr Peterson. They’re attempting will all their might to be intellectually honest and logically consistent. So when they recognize a bad point in an argument they’re willing to point it out regardless of whether that person is with or against them. That helps to actually seek truth.
I think that, sometimes, believing in false things may help you with surviving, but I'm pretty sure that, most of the time, knowing the truth helps you more.
Time is relative. But that information is useless in the everyday scale. For survival, it's more useful to think time flows the same for every being, and that's instinctual. Therefore, we do believe in some false things for the necessity of survival.
@@La_republica I don't think that follows in the context of evolutionary development, because until very recently there was really no way to tell time wasn't absolute.
And the truth comes from facts. Ergo faith in myths and supernatural entities cannot lead to the truth. It can only support a primitive desire to be lied to, to believe in myths, and feed a dependency upon myths. Furthermore, when those who profess faith in myths and supernatural entities defend their beliefs with certainty, yet offer no valid evidence to support or even explain their behaviour, they lose all credibility.
@@G58 How do you know what you believe to be true is actually the truth? That takes faith. Everyone has it. If you think you don't you are believing in the myth know as certainty. You should be careful with that old fable. Its one of the worst ideas to believe in. A lot of terrible things have been done by people knowing they were right and truth was on their side.
@@G58Oh please…scientifically illiterate people everywhere don’t understand that colors don’t exist. They are a psychological representation based on the relative strengths of three of four different wavelengths of light. Billions of people everywhere believe untrue things even after being given the scientific explanation. Consciousness begins as virtualized reality, kiddo.
I didn't realize it at the time when watching both this conversation with Peterson and the one referenced with Dawkins, but this was a bad example. It actually does cost something to act on the lie that there is a tiger. But there is a way to tweak it to make it work. If you didnt simply run and waste energy but strengrhened yourself and your community on the idea of a hypthetical threat, then perhaps believing in the lie that the threat is greater than it actually is is truly beneficial to survial.. I have discovered something similar when it comes to hope. There is this false belief that people genuinely have about themselves and everyone else they meet: You will overcome this. You will succeed. Better days will come. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. We all know that nothing is truly guaranteed. We know that tomorrow isn't promised. But truly live your life with the certainty that the bad times will pass and that there are better times ahead and watch how it changes your life. People say to live everyday like its your last, but I'm starting to believe that we as a species have endured for so long because of our false belief that we will live forever and everything we do has some tangible meaning that will outlast us when we do inevitably die.
It’s not that the women don’t fear bears. It’s that women would rather be eaten alive by a bear than even have a chance at being raped by a man and having to go through torture.
Dawkins answer is instead to the question: Why should I believe in true things? Dawkins gave the answer he have because he assumes that survival is the goal, which it is in a naturalistic frame work, but if you have a different goal, then you may disagree with the answer. As to 'how' you know what you believe is true, I would say because we recognize only true ideas can allow us to have successful novel predictions in our reality, if an idea gives us successful predictions, you can be reasonable in believing that idea to be true. Mathematics is the most literal example: We know 2+2=4 because we can make successful predictions assuming that its true. Making successful predictions in the reality we live in is fundamentally the most beneficial thing to our survival.
Isn’t the process you described just affirming the consequent? Assuming A is true let’s us make the prediction that phenomenon B will occur. So, if A then B. B occurs, so conclude that A is true.
So in layman's terms common sense and experience eg true things we have experienced predict the outcome of closely related situations we will, and have experienced, most likely will have the same out come. So learn from the past to predict the future...??? Have I got this completely wrong? 🧐😊😊
The problem is that it assumes there is such a thing as "truth", i.e. some unchanging universal standard that we can measure against. If there is such a thing as truth, where does it come from? it's a fundamental question that I think we simply brush off because we accept the existence of truth A priori.
If he assumes survival is the goal then it seems he assumes evolution. What novel prediction comes from holding the view that rape is intrinsically unjust? That George Washington is the 1st American President? That Dawkins is British? There seem to probably be more ways of knowing.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
He's conflating being cautious and being right, running away when youre not in danger doesn't save your life, it only saves your life when you're right that its in danger.
He's pointing out a peculiar issue with the evolutionary argument for believing true things. This is all based on the perception of the individual, an individual perceives that rustling means there is a lion always in the bushes, regardless if the lion is there. He is right one out of ten times however he perceives things to be true all the time. Meaning evolution does not select for truth at all, if anything it selects for false positives.
@@boguslav9502 ...that's a huge leap, running away from rustling in the bushes doesn't mean you believe you are correct that there is a lion there, it means it's safer to run away than find out. Again being cautious doesn't mean you are fully convinced you are right.
@@vg8062 Caution means having more confidence in the possibility of X being true (considering the dire consequences of X being true) to be likely enough that action is warranted. Even then Caution itself means we are by nature given a negativity bias as Peterson points out. It also demonstrates that truth seeking as a mechanism of evolution is extremely unfounded. Being convinced here isnt really relevant because in that moment you are convinced enough to take action.
You missed the point. Something that is untrue may also be the basis for survival, based on the assumption that it is a danger. Therefore you cannot have a basis of “it helped me survive” for assuming morals.
But you can't speak a truth you don't know. No matter how much passion you put into something it makes no difference if you can't prove your truth is real.
I admire you Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. That's the true. I'm Nahuel Tomas Falero, from Uruguay. I send you always my best wishes from the bottom of my heart. 🇺🇾❤️
Yeah this is talking about a stand up fight. With religious impetus. A godly man is relying on God to fight the war. I would tread very very carefully.
Considering the amount of wars based in religion and how much of the world's knowledge has been lost to religious disagreements I'd say your words don't have a place here
@@UtterlyClueless1 that’s not the messsage there at all. Religions are a base of power for elites to rally the people around, no different to family, nation or land. Wars have actually become FAR more dangerous since religion stopped being the key excuse for them. Mao and Stalin and the nationalism of WW2 killed tens of millions. Religion has not even come close to such numbers.
@@wastedviking6280 The verse is pointing out that those who rely on themselves and their own self righteousness tend to run even when nothing is coming at them, but that those who live according to the will of God understand that regardless of victory or defeat their eternal hope is greater than any attacker
As others have pointed out there is a clear difference between believing there is definitively a tiger in the bush and believing that it is possible that there might be a tiger in the bush. To take evasive action when you hear a rustle has nothing to do with believing a falsehood and has everything to do with acknowledging that there is a chance that the noise might be indicative of mortal danger making a swift retreat an entirely rational response.
Nature has shown us the importance of quick reactions for survival. The belief in needing to "save eternity" for the soul when meeting "your maker" or the instinct to believe in the existence of unseen and "supernatural" entities that might interact with us outside of CONFIRMED REALITY, may stem from the same. The idea is to act BEFORE having full knowledge, the same as how one might act on a belief in supernatural forces. Many people are not as convinced (as you are) that nothing exists beyond the reach of our scientific tools, so this principle still holds for individuals with such a perspective, correct?
False. A swift retreat is not free, it has opportunity cost like everything else. It costs something. It closes doors, makes you blind to possibilities. Definitely not rational in all cases.
