 And that's, it's one of those questions that leads into a philosophical dead end because it's not well posed. There isn't any such thing as self-interest. All right, no, this is going to be, this is going to be very interesting, right? Because he just said there isn't any such thing as self-interest. And what is there is a question you should keep at the top of your mind. What is there if there's no such thing as self-interest? What is there for Jordan Peterson at least if there's no such thing as self-interest? And you'll notice that how I think convoluted this gets in terms of his own thinking because he can't be an egoist. He can't be an egoist. So he has to, he has to fight it and he has to try to denounce it. But on the other hand, what are the 12 rules? The 12 rules are an attempt at least to tell people how to live better, how they should live, how should they make their lives better really for themselves. At least that's one of the goals of 12 rules. And it's certainly part of his advice makes sense from a self-interested perspective, although the methodology is wrong and we'll get to that because he doesn't understand what self-interest is. Because he doesn't understand the fundamental question that ethics is asking, he can't really articulate those 12 rules in the right kind of way. Obviously in a popular way because everybody's listening to them, but in the right kind of way that actually gives meaning morally. All right, let's keep going here. It's not the right way to think about it because you're not alone. And so this is, so note this again, and I'm going to cut him off a lot. As I said, you're not alone. Well, okay. Nobody said you are alone. Self-interest doesn't mean you're alone. It means your interests, other people could be part of your interest. And he'll talk about that. He actually described how other people are part of your interest. But he's already accepted a straw man of self-interest, which is this idea of self-interested people want to be at the desert island. Self-interest means thinking only of yourself in some way excluding other people, even though those people might be important to self. So he's bought into kind of the conventional view of what self-interest is and how we should think about self-interest, which is, I think, really unfortunate. Piaget, John Piaget, because he thought about this intelligently. Look, first of all, whose self-interest do you mean? Do you mean your immediate self-interest in the next second? So that would be impulsive pleasure. We're all acting for the gaining of impulsive pleasure and to hell with everything else. Well, obviously that's a stupid way to behave because, and everyone knows that, because you can do impulsive short-term gratifying things like snort cocaine now, and you can keep doing that and it pay off real well. Well, extremely short-term and it'll just auger you into the ground in the medium to long-term. Yes, we agree. Pursuing one's whim short-term is really bad for whom? Who's it bad for? For self, for yourself over your life. But he has no concept of life here. He has no concept and you'll see this as we go along. Of what you are and over your lifetime. So first of all, there's no such thing as immediate self-interest. What does that even mean? Your self-interest, you are not you immediately and we'll get into what you mean, but it's you, your life. Self-interest means your life, not just right now, but over your life. So if you're acting in your own self-interest, let's take that apart. Over what period of time? Your self-interest in the next second? Your self-interest in the next hour? Like if you're impulsive and you want to gratify an impulse, you're obviously acting in your self-interest in the next second or the next two seconds or the next minute. But you know, you'll pay for that. Maybe you punch someone or you slap someone because you're so angry and they knock you for a loop and then they charge you with assault. So well, it was great in your self-interest in the second, but like future, remember that Simpsons episode? Homer drank a quart of mayonnaise and vodka and Marge and all his kids were telling him not to and he said, well, that's a problem for future Homer. I sure don't envy that guy. It's like, which is one of the best Simpsons lines ever, I think. And well, that's it exactly. It's like, well, there isn't just you, there's now you and there's tonight you and there's tomorrow morning you. That's the one that'll have the hangover, by the way. And there's next week you and next month you and next year you. So notice this, there's now you, there's tomorrow you, there's next month you, there's next year you. I see this a lot among psychologists, among philosophers even. This idea that you are not you, there are many yous and you are not you today. You're not the same you as you were last year. It's a different you. I mean, I don't exactly know what to do with all that, but it's wrong. And it's very much consistent with this idea that Jordan, I think is a little concrete bound and a pragmatist. No, you are at this moment, what you have been, what you've become, you are the accumulation of all the choices you have made in the past and you are the projection of what you're going to be in the future. Your life is a life. It has a beginning, it has an end, and it has everything in between. That is your life. You are an entity. Yes, you change, but it's still you. You don't, you know, the identity of you doesn't change even though some of your characteristics or some of your ideas or some of your habits and traits and thoughts do change. So it's not you're trading off you today versus you tomorrow. You are one entity. You are one thing. Your life is a whole. And idea, if you're self-interested, if what it means to be self-interested is to think about your life as a whole and to think about the things that you do today, how they affect you, not just in the moment, but how they affect you over a lifetime, over that life as a whole. And for that, for that kind of thinking, and in order to do that every minute of every day, on every choice that you make, on every decision, every important decision certainly, the only way that is possible to do, and this is, I think, why Peterson has a hard time with