The core job of cultures is to teach their members how to properly integrate into the society, and so their stories are about that, rather than about what actually happened or how the world actually works.
This is definitely not culturally universal. For example, the Inuit people have highly accurate maps and accurate oral history (1, 2). When you live in such a harsh climate, you can’t get away with communicating only about what people should do, you also have to communicate about what’s true, or you die.
When you live in such a harsh climate, you can’t get away with communicating only about what people should do, you also have to communicate about what’s true, or you die.
One thing that the post doesn’t highlight is the interaction between the “world as forum for action” and “world as place of things” views, where the implication is that typically the latter view informs the former view. (If medicine is more effective at healing the sick than prayer, then it seems adaptive for someone sick to generate more ‘should’-juice for medicine than prayer.) One view on the heroic myth is that it’s about someone taking on the ‘most important false belief’ of their culture, and changing it to a true belief (in a way that also allows for ‘absent’ beliefs to count as false).
I should make it clear that the “rather” in that sentence doesn’t mean it’s anti-optimizing for truth, just that truth is important to cultural transmission to the degree that it serves the core purpose of cultural transmission. It seems to me like cultures closer to the ‘survive’ end of the ‘survive—thrive’ spectrum should have ‘the importance of doing things right / believing true things / doing things by the book’ as important parts of their narratives, because that is an important part of properly integrating in society. Cultures closer to the ‘thrive’ end of the spectrum instead likely have their narratives focus more on the importance of self-expression and exploration, because that’s an important part of properly integrating into their society.
One contemporary example that comes to mind is the different mindsets promoted by different video games: games like XCOM or Dark Souls build cultures in which “don’t make mistakes” and “pay attention to the environment” and “git gud” are fundamental pieces of advice that are reinforced by the world, whereas games that are more exploratory or forgiving don’t promote the same sort of mindset or culture.
This all seems right. I guess what I meant to focus on was that the narratives themselves (at least the ones that are part of oral history, and almost certainly others) are accurate and are consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation. Which indicates that world-as-place-of-things is not a recent development, as Peterson seems to think, though I am not sure whether to interpret “long before the notion of objective reality emerged” as indicating that the notion of objective reality emerged only in the past millennium (e.g. with Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment).
I should note that I definitely agree that many narratives are accurate and consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation, and that some pressures towards accuracy are not new. But there are other pressures that are new—the development of materialist religions, for example, seems to mostly have resulted from materialist worldviews dominating supernaturalist worldviews, and I think Peterson is pointing to those new pressures in that section.
Which indicates that world-as-place-of-things is not a recent development, as Peterson seems to think
I can see a handful of different ways to interpret his statement, and don’t know which one Peterson is trying to point at.
One way I conceptualize this is that a lizard is able to perceive the world around it and navigate its environment, but likely doesn’t have a sense of what it would be like for there to be an environment without a lizard at the center of it. But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics. In this view, whether the Inuit map-making counts as belief in ‘objective reality’ hinges on whether they viewed the maps as meaningful in the absence of Inuit to relate to the maps or traverse the territory.
His writings on alchemy seem somewhat relevant here; a compressed summary is that he viewed the alchemists as empiricists / engaged in the heroic project, but they had this incorrect belief that internal orientations were relevant to the outcomes of rituals. A quote:
Virtually every process undertaken by pre-experimental individuals—from agriculture to metallurgy—was accompanied by rituals designed to “bring about the state of mind” or “illustrate the procedure” necessary to the successful outcome desired. This is because the action precedes the idea. So ritual sexual unions accompanied sowing of the earth, and sacrificial rituals and their like abounded among miners, smiths, and potters. Nature had to be “shown what do to”; man led, not least, by example. The correct procedure could only be brought about by those who had placed themselves in the correct state of mind.
The process of discovering that this was false—that nature did not have to be shown what to do, and ‘just happened’ or followed deterministic dynamical laws—transmuted alchemy into chemistry. I think this is what he means by world-as-place-of-things and it likely is a recent development, whereas world-as-thing-that-can-be-perceived (and thus accurately mapped) is obviously an old development, possibly old enough that lizards have it.
But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics.
I think this was mostly only true of Newtonian physics. Relativity gets rid of an imaginable perspectiveless reality (you might be able to mathematically describe it, but as early as Descartes people noticed that this isn’t the same as imagining), and quantum mechanics are also famously resistant to imagination as a means of understanding the whole, and focused on observations instead.
