Pod Insights The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast 568. Advice for Dealing with Bullies, Big Tech and Social Media | Answer the Call About this episode The views expressed on "Answer The Call" are presented for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes, and are not intended as medical, nutritional, or psychological advice. Viewers are strongly encouraged to consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions based on the content presented.
How do you raise strong kids in a distracted, digital world full of bullying? Dr. Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila take calls on bullying, social media, dating apps, and how parents can help kids resist the algorithm, build real resilience, and face modern challenges with confidence and clarity. Have a question you’d like to ask?
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Transcript 8,700 words · 15 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:30 Speaker 03 You got bullied, right? You talked all the time. Everybody gets bullied. But some people are bullied more than others.
1:35 Speaker 04 My son Anthony is overweight. His friends used to tease him and ridicule him.
1:40 Speaker 05 Our eight-year-old son has been called fat by a few friends. How can we as parents encourage a healthy lifestyle, knowing when or if to focus on weight?
1:48 Jordan B. Peterson? The situation that you're both facing at the moment is not optimal by any stretch of the imagination.
1:55 Speaker 07 My husband and I are parents to two young adult ladies. When we're asked for guidance about dating, we feel like the generation gap right now is more like a generation chasm.
2:06 Speaker 08 How can parents raise children to value depth in an age dominated by short-form content? Well, there's an insanely difficult question.
2:15 Jordan B. Peterson? During Answer the Call, I take questions from people just like you from around the world about their problems, opportunities, challenges, or if they simply need advice. My daughter Michaela guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives. All right, fire away.
2:42 Speaker 03 Over the next hour, we're going to hit on two topics: bullying and technology, which often go hand in hand. So the first guy we have is John in Arizona.
2:52 Jordan B. Peterson? Hey, John.
2:54 Speaker 04 Good afternoon, Dr. Peterson. I'm John. I'm in northern Arizona, and thank you for having us today.
3:00 Jordan B. Peterson? It's my pleasure. I'm very interested to hear your question.
3:04 Speaker 04 Yes, my son Anthony is overweight, and he's approaching morbid obesity. This all started when we lived in Utah. As he gained more and more weight, his friends used to tease him and ridicule him. It was pretty horrible. He took the rejection very hard. So my question is, how do you repair this kind of damage? He's 21, approaching 22. Stays in his room most of the time, lost in video games and that kind of technology. And it's kind of like living with a heroin addict. I get as sick as he does trying to steer him and control him.
3:45 Speaker 04 And I just feel lost as a parent, and I don't know how to heal him. I don't know how to heal me. I don't know how to heal us, so.
3:54 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, okay. Well, the first thing I feel compelled to say is that, and this isn't exactly the psychological issue, is that, you know, my family, my daughter in particular, Michaela, has battled with health problems, very serious health problems her whole life. And one of the things that we've discovered that's very strange and odd, but that has been verified now by thousands of people, is that a carnivore diet will strip weight off people so fast that it's absolutely beyond comprehension. And so I would feel remiss in my...
4:38 Jordan B. Peterson? Obligations if I didn't lay that out as a potential practical solution. And you know, that's a, that's a long-term issue.
4:50 Jordan B. Peterson? I guess what I would say, more on the forgetting about diet, on the practical side, although there are obviously health concerns as well as social concerns that are relevant here. I would say,
5:05 Jordan B. Peterson? what is it that you, I would want to find out what you envisioned for your son and what he envisions. Like, we, we know that the situation that you're both facing at the moment is not optimal by any stretch of the imagination. You guys need a joint plan that you agree on, on what would be better. And
5:30 Jordan B. Peterson? I, I, like people,
5:34 Jordan B. Peterson? human beings of by their nature are visionary creatures. As we lay out a structure that we wish to make real in the future and we move towards that. Otherwise, we're the puppets of our surrounding or the
5:50 Jordan B. Peterson? victims of forces that are beyond our control. Vision is the alternative to manipulation and and subjugation. Vision is the alternative to slavery and tyranny. Your son is not living a life that is sustainable and productive. No doubt by his own account and certainly by yours as a an interested and concerned parent.
6:21 Jordan B. Peterson? It would be helpful
6:24 Jordan B. Peterson? to help him develop a plan for where he wants to be in five years. And for you, for, for him to help you understand what would be best for him from you. You know, because I can imagine his attitude is something like, "Get off my back dad and leave me alone." And, you know, fair enough, he's got health problems, he's got social problems, he's isolated, and you can understand that his attitude could well be, "Don't bug me." However, things are not going in a good direction. And so, your conundrum is, well, you have to... What are you gonna do, ignore it and let things deteriorate across time?
7:09 Jordan B. Peterson? That's not helpful. And so, you guys are in a position where you need to develop a plan, and it needs to be one that you're both on board with. And that's going to take some very difficult discussion to convince him. I guess I would start with questions, you know? And because questions rather than statements are a much more effective way to suggest and intervene. But they have to be non-manipulative, you know? They have to be genuine questions. So, if your son came and saw me, I would say like, first of all, well, "How are you reacting to your current circumstances?" And then you want to listen, it's like,
7:52 Jordan B. Peterson? "Well, this is problematic and this is problematic, but it's like I'm defending myself by hiding and I don't know what else to do about that." You need to lay out the territory. And then you have to ask, "Well, if this could be rectified, what would a rectification look like?" You know, do you want friends? Do you want an intimate relationship? How are you going to pursue your future goals? Do you have any future goals? What do you see as a solution to this? How, as a father, you could ask him as well, "How do you want me to conduct myself when I see that you're ensconced in a world of misery in a manner that's going to make the future worse than the present? If I love you, I can't ignore that,
8:35 Jordan B. Peterson? but I don't want to torture you to death and add to your misery. So, what do you, what do you want from me? Given your understanding as well that I can't just stand by and watch you go to hell in a handbasket." And so...
8:49 Speaker 03 Can I...
8:50 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes, you can, please do.
8:51 Speaker 03 This one... That sucks.
8:54 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
8:55 Speaker 03 So first of all, and I think a lot of chronically ill, I think every chronically ill person, including people suffering with obesity, are blamed for their health problems. That's like number one. Not only are you sick,
9:06 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, but it's your fault.
9:08 Speaker 03 But it's your fault. And then they're left in this position where they don't know the solution. And that's not, that's not fun at all.
9:16 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
9:17 Speaker 03 So like what I would say, like my husband lost 300 pounds doing the carnivore diet. It's not a joke. It's not a fad diet. It's an actual like ketogenic medical diet.
9:28 Jordan B. Peterson? He's a staggeringly good-looking person now. It's quite remarkable.
9:31 Speaker 03 Yeah. And it's not, you don't have to starve yourself. I would probably, if I was them, trying to get on board with trying the diet as a family.
9:39 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes, right.
9:40 Speaker 03 Like, hey, we're on your side. This isn't your fault. American foods are hyper palatable. Everybody eats carbs. Some people have a harder time stopping eating them than other people and we don't even know why.
9:51 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, absolutely.
9:51 Speaker 03 So first of all, it's too bad you were bullied.
9:54 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
9:55 Speaker 03 And, and second of all, it's not your fault. But third of all, you can do something about it. And let's just all try it as a family for like a couple of months. He's probably depressed.
10:05 Jordan B. Peterson? Oh, undoubtedly.
10:07 Speaker 03 It's not the video games that are the problem. I would say it's the physical ailments and probably depression and brain fog that are drawing him towards video games.
10:16 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, that's a very important additional concern because the fact of his obesity is a reflection of an inability to manage a high carbohydrate, high sugar diet.
10:26 Speaker 03 Which a lot of people have.
10:28 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, and, and it's clearly the case that many forms of depression are inflammatory and are brought about by exactly that kind of diet. I like the family approach idea a lot.
10:39 Speaker 03 You're like, we're on your team. Let's try it.
10:41 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, and I should also say, you know, it, it took me a long time to eradicate All quick judgment from my observations of people that were obese, because it's very easy to judge. And I've become completely convinced that the best way of thinking about it is that it's a situation-induced illness.
11:02 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
11:02 Jordan B. Peterson? It's like we're wired genetically to gorge on high carbohydrate, high sugar foods, because in our ancestral environment, they were rare. And so when you came across honey, you just ate all of it, because maybe you're not going to find any for the next five years.
11:19 Speaker 03 They also set up scientists to manufacture foods so that people could stop eating them.
11:25 Jordan B. Peterson? Right.
11:26 Speaker 03 Well, so they're built like that. So no wonder you can't stop eating them.
11:30 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, yeah.
11:30 Speaker 03 And I don't think, you know, you need to go on a diet or you need to change the way you eat. It puts the blame on the person and it doesn't even give them a plan.
11:39 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, and diets don't work, because a diet is food restriction. And the evidence is quite clear. If you restrict and then stop restricting, because you can't maintain that forever, you gain back the weight you lost and more.
11:54 Speaker 03 I know, it's terrible.
11:55 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, it's not good. And the advantage to this carnivore diet approach or keto approach is that you can eat as much as you want. You can be satiated.
12:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I also can't tell you, like, I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis from the age of two, and I didn't have obesity issues. I gained weight when I went away to college, because then I started eating pizza and beer and delicious terrible foods. And it really impacted my mental health. But I cannot explain how much this diet has changed my life. Like, I was on something like eight medications for psychological health and then immune suppressants, antibiotics, sleeping medications, so I could sleep, painkillers for the arthritis. Like, I was a complete mess. The other thing that's hopeful, too, is like, your kid isn't very old.
12:48 Speaker 03 He's 21. That's, I turned around my health when I was 23. I needed to get older and smarter. And I actually needed to get old enough to recognize that my health issues were going to kill me. And I don't think I reached that point, and it was obvious. I didn't reach that point until I was 23. But I know a lot of younger people who've done the carnivore diet. Like, my husband started a keto diet when he was seventeen and that's when he lost three hundred pounds. Like, he did it on a keto diet. But the carnivore diet is like, it's easier, you don't get cravings, it's hard to transition onto, but once you're on it, you don't even want those other foods. And I think he'll start dropping weight so fast that he'll be like, "Okay, wow, yeah, let's keep doing this."
13:28 Speaker 09 Yep.
13:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:30 Speaker 09 Okay.
13:30 Speaker 03 Next question?
13:31 Speaker 09 Yep.
13:31 Speaker 03 That was a good one. That's a hopeful one.
13:33 Speaker 09 Yep.
13:34 Speaker 03 It's sad, but it's hopeful.
13:35 Speaker 09 Yep.
13:36 Speaker 03 It's called?
13:37 Speaker 10 Peterson Academy.
13:39 Speaker 09 Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy.
13:40 Jordan B. Peterson? It's called Peterson Academy. Peterson Academy. If you want an actual education.
13:45 Speaker 10 With hand-selected professors from top universities around the world.
13:50 Speaker 11 Bringing the best professors together, making sure they're not censored in any way, giving them the audience and the remuneration and appreciation they deserve.
13:56 Speaker 01 And you were true to your word. You gave me absolute intellectual autonomy. I have had it through every course.
14:01 Jordan B. Peterson? We figure we can offer people a high-quality university-level education for under $2,000.
14:06 Speaker 10 Well, congratulations, Jordan. It's honestly brilliant. Can't wait to enroll myself. I'll be doing that straight after this.
14:12 Jordan B. Peterson? Fun, Joe. Pretty bad. Yep.
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14:49 Speaker 03 Up next, we have Victoria in Louisiana. Hello, Victoria.
14:54 Speaker 05 Hi. Uh, thank you so much for taking my call. So this is my question. Um, our eight-year-old son is kind, loving, and socially observant. He is also very sensitive, especially in regards to his appearance and his performance. He is taller and heavier than his siblings and most peers, and has been called fat by a few friends. How can we, as parents, encourage a healthy lifestyle, knowing when or if to focus on weight, without creating an eating disorder or hyperfixation on his outward appearance?
15:25 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, I guess some of the discussion that we already had is relevant with regards to stabilization of diet, is that moving your family's eating pattern to a lower carbohydrate load would be useful. And you know, your comment with the last questioner was that this has to be a family affair. And I believe that's the case, because eating is a communal activity and...
15:48 Speaker 03 You don't want to isolate a kid. And just cutting processed foods can make a big difference. If you just focus on a lot of meat, fruit and vegetables, try to get rid of the grains and processed foods, that'll probably help him out. And I wouldn't say, like, again, that it's his fault. We're kind of set up in society right now to eat hyper-palatable foods, and most people, if weight gain doesn't hit them young, it hits them eventually. Nobody escapes it unless they have a low carb diet.
16:19 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, we also know that there is radical individual differences in the degree to which people pack on weight. So, for example, Pacific islanders, island people are, have gone through periods of food deprivation, their cultures, very radically in their evolutionary history. And so, island people tend to pack on weight like mad. And so, the Polynesians, for example, on a North American diet, they just balloon out in no time flat. And so, there is wide individual variability in the proclivity to put on weight. And it's very important, I really do think it's crucial, to stop making it a issue of lack of willpower or morality. First of all, you can't fight your hunger. Good luck with that. Your hunger will win.
17:03 Jordan B. Peterson? So, if you're on a diet and you're not satiated, you're going to cheat, or when you stop the diet, you'll return to your old eating habits. You have to change the way you eat. And that's very difficult, and it's very radical, but it's unbelievably useful. And then, I would also say, he's sensitive about his appearance, more sensitive than normal. That's the other issue.
17:27 Speaker 03 Maybe he's conscientious.
17:28 Jordan B. Peterson? It's possible.
17:29 Speaker 03 That might be a good thing.
17:31 Jordan B. Peterson? It might be. It might be a good thing. And it might be a consequence of some higher levels of negative emotion as well. And so...
17:40 Jordan B. Peterson? What would I do with someone who's more sensitive than... He was eight, was that right? He's eight. He's eight, yeah. I guess I would... This is one way of inoculating people against typical bullying responses, is to work out a description of all the bullying tricks and phrases, and to have the person develop a defense for them. Something jokey. Yep, something jokey, but at least to expose yourself to it. Like, if someone calls you fat... At least I have a brain. Right, right. What should your response be?
18:23 Jordan B. Peterson? Your son needs help developing strategies for dealing with the most common bullying situations and phrases. And you'll have to get from him what people say that hurts his feelings, and then you'll have to work with him to develop strategies of verbal response or attitude that help him prevail in the face of that. Now, what you don't want him to do is to get down on himself, to isolate, to be irritable, to cry or lash out, because that'll just amplify the bullying. Like, what bullies do? Like, first of all, we should understand that every child gets bullied
19:06 Jordan B. Peterson? on the basis of their peculiarities. And so, if you don't have any obvious aberration in your appearance, well, the bullies will just make one up. They'll give you a nickname that's derisive, or they'll... They'll come up with something that's like a rhyme on your name. Like, they're gonna find something, and what they're looking for is an emotional reaction.
19:32 Jordan B. Peterson? In the bully victim literature, you see that there are stable bullies, and there are stable bully victims. And the stable bully victim boys tend to respond emotionally when they're picked on. If they can develop a, like a defensive strategy, say, which, and humor can be very useful in that regard.
19:52 Speaker 03 Or just pretending you aren't bothered.
