I think it’s pretty risk to play Rationalist taboo with what other people are saying. It’s supposed to be a technique for clarifying an argument by removing a word from the discussion, preventing it from being solely an argument about definitions. I would like it if Peterson would taboo the word “truth”, yeah.
I also don’t think that dereferencing the pointer actually helps. I object to how he uses “truth”, and I also object to the idea that Harry Potter is (dereferenced pointer)->[more psychologically useful to believe and to use as a map than discoveries about reality arrived at via empiricism]. It’s uh … it’s just not. Very much not. Dangerous to believe that it is, even. Equally if not more dangerous to believe that Christianity is [more psychologically useful to believe and to use as a map than discoveries about reality arrived at via empiricism]. I might sign on to something like, certain stories from Christianity are [a productive narrative lens to try on in an effort to understand general principles of psychology, maybe, sometimes].
The claim is that if believing a story predictably makes your life better, then you should overload your definition of truth and treat the story as “true,” and there is no better definition of the word.
This is indeed a hazardous application of Dark Arts to be applied judiciously and hopefully very very rarely. As a rule of thumb, if you feel like calling Harry Potter “true”, you’ve probably gone too far, IMO.
I think it’s pretty risk to play Rationalist taboo with what other people are saying. It’s supposed to be a technique for clarifying an argument by removing a word from the discussion, preventing it from being solely an argument about definitions. I would like it if Peterson would taboo the word “truth”, yeah.
I also don’t think that dereferencing the pointer actually helps. I object to how he uses “truth”, and I also object to the idea that Harry Potter is (dereferenced pointer)->[more psychologically useful to believe and to use as a map than discoveries about reality arrived at via empiricism]. It’s uh … it’s just not. Very much not. Dangerous to believe that it is, even. Equally if not more dangerous to believe that Christianity is [more psychologically useful to believe and to use as a map than discoveries about reality arrived at via empiricism]. I might sign on to something like, certain stories from Christianity are [a productive narrative lens to try on in an effort to understand general principles of psychology, maybe, sometimes].
This is indeed a hazardous application of Dark Arts to be applied judiciously and hopefully very very rarely. As a rule of thumb, if you feel like calling Harry Potter “true”, you’ve probably gone too far, IMO.