@@poepho1303 Interesting comment. The argument from evolutionists regarding why we perceive agency where it may not exist is not that reacting without full information is rational, but that it offers survival benefits on the whole. More often than not, such reactions are irrational, yet the cost of this is LOWER than the cost of being wrong. Additionally, people often think in terms of individuals rather than collectively. While one person's overreaction might seem costly compared to its benefits, considering the high stakes when danger does present itself, it is still advantageous for the species to bear that cost instead of waiting for confirmation in a perilous situation. Note: At a SAFE DISTANCE from danger, the situation is reversed: taking the time to evaluate the situation can improve future performance and survival. (As to the supernatural, calculating what dangers may lurk or what is "a safe distance" is impossible, yet our natures are what they are)
@@Lilhaggis747your sanity , your actual survival skills. Flight or fight shouldn’t always be the same . You spend your whole life running what does that actually do to you when you realize that all that running also made you weaker
@@tannershane6491 running a lot makes you longer last I checked 😂😂. I used to only be able to run 4ks now i do 20ks. Running hasn’t made me weaker buddy.
This is wrong. At least it's not always true and for the example of a primitive human it's certainly the smart thing to run away. The thing is: it costs you to run from an unexisting threat, but it costs you too to figure out whether the threat it real or not. For instance, to discover if the lion is in the bushes, you would have to get close or look toward it or otherwise expose yourself. So running from bushes that move every time costs you (the hypothetical primitive human) *practically* nothing compared to what will cost you to sometimes stay to figure it out
There is a price to pay for running away every time there's a rustling. You've wasted energy, and if a breeze or a small bird can keep you from getting berries, you're going to starve.
if we're staying within the metaphor i run away and find mushrooms and berries because ive covered a larger area to find them, 1 minute of energy is not going to make me starve, you invented that portion and tacked it on. taking the metaphor less literally; if there is a sizeable enough chance of a catastrophic failure, youre better off disengaging and trying again for better probabilities. If you end up in the exact same circumstance but its death by disengaging, death by predator, or survival by "treasure", you'd seriously need to look at how you got in this position in the first place since theres virtually no situation in life that is so absolute
@@booperdee2 We're not speaking metaphorically. We're talking about the instincts that allowed hunter/gatherers to survive, and how the remnants of those instincts affect us. While it may be hard to imagine in modern times, in the life of a hunter/gatherer, every failed attempt is a chance to remove yourself from the gene pool. If you don't eat today, you're going to be weaker tomorrow, making a successful hunt less likely. That feedback loop can make you the last of your lineage.
If you think someone is starving from not eating a few berries you’re not gonna make it long in a forest. You need protein and fat more than anything not damn berries.
The truth is hard to handle for most people, and it will bring suffering and pain before clearness and self acceptance. Some might not be able to process and handle it. Say you believe your parents are the most decent, truthful and caring people in the world, and your whole character, moral and belief system are built around that single fact. What do you think would happen if after 40-50 years you learn that the truth is the complete opposite? You will have to deconstruct and reconstruct your whole being. Most people don't want that. Its easier to believe in lies than the truth, like its easier to tell the truth in a difficult situation.
Running away costs you ENERGY- or even just being in the constant fight or flight mode or stress, like we humans. Longer term survival = Conservation of energy.
If I have a calculator that everytime says 2+2=5, then that it the reality in that closed loop. If humanity has no higher level of cognitive connection, then there is no way to know whether we experience a similar level of incorrect reasoning that we will never notice because it is baked into us.
@DG-mv6zw We can watch macro evolution on species that have quick successive generations. We can also see the big bang and measure background radiation. Tell me more about how you've never actually looked into the sciences. 😅
I mean in a short time frame the belief in wrong is okay for survival. But at scale you eventually need to find the truth. If the bush rustles literally every time you walk by and you refuse to go there, that doesn’t benefit you to be perpetually scared. Maybe you were kicking a root. Maybe squirrels nest there which would be good food. Constantly believing the wrong thing means no progression. Eventually you have to figure out if there is a lion in that bush or not, or else you will be crippled by fear and humans never progress
Etymologically " to believe " root meaning is to accept that which is false or unknown as being Truth. So no beliefs, one abides in a spaciousness of " not knowing ". Namaste 🙏
I struggle to believe that someone answered “how do you know what you believe is true” with “because believing true things helps me to survive.” Because that’s an answer to a completely different question. Maybe something got lost in the summarizing of another conversation for me. Maybe it was more like “since our beliefs are formed from natural processes whose primary strength is their ability to replicate and continue, how do we know our beliefs are anything more than what was able to replicate and continue, with the truth value not seeming to be a relevant part of that process?” I suspect that may be the case, or something like it. But even then, Dawkins wouldn’t be saying that the thing which helps me to survive is *necessarily* true, just that the fact it helped me survive weighs the odds that it is true a bit more in its favor. But all of that aside, the way we tell something is true is usually by analyzing its predictive power.
People don’t rely on truth to survive, they rely on illusion. For instance, you could argue that if our mortality is unavoidable and permanent, very few find this helpful to our survival since it’s depressing, undermines what we’re doing in life, and runs counter to everything we want to believe in an almost instinctual level. This is why we have afterlife theories, to compensate and console ourselves that death isn’t really the end. It ties in with loss too. The biggest religions in earth tell us we’ll see all our lost loved ones again rather than they are gone forever. If it’s true they are gone forever, it doesn’t help us survive, believing we’ll be reunited or that they really aren’t gone does. It gives us some illusory goal to pursue.
It’s a statement on how we justify truth claims, if the precondition to how we define truth is that it is something that is utilitarian to our survival than anything that is objectively false, based on a transcendent standard of truth, but still fits that purpose can be considered true. From that relativistic frame work everything is circumstance eg 2+2 =4. If we assume that there is actual truth you are then appealing to an objective or transcendent standard/ authority on truth.
@@Louiesarge1 it's a bad example because we 2+2=4 is a matter of definition, it's not something we claim to know. We invented mathematics to try to describe the universe. It would be like saying "how do you know wrist mean the joint between the forearm and the hand?", or "how do you know the bishop moves diagnoally?", well that's just how we've defined it. On the other hand, a rustling in the bush coming from a predator is not a matter of definition, it is a claim to knowledge. A better comparison would be "how do you know the sun orbits the earth? Does having knowledge of that truth benefit your survival?".
“2+2=4” is a prime example of objective truth, an actual fact. That's why it was mentioned. Truth in and of itself isn't subjective, it doesn't change according to people or circumstances. It's not just something that helps you survive.
Truth has a resolution (high vs low). Facts are just parts of a particular model which may not tell the full truth but is probably good enough for a given use case.
I would say that the example with the tiger in the bush is not a particularly great one, as it does not deal with "believe" in my opinion. This is an example of being cautious, you do not have to actually believe that a rustling in a bush is a dangerous animal, but acting as if, i.e. being cautious, can save your life. So your actual state of mind would be "I do not know what caused this rustle, but, to be safe, I probably should run away". I have also heard a similar argument with "treating a gun as if it is loaded at all time", but I think the same principle applies, being cautious does not mean you actually have to believe that the gun is loaded, but acting like it is, is safer overall.
"We train ourselves to believe the little lies when we are young, so that we can believe the big lies, like reality, when we grow older." Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (Might slightly misremember it)
@@TOAOM123 you are aware are you, that a vast array of foods are harmful to humans (in some form). Berries, nuts, mushrooms etc Not to mention the fact that for example humans hunted wild boars, regardless of them being dangerous. Again it’s true that knowing what’s true, learning how they respond, act is imperative to survival.
Sure, a lot of stress does affect your long-term health but this is new ground for us. Humans didn't regularly live into their 70s until a couple of centuries ago and high levels of stress helped our ancient ancestors to survive in a world which was much more brutal and infused with fear.
@@lukacuturilo4992 100% I do agree with you brother. However in modern times, many of us tend to live in unnecessary fear which hinders our ability be courageous and confident. Our ancestors stressed and fought for us to have a better life, so let’s enjoy the comfort and safety we have in modern times to respect their hardships.
Believing true things makes you more likely to survive. Being suspicious makes you more likely to survive. Now, people are being taught that 'negativity bias' is bad because the people who control education are doing really bad stuff and they don't want you to worry about it 😂😂😂
You would still survive best if you always believed the rustling in the bush was exactly what it was. It’s better to think it’s a tiger and be wrong often than to fail when it really is one, but the best way would be to think it’s a tiger when it is one and never waste energy running, being more alert, or hitting an adrenaline rush when it isn’t. The truth really can be ordained by simply respecting reality, assuming of course that reality is real. Every philosophy has a fundamental assumption, and every person does too. This doesn’t even inherently mean that values and morals are subjective, it means that there is currently and possibly always will be a point at which any living human being will be unable to discern with perfect accuracy and the knowledge that his accuracy is perfect, the complexities of the universe. I, for instance, am basically a pragmatist. Some existential arguments are unverifiable and it’s technically possible that everything around me does not actually exist, nor does logic, and as such it’s even possible I don’t exist. However, I really seem to exist, and so does everything around me, and I knew a guy who thought gravity didn’t exist and he seemed to rise poorly when he thought he could fly and jumped from five stories up, so I’m more willing to bet on reality being real than on the matrix being real, and so far it seems to be working. with the assumption that reality is real and objective, I then use my faith based assumption that there is objective truth to figure out the rest, and land on otherwise impossible conclusions, as all of us have either through really deep thought or the complete lack of it.
@@ranchmangno thank you, I find Marxism more draining. The ideologies of the old continent seem to enjoy repeating themselves too much. More of an Americanism and meritocracy kinda guy then the back and forth of Communism and its more honest cousin Facism.
Believing there's a tiger in the bushes to help you survive isnt necessarily believing in false things if you dont know them to be false. Its also the fear that would be saving you and not the knowledge.
That's the way I see it. The original premise is a truth "tiger's do rustle bushes," Any false identification after that is irrelevant. If you continue to act as if any rustle could be a predator, then surely your long-term survival chance enhances.?
Because A is A and reality exists. It’s not subjective. It is objective. You can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.
I am constantly arguing that phonetics distract us from the reality of what it is we intend to articulate, so that concept of 2 + 2 equaling 4 being a temporary understanding that leads us to a more developed existence, really strikes a chord.
That 2+2 equals for IS one of those. Or at least it is a byproduct of some of those. Bertrand Russell explained it well. Mathematics are an abstraction and an ideation, it only makes sense on a relatively stable planet like ours to count things and categorize them as objects. If somehow we lived on the surface of the sun we would never have invented mathematics because there were no “things” to count everything would constantly be moving, changing and transforming.
"True things makes me more likely to survive" Meanwhile, somewhere... Wife: Do these pants make my ass look fat? Husband: *Life flashes before my eyes*
The truth is the *rustling of the leaves*. Not what caused it. You can determine what was causing the rustling at a later time when it is less likely to be deadly
We can send a rocket into space, have it traverse hundreds of thousands of miles of space, intersect an asteroid moving at several thousand miles an hour, gently land on that asteroid to collect a sample before boosting off, return that sample to earth for further analysis, and all of this is done remotely, and lot of the calculations for this is done prior to launch . . . Ummm . . . Yeah . . . I think a teeny tiny bit of confidence in our knowledge isn't unwarranted.
The case you just made is a pragmatic one. So 2+2=4 isn't True, but it's true ENOUGH that humans can accurately predict the behavior of physical objects in space. From the human perspective, we don't have access to truth. We have access to the track record.
@@Valstein0Which is the closest thing to truth we can get, and the fact that we're still debating over the value of Falsification and likelihood is a travesty.
Sure we can. But we are also just as likely to murder each other in catastrophic numbers, as we’ve done all throughout history. The problem is that just because something is true in some sense doesn’t make it good.
Assuming that it's a lion in the bushes could help you survive.. but you asked about TRUE, not intuition nor assumption nor guess. Being able to figure out which is TRUE from your guesses is always advantageous. If the wind hits the bushes then you would waste a LOT of resources running all the time than evaluating and determining the truth.
Living according to a narrative, true or not, gives us motivation and hope, but it can also be used against us as propaganda. Either way, it is built right in us. Evolutionarily, it has to be there for a reason
Except it's still generally more advantageous to believe true things so Dawkins is still correct. Just because there are a few rare examples of where believing falsities saves you means nothing just like it means nothing that sometimes seat belts trap and kill you vs saving you
2+2=4 is a tautology and if anything its value its not on its truthfulness but its usefulness to construct mathematical concepts, trying to find new and "better" math is the breath and butter of a mathematician, people who raise these "profound" questions without so much as a "lion behind the bush" argument have no idea the kind of behemoth efforts we make as a species to further our knowledge
I work in shipping/receiving of a really expensive retail clothing store. $10,000 jackets and shit. I make so little compared to everyone around me all day that it's crazy. I've been noticing more and more how happy the clients look. Real smiles, not fake or performative at all. Our sales people ask them about their life and they are happy to tell them about this trip, that child's success, this new project, and that new thing they are interested in that they have no barrier of entry. I can only assume that it comes from the wellbeing of knowing that you are so far from the need to survive. When your basic needs are more than met, you are free to expand your life beyond that in a way that enriches any aspect of it that you happen to be focusing on at the time. Anyway, tell me that money doesn't buy happiness.
It does if you have your health and great family and friends. Having those and no money won't make a lot of people happy. Happiness shouldn't come from material things, but it does, let's be honest.
People always question concept of hell and “putting the fear of god into people” when this guy points out exactly why we need that. The whole concept is negativity bias at its core and has helped our development historically.
The answer is that the ability to reason itself when normally uninhibited will lead to better outcomes. There is a difference between ones ABILITY to do a risk analysis and believing something which is observably false as true. Meaning even when overshpoting or miscalculating it's REASON and forethought which has survival value even when it's incorrect over impulsivity or being haphazard The former can and does aide survival even when wrong. But actually believing a tiger IS there when there isn't in spite of evidence and actually hallucinating one IS there would NOT lead to improved chances for survival and actually inhibit survival and reproduction. We survive in a real world the ability to observe it accurately more often than not by far will improve ones chances of survival
I think Dawkins was dogding the question a bit but he is probably right on that point. I think, overarchingly, its a better survival trait to pursue truth.
You don’t need to believe a lie to protect yourself from the tiger. You can simply say since I don’t know that it isn’t a tiger I’m going to go the other way.
Exactly you're not believing anything false, because tigers do exist and there might be one doing all that rustling, and it's true that you should run from tigers. Believing something that is false means you believe you saw a tiger that wasn't there. Or saw a tiger that was there, and thought it was an elephant, or a hallucinations. Oh damn I just did the rambling thing again
Congratulations for missing the point. You could believe it is the evil twin of the FSM, and if it keeps you away from the bushes, it is a net plus on your survival. Human reason generally works reasonably well for the kind of situations our ancestors ran into often, but otherwise not so well. But we fondly imagine it gives the God's Eye view. And we have a succession of grand theories, eg mathematics, that we believed would give us complete and accurate knowledge, but that we found have limitations (e.g. incompleteness theorems).
That's why there are mathematical proofs 2 + 2 = 4 and 1.999... + 1.999... = 2. The idea behind proofs is it's "objective" and therefore is a method used to remove bias and creates a "reasonable expectation."
The constant stress of expecting a tiger may kill one in the long run before an actual tiger does!! Occam’s Razor says expect unicorns and not tigers (maybe paraphrasing a little!)