19:54 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, well, well, well. Better even than pretending is to practice not being bothered to the point where you're actually not bothered. Because what the bully wants is a reaction. And he'll go around poking at people till he finds someone that reacts, and then that's the person that gets picked on. So your son needs to be trained in resilience. And, you know, one of the things you might even try with him is to make a list of the insults, and the insults that have been used against him, and the insults that he's afraid of, and practice delivering them to him, so that he can learn to be resilient in their presence.
20:38 Speaker 03 Oof.
20:39 Jordan B. Peterson? Yep. You can do that, you can do that with his cooperation, though.
20:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:43 Jordan B. Peterson? What are you gonna do if someone calls you fat? What should you do? Do you wanna get upset? Like, how does that, how does that work for you if you get upset? Does that help? Well, they hurt my feelings. It's like, well...
20:54 Speaker 03 Pretend they don't is a good place to start.
20:56 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, practice, practice acting as if they don't. That's, so, see, 'cause the pretending, there's an element of deception in there, there can be an element of self-deception in that.
21:07 Speaker 03 It does hurt, though, when you, like, it's hard to, I don't, didn't, you got bullied, right? You talked all the time.
21:11 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, everybody gets bullied. Everybody, everybody gets bullied.
21:14 Speaker 03 But some people are bullied more than others.
21:16 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes, they certainly are.
21:18 Speaker 03 And they're not usually, they're usually the ones that show weakness, honestly.
21:21 Jordan B. Peterson? They're the ones who respond emotionally. Yeah, and so, so practicing...
21:28 Jordan B. Peterson? Stoicism in the face of provocation is a useful strategy. And you can help your child learn to do that. Yep.
21:38 Speaker 03 You, when, when, this is a funny story.
21:41 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
21:43 Speaker 03 Kindergarten, I think, you told us, "Go find the biggest kid in the class and punch him." And he, he said this, weren't you in front of other parents?
21:53 Jordan B. Peterson? Oh yeah, they were shocked. No, I said, I think, I think, "Find the biggest, ugliest kid in the, in the classroom and then hit him on the back of the head with a toy."
22:00 Speaker 03 Oh wow, that's way more in-depth and specific.
22:03 Jordan B. Peterson? It was a joke, obviously.
22:05 Speaker 03 We didn't do that.
22:05 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, no, I know you didn't do that.
22:07 Speaker 03 But, in grade two, this girl came out of the bathroom, I remember, I was standing against the wall, leaning against the wall, and kicked me.
22:13 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 03 Just random, grade two girl.
22:15 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:15 Speaker 03 And I turned around and I kicked her back as hard as I could.
22:17 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:18 Speaker 03 That was it.
22:18 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:19 Speaker 03 That was the interaction. And she was the bully, right? It was like, "Kick."
22:22 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:23 Speaker 03 "Kick harder."
22:23 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
22:24 Speaker 03 It was like, "Oh, okay, not gonna kick you anymore, go kick somebody else."
22:27 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, right, right. Well, there is some real utility also in helping your children learn to defend themselves and to discussing very carefully with them the conditions under which they are allowed to or also morally required to defend themselves. Or sometimes to defend other people. And so you need a philosophy of that. If someone is picking on you, if someone hits you,
22:53 Jordan B. Peterson? and you're a kid, what's the right response? Well, the people who are anti-violence, let's say, is, "You should go tell a teacher." It's like, "Do you remember what it's like to be a kid?" Going to tell the teacher, that can be social suicide, right? Because it indicates to the bullies in particular that you can't handle your own affairs. That, and that you'll rat them out. That's not good.
23:18 Speaker 03 Although...
23:20 Speaker 03 I do think pretending, or actually just being unaffected by it, like, "I don't care what you say."
23:27 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes.
23:28 Speaker 03 Like, that'll deter a bully.
23:30 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes, yes.
23:31 Speaker 03 Because they're not interested in bothering someone that's like so.
23:34 Jordan B. Peterson? So, Dan Olwies, who's a Scandinavian expert on bullying, and he reduced the incidence of bullying in Scandinavia by about 50%, so, he's quite... And there's a book, which you can take a look at, everybody who's listening, called "Bullying: What We Know and What We Can Do About It", pretty blunt book. Olwies did the best analysis of bullies. He thought of them as prototypical fascists, which was why he was concerned with them, and I think that that's correct. Olwies's analysis of the bully dynamic is dead-on. And one of the things he also helped schools, parents, and children work through is the conditions under which you are allowed to seek adult authority if you're a child.
24:15 Jordan B. Peterson? So, his definition of bullying was that bullying was aggression utilized when there was a mismatch in power. So, if there's two kids of approximately equal physical size and stature, let's say, in development, and they're having an altercation, that's not bullying. Bullying is when there's three 10-year-olds against an 8-year-old, right? There's clear imbalance of power. And then, if you observe that as a child, you have the moral right to intervene on behalf of the person who's being bullied with an adult, mostly because you're serving the cause of justice. And so, Olwies was one of these dim-witted, like, hyper-agreeable, social-worker-type interveners who thinks,
25:00 Jordan B. Peterson? "All violence is wrong." It's like, that's actually not true. Violence in defense of yourself, or of your principles, or of someone weaker, is often admirable. And your children have to learn how to... They have to learn how to think that through. You know, and, you know, your response, for example, when you got kicked... What would you, we say, in the ideal, there'd be no violence. It's like, well, that's not real helpful when your daughter is-
25:23 Speaker 03 I wasn't talking that girl out of kicking me.
