I have to admit, I'd barely heard about any these people(Peterson, rubin, Harris, Shapiro etc.) until last year from this thread. Maybe that's because I don't follow mainstream US discussions very much. Personally I think Sam Harris becomes off as the most intelligent and articulate of the lot albeit a bit smug. Rubin and Shapiro are just dimwitted. Peterson is more of a sad quasi intellectual self help guru who has a rather weird obsession with lobsters and "cultural" marxism.
Peterson, Harris, etc....
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Especially Rubin. How anyone takes that guy seriously is a huge mystery to me. He is clearly not very intelligent, and has had some absolutely moronic takes on just about everything. I don't doubt that Shapiro is actually pretty intelligent, but he has gone into full grift mode and will just take the most predictable right-wing positions on everything in order to sell crappy products on his YouTube channel.
Molyneux is an a category for himself, in my opinion. He comes across as both batshit crazy and evil, whereas the others are mostly faux intellectuals/grifters.
I think Shapiro is probably well educated on some issues(not climate change) and is fairly articulate, but he's basically surrended himself completely to American conservatism so he constantly unable to have nuanced discussion about the things that need to change for America to progress. I still enjoyed his interview with Joe Rogan simply because it's a interview in a friendly atmosphere where the guest is allowed to explore and express his ideas without the two constantly interrupting each other. I have no idea who Molyneux, but if he's just known for being a racist and evil, I have no desire to look him up.
Don't, he's deeply unpleasant
Molyneux is quite malicious in my opinion. I mean I think he genuinely believes in his general philosophy, but he will lie and twist facts in order to win/score points. He's painfully aggressive in debates, and his faux sincere schtick at times is creepy as feck, especially as it was usually followed by him begging for donations. Really enjoyed his debate with Rationality Rules who calmly destroyed him, and didn't lose his cool when Molyneux did his usual thing of shouting over people when he's losing. He may even speak some truth on certain issues but I find him extremely unpleasant.
Agree Crowder and Rubin are definitely grifters, really just interested in self promotion and their own media stardom. Crowder is at least occasionally funny but also extremely weird, whereas Rubin seems like an empty vessel that recites rhetoric that he hears smarter people say despite not quite understanding it.
Still a big fan of JP though, and it always pains me to see him grouped together with these charlatans.
What is it that you admire about Peterson?
Why? Dude's an idiot who's been preaching about the dangers of post-modernis cultural marxism, and when put on the spot and asked to describe what it was or mention prominent proponents, he couldn't come up with any thing or any one. The big bad marxism that he was so familiar with? Turns down he's knowledge went no further than reading the Communist Manifesto, which is very much Communism for Dummies. If he had any credibility left before his debate with Zizek, he sure as feck didn't afterwards.
He rose to prominence completely misunderstanding a proposed law because he's, well, an idiot. Everyone and their grandmother was telling him what he was claiming would happen couldn't happen, but he persisted. He makes a living telling people how to live their lives, but fails completely to set any kind of example, instead opting to do the opposite. Remember when he argued that equality can't and shouldn't be enforced by law, and when the civil rights era and the laws resulting from the social unrest at the time was brought up, he had to concede that maybe sometimes you have to enforce equality by law (and has then gone on to say that you shouldn't enforce equality by law, because of course he did.) Then there was that time where he did an interview, and wrote an angry blog post about the unpleasant young man who had interviewed him. Turned out the young man had done research and knew what he was talking about, so he was able to challenge JorP, and JorP didn't like that one bit. His views on women and their role in society are outdated, to put it mildly, and he sounds like Kermit the Frog.
He's a charlatan, same as the rest of them. Having a doctorate counts for nothing when you manage to make an absolute ass of yourself every time you open your mouth.
The most commonly used phrase after learning about something Jordan Peterson has said.
"it's just a guess, it could easily be wrong, but it also could not be wrong"... comedians have it hard nowadays.
To be fair the video isn't as bad as the citation, which is unfair in the way it makes it look like an affirmation. The "I suspect", "it's just a guess" and "could easily be wrong" makes it look a tad less bad. The "independent of public health" is also important as it's by far the area of medicine that saves more lives. I can imagine a lay person who doesn't quite understand how medical error and "superbugs" work putting that hypothesis as food for thought in a random conversation, which was what he did.
Still grossly stupid as an ill-thought hypothesis, I think we would have figured that out by now if it were true, with the amount of money and resources putting into evaluating everything medicine does. I just think he wouldn't stick to that idea, if forced to expand on it more, as he does stick to other stupid things he says.
Still grossly stupid as an ill-thought hypothesis, I think we would have figured that out by now if it were true, with the amount of money and resources putting into evaluating everything medicine does. I just think he wouldn't stick to that idea, if forced to expand on it more, as he does stick to other stupid things he says.
Overuse of antibiotics will kill more people than they save in the long term, so if that's what he meant he's not wrong. But it probably wasn't what he meant.
Put that through any decent BS translator, and the translation comes out: "I have no idea what I'm talking about, but let's assume the bs I just pulled out of my arse is right, so it adds a bit of merit to the baseless point I'm trying to make.
Ya it's a real concern, but overuse of antibiotics takes us back (worst case) to a world without antibiotics, not something worse than that. And hospitals aren't the only resistance generation sites.
Something that strikes me when reading/watching Peterