I asked ChatGPT this question.

Like many other people, I’m often frustrated at people’s lack of ability to make distinctions and understand (in the context of a disagreement) what the real issues are. They quickly run to feelings, ideology, and straw-man arguments. One big exception is lawyers. They are able to grasp the actual issue at dispute. What do law schools do to train lawyers for this skill?

Law schools do several things that, taken together, train people to separate issues, define terms, and argue from evidence rather than intuition.

1. They teach students to identify the precise question

A good lawyer learns that a case is rarely about the broad issue everyone is emotionally arguing about.

For example, a public debate might be:

“This is about free speech!”

A lawyer asks:

“What specific government action occurred? What legal standard applies? Is this a content-based restriction? What remedy is being sought?”

The first habit law school instills is reducing a large, emotional dispute into a narrow, answerable question.

2. They force students to argue both sides

One of the most powerful features of legal education is that students are constantly required to defend positions they personally dislike.

A student may support a policy politically and still have to argue why it violates a statute.

Or oppose a defendant morally and still have to argue why the evidence is insufficient.

This trains the mind to distinguish:

• What I believe
• What I wish were true
• What I can prove
• What the rules actually say

Many people never develop this separation.

3. They teach issue spotting

Law professors love exam questions where everything is messy.

A fact pattern may contain:

• Contract issues
• Tort issues
• Evidence issues
• Procedural issues

Students are rewarded for identifying every distinct issue.

Law school therefore creates a habit of asking:

“What are all the separate questions hiding inside this argument?”

Many ordinary disagreements fail because people treat ten different disputes as though they were one.

4. They punish unsupported assertions

In ordinary conversation, saying:

“Everybody knows…”

or

“It’s obvious that…”

often works.

In law school it doesn’t.

The professor immediately asks:

“What authority supports that?”

Students become conditioned to ask:

• What’s your evidence?
• What’s your source?
• What’s your precedent?
• What rule are you relying on?

This doesn’t guarantee truth, but it does discourage pure assertion.

5. They use adversarial analysis

The legal system assumes smart people disagree.

Instead of trying to eliminate disagreement, it institutionalizes it.

Every argument is expected to face:

• Objections
• Counterarguments
• Alternative interpretations

Students therefore learn to anticipate:

“What’s the strongest argument against my position?”

This is often the opposite of ideological thinking, which tends to seek confirming evidence.

6. They force precision in language

Lawyers become almost obsessive about definitions.

A normal person might say:

“He threatened me.”

A lawyer asks:

“What exactly did he say?”

A normal person says:

“The company lied.”

A lawyer asks:

“Do you mean fraud, negligence, misrepresentation, breach of warranty, or something else?”

Many disputes are actually disputes about words.

Law school trains people to notice that.

7. The Socratic method exposes hidden assumptions

Many law schools use a version of the Socratic method.

A professor repeatedly asks:

• Why?
• Why?
• Why?
• What if we change this fact?
• What if we change that fact?

Eventually students discover that what they thought was a principle was actually just a reaction to a particular example.

This is similar to what philosophers do.

8. They teach reasoning from cases rather than slogans

Students spend years reading judicial opinions.

Judges rarely write:

“Because fairness.”

Instead they explain:

• Facts
• Principles
• Precedent
• Reasoning
• Conclusions

Over time students absorb a habit of structured analysis.

Why Lawyers Seem Different

The most important point is that lawyers are not necessarily smarter than everyone else.

What is different is that they are professionally punished for failing to distinguish:

• Facts from opinions
• Evidence from assumptions
• Legal questions from moral questions
• One issue from another

If they fail to make those distinctions, they lose cases.

Most people operate in environments where those distinctions are not heavily rewarded.

There is also an uncomfortable observation.

Many public arguments are not actually attempts to discover the truth. They are attempts to signal loyalty, express identity, vent frustration, or mobilize allies. In those contexts, careful distinctions can be perceived as weakness or even betrayal.

Lawyers operate in a culture where the opposite is true. The person who notices the subtle distinction often wins.

That is probably the biggest reason lawyers sometimes seem unusually good at identifying the real issue in a dispute. They have spent years in an environment where success depends on finding exactly the distinction everyone else missed.

A long time ago my sister told me a story about some conflict she had with dad. Dad said, “there’s no manual for how to raise kids.” My sister was tempted to give him a Bible – and while there is some good stuff in the Bible about raising kids, it really doesn’t fit the need. It’s not an adequate training manual for parents.

There was a book, years ago, titled “All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek.” There’s some truth to that. Star Trek has always been a morality tale, and there are some solid messages (and some galactic-level stupidity) in Star Trek.

One day those two ideas collided in my mind and I wondered if it would even be possible that Spock wouldn’t know how to raise a kid (if he had one). Surely the Vulcans would have a manual on precisely how to do everything, when to do it, etc.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on all the things my parents didn’t have to teach me. There were so many things we simply absorbed from TV, music, swim team, scouts, school, band, and even my friends in the neighborhood. It wasn’t all perfect, of course, but there was something like an “ambient decency” that suffused the culture.

That’s all gone now.

