On Being Smart
"We need to be bound by our traditions, but we need to be judicious in their re-representation and update."
This segment is about religion, but (a) religion isn't really mentioned all that much and (b) there are echos of education debates in parts of this dialog that I'd like to highlight.
Peterson: What if you're not very smart?
Harris: So then you're basically saying that the stupid people need their myths. We smart people on stage don't need them.
Peterson: Look, I actually am saying that to some degree. Look, look, if you're not exceptionally cognitively astute, you should be traditional and conservative. Because if you can't think well, you're going to think badly, and if you think badly, you're going to fall into trouble. And so, it is definitely the case--and this has been a cliche of political belief for a long time--if you're not very smart, it's better to be conservative. Because then you do what everyone else does, and generally speaking doing what everyone else does is the path of least error moving forward. Now, that doesn't mean that rationality is unnecessary.
Murray: Nor does it mean that all conservatives are stupid. . . .
Peterson: It's definitely the case that we need to be bound by our traditions but we need to be judicious in their re-representation and update. . . .
Chesterton's Fence
Let's take this transcript from the bottom up. First, Peterson's final contribution above is essentially a recapitulation of the idea behind Chesterton's Fence—an important rule of thumb to consider, no matter what side you find yourself on in any education debate.
Chesterton's Fence is a simple rule of thumb that suggests you should never destroy a fence, change a rule, or alter a tradition if you do not understand why it was created in the first place.
Critical to the application of this rule of thumb is the charitable interpretation of rules and traditions—i.e., steelmanning. The notion, for example, that putting kids in rows in a classroom is a mechanism for soliciting subordination and compliance is certainly a pretense for understanding why this particular tradition exists, but it's an incredibly uncharitable one that should not count as understanding at all—unless of course you have good evidence for this interpretation.
It is also important to check whether you are mapping your values back onto the past. The fact that you see the world through the lens of oppressors and victims and individuals rather than collectives (or however you see it) does not mean that's how people in the past looked at the world. Similarly, try to avoid a narrow, school-centric view (nearly 80% white and female; groupthink doesn't just apply to male-dominated endeavors). Where else in the world have we essentially agreed to position ourselves in rows? Buses, trains, airplanes? Movie theaters and concert halls? Sporting events? Meetings and conferences? Waiting rooms? Restaurants? Are these all acts of oppression and subjugations of individuality, or do you think maybe we self-organized into these solutions over time, solving an ever-present coordination problem?
On the more traditionalist or conservative side, Chesterton's Fence is a call to action. Once we understand, for example, that row seating minimizes distractions, improves on-task behaviors, and promotes effective independent study, we can and should be okay with adjusting to different arrangements to meet different goals.
The Smart Ones
The first of Peterson's contributions answers the question, Why do we need Chesterton's Fence? Because we aren't all that smart! "Smart" is, at the very least, a ratio of mental horsepower over a certain number of variables. Increase the horsepower, and you increase the smart, but it's much simpler to keep the mental horsepower the same and decrease the number of variables. This is, after all, what your brain does all the time—filter out information so that you can operate on the remainder.
This is also why you never hear about anything amazing from MENSA types. Sure, they're smart with puzzles. Open up the number of variables and things get more complicated very quickly—and smart isn't all that smart anymore.
Although Peterson frames his first contribution above in individualistic terms, what I think he means is more general and collective: in the grand scheme of things, you are not smart in the least. No individual could be. This is why, collectively, we orient ourselves more toward conformity than to non-conformity. All things considered—ALL things—no one, conservative or liberal, is so smart as to be able to strike out entirely on their own.
