Are We Living in a Dark Age? Bret Speaks with Steve Patterson

DarkHorse Podcast

Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying

Natural Sciences, Society & Culture, News, Adaptation, Modernity, Culture, Politics, Science, Evolutionary Biology

4.6 • 5.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2022

⏱️ 176 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bret Speaks with Steve Patterson on the subject of today’s world and what we face as time progresses. Some of us have begun to wonder, given the vast array of unscientific beliefs that recently echoed across civilization, are we entering a cryptic dark age? Might we be living in one already? Steve Patterson, a philosopher and independent researcher, has reached an even more unsettling conclusion. Despite the remarkable pace of technological progress, we have lived our entire lives in the scientific dark.

Find Steve at his website: https://steve-patterson.com/

Find Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveinpursuit

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Theme Music: Thank you to Martin Molin of Wintergatan for providing us the rights to use their excellent music.

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction

(05:33) Sponsors

(10:27) Establishing critical concepts in fields of study

(17:40) Bret's mentors and Richard Dawkins

(36:32) Popularizers of science

(41:12) Martial Arts

(53:43) Trade-offs and interdisciplinary skills

(57:53) COVID

(01:02:19) Bret's Jamaica hiccup story and burning sage at funerals

(01:07:03) God and faith in science

(01:11:12) Consciousness and the hard problem

(01:26:15) Free will

(01:29:05) Is Bret an atheist? Defining religious

(01:39:40) Religion shaped hole and what religion got right about civilization collapse

(01:44:07) Debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson

(01:49:00) Underestimating the complexity of the world

(01:56:41) Diminishing returns and keeping hypotheses open

(02:06:33) The process of science creates noise

(02:08:41) How markets function

(02:10:20) COVID Vs and complex systems

(02:19:00) Are we in a dark age? Foundation of mathematics

(02:39:20) Steel man of believing in bad ideas

(02:48:30) Psychological features and ideas

(02:54:30) Wrap up

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Is it possible? Let's say that we're entertaining a theory in which there's physical stuff,
0:06.6	maybe conscious states are in a separate system, obviously, they're related.
0:11.9	And then there's an abstract system. Maybe that's where the laws of physics resides or something.
0:17.2	Are each of these equally fundamental? So is it possible that we could dispense with the abstract
0:25.3	stuff? It might be. It might be like there's a theory here. I think it's called, I forget what
0:31.2	it's called, but it's something like the laws of physics are ideas in the mind of God. So maybe
0:34.9	all we have is physical stuff and mental stuff and the mental is more fundamental and you don't
0:40.0	need the abstract stuff. Can you dispose with the physical stuff? I actually think you can. I think
0:45.2	it's conceivably possible to tell the idealist story, which says that everything is mental. Everything
0:50.4	is an experience. Everything is an idea. I don't take that position, but it's at least conceivably
0:54.8	possible that the most basic story we tell about the physical world is wrong. Is it possible to
1:02.0	dispense with the existence of consciousness and conscious mental states? I would say no.
1:06.4	That one, there's no true story that we could tell that is possibly true in which our conclusion
1:13.4	is consciousness doesn't exist. Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast. I have the great
1:22.1	pleasure of sitting today with Steve Patterson, who you may well not know, but you can find him
1:27.8	at steve-patterson.com. You may also want to check out his podcast, which is called Patterson in
1:37.6	pursuit. Am I correct about that, Steve? Indeed, yeah. Well, welcome to the Dark Horse.
1:41.6	Hey, thanks for having me. So you are an independent philosopher, which
1:47.1	independent and philosopher would both be pursuing his terms here, but let's just say that's a fascinating
1:54.3	category to me. I take philosophy very seriously as a tool for getting logic correct. And I also find
2:04.7	the idea of someone doing this independently, very tantalizing. I will say for my audience's benefit,
2:11.4	I became aware of you when I read an essay that you wrote recently on a topic that is near and
	...

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