Also this reminded me of Tradition Is Smarter Than You Are, linked by Kaj_Sotala, where unjustified rules passed down from generation to generation only recently became understandable as necessary to prevent long-term damage, or where divination is understood as the implementation of game-theoretically correct mixed strategies.
This is definitely not culturally universal. For example, the Inuit people have highly accurate maps and accurate oral history (1, 2). When you live in such a harsh climate, you can’t get away with communicating only about what people should do, you also have to communicate about what’s true, or you die.
See also: Actors and scribes, words and deeds; The face of the ice.
Neat!
One thing that the post doesn’t highlight is the interaction between the “world as forum for action” and “world as place of things” views, where the implication is that typically the latter view informs the former view. (If medicine is more effective at healing the sick than prayer, then it seems adaptive for someone sick to generate more ‘should’-juice for medicine than prayer.) One view on the heroic myth is that it’s about someone taking on the ‘most important false belief’ of their culture, and changing it to a true belief (in a way that also allows for ‘absent’ beliefs to count as false).
I should make it clear that the “rather” in that sentence doesn’t mean it’s anti-optimizing for truth, just that truth is important to cultural transmission to the degree that it serves the core purpose of cultural transmission. It seems to me like cultures closer to the ‘survive’ end of the ‘survive—thrive’ spectrum should have ‘the importance of doing things right / believing true things / doing things by the book’ as important parts of their narratives, because that is an important part of properly integrating in society. Cultures closer to the ‘thrive’ end of the spectrum instead likely have their narratives focus more on the importance of self-expression and exploration, because that’s an important part of properly integrating into their society.
One contemporary example that comes to mind is the different mindsets promoted by different video games: games like XCOM or Dark Souls build cultures in which “don’t make mistakes” and “pay attention to the environment” and “git gud” are fundamental pieces of advice that are reinforced by the world, whereas games that are more exploratory or forgiving don’t promote the same sort of mindset or culture.
This all seems right. I guess what I meant to focus on was that the narratives themselves (at least the ones that are part of oral history, and almost certainly others) are accurate and are consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation. Which indicates that world-as-place-of-things is not a recent development, as Peterson seems to think, though I am not sure whether to interpret “long before the notion of objective reality emerged” as indicating that the notion of objective reality emerged only in the past millennium (e.g. with Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment).
I should note that I definitely agree that many narratives are accurate and consistent with a world-as-place-of-things interpretation, and that some pressures towards accuracy are not new. But there are other pressures that are new—the development of materialist religions, for example, seems to mostly have resulted from materialist worldviews dominating supernaturalist worldviews, and I think Peterson is pointing to those new pressures in that section.
I can see a handful of different ways to interpret his statement, and don’t know which one Peterson is trying to point at.
One way I conceptualize this is that a lizard is able to perceive the world around it and navigate its environment, but likely doesn’t have a sense of what it would be like for there to be an environment without a lizard at the center of it. But for a physicist, imagining a world without a physicist at the center of it is the basic act of physics. In this view, whether the Inuit map-making counts as belief in ‘objective reality’ hinges on whether they viewed the maps as meaningful in the absence of Inuit to relate to the maps or traverse the territory.
His writings on alchemy seem somewhat relevant here; a compressed summary is that he viewed the alchemists as empiricists / engaged in the heroic project, but they had this incorrect belief that internal orientations were relevant to the outcomes of rituals. A quote:
The process of discovering that this was false—that nature did not have to be shown what to do, and ‘just happened’ or followed deterministic dynamical laws—transmuted alchemy into chemistry. I think this is what he means by world-as-place-of-things and it likely is a recent development, whereas world-as-thing-that-can-be-perceived (and thus accurately mapped) is obviously an old development, possibly old enough that lizards have it.
I think this was mostly only true of Newtonian physics. Relativity gets rid of an imaginable perspectiveless reality (you might be able to mathematically describe it, but as early as Descartes people noticed that this isn’t the same as imagining), and quantum mechanics are also famously resistant to imagination as a means of understanding the whole, and focused on observations instead.
Also this reminded me of Tradition Is Smarter Than You Are, linked by Kaj_Sotala, where unjustified rules passed down from generation to generation only recently became understandable as necessary to prevent long-term damage, or where divination is understood as the implementation of game-theoretically correct mixed strategies.
Truth tracking as a function of environmental harshness runs deep. Convergence speed has to be high, so pruning occurs at meta levels as well.