this concept. The only way to do that is with principles, moral principles. You have to hold certain moral principles so that you don't have to every moment say, should I start the cooking? Shouldn't I? Should I lie? Shouldn't I? Should I go to work this morning? Shouldn't I? But you are guided in your life by moral principles that guide you, not just in the moment, but guide you in the moment for the rest of your life, with the context of your rest of your life in mind. The context of the rest of your life in mind. And so if you're going to act in your self-interest, you have to take that collective of use across time into account. But there is no collective of use. There's just you. Now, he's right that you have to take into account the future. But he's using that collective of use. He's using the future to deny the existence of self. To deny the existence there is a self with an interest, that there is something that's good for you right now. And that what's good for you right now is to take into account the consequence of your actions into the future. But he is denying that. Your decision. And now here's the cool thing about that. So then let's say, well, that would be acting in your self-interest, writ large right across time spans. But the thing is future you and someone else that you have to live with right now, that's not you, are pretty much the same people. Now this is the kind of stuff he says. This is the type of stuff that he says that, you know, sounds deep. And I think a lot of people like, but the fact is it. No, it doesn't make any sense. I'm, I'm no philosopher, right? But that just doesn't make any sense. Future you is the same as other people. No, he's not future you as you other people, other people. And there are other people in the present and there are other people in the future. But you can't, and he does this, he'll do this a lot in the rest of his video. He, he merges all of reality into a blur where there's no difference between you and other people. And ultimately there's no difference between you and your room. And there's no difference between you and existence. But there are borders. The things do have identity. You are you. Other people, other people. And it depends which other people, you know, he'll give an example here in a minute about your wife. Well, sure, but that's a particular person with a particular relationship to you. Your wife is just not any other person. It's a specific person. All right. Let's keep going. And so if you're going to act in your self interest and you have other people around you, then you also want to act in their self interest because otherwise they won't like you. They won't cooperate with you and they won't compete with you in a reasonable manner. And so that's going to be a catastrophe. So you have to act in other people's self interest because if you don't, it's not in your self interest. Now, again, there's an element of truth there, right? If you treat other people with justice, if you treat other people the way they deserve, which is in your self interest. But you could argue broadly in their self interest as well. That's good. That's in your self interest to do so and to treat people unjustly is wrong. Right. Would be bad for you, but it's still you are the standard here. But he's going to, he doesn't want to create a standard. He doesn't want to draw lines. He doesn't want to draw identities. Everything kind of merges into a blur. So you want to act out what's good for you now and what's good for you next month and next year. And you want to do that in a way that's good for you and your family and your community right now, next week and next year. And you're going to take all those things into account at the same time. Now notice, see there it is, right? He's saying you have to take all these things into account at the same time. And yeah, and that's impossible. And it is impossible if you have to do that every time you make a decision, every single time you make a decision, you have to make a list of everything. You today, you tomorrow, you in a month, you in a year, and everybody else around you, the impact, the justice that the impact it has on everybody else and everything. You can do it. He's right. So to help with tell us self interest, right? But no, but this is what morality is about. This is what principles make possible to do. Once you figure out and we're not going to go into figuring this out right now that lying or being just the people that lying is wrong and being honest is good and that being just is good. Then you don't have to recreate it every single time. And of course, he knows this to some extent. And this is why he doesn't integrate his knowledge because he knows this from the example of honesty. He's very, very good on honesty. It's the one virtue, the one virtue that he nails. If you've seen his talks on Pinocchio, right? And you've seen his talks on honesty. He is very good at it. He's the best non-objectivist and he's actually better than some objectives on this topic. On honesty and the awful, horrible consequences of dishonesty to you, to you today, to you tomorrow, to you in a month, to you in a year, to you forever, to you. So he gets honesty as a principle, although I don't think he defined it that way. And he doesn't define honesty exactly the way we do, but he gets why lying deception is bad. Bad for you, bad for your self-interest. Again, in short term, long term, in all terms, because it is. Because the you, which is you, is unified. But he's a committed pragmatist. So he can't think of it as a principle. And he can't then integrate it into, well, maybe there's other principles by which if one lives, right? It has to be very concrete. And in the end of the day, that's, you know, if you look at his rules, they're very concrete bound. They are principles in the background, but it's very, very hard for him. It's very, very hard for him to, you know, to actually think in terms of integrate and to think in terms of a real principle, even though implicitly they're principles. Because when you have rules, what do rules mean? Well, they're very concrete rules, but behind the concrete rules there are principles, but he won't, he won't identify them. He doesn't go there. He doesn't go there.