I had a friend overdose and the doctor said the only reason he didn't die was because the methamphetamine kept his heart going ... A lot of stupid stuff keeps you alive but that doesn't mean believing false things is better than knowing the truth... Yes sometimes it works and that's fine but knowledge works better
Being scared or frightened all of the time because of possibilities is already a negative. You can't live s reasonable life that way or nothing would get done . Everything can kill you.
Believing a lie is not at all equal to assuming the worst to protect you yourself. If you know the rustling is not a tiger amd you belive that, you increase the chances to run towards the tiger actually 😊
Running away doesn't cost you nothing. You might lose a meal, much needed rest, you could trip and get injured, you could run in the wrong direction straight into the lions. There's an opportunity cost there. It's not as big as the negative of getting eaten, but it's there. And so, all other things being equal, getting better senses, or more accurately interpreting the senses you do have to better figure if it is a lion and what direction it's in - ie, being better at discerning truth - is still a net benefit compared to others around you, and will make you more likely to survive and procreate.
Lies like “believing the rustling in the bushes is a lion everytime” seem like it costs nothing, but it eventually costs you your mind, your awareness, your perception, and will be a generational trait that will be placed on one of your descendants to break. Also, since it “helps you survive” as a temporary positive, the tendency to over-react or fear the worst will bleed into other aspects of your life and will cost you relationships, business, and safety. Imagine mindlessly reacting to a rustling bush and you fearfully run right off a cliff…but it was just a small bird in the bush.
There is a continuum of proof ranging from hypothesis to empirical evidence. But really anything can turn out to be untrue if we’re in a simulation for example (which we are)
Running from predator type animals is a very bad idea in most circumstances, if they're hungry they will chase you and they will catch you. On top of that you've already made yourself look like prey so there's definitely no going back from that.
The problem with that is that every "objective" evidence you try and use, you only know about via subjective experiences. Even your own thought process, no matter how objectively logical you think it is, is itself a subjective experience. I am not a subjectivist, idealist, nor relativist. I agree there is an objective world and it behooves us to understand it as it is. But this is why these philosophies, though wrong, will never go away. Because "objectivity" is only ever shared, consistent subjectivity. Shared between memories of an individual or between minds of a group. And how do you know it's shared? Via subjective experiences, again.
My problem with Alex's example is that believing there is a tiger in the bushes isn't necessary to act as if there is one there. You could be acting on the probability that it's a tiger, not the certainty.
For as common as the lion in the bushes scenario is, I'm not sure it is representative of what actually happened with our ancestors. Yes, there is obviously a certain degree of caution or fear in a situation like this, but to presume they immediately jumped to a firm conclusion about there being a serious threat in the bushes is just taking a very short-sighted view of things. There could also very well be a wild pig or deer in the bushes, which would be a fantastic food discovery. So the idea that running if you're wrong costs you nothing is also oversimplified. I think there are also different orders of believing falsehoods. In the example given, the falsehood would still be one of inference. You don't actually know what the rustling really is. On the other hand, it is hard to see how our eyes would evolve to see things that aren't real, or to NOT see things that ARE real, because it is very hard to see how a system so at odds with reality could ever be selected for.
You don't run because you hear a rustle in the bushes and _mistakenly_ think it's a Bear ... you run because although it might not be a Bear, if _You_ are mistaken and it is a Bear -- -you're dead! That's not being "Mistaken" in the way described in this video
I could be being stupid here but hear me out. I think believing a rustling in the bushes is a tiger is not the same as believing something which isn’t true in order to maximise survival, because whether the rustling in the bushes is in fact a tiger isn’t true or false until the source of the rustling reveals itself. I’m thinking of it like this; rustling in bushes could be dangerous, therefore avoid the source of rustling. The statement that the rustling could be dangerous is true, no?
Dawkins didn’t really answer Alex’s question. His answer is question begging. Alex asked him, “How can you know what you believe is true.” Dawkins responded with, “Believing true things makes me more likely to survive”. His response assumes truth and begs Alex’s original question.
you’re the first person i’ve seen who knows that begging the question is a logical fallacy.
@emperor_diazepam Yeah they don't want to teach logic in schools these days because they'd have to answer for it when they realize all major religions (as clasically practiced) are full of them.
Well said. Circular reasoning at its finest: the conclusion is found in the premises.
They were both aware that Dawkins position is not one of belief. Not believing something is not a belief. His ambition is to believe in true things.
@@VilhelmEdgren If you believe that “not believing something is not a belief,” then you are confused about the nature of beliefs.
This is why I love people like Alex and Dr Peterson. They’re attempting will all their might to be intellectually honest and logically consistent. So when they recognize a bad point in an argument they’re willing to point it out regardless of whether that person is with or against them. That helps to actually seek truth.
I think that, sometimes, believing in false things may help you with surviving, but I'm pretty sure that, most of the time, knowing the truth helps you more.
Time is relative. But that information is useless in the everyday scale. For survival, it's more useful to think time flows the same for every being, and that's instinctual. Therefore, we do believe in some false things for the necessity of survival.
@@La_republica I don't think that follows in the context of evolutionary development, because until very recently there was really no way to tell time wasn't absolute.
And the truth comes from facts.
Ergo faith in myths and supernatural entities cannot lead to the truth. It can only support a primitive desire to be lied to, to believe in myths, and feed a dependency upon myths.
Furthermore, when those who profess faith in myths and supernatural entities defend their beliefs with certainty, yet offer no valid evidence to support or even explain their behaviour, they lose all credibility.
@@G58 How do you know what you believe to be true is actually the truth?
That takes faith. Everyone has it. If you think you don't you are believing in the myth know as certainty.
You should be careful with that old fable. Its one of the worst ideas to believe in.
A lot of terrible things have been done by people knowing they were right and truth was on their side.
@@G58Oh please…scientifically illiterate people everywhere don’t understand that colors don’t exist. They are a psychological representation based on the relative strengths of three of four different wavelengths of light.
Billions of people everywhere believe untrue things even after being given the scientific explanation.
Consciousness begins as virtualized reality, kiddo.
I didn't realize it at the time when watching both this conversation with Peterson and the one referenced with Dawkins, but this was a bad example. It actually does cost something to act on the lie that there is a tiger. But there is a way to tweak it to make it work. If you didnt simply run and waste energy but strengrhened yourself and your community on the idea of a hypthetical threat, then perhaps believing in the lie that the threat is greater than it actually is is truly beneficial to survial..
I have discovered something similar when it comes to hope. There is this false belief that people genuinely have about themselves and everyone else they meet: You will overcome this. You will succeed. Better days will come. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
We all know that nothing is truly guaranteed. We know that tomorrow isn't promised. But truly live your life with the certainty that the bad times will pass and that there are better times ahead and watch how it changes your life.
People say to live everyday like its your last, but I'm starting to believe that we as a species have endured for so long because of our false belief that we will live forever and everything we do has some tangible meaning that will outlast us when we do inevitably die.
But if it's a bear in the bushes the womenfolk will fear nothing.
Man, that's terrifying. 🙄
Good!
The FA/FO effect!
It’s not that the women don’t fear bears. It’s that women would rather be eaten alive by a bear than even have a chance at being raped by a man and having to go through torture.
I wont save them 🫣 I didn’t see nothing
All while the guy is off hugging and whispering sweet nothings to a tree
Wind blows the bushes, I run away…right into a pride of lions!! Cost me there!
but at least you're here to tell the story!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂❤
🤭🤭🤭
Dawkins answer is instead to the question: Why should I believe in true things?
Dawkins gave the answer he have because he assumes that survival is the goal, which it is in a naturalistic frame work, but if you have a different goal, then you may disagree with the answer.
As to 'how' you know what you believe is true, I would say because we recognize only true ideas can allow us to have successful novel predictions in our reality, if an idea gives us successful predictions, you can be reasonable in believing that idea to be true.
Mathematics is the most literal example: We know 2+2=4 because we can make successful predictions assuming that its true. Making successful predictions in the reality we live in is fundamentally the most beneficial thing to our survival.
now THAT is a legendary comment
Isn’t the process you described just affirming the consequent?
Assuming A is true let’s us make the prediction that phenomenon B will occur. So, if A then B. B occurs, so conclude that A is true.
So in layman's terms common sense and experience eg true things we have experienced predict the outcome of closely related situations we will, and have experienced, most likely will have the same out come. So learn from the past to predict the future...??? Have I got this completely wrong? 🧐😊😊
The problem is that it assumes there is such a thing as "truth", i.e. some unchanging universal standard that we can measure against. If there is such a thing as truth, where does it come from? it's a fundamental question that I think we simply brush off because we accept the existence of truth A priori.
If he assumes survival is the goal then it seems he assumes evolution.
What novel prediction comes from holding the view that rape is intrinsically unjust? That George Washington is the 1st American President? That Dawkins is British?
There seem to probably be more ways of knowing.
Started listening to this today, quite good what these men are on about.
Truth is LIGHT!.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
I really enjoy watching intelligent people have intelligent conversations
JP suits are sick
It’s gaudy
It’s a bit much
I agree, everyone is just used to blank looks now. I love the unique looks.
fr JP is straight balling with his suits! God bless this man who has paved the way for so many of us in these dark times.
"JP suits are sick" -- Care to explain?
He's conflating being cautious and being right, running away when youre not in danger doesn't save your life, it only saves your life when you're right that its in danger.
He's pointing out a peculiar issue with the evolutionary argument for believing true things. This is all based on the perception of the individual, an individual perceives that rustling means there is a lion always in the bushes, regardless if the lion is there. He is right one out of ten times however he perceives things to be true all the time. Meaning evolution does not select for truth at all, if anything it selects for false positives.
@@boguslav9502 ...that's a huge leap, running away from rustling in the bushes doesn't mean you believe you are correct that there is a lion there, it means it's safer to run away than find out. Again being cautious doesn't mean you are fully convinced you are right.
Yeah that's what he's saying bro
@@vg8062 Caution means having more confidence in the possibility of X being true (considering the dire consequences of X being true) to be likely enough that action is warranted. Even then Caution itself means we are by nature given a negativity bias as Peterson points out. It also demonstrates that truth seeking as a mechanism of evolution is extremely unfounded. Being convinced here isnt really relevant because in that moment you are convinced enough to take action.
Point went right over your head bro
Believing the truth might help you survive
But speaking it earns you the hemlock
You missed the point. Something that is untrue may also be the basis for survival, based on the assumption that it is a danger. Therefore you cannot have a basis of “it helped me survive” for assuming morals.
@@andrepalomaro353 might makes right? Both a moral statement and a basis for survival.
But you can't speak a truth you don't know. No matter how much passion you put into something it makes no difference if you can't prove your truth is real.
@@JMS-to3xb You cannot prove that anything is real. Watch.
Prove to me that you’re not artificial intelligence.
@ORDlNANCE You mean almost like they can't speak on a truth they don't know?
I admire you Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. That's the true. I'm Nahuel Tomas Falero, from Uruguay. I send you always my best wishes from the bottom of my heart. 🇺🇾❤️
What do you mean by admire?
Proverbs 28:1 “the wicked run when no one is chasing them, but the godly are as bold as lions”
And dead, they are also dead.
Yeah this is talking about a stand up fight. With religious impetus. A godly man is relying on God to fight the war. I would tread very very carefully.
Considering the amount of wars based in religion and how much of the world's knowledge has been lost to religious disagreements I'd say your words don't have a place here
@@UtterlyClueless1 that’s not the messsage there at all. Religions are a base of power for elites to rally the people around, no different to family, nation or land. Wars have actually become FAR more dangerous since religion stopped being the key excuse for them. Mao and Stalin and the nationalism of WW2 killed tens of millions. Religion has not even come close to such numbers.
@@wastedviking6280 The verse is pointing out that those who rely on themselves and their own self righteousness tend to run even when nothing is coming at them, but that those who live according to the will of God understand that regardless of victory or defeat their eternal hope is greater than any attacker
The Holy Spirit and Christ Himself will show what the TRUTH is everytime
But not everyone at every time ‘hears’ Them. Or if they do, people don’t always recognise whose voice it is.
@@gracebe235 The Holy Spirit can help with that too
@@OsasLove-md3cx……and yet, there are always many instances where people STILL either don’t hear it, or don’t heed it.
As others have pointed out there is a clear difference between believing there is definitively a tiger in the bush and believing that it is possible that there might be a tiger in the bush. To take evasive action when you hear a rustle has nothing to do with believing a falsehood and has everything to do with acknowledging that there is a chance that the noise might be indicative of mortal danger making a swift retreat an entirely rational response.
Nature has shown us the importance of quick reactions for survival. The belief in needing to "save eternity" for the soul when meeting "your maker" or the instinct to believe in the existence of unseen and "supernatural" entities that might interact with us outside of CONFIRMED REALITY, may stem from the same.
The idea is to act BEFORE having full knowledge, the same as how one might act on a belief in supernatural forces. Many people are not as convinced (as you are) that nothing exists beyond the reach of our scientific tools, so this principle still holds for individuals with such a perspective, correct?
Clever!
False. A swift retreat is not free, it has opportunity cost like everything else. It costs something. It closes doors, makes you blind to possibilities. Definitely not rational in all cases.
@@poepho1303 Interesting comment.
The argument from evolutionists regarding why we perceive agency where it may not exist is not that reacting without full information is rational, but that it offers survival benefits on the whole. More often than not, such reactions are irrational, yet the cost of this is LOWER than the cost of being wrong.
Additionally, people often think in terms of individuals rather than collectively. While one person's overreaction might seem costly compared to its benefits, considering the high stakes when danger does present itself, it is still advantageous for the species to bear that cost instead of waiting for confirmation in a perilous situation.
Note:
At a SAFE DISTANCE from danger, the situation is reversed: taking the time to evaluate the situation can improve future performance and survival.
(As to the supernatural, calculating what dangers may lurk or what is "a safe distance" is impossible, yet our natures are what they are)
Running away from a precieved threat when there is no threat costs you plenty.
like?
@@Lilhaggis747your sanity , your actual survival skills. Flight or fight shouldn’t always be the same . You spend your whole life running what does that actually do to you when you realize that all that running also made you weaker
@@tannershane6491 running a lot makes you longer last I checked 😂😂. I used to only be able to run 4ks now i do 20ks. Running hasn’t made me weaker buddy.
@@tannershane6491 lion fighting skills should be developed and not suppressed by weak liberal running
This is wrong. At least it's not always true and for the example of a primitive human it's certainly the smart thing to run away.
The thing is: it costs you to run from an unexisting threat, but it costs you too to figure out whether the threat it real or not.
For instance, to discover if the lion is in the bushes, you would have to get close or look toward it or otherwise expose yourself.
So running from bushes that move every time costs you (the hypothetical primitive human) *practically* nothing compared to what will cost you to sometimes stay to figure it out
There is a price to pay for running away every time there's a rustling. You've wasted energy, and if a breeze or a small bird can keep you from getting berries, you're going to starve.