25:25 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, well, that's-
25:25 Speaker 03 She just randomly kicked me.
25:26 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, of course, of course you weren't. Of course you weren't.
25:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:29 Jordan B. Peterson? And so, that stopped it. And we, you and I, and Julian as well, like, I practiced teaching you how to punch, so that you could throw a punch. And we discussed the times when that was necessary, right? So, you remember that?
25:45 Speaker 03 I do, indeed. It hurt. I had arthritis.
25:48 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, right.
25:48 Speaker 03 Everything hurt. My childhood was very sad. Every time I talk about it with my husband, he's like, "I was like, bowling, yeah, I used to bowl. My thumb used to get stuck in the bowling ball." It's like, why is everything you say depressing? Like, well, it's funny now.
26:02 Jordan B. Peterson? You were actually a remarkably happy child, so, yeah.
26:05 Speaker 03 Well, good.
26:07 Jordan B. Peterson? Yep.
26:07 Speaker 03 Partly thanks to you, I'm sure.
26:10 Jordan B. Peterson? Mm-hmm.
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27:02 Speaker 03 Next caller?
27:03 Jordan B. Peterson? Next caller.
27:04 Speaker 03 On the line now is Marilyn in Florida.
27:07 Jordan B. Peterson? Hello, Marilyn.
27:09 Speaker 07 Hello, thank you for taking my question. My husband and I are parents to two young adult ladies, 18 and 24 years old. And when we're asked for guidance about dating, we feel like the generation gap right now is more like a generation chasm. For example, social media, how the people connect today, different sexual norms. There are situations that have been brought up that we never encountered when we were in the dating life. We're often hard-pressed to offer really good advice.
27:53 Speaker 07 I was wondering if you would have any thoughts on that?
27:57 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, there's an insanely difficult question.
28:02 Jordan B. Peterson? Well, this is... Everything I say is going to get me in trouble on this regard. So, yeah, yeah. So, the first thing I would say is that alcohol is a dating danger that's always underestimated in its magnitude. It isn't unreasonable to point out that there would be zero date rape, essentially, if alcohol wasn't involved. And so, that's a good thing to know.
28:39 Jordan B. Peterson? And then I would say as well, when you're talking to your daughters, that their right and obligation to say no should be
28:53 Jordan B. Peterson? exemplified, should be encouraged and strengthened. And here's why I leave this to be the case.
29:02 Jordan B. Peterson? Women cross-culturally are hypergamous. It's a deep characteristic of femininity among human beings. It's not the case for all of our primate relatives, by the way. Women mate up and across and up hierarchies. Cross-culturally, they like men that are about four years older. And so you might ask yourself, "What's the female mating strategy? Human female mating strategy?" And the human female mating strategy is to watch men compete with one another and peel from the top. And it's a brilliant strategy, because what women are essentially doing is thinking,
29:44 Jordan B. Peterson? "Well, the best man will win in competitions with other men." And she sits back and watches and picks the guy who emerges victorious. And that's a great strategy. And so men compete for status in large part to attract women. The status that men have among men, the most viable marker of that status is their competence. And men will grant other competent men status. And then women are fortunate, because they can use that as a marker for finding a competent man. The question is, what confers status among women in the opinions of men? And that's easy.
30:28 Jordan B. Peterson? It's their ability to say "no." And so "no" is a superpower for women. And because the typical high-status guy, for example, so a desirable guy, who faces "no", is either going to depart because he's interested in exploitation, in which case good riddance, or he's going to think, "Huh."
30:56 Jordan B. Peterson? What's up with her? You know, I'm a high-status guy and she says no. Well, that indicates that she's... That's her indication of status. Now, I should also point out, here's something to talk to your daughters about. That's very concrete. So, imagine there are two mating strategies. One is short-term, so that's free love, sexual gratification. That's the whole kind of dark hippie ethos from the 1960s. And then there's the more... There's the mating strategy that's more oriented towards long-term committed relationships, which you might well define as marriage. Okay, so now imagine that you do a personality assessment
31:41 Jordan B. Peterson? of the men who pursue those variables, those variant strategies. So, is... Who are the guys that are after short-term sexual gratification? Well, we know who they are. They're dark tetrad types. They're Machiavellian, so they use their language to manipulate. They're psychopathic, they have a tilt towards psychopathy, so they're predatory parasites. They're narcissistic, they're only concerned about themselves. And, just to top it all off, they're sadistic. And so, when women participate in that easy sexual revolution, let's say, that's short-term pleasure-focused,
32:23 Jordan B. Peterson? they throw themselves into the hands of the worst men. And so, it's much better to play a long-term game. Now, if your daughters are having a hard time finding someone who wants to play along, well, then I would say they're well-advised to not be unhappy that men who are irritated because they don't get what they want right now have left. Because that is not a person you want to be around.
32:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
32:55 Jordan B. Peterson? No, yeah, for sure, for sure. The, the, the, all of the...
33:02 Jordan B. Peterson? All of the evidence converges on this very solidly.
33:07 Speaker 03 I have, like, just a loop in technology.
33:10 Jordan B. Peterson? Yep.
33:11 Speaker 03 So, this is, I went through this kind of thing 10 years ago. So, it's still kind of recent. And the dating...
33:19 Speaker 03 Experience has changed since then, but not a ton. I would say that, you've told me this before and this was very helpful. Figure out what your kids want as a life plan. Like, this is probably more relevant for your 24-year-old because your 18-year-old is 18. But, does she want to get married? Does she want to have kids young? Does she want to be a stay-at-home mom? Does she want to work at the same time? Figure out those serious questions and make sure they know the answers to those questions. Then, they can utilize technology. So what I found helpful is you can download a dating app. So, back in my day, it was Tinder. Now, there's hordes of them. But Tinder was pretty rough back then, too.
34:01 Speaker 03 But, you can meet people online, generate a rapport to see if you get along. Then, you can say, "I want to go for a coffee date."
34:09 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, yeah.
34:09 Speaker 03 So, coffee date doesn't have the alcohol problem. You can go for a half-an-hour coffee date. You can tell right away, especially if you don't have alcohol to numb yourself, if you dislike or like the person. And then, you can get up and leave, which is totally fine. But if you like the person, you can pretty much have the conversation about what you want in life, right off the bat. And if that scares that person away, then it's good that they're gone anyway. So, you might as well encourage them to go out and meet people. You might have, they might have to go on like 20 of these coffee dates to meet someone who goes, "Hey, we want the same life, like, same things in life." And then, you can take it from there.
34:46 Jordan B. Peterson? That's very, okay, there's a bunch of things about that that are very important. So, talk to your daughters, precisely as you said, about what they want.
34:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, you taught me that.
34:54 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, yeah.
34:54 Speaker 03 Make a list of what you want.
34:55 Jordan B. Peterson? Precisely that. You do that when you're shopping for a house, you know? What do you want? Okay, so now you know. Well, now you have a criteria by which to judge potential partners. They either want that or they don't. If they don't, well, maybe they have a better offer. Probably not, but maybe they do. And if they don't, it's like, don't be upset that they leave. You're thrilled that they leave. Because the last thing you want is the wrong person. Okay, so that's the first thing. Talk to your daughters so they have a plan. That gives them a template for acceptance and rejection. Encourage them to reject, right? Not arbitrarily and meanly. And, and, and maybe even to look beyond their immediate reaction
35:38 Jordan B. Peterson? at things more fundamental like shared goals. Right? Because there are people you meet that you're not necessarily so attracted to immediately, but you learn to like them. And that's because they're of good character. So that shared vision of the future is extremely important. Then the next thing is, slow, safe situations to mutually get to know each other. And certainly the initial coffee date in the daytime? Yeah. Somewhere public? Yes, exactly. And then care with each step forward. Here's another rule of thumb for women, I would say, and I also think it's true for men, but it's more desperately necessary for women.
36:19 Jordan B. Peterson? Don't do anything physically with anyone that you wouldn't have a conversation with them about. Right? Because you might say, well, at what rate should we pursue intimacy? Well, if you're pursuing physical intimacy before you can have a conversation about what you're doing, you're probably put in the cart before the horse. So. That's for sure.
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37:50 Jordan B. Peterson? On to the next.
37:52 Speaker 03 Next, we have a more general question about AI, and we're joined by Robert in California.
37:59 Speaker 12 So let me ask my question. First of all, thank you for having me here. My question is a quick two-parter. The first part, they're both actually about LLMs, like ChatGPT and stuff like that. I was wondering, first of all, whether you use them yourself, and if so, what you make of the experience. And if you don't, why you don't. And second of all, I was wondering what you thought the social consequences of their widespread adoption would be. Do you think people are basically gonna offload lots of their thinking to these devices, or do you think there's gonna be some kind of rebellion?
38:27 Jordan B. Peterson? Okay, the first, let's answer the first part of that question. I use LLMs all the time. I use ChatGPT, I use Grok, and I have a system that one of my compatriots built with me and for me that's based on the King James Bible and that also incorporates a bunch of the things that I've written and lectured on that I can use as a conversational partner when I'm trying to figure out what I think. They are insanely helpful. They're like having a research team at your fingertips. You have to torture the woke models, ChatGPT and Grok to some degree into telling the truth by specifying your questions very carefully
39:10 Jordan B. Peterson? and laying down rather impolite restrictions. But you probably have to do that with people when you're trying to get the truth out of them too, rather than some just polite and agreeable response. I think they're stunningly remarkable machines, and they've been ridiculously useful for me while I'm writing. So I use them all the time. When I'm writing, I have like three LLMs open, and I'm just conferring with them all the time. I ask them for advice on how I'm formulating paragraphs. They're ridiculously useful. Now, having said that, I have this program that I've worked on with my son called Essay, and we're trying to use Essay to teach people to write. And when you teach them to write, you're teaching them to think.