That saying “it takes a village to raise a child” is true in at least two respects. First, the parents can’t do it all. They don’t have the knowledge or the skills. Second, even if they did, they can’t raise a kid with a set of values that the culture is constantly undermining. If it’s only mom and dad saying, “no sex before marriage,” and the culture is shouting “go for it!” – it’s pretty obvious which way a hormone-crazed teenager is going to go.

It’s not only sex, of course. Hard work. Prudence. Diligence. Dressing decently. Being respectful. If mom and dad’s lessons aren’t supported and affirmed by at least some of the rest of society, the kids will think they were raised by weirdoes and will go their own way.

The catastrophe of the 80s

One of my biggest regrets is not having the wisdom to understand how consequential this societal change was.

I was bright enough to realize there was no shared culture any longer. Large scale changes were wreaking havoc on the American mind: feminism, the sexual revolution, economic changes, cable TV, the decline of religious and civic organizations, a generalized feeling of guilt about western culture, the rise of therapeutic culture, and much more.

I was not bright enough to compensate adequately. I still expected my kids to absorb certain things, the way I did. It just seemed like the natural process of growing up. I mean, it’s pretty doggone obvious how to change a tire on a car, or to know that the highway half a mile from the house goes north and south.

No, it’s not, of course, and that’s the problem. One of the hard things about life is that you don’t know what you don’t know, and what’s obvious to you isn’t obvious to other people.

For example, I grew up shooting. By the time I was eight I knew more about gun safety than Alec Baldwin knew when he was 63. I’ve taken friends to the gun range and recoiled in horror at the way they treat a shotgun.

It’s very hard to remember what it’s like not to know something, which is why we have safety officers who make sure we follow the rules. It can be annoying when the guy at the jet ski place gives you the five-minute lecture, but he has to assume you don’t know what you’re doing.

My parents could reasonably rely on the “ambient decency” of the culture to fill in some gaps. They didn’t have to lecture me on everything all the time. They knew that their values would be generally upheld and reinforced by my teachers, coaches, scout leaders, other parents in the neighborhood, and so on.

Now the kids are exposed to “ambient indecency.” The culture is at war with your values. It’s actively trying to tear them down.

It’s not just values

I was at mom’s house fixing a door for her one day, and she asked if dad taught me how to do it. I thought, “Of course not. This is obvious. Nobody had to teach me how to do this.”

While I can’t remember dad ever teaching me how to work on a door, I’m not sure I had that quite right. Dad did teach me a way of looking at things, and a confidence to try. One summer day when I was 16, dad called me from work and told me to get the model number off the dryer, go to the Sears parts store, get a replacement belt, and change the dryer belt (which had broken the night before). He didn’t give me that many details. He just gave me the basics and expected me to figure it out.

At that time (1979), that was a reasonable assumption. Kids had shop class in school. They watched when somebody else worked on a car, sharpened a knife, whittled a stick, or tied a knot. They listened while Pop Pop smoked a pipe and told tales of the stupid things people do. They absorbed a certain mechanical proficiency from the air all around them.

This led me to the false belief that I didn’t need to teach these things. The kids would just get it on their own — the way I did. I mean … it’s obvious stuff, right?

No, it’s not. They didn’t have a supportive culture that generally pointed kids in the right direction. They had a poisoned culture that pointed them to lies, an entertainment culture that made video games more important than learning how to change a tire, and absolutely no emphasis on basic competence.

That was 30 years ago. It’s only getting worse.

The camping checklist

After you’ve been on a few trips – camping, business, fishing, whatever – you get tired of forgetting things. Some people have the mental discipline to keep those lessons in mind. I make checklists.

Before each trip I review the checklist to see if I’ve forgotten anything. It reduces anxiety and assures I won’t end up at the campsite with no tent pegs. (Provided I remember to consult the checklist!)

Which raises the question, what would that Vulcan training manual look like?

Thinking about that got me wondering what it’s like to be a psychologist, counselor, or therapist. It’s an interesting challenge. Some stranger walks into your office and you have to assess how this person is doing in life. Is he prospering or drowning?

There have to be some markers. Some tells. Some metrics. There has to be some analogy to the camping checklist.

So, here you have it. Here’s my first draft of a checklist of life skills.

If you’re a parent, you should review this. Are your children learning these things? How do you know? If they’re not, what do you need to do to make sure they do learn them?

Life Skills Checklist

1. Identity and Personal Responsibility

• Do they understand that they are not a victim of their circumstances?
• Do they take responsibility for their choices, actions, and consequences?
• Do they know their strengths and limitations without false pride or self-loathing?
• Are they learning to delay gratification?

2. Moral and Spiritual Compass

• Do they understand the difference between right and wrong, and that there are some things you just don’t do?
• Do they have a working understanding of your family’s core moral/spiritual framework (e.g., the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, Natural Law)?
• Are they aware that a good conscience must be formed and doesn’t develop naturally?
• Do they have a sense of meaning and purpose beyond themselves and their own desires?

