The Heavy Burden Of Extreme Intelligence - Jordan Peterson

Hello you legends. Watch the full episode with Jordan here - https://youtu.be/WEP5ubPMGDU. Get a 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 5.0 at manscaped.com/wisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM)

I love how JBP casually mentions his brother in Law as Engineer Jim. His brother in law is Jim Keller of Intel, one of the greatest computer scientists of our age

Dr. Peterson appears healthier than ever. I'm happy to see him back having these kinds of important conversations.

I took the personality test on Jordan’s site “understand myself” 3 times. I was rated exceptionally high in neuroticism and low in intellect and extremely high in volatility all 3 times. I found is incredibly frustrating and embarrassing. After sitting down and writing a few self evaluations I realized it made absolute sense. I have high negative emotions and low impulse control. It was a humbling self recognition . I had just lost a high end, 6 figure job due to my temperament and of course I blamed everyone and everything but myself. It took a full week of self introspection and writing to realize that because of this mentality nothing will change until I incorporate extreme self discipline in my life. I truly believe that’s the only way I can better my highly neurotic mind frame and improve my life.

My younger brother suffered from a manic episode earlier this year for the second time in his life. His mind was racing all the time with new ideas and things he wanted to do. He called me one evening and talked to me for 5 hours straight, with me only getting a few lines of text in between. It was an exhausting experience, but I wanted to be there for him in the hope I might be able to calm his mind. At the height of his mania, he had been awake for 7 days, unable to sleep and living on energy drinks and unhealthy snacks, when he was taken to a psychiatric ward. On his third day there, refusing to take any medication and still being unable to sleep, his heart just stopped working on the morning of March the 21st... I miss him every day and am saddened deeply that there was nothing I could do for him, except providing a listening ear. Mania is no joke. Even hypomania must be an overwhelming and exhausting experience. I wouldn't want to be in Elon Musks' shoes, not even for all the money in the world (which he luckily has). Edit : thank you for your kind words and empathy. I find peace in the thought that he is now watching from above and is probably thinking "sh*t, I've f*cked up, maybe I should've listened to my older brother a bit more"... ;-)

Jordan mentioning lifting weights in order to shut off your mind is so important and I think a lot more people need to do that particularly those that suffer from depression. I think depression stems from having a lot of time on your hands and nothing to preoccupy yourself with so your mind reverts to what you are lacking whether that be a good job, a relationship, financial stability, physical weakness, obesity, etc. I used to go through bouts of depression until a friend of mine, who was very into powerlifting, convinced me to start going to the gym with him. After about a month of forcing myself to go to the gym it eventually just became a normal ritual for me and it no longer felt like a chore. That was roughly 6 years ago and since then I don’t think I have had a single depressing thought go through my head. I tell people all of the time, the gym is the best antidepressant you can ever get on.

My father was bipolar and JBP could not have summed up mania any more concisely and any more accurately. One time, after a particularly bad manic episode, when he was on the other pole, so to speak, he looked at me over his glasses and said, "believe me, its no picnic being in my coconut buddy".

I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that six minutes of conversation. Some things make way more sense now. Major perspective SHIFT. Thank you, and Dr. Peterson.

It would have been nice if as a child my parents had told me, "Thoughts are just thoughts. Follow your breathing instead. Stay aware." Thank goodness I found meditation in life.

The Jim that Jordan mentioned is Jim Keller. He was one of the most important chip engineers/execs at Intel, AMD, Apple, and Tesla.

I wish Chris wouldn’t cut off and interrupt people he is interviewing.

Elon's baggage is he seeks love, he's mentioned it several times. He can't hold a stable relationship while balancing his intense job/s. Work comes first. It's a lonely place to be but also holds immense responsibility, public and employee wise. Also explains all the kids.

0:08: 🧠 Elon Musk discusses the downsides of high-level genius and the correlation between verbal fluency and creative achievement. 0:30: Verbal fluency is associated with creativity, and there is a strong correlation between the number of words produced and lifetime creative achievement. 1:01: Vocabulary and verbal fluency are different, with verbal fluency being more important for creative achievement. 2:42: 📚 Jordan Peterson discusses his experience of having a constantly active mind and how he used weightlifting and alcohol to cope with it. 3:03: He could think as fast as he could read, which was about 1200 words per minute. 3:19: Peterson started weightlifting and drinking to help shut off his busy mind. 5:19: 💡 Elon Musk is a hyper creative and hyper conscientious person who worked with Peter Thiel for a long time. 5:34: There is no correlation between creativity and conscientiousness. 6:03: The episode is sponsored by Manscaped and their new Lawnmower 5.0 Ultra. Recapped using Tammy

As someone with bipolar II, and in the festive field, this is so well explained… When you’re hypomanic, there’s so many thoughts, in a normal state, I can stop my anxiety from taking over me, but when I’m hypomanic, it’s not just a single voice I gotta stop, and it’s too fast. It doesn’t stop, not even at night. Your mind is so overloaded with information, that everything else makes you sensitive. The light is too bright, the noise is too loud and sharp. You can barely sleep at night. In good times I’d sleep 2 to 3 hours, but didn’t feel rested at all. The bright side was the creative abundance in your mind. It flows like a waterfall, and you only have a cup to pickup whatever you can. As an artist it feels amazing, you can do so much, you can produce so much, you can do great work… that sometimes is hard to replicate once the hypomania/mania is over. And then there’s the depression, which would be the drought. Although here what was discussed was the manic side of things.

I'm just glad Chris' podcast has taken off like it has in the last few years. When you look at the list of guests he's had on, and see him able to harness the model of Joe Rogan into, frankly, a more engaging and intelligent form, it puts this podcast into an elite level. Chris is the sweet spot between Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan on relatability and intelligence in being able to facilitate great conversations.

As a normal but slightly clever fellow, this happens to me occasionally and no way would I want to live that way all the time.

It wasn’t until I taught myself how to learn that I realised why teachers couldn’t, my teachers tried to teach me most subjects from the ground up and I as much as I found the subjects interesting I found it difficult to properly latch on. When I taught myself electrical engineering I was forced to go all the way down to the quark to understand everything above and then everything made sense, I needed to be taught from the foundations up rather than the ground up. Not having other kids around to distract me helped a great deal too.

"My brother-in-law is a great engineer". That's a huge understatement.

Most of my immediate family seem to have an IQ of about 85-95 (just my speculation based on growing up around them) and I am not high IQ compared to my friends (I’m 125) but I’ve grown up being unable to connect with my family (minus father who didn’t live with us) and it was very lonely and frustrating at the same time because I’m not able to say what I believe or know as fact to them or help improve their knowledge because I was instantly shut down or accused of not knowing and so on. It was impossible to have a simple conversation or find common ground because they didn’t have the ability to think for themselves and only take advice or knowledge from TV. Super annoying. I can only imagine Musk might feel this at extreme levels when debating or speaking to other people in his field or don’t hold the same political belief as him.

wow! This is the most fascinating study of Elon I've ever heard, and what better person to articulate the genius behind Musk than the great Dr. Jordan Peterson. Everything he said made total sense. He can "see" what Elon is, just as he can "see" deep into the psychology of his own patients, and in so doing, can offer them a cure. He understand people deeply because he's a walking genius