If your that small your not on a lions menu, although they could get stepped on I guess lol
And you won't get any bitches, so to speak.
if we're staying within the metaphor i run away and find mushrooms and berries because ive covered a larger area to find them, 1 minute of energy is not going to make me starve, you invented that portion and tacked it on.
taking the metaphor less literally; if there is a sizeable enough chance of a catastrophic failure, youre better off disengaging and trying again for better probabilities. If you end up in the exact same circumstance but its death by disengaging, death by predator, or survival by "treasure", you'd seriously need to look at how you got in this position in the first place since theres virtually no situation in life that is so absolute
@@booperdee2 We're not speaking metaphorically. We're talking about the instincts that allowed hunter/gatherers to survive, and how the remnants of those instincts affect us.
While it may be hard to imagine in modern times, in the life of a hunter/gatherer, every failed attempt is a chance to remove yourself from the gene pool. If you don't eat today, you're going to be weaker tomorrow, making a successful hunt less likely. That feedback loop can make you the last of your lineage.
If you think someone is starving from not eating a few berries you’re not gonna make it long in a forest. You need protein and fat more than anything not damn berries.
At this point in life i rush to those bushes saying here kitty kitty 💀
KNOWING what tigers can do and are around is enough with intelligence to stay smart about it.
Complacency can get that person killed
I’ve never seen Alex O’Connor outside of his actual channel and it makes me happy to see his clips are elsewhere
The truth is hard to handle for most people, and it will bring suffering and pain before clearness and self acceptance. Some might not be able to process and handle it.
Say you believe your parents are the most decent, truthful and caring people in the world, and your whole character, moral and belief system are built around that single fact. What do you think would happen if after 40-50 years you learn that the truth is the complete opposite? You will have to deconstruct and reconstruct your whole being. Most people don't want that. Its easier to believe in lies than the truth, like its easier to tell the truth in a difficult situation.
Running away costs you ENERGY- or even just being in the constant fight or flight mode or stress, like we humans.
Longer term survival = Conservation of energy.
So, are you weighing up the cost of dispensed energy against potentially being eaten by a Tiger..?
@@Fluffysweep
Yes, but we as humans today, are constantly in a elevated cortisol state.
I was thinking more of present human state.
@peterwilson1295 In that case, forget the Tigers, It's other humans we need to watch out for.
This is precisely why the scientific method exists.
I don’t think you understand what they mean. I suggest you start with humes skepticism, see if that leads you back
"Observable, repeatable and measurable."....Like the Big Bang, for example? Or perhaps macro evolution? Good luck implementing that.😂
If I have a calculator that everytime says 2+2=5, then that it the reality in that closed loop. If humanity has no higher level of cognitive connection, then there is no way to know whether we experience a similar level of incorrect reasoning that we will never notice because it is baked into us.
The scientific cycle is man made (I.e. by our brains which are in question here)
@DG-mv6zw We can watch macro evolution on species that have quick successive generations.
We can also see the big bang and measure background radiation.
Tell me more about how you've never actually looked into the sciences. 😅
Running away costs energy, so knowing when to run or not is beneficial for energy conservation.
I mean in a short time frame the belief in wrong is okay for survival. But at scale you eventually need to find the truth. If the bush rustles literally every time you walk by and you refuse to go there, that doesn’t benefit you to be perpetually scared. Maybe you were kicking a root. Maybe squirrels nest there which would be good food. Constantly believing the wrong thing means no progression. Eventually you have to figure out if there is a lion in that bush or not, or else you will be crippled by fear and humans never progress
Etymologically " to believe " root meaning is to accept that which is false or unknown as being Truth. So no beliefs, one abides in a spaciousness of " not knowing ".
Namaste 🙏
I struggle to believe that someone answered “how do you know what you believe is true” with “because believing true things helps me to survive.” Because that’s an answer to a completely different question.
Maybe something got lost in the summarizing of another conversation for me. Maybe it was more like “since our beliefs are formed from natural processes whose primary strength is their ability to replicate and continue, how do we know our beliefs are anything more than what was able to replicate and continue, with the truth value not seeming to be a relevant part of that process?”
I suspect that may be the case, or something like it. But even then, Dawkins wouldn’t be saying that the thing which helps me to survive is *necessarily* true, just that the fact it helped me survive weighs the odds that it is true a bit more in its favor.
But all of that aside, the way we tell something is true is usually by analyzing its predictive power.
People don’t rely on truth to survive, they rely on illusion. For instance, you could argue that if our mortality is unavoidable and permanent, very few find this helpful to our survival since it’s depressing, undermines what we’re doing in life, and runs counter to everything we want to believe in an almost instinctual level. This is why we have afterlife theories, to compensate and console ourselves that death isn’t really the end. It ties in with loss too. The biggest religions in earth tell us we’ll see all our lost loved ones again rather than they are gone forever. If it’s true they are gone forever, it doesn’t help us survive, believing we’ll be reunited or that they really aren’t gone does. It gives us some illusory goal to pursue.
Using a mathematical operator is a naive proposition. It isn’t circumstantial.
It’s a statement on how we justify truth claims, if the precondition to how we define truth is that it is something that is utilitarian to our survival than anything that is objectively false, based on a transcendent standard of truth, but still fits that purpose can be considered true. From that relativistic frame work everything is circumstance eg 2+2 =4. If we assume that there is actual truth you are then appealing to an objective or transcendent standard/ authority on truth.
@@Louiesarge1 it's a bad example because we 2+2=4 is a matter of definition, it's not something we claim to know. We invented mathematics to try to describe the universe.
It would be like saying "how do you know wrist mean the joint between the forearm and the hand?", or "how do you know the bishop moves diagnoally?", well that's just how we've defined it.
On the other hand, a rustling in the bush coming from a predator is not a matter of definition, it is a claim to knowledge. A better comparison would be "how do you know the sun orbits the earth? Does having knowledge of that truth benefit your survival?".
“2+2=4” is a prime example of objective truth, an actual fact. That's why it was mentioned. Truth in and of itself isn't subjective, it doesn't change according to people or circumstances. It's not just something that helps you survive.
Whatever that means.
@arvaneret_329 2+ 2 is a horrible example, since it's just a matter of definition
Believing there's a lion every time will make you do nothing in life because guess what there's always a rustling in the bushes.
Truth has a resolution (high vs low). Facts are just parts of a particular model which may not tell the full truth but is probably good enough for a given use case.
I would say that the example with the tiger in the bush is not a particularly great one, as it does not deal with "believe" in my opinion.
This is an example of being cautious, you do not have to actually believe that a rustling in a bush is a dangerous animal, but acting as if, i.e. being cautious, can save your life.
So your actual state of mind would be "I do not know what caused this rustle, but, to be safe, I probably should run away".
I have also heard a similar argument with "treating a gun as if it is loaded at all time", but I think the same principle applies, being cautious does not mean you actually have to believe that the gun is loaded, but acting like it is, is safer overall.
"We train ourselves to believe the little lies when we are young, so that we can believe the big lies, like reality, when we grow older."
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather (Might slightly misremember it)
Just change the threat. Knowing which mushroom will kill you and which one is food will keep you alive
And in that scenario being suspicious of all mushrooms is just as likely to result in survivng
@@TOAOM123 ... and starvation. There is a forced outcome.
@@TOAOM123 you are aware are you, that a vast array of foods are harmful to humans (in some form).
Berries, nuts, mushrooms etc
Not to mention the fact that for example humans hunted wild boars, regardless of them being dangerous. Again it’s true that knowing what’s true, learning how they respond, act is imperative to survival.
That’s an objective truth..
The cost of living in fear is consistent stress, which has detrimental effect towards your health.
Evolution only cares if you survive long enough to reproduce
Long term it is bad. Short term, it makes you mate faster and get kids asap. Prepare for any world ending event. Create stable society.
@@A_m3ss wish you the best, happy and healthy 🙏🏽
Sure, a lot of stress does affect your long-term health but this is new ground for us. Humans didn't regularly live into their 70s until a couple of centuries ago and high levels of stress helped our ancient ancestors to survive in a world which was much more brutal and infused with fear.
@@lukacuturilo4992 100% I do agree with you brother. However in modern times, many of us tend to live in unnecessary fear which hinders our ability be courageous and confident. Our ancestors stressed and fought for us to have a better life, so let’s enjoy the comfort and safety we have in modern times to respect their hardships.
Believing true things makes you more likely to survive. Being suspicious makes you more likely to survive. Now, people are being taught that 'negativity bias' is bad because the people who control education are doing really bad stuff and they don't want you to worry about it 😂😂😂
and how you know something you believe is wether true or false? because is better for survival?
@@nicolassevilla8048
how you know english? because you believe?
What do you meab by believing?
You would still survive best if you always believed the rustling in the bush was exactly what it was. It’s better to think it’s a tiger and be wrong often than to fail when it really is one, but the best way would be to think it’s a tiger when it is one and never waste energy running, being more alert, or hitting an adrenaline rush when it isn’t.
The truth really can be ordained by simply respecting reality, assuming of course that reality is real. Every philosophy has a fundamental assumption, and every person does too. This doesn’t even inherently mean that values and morals are subjective, it means that there is currently and possibly always will be a point at which any living human being will be unable to discern with perfect accuracy and the knowledge that his accuracy is perfect, the complexities of the universe. I, for instance, am basically a pragmatist. Some existential arguments are unverifiable and it’s technically possible that everything around me does not actually exist, nor does logic, and as such it’s even possible I don’t exist. However, I really seem to exist, and so does everything around me, and I knew a guy who thought gravity didn’t exist and he seemed to rise poorly when he thought he could fly and jumped from five stories up, so I’m more willing to bet on reality being real than on the matrix being real, and so far it seems to be working. with the assumption that reality is real and objective, I then use my faith based assumption that there is objective truth to figure out the rest, and land on otherwise impossible conclusions, as all of us have either through really deep thought or the complete lack of it.
This is such a breath of fresh air after listening to destiny
Oh I might have to watch this one, that sounds very interesting!
It's not. Trust me. You will lose braincells. Start watching Zizek instead.
@@ranchmangno thank you, I find Marxism more draining. The ideologies of the old continent seem to enjoy repeating themselves too much. More of an Americanism and meritocracy kinda guy then the back and forth of Communism and its more honest cousin Facism.
@jsmart6430 Don't say draining, you can admit that you're stupid and can't understand anything about it.
Believing there's a tiger in the bushes to help you survive isnt necessarily believing in false things if you dont know them to be false. Its also the fear that would be saving you and not the knowledge.
Believing it could be a lion is a true statement.
That's the way I see it.
The original premise is a truth "tiger's do rustle bushes,"
Any false identification after that is irrelevant.
If you continue to act as if any rustle could be a predator, then surely your long-term survival chance enhances.?
@@Fluffysweep yes thats the point... so what are you getting at ??
Because A is A and reality exists. It’s not subjective. It is objective. You can evade reality, but you cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.
As all evidence is in consciousness, Occam’s Razor sides with reality being subjective
Does the truth matter when no one agrees on it? What's better: believing the truth and being alone, or believing a lie and being with the group?
I am constantly arguing that phonetics distract us from the reality of what it is we intend to articulate, so that concept of 2 + 2 equaling 4 being a temporary understanding that leads us to a more developed existence, really strikes a chord.
That 2+2 equals for IS one of those. Or at least it is a byproduct of some of those. Bertrand Russell explained it well. Mathematics are an abstraction and an ideation, it only makes sense on a relatively stable planet like ours to count things and categorize them as objects. If somehow we lived on the surface of the sun we would never have invented mathematics because there were no “things” to count everything would constantly be moving, changing and transforming.
"True things makes me more likely to survive"
Meanwhile, somewhere...
Wife: Do these pants make my ass look fat?
Husband: *Life flashes before my eyes*
You don’t need to believe there is a tiger in the bush to run. You need to believe there’s a chance, which IS true.
Truth is always a nano second away
The truth is the *rustling of the leaves*. Not what caused it.
You can determine what was causing the rustling at a later time when it is less likely to be deadly
Because the nature, the life, the universe test your ideas. If they don't stand the reality, you are done.
We can send a rocket into space, have it traverse hundreds of thousands of miles of space, intersect an asteroid moving at several thousand miles an hour, gently land on that asteroid to collect a sample before boosting off, return that sample to earth for further analysis, and all of this is done remotely, and lot of the calculations for this is done prior to launch . . .
Ummm . . . Yeah . . . I think a teeny tiny bit of confidence in our knowledge isn't unwarranted.
The case you just made is a pragmatic one. So 2+2=4 isn't True, but it's true ENOUGH that humans can accurately predict the behavior of physical objects in space. From the human perspective, we don't have access to truth. We have access to the track record.
@@Valstein0Which is the closest thing to truth we can get, and the fact that we're still debating over the value of Falsification and likelihood is a travesty.
Sure we can. But we are also just as likely to murder each other in catastrophic numbers, as we’ve done all throughout history. The problem is that just because something is true in some sense doesn’t make it good.
Justifying is the issue.
we actually cant and space is fake, the moon landing never happened.
Assuming that it's a lion in the bushes could help you survive.. but you asked about TRUE, not intuition nor assumption nor guess.
Being able to figure out which is TRUE from your guesses is always advantageous.
If the wind hits the bushes then you would waste a LOT of resources running all the time than evaluating and determining the truth.
Living according to a narrative, true or not, gives us motivation and hope, but it can also be used against us as propaganda. Either way, it is built right in us. Evolutionarily, it has to be there for a reason
Except it's still generally more advantageous to believe true things so Dawkins is still correct. Just because there are a few rare examples of where believing falsities saves you means nothing just like it means nothing that sometimes seat belts trap and kill you vs saving you
Peterson was dying to say "well it depends what you mean by tiger"
Whatever that means.
2+2=4 is a tautology and if anything its value its not on its truthfulness but its usefulness to construct mathematical concepts, trying to find new and "better" math is the breath and butter of a mathematician, people who raise these "profound" questions without so much as a "lion behind the bush" argument have no idea the kind of behemoth efforts we make as a species to further our knowledge
I work in shipping/receiving of a really expensive retail clothing store. $10,000 jackets and shit. I make so little compared to everyone around me all day that it's crazy. I've been noticing more and more how happy the clients look. Real smiles, not fake or performative at all. Our sales people ask them about their life and they are happy to tell them about this trip, that child's success, this new project, and that new thing they are interested in that they have no barrier of entry. I can only assume that it comes from the wellbeing of knowing that you are so far from the need to survive. When your basic needs are more than met, you are free to expand your life beyond that in a way that enriches any aspect of it that you happen to be focusing on at the time. Anyway, tell me that money doesn't buy happiness.
It does if you have your health and great family and friends. Having those and no money won't make a lot of people happy.
Happiness shouldn't come from material things, but it does, let's be honest.
People always question concept of hell and “putting the fear of god into people” when this guy points out exactly why we need that. The whole concept is negativity bias at its core and has helped our development historically.
The answer is that the ability to reason itself when normally uninhibited will lead to better outcomes. There is a difference between ones ABILITY to do a risk analysis and believing something which is observably false as true. Meaning even when overshpoting or miscalculating it's REASON and forethought which has survival value even when it's incorrect over impulsivity or being haphazard The former can and does aide survival even when wrong. But actually believing a tiger IS there when there isn't in spite of evidence and actually hallucinating one IS there would NOT lead to improved chances for survival and actually inhibit survival and reproduction. We survive in a real world the ability to observe it accurately more often than not by far will improve ones chances of survival
"It costs you nothing to run away"
By the time you run that does not matter anymore...
If you run every time the wind blows because you think there's a lion, you will deplete your energy.
Essentially you'll have anxiety.
I think Dawkins was dogding the question a bit but he is probably right on that point.
I think, overarchingly, its a better survival trait to pursue truth.
You don’t need to believe a lie to protect yourself from the tiger. You can simply say since I don’t know that it isn’t a tiger I’m going to go the other way.
Yup, that's knowledge and not being complacent..
-Why do you pray every night?
-Since I cannot know if there’s a God, I do it just in case…
Is the same for people deciding to believe in god.
Exactly you're not believing anything false, because tigers do exist and there might be one doing all that rustling, and it's true that you should run from tigers. Believing something that is false means you believe you saw a tiger that wasn't there. Or saw a tiger that was there, and thought it was an elephant, or a hallucinations. Oh damn I just did the rambling thing again
Congratulations for missing the point. You could believe it is the evil twin of the FSM, and if it keeps you away from the bushes, it is a net plus on your survival.
Human reason generally works reasonably well for the kind of situations our ancestors ran into often, but otherwise not so well. But we fondly imagine it gives the God's Eye view. And we have a succession of grand theories, eg mathematics, that we believed would give us complete and accurate knowledge, but that we found have limitations (e.g. incompleteness theorems).
That's why there are mathematical proofs 2 + 2 = 4 and 1.999... + 1.999... = 2. The idea behind proofs is it's "objective" and therefore is a method used to remove bias and creates a "reasonable expectation."
"I asked Dawkins a question, and he gave me a *smart* answer, and I'll go ahead and add to it with something *smart of my own* 🤓"
What do you mean by this?
It costs you everything to practice cowardice. Everything.
The constant stress of expecting a tiger may kill one in the long run before an actual tiger does!! Occam’s Razor says expect unicorns and not tigers (maybe paraphrasing a little!)
I had a friend overdose and the doctor said the only reason he didn't die was because the methamphetamine kept his heart going ... A lot of stupid stuff keeps you alive but that doesn't mean believing false things is better than knowing the truth... Yes sometimes it works and that's fine but knowledge works better
Being scared or frightened all of the time because of possibilities is already a negative. You can't live s reasonable life that way or nothing would get done . Everything can kill you.
Lions do not care if you run. But if you do not run they eat well that day.
because 2 + 2 = 4 is a construct. mathematics is a vast array of axioms WE set, which make it True if those axioms are accepted.
Believing a lie is not at all equal to assuming the worst to protect you yourself. If you know the rustling is not a tiger amd you belive that, you increase the chances to run towards the tiger actually 😊
I saw this guy interview Hitchens ... Not Christopher. This young fellow makes my skin crawl
That jacket 💯
Running away doesn't cost you nothing. You might lose a meal, much needed rest, you could trip and get injured, you could run in the wrong direction straight into the lions. There's an opportunity cost there.
It's not as big as the negative of getting eaten, but it's there.
And so, all other things being equal, getting better senses, or more accurately interpreting the senses you do have to better figure if it is a lion and what direction it's in - ie, being better at discerning truth - is still a net benefit compared to others around you, and will make you more likely to survive and procreate.
Lies like “believing the rustling in the bushes is a lion everytime” seem like it costs nothing, but it eventually costs you your mind, your awareness, your perception, and will be a generational trait that will be placed on one of your descendants to break.
Also, since it “helps you survive” as a temporary positive, the tendency to over-react or fear the worst will bleed into other aspects of your life and will cost you relationships, business, and safety.
Imagine mindlessly reacting to a rustling bush and you fearfully run right off a cliff…but it was just a small bird in the bush.
If that lion is on a boat coming across the English channel the left will ensure safe passage 😂
That is the porcupine can throw it's quills belief.
It can't. But it doesn't hurt to stay a little further away from porcupine quills.
Faulty Logic there. Because it does cost you something to run away from a non threat.
Dawkins being the Darwinist that he is, equating truth with beneficial traits, and thus benefiting survival.
There is a continuum of proof ranging from hypothesis to empirical evidence. But really anything can turn out to be untrue if we’re in a simulation for example (which we are)
Running from predator type animals is a very bad idea in most circumstances, if they're hungry they will chase you and they will catch you.
On top of that you've already made yourself look like prey so there's definitely no going back from that.
Take all perspectives and experiences subjective into consideration and apply objective evidence.
The problem with that is that every "objective" evidence you try and use, you only know about via subjective experiences. Even your own thought process, no matter how objectively logical you think it is, is itself a subjective experience.
I am not a subjectivist, idealist, nor relativist. I agree there is an objective world and it behooves us to understand it as it is. But this is why these philosophies, though wrong, will never go away. Because "objectivity" is only ever shared, consistent subjectivity. Shared between memories of an individual or between minds of a group. And how do you know it's shared? Via subjective experiences, again.
It costs you a lot to run away when it's not a tiger.
This sort of thinking defeats itself
No If there is a rustling in the bushes its better to know and understand why rather than just running for the hills and straight into a lions track.
Cosmic skeptic fuckin tearing through all these conservatives
Great argument!
They have mathematical proofs for
2+2=4.
What if the rustling in the bushes was a person that needed your help and you ran away?? Did you lose something?
"how can you know, that what you believe is true?" well, because the predictions made based on that knowledge are right.
My problem with Alex's example is that believing there is a tiger in the bushes isn't necessary to act as if there is one there. You could be acting on the probability that it's a tiger, not the certainty.
For as common as the lion in the bushes scenario is, I'm not sure it is representative of what actually happened with our ancestors. Yes, there is obviously a certain degree of caution or fear in a situation like this, but to presume they immediately jumped to a firm conclusion about there being a serious threat in the bushes is just taking a very short-sighted view of things. There could also very well be a wild pig or deer in the bushes, which would be a fantastic food discovery. So the idea that running if you're wrong costs you nothing is also oversimplified.
I think there are also different orders of believing falsehoods. In the example given, the falsehood would still be one of inference. You don't actually know what the rustling really is. On the other hand, it is hard to see how our eyes would evolve to see things that aren't real, or to NOT see things that ARE real, because it is very hard to see how a system so at odds with reality could ever be selected for.
Ah, but. How do you know it costs you nothing to run away?
You don't run because you hear a rustle in the bushes and _mistakenly_ think it's a Bear ... you run because although it might not be a Bear, if _You_ are mistaken and it is a Bear -- -you're dead!
That's not being "Mistaken" in the way described in this video
I could be being stupid here but hear me out. I think believing a rustling in the bushes is a tiger is not the same as believing something which isn’t true in order to maximise survival, because whether the rustling in the bushes is in fact a tiger isn’t true or false until the source of the rustling reveals itself.
I’m thinking of it like this; rustling in bushes could be dangerous, therefore avoid the source of rustling.
The statement that the rustling could be dangerous is true, no?