3. Relationships and Social Skills

• Do they have friends?
• Can they make and keep friends for a significant period of time?
• Do they treat others with respect, and expect respect in return?
• Can they manage conflict without exploding or collapsing?
• Do they take everything personally?
• Do they understand how romantic relationships work—including asking someone out, dating with respect, establishing sexual boundaries, embracing commitment, etc.?
• Do they understand what marriage is for, and why it matters?

4. Work Ethic and Competence

• Do they know how to work hard—even when it’s boring or difficult?
• Do they understand the value of money, time, and effort?
• Are they learning to finish what they start?
• Do they have any practical or marketable skills? (Do they realize that nobody’s going to pay them because of their wonderful uniqueness?)
• Can they function in a workplace (e.g., show up on time, follow instructions, manage a boss)?

5. Habits of Self-Maintenance

• Are they learning to care for their body with proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, and basic hygiene?
• Are they learning self-control with digital devices, entertainment, and dopamine triggers?
• Do they recognize unhealthy coping mechanisms (e.g., porn, drugs, compulsive scrolling)?
• Are they forming any healthy routines?

6. Vision for the Future

• Do they have goals or a sense of purpose?
• Do they understand what adulthood requires—education, work, family, civic duties?
• Do they have a mental model of what “a good life” looks like (e.g., married, stable, contributing, grounded)?
• Do they know how to navigate failure and keep moving forward?

7. Civic and Cultural Awareness

• Do they understand how society works—government, money, media, etc.?
• Are they learning to question cultural narratives and spot manipulation or propaganda?
• Do they feel a sense of responsibility to their community or nation?

8. Resilience and Mental Strength

• Can they handle rejection, failure, or discomfort without melting down?
• Are they being challenged regularly—physically, intellectually, and socially?
• Do they know how to ask for help when necessary?

You shouldn’t have to do this

If we lived in a decent society, most of these things would be in the air we all breathed. It would be common knowledge.

Kids used to pick up half these things from Leave It to Beaver, teachers, scoutmasters, coaches, and ministers, without anybody spelling it out.
Needless to say, that’s not the case today. If parents don’t explicitly pass these things on, there’s a good chance no one will.

This just occurred to me recently. I might have to add it to my book.

A challenge with understanding Dr. Peterson’s view of God is that he uses words and language in his own way. He says he’ll stake his life on the idea that God exists, but the God he believes in is not what you think of as God.

One simple way to bridge this gap is to reflect on the idea of God as the voice of conscience. I don’t mean that God reveals himself through the conscience. I don’t mean that conscience is somehow a reflection of the will of God.

What I mean is that God is conscience. That nagging thing in your head that reproves you and demands your obedience is God. All our concepts of God are built on top of that. They’re all extrapolations from that basic psychological reality.

From that perspective, God is not an entity who calls to Moses. God is the voice in Moses’ head.

Dr. Peterson has a bias to try to explain everything in psychological terms. God included.

Consequently, God is not an external being. He’s a psychological phenomenon.

Please note that this is a shortcut. It doesn’t do justice to the depth and breadth of Dr. Peterson’s thoughts on the matter. But if you think about it for a while, it will get your brain in the right groove to understand JBP’s point of view. If you come to his book (or lectures) thinking of God in traditional terms, you’re not going to get it.

For more, see Wrestling with Jordan Peterson’s God: A Systematic Guide to Dr. Jordan Peterson’s Religious Thoughts

Over the years I’ve listened to a lot of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s talks on (or related to) religion, and I’ve witnessed his very public, very slow and agonizing conversion. After reading his new book, “We Who Wrestle With God,” I’ve written a response, which attempts to organize and systematize his argument into something like a logical format.

Here’s the short version.

Man is an evolved creature. Our ancestors did not have a language in the sense we would understand it. As they evolved cognitively, some instinctual functions became conscious, but those instincts continue to have an impact on our perceptions and behavior.

Man is a biological creature with limited cognitive ability faced with an infinite array of possibilities. Our bodies and our minds evolved to filter the cacophony of experience into patterns that are useful to our goals. This goal-orientedness lies beneath all our perception of the world.

We enacted things – often in ritual, often imaginatively – before we understood them. We slowly developed semantic representations for the patterns of our lives.

We developed these semantic representations of how to get along in the world through stories that were refined and condensed over time into myths, legends, symbols, and images. We understand the world through the lens of these stories.

Many of the stories represent how to respond to the threat of the various monsters we encountered along the way – whether those threats were from animals or from our fellow man. These stories helped us prevent the Hell life could easily descend into.

Stories exist within a moral hierarchy. Whatever is placed at the top of that hierarchy is “god” – by definition. It is the concept or system of values around which all goals, all perception, all moral reasoning is organized.

We can understand this god by looking at the values that over time have been useful in helping human societies to flourish. These values are expressed in all human culture, but most particularly in the fundamental texts and stories of culture.

The story that unites all these values is a story of sacrifice, which is best illuminated in the Gospels.

Wrestling with Jordan Peterson’s God: A Systematic Guide to Dr. Jordan Peterson’s Religious Thoughts

Here’s my latest, in which I try to organize Dr. Peterson’s thoughts into a coherent argument. It’s systematic, but not comprehensive. The goal is not to cover everything, but to put JBP’s religious thoughts into an understandable framework.