8KcHk_9iues.srt

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Hello Dr Peterson,
I've been trying to listen to my 

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conscience,
but I can't tell the difference between 

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fear,
willful blindness or genuine conscience.

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Well,
the first thing I would say about that 

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is it is quite clear that you are in 
fact trying to listen to your conscience

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because that's probably the first thing 
that you discover,

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so that's a really good question.
Okay,

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fear.
Well,

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here's a test and you don't want to do 
this stupidly.

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If you think that you should do 
something and you think that the reason 

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you might not be doing it is because 
you're afraid,

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then you should do it.

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So that way you can find out if it's 
fear.

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No,
I think your question is,

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well,
how do I know my conscience isn't just 

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masquerading as fear saying,
well,

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you shouldn't do that,
but it's rationalizing the real issue,

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which is you're afraid of doing that.
Now,

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see,
here's a reason that you want to tell 

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the truth.
And I parked.

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I kind of figured this out when I was 
looking deeply into the Pinocchio Story.

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You know when Pinocchio as Pinocchio 
strives to become real,

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he,
he has a conscience to guide him,

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but it's jimminy cricket,
this insect,

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but Gemini isn't really a very good 
conscience.

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He's a bit dogmatic to begin with,
dogmatic and didn't experienced,

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and so it's.
It's not like the conscience is an 

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unerring guide.
It's like a partner in discovery and as 

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you move forward in your life and you 
consult your conscience and you listened

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to it,
then it gets smarter and so to you,

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but there's a Coda there,
and this is why I've suggested part of 

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the reason why I've suggested so 
frequently in my lectures and in my book

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that people try not to lie.

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See,
there are many systems.

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You have many systems within.
Let's say that guide you and one of 

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those is your capacity for rational 
thought and then you have a variety of 

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emotional systems and motivational 
systems and internal dramas and 

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intuitions and bodily sensations like 
lots and lots of incenses.

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Lots of systems that are guiding you and
many of them operate.

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You might say,
unconsciously,

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autonomously,
instinctively,

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implicitly,
all of that.

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Now you pr nonetheless,
you programmed them like you feed them 

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content,
let's say just like you feed your body 

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nourishment,
you feed them content and a lot of the 

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content that you feed them pertains 
directly to your voluntary thoughts and 

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speech and your actions and then if you 
pathologize those by lying,

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so if you say things that you know not 
to be true or you don't say things that 

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you know to be true when you need to,
which is more common and if you act in 

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ways that you consider that an act in 
ways you considered reprehensible,

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then you pathologize all of those 
autonomous systems that guide you.

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It's like you're programming them badly.
You're building an AI system inside 

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yourself really in in,
in some sense that is what you're doing.

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That has very bad.
It's very bad training data and so the 

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output it produces will be will,
won't guide you properly and so you 

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don't want to pathologize your guidance 
systems.

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It's a really bad idea.
So that's why you have to not lie and 

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maybe that's also why you have to say 
what you have to say and you have to say

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clearly as well and you have to learn 
how to do that.

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So that's one of the ways of getting 
your conscience straightened out.

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And then you have to have a dialogue 
with your conscience and you might ask.

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It's like,
okay,

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well what should I do or what should,
should I do this or should I not do 

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this?
So let's say you're thinking,

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should I not do this?

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In the case of a temptation,
maybe you have a chance to develop a new

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relationship.
You know,

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and you're,
you're excited about it and apprehensive

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about it and afraid of it and you don't 
know how to sort out all those feelings.

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And the first thing is you really have 
to want to sort them out.

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That's why you have to orient yourself 
to something that's a genuine up.

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You know that the star above the 
horizon,

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you have to really want things to be 
straight and you have to have thought 

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that through.
And you have to know what it means for 

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things not to be straight,
and really what it means is that you're 

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headed for hell in one way or another.
And if you understand that it's enough,

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maybe it's enough to scare you straight.
You really gotta think that through.

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Then you've got to think about how much 
better it would be if you aimed up and 

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and that really has to kind of permeate 
your whole being.

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And so then you're oriented that way 
you're oriented to adopt and you're 

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deciding that it's okay to try to tell 
the truth and then you can start to rely

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on this dialogue with your conscience.
But both of you have to learn and you're

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gonna make mistakes along the way.
You know that's okay.

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You can say,
well,

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I'm going to try this without being 
certain that it's right.

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You can even say,
I'm going to say this without being 

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certain that it's correct.
Like if you're arguing with your wife or

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your husband or your or your sister,
your father,

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and you have an idea about what might be
going on.

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You can say,
look,

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here's my idea about what's going on,
who knows what that idea might be 

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contaminated with like,
maybe I'm putting it forward just 

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because I'm too proud or arrogant or 
angry or fearful or whatever that's 

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possible.

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Let's see if we can figure that out.
But you can offer it tentatively and 

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both have at it.
That's what you do.

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If it's a hypothesis,
right.

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You both have at it and see if it's an 
idea that's worthy of,

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of keeping you do that with your 
conscience.

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And then you were moved forward.
There's a,

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there's a technique in behavioral 
psychology called psychotherapy called 

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collaborative empiricism.
So let's say that we,

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you and I have been sitting down and we 
decided that you're going to try 

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something new this week,
like maybe your agoraphobic and you're 

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having a hard time in a parking lot and 
so getting out of the car and going to 

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the grocery store.
So maybe we say,

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well,
you know,

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drive to the grocery store and you're 
just gonna walk halfway to the two,

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halfway from your car to the door and 
that's good enough for like,

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do that every second day for a week and 
then come back and let's talk about it.

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So that's collaborative empiricism.
You're running little experiments,

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you think what your conscience is 
guiding you towards something.

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You take a tentative step in that 
direction and then you check and see,

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well,
you know,

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did what I wanted to have happen or 
occur as an outcome.

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That's the crucial question and that's 
the crucial question for behavioral 

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truth,
right?

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That's the pragmatic perspective.
Did what I want to have happened happen 

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as a consequence of my framework of 
interpretation and my action.

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If the answer is yes,
then I have not invalidated it.

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Right?
That's,

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that's the pragmatic philosophy in a 
nutshell.

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And it's,
it's very,

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very smart.
So you have a dialogue with your 

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conscience that never ends and hopefully
it gets wiser and you get wiser.

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And

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that's the dialogue that young talked 
about between the conscious and the 

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unconscious,
between your,

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your fantasy life.
Say the life that sort of underneath you

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as a conscious being like the life 
that's part of your biological platform,

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the biological platform that somehow 
miraculously gives rise to your 

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consciousness.
If a dialogue with that.

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We're always in dialogue.
We're always in dialogue,

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right with everything,

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so pursue that.