39:55 Jordan B. Peterson? And when you're learning to write and think, you're learning how to move your way through the world without falling into a pit. And if you offload that all to a LLM, then you're just a hollow shell and you have no idea who you are, where you're going, or what you want. And that's a huge danger. I mean, I was just talking to my son the other day about his experiences.
40:18 Jordan B. Peterson? Communicating about essay in general, and he talked about a situation that one of his friends was involved in where they were taking a course where they were required to write essays and to give feedback to one another. And everyone who was taking the course used ChatGPT to write the essays and to provide the feedback. And so all you really got from the course was bots communicating with one another. And so people can use the LLMs to evade their responsibility and to lie and to deceive and to look smarter than they are. And that's just like, that's just rife with catastrophe. So I would also say that the LLMs in my experience have been very useful
41:03 Jordan B. Peterson? in precise proportion to how carefully you specify the question and assess the answer. And so they can also teach you to ask extremely careful and well-formulated questions and to hone your
41:20 Jordan B. Peterson? your capacity for critical thinking. Look, it depends on your intent. Right? If your intent is to rely on technology to look smarter than you are and to gain a bunch of undeserved rewards in the short term, it's going to be a complete bloody catastrophe. If your aim is to sharpen your thinking, to learn, to interrogate, to question properly, and to make the sharpest and most well-informed arguments you possibly can, then that's open to you too. And I don't think that's much different than most technologies. It's like the more powerful the technology, the more you can use it for good and the more you can use it for evil. And
42:04 Jordan B. Peterson? one of the things I've noted for and tried to teach people for 20 years is as our technological prowess increases, the consequences of our morality or immortality or immorality expand. And that's the curse and the benefit of technology. Now, there's an additional issue that we should address too, which is the alignment problem. How do we know that the LLMs are operating according to the proper moral principles when they're formulating their answers? We just assume they're not. Well, well, part of that is
42:47 Jordan B. Peterson? Part of that can be dealt with by extremely careful questioning and critical thought, but this is also why we've been experimenting with our own large language models. Because my guess is, is that we're going to have to train them on something like the Western canon for them to be aligned properly. Like, there's not much difference in training an LLM and educating a young person. Like, if you train the LLM on broad consensus across every possible source of information, you're going to tilt them towards a present-focused view and something that looks quite woke.
43:29 Jordan B. Peterson? So, and that's exactly the same with young people. So what do you do about that? Well, a classic humanities education, a classic education in the, in the deep works of the Western tradition, provides them with a defense against ideological possession. Well, why would it be any different with the LLMs? I want, and I've talked to people who develop LLMs, although we haven't made enough headway on this front yet, to train systems on classic works and to make that the core of their ethos. And so, you know, with any luck, we'll work that out over the next five or six years.
44:13 Speaker 03 That's what we're trying to do with Peterson Academy.
44:15 Jordan B. Peterson? Yes, yes.
44:16 Speaker 03 We've talked about this a lot. People are probably going to be split into two camps. There's going to be the people that know how to utilize LLMs, because it takes, it reduces your work, depending on what you do, to like 10% or eliminates your job. It's a crazy difference. It is not Google. Google, I thought Google was great, just being able to Google. I was like, the internet, we all have access to the internet? That's crazy. You can research basically whatever you want. And Grok, I use primarily Grok, just squishes three days of research into like...
44:48 Speaker 03 Fifteen seconds, it's crazy.
44:51 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, it is.
44:52 Speaker 03 So if people aren't using it, they need to start using it and learn how to use it, because you're gonna be left behind. That's what I think.
44:57 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
44:58 Speaker 03 So you need to incorporate that. But, there was this funny, I'll send it to you after, but it was this video going around Instagram, and it's this guy, and he's like on his chair like a monkey going like, "Eat, eat, eat", like typing things into Grok, and then, or, or an LLM, and it's spitting out a really nicely worded email.
45:15 Jordan B. Peterson? Right, right.
45:16 Speaker 03 And then he sends that, and then he gets a response, and he's like all happy about it, and goes like, "Eat, eat, eat", and types it in. Unfortunately, I feel like, there's probably gonna be a group of people that use it to enhance themselves, and a group of people that won't learn how to write or communicate, that'll just use it.
45:35 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah.
45:35 Speaker 03 Which is, that's the dangerous part.
45:37 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, well, and your comments about Peterson Academy are, are relevant with regard to classical education. If you're going to use an LLM intelligently, you better be well-informed and morally grounded properly. But, but of course that's the case, because the more powerful tools you have at your disposal, the more your stupidity will magnify itself in consequence of the misuse of those tools. You know, and I've known this for years. One of the reasons I got attracted to Carl Jung's thought was because in the aftermath
46:16 Jordan B. Peterson? of World War II and our development of the hydrogen bomb, he pointed out that the true danger that confronted humanity wasn't the bomb itself, it was the ideological foolishness that would lead us to use it. And that the development of the psyche, the development of wisdom, was, as, as, as your technological power increases, the requirement for you to be wise increases proportionately. Well...
46:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:48 Jordan B. Peterson? That's even more the case now, and I think the LLMs have really, they've been another tremendous example of the necessity of that moral grounding. And that's a very, you find that moral grounding in consequence of being properly educated, and that is what we're trying to do on Peterson Academy.
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47:37 Speaker 03 Last question?
47:38 Jordan B. Peterson? Last question.
47:39 Speaker 03 So up last, we have a recorded message from Diego in Paraguay. Cool.
47:47 Speaker 08 Hi, Dr. Peterson. Thank you very much for this opportunity to ask a question that is very important for me. How can parents raise children to value depth, purpose and delayed gratification in an age dominated by short-form content, endless distraction and dopamine-chasing media? What practical steps can we take to protect and prepare our children so they aren't psychologically hijacked by the algorithm before they even have a sense of who they are?
48:21 Jordan B. Peterson? So the most terrifying element of the algorithm, and you can really see this in the degeneration of YouTube, especially over the last two years, is that the algorithm maximizes for grip of attention. And fair enough, because why wouldn't you want to be given things that you want to attend to? But the problem comes as the maximization of grip of attention becomes shorter and shorter duration. Right? Like pathological addiction is actually the hijacking of attention by short-term considerations. So the shorter term across which your attention span is being manipulated, the more pathological the outcome.
49:03 Jordan B. Peterson? And you can see a race to the bottom in the social media world. And TikTok probably really kicked that off.
49:11 Speaker 03 You're not a fan of TikTok? You like that swipe?
49:14 Jordan B. Peterson? Swipe. Right, right, right. Fifteen-second bursts, right? And so, okay, so how do you fight against that? Well, look, you fight against that the same way you fight against immaturity as you socialize your children. What you're actually doing when you socialize children is you expand the timeframe over which they calculate reward. Right? So they're able to maintain attentional focus for longer and longer spans of time. Well, they're doing effortful things that culminate in a delayed reward. It's the definition of maturity. So how do you practice that with them? Well, you listen to them.
49:59 Jordan B. Peterson? That's helpful. That's why regular dinnertimes, mealtimes together, are very useful. Without phones, so that people communicate. And you can encourage your children to attend for long periods of time by listening to them formulate their thoughts and engaging in conversation with them. You can do the same thing by reading to them. Right? I mean, this is dependent on the individual child, but there are four-year-old kids who can listen to a story for an hour
50:39 Jordan B. Peterson? and who can handle a pretty complex juvenile novel by the time they're four. Interact with your children in a manner that requires sustained attention for longer and longer periods of time. And so, board games can do that too, especially more complex board games. So you want to engage, as a family, in sophisticated enterprises that don't fragment attention down to the smallest possible unit.
51:10 Speaker 03 There's tech now, too, you can use. I've, so I found this machine. There's some practical things too. So I have a seven-year-old. She has a phone already because she's split between two houses. Otherwise, she wouldn't have a phone. I would say, delay the phone, for sure. I haven't given my kids screens before the age of three, like, including movies and things. Just because you can see a two-year-old glued to a screen and you're like, that cannot be good for their brain. So, like, no screens. There's this player, it's called a Yodo player. And it's this little machine that little kids can operate by themselves. And you get these cards that are either music or stories and you can stick the card in the machine.
51:52 Speaker 03 A little graphic shows up, but it's not a screen. It's like some lights that move around a tiny bit. It's not hyper-stimulating. And then they can listen to stories and things. So just as a practical tech piece, I really like the Yodo. And then, for hyper-stimulation too, we use kind of a Montessori approach. Just, it's just limited toys. Don't overrun them with toys. Just a couple and you can swap them out every couple of weeks. So they get new toys every couple of weeks. But I think avoiding the hyper-stimulation when they're really little helps a lot. And then delaying, like, you just talked to Jonathan Haidt, right? Delaying social media, delaying phones, delaying screens.
52:34 Jordan B. Peterson? Yeah, and Haidt has talked a lot about too, about the fact that many states, I think he said 13 states already, maybe it's more than that, have decided to make schools phone-free zones.
52:46 Speaker 03 Good, yeah.
52:46 Jordan B. Peterson? Brazil has done that. And many more states are planning to do it.
52:50 Speaker 03 All the way up to grade 12, just no phones?
52:53 Jordan B. Peterson? Um, that's my understanding. No phones in schools.
52:56 Speaker 03 That's good.
52:57 Jordan B. Peterson? It seems like the right thing to do. The evidence for its utility is not in yet. But...
53:07 Jordan B. Peterson? But that constant fragmented attention. The fundamental problem is that the AI algorithms are going to optimize for the grip of short-term attention. And that's just, that's, there's no difference between that and addiction. That, that's just addiction by a different definition. And so encourage your children to pursue.
53:30 Jordan B. Peterson? Processes pursue activities that require the investment of attention and do that jointly. So.
53:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:39 Jordan B. Peterson? Yep.
53:40 Speaker 03 Well, thank you, Dad. That was fun.
53:43 Jordan B. Peterson? Thank you to everybody who asked questions. Much appreciated. And thanks, Mick. Yep, it was great.
53:49 Speaker 03 Thank you guys so much for watching or listening today. Hit the like and subscribe buttons so you can be sure to catch all the episodes if you enjoy these answers to these questions. It's us answering the call. We'll have many more soon. Thank you.
54:05 Jordan B. Peterson? Do you have a question you'd like us to explore? Share it with us at the link in the video's description and let's face life's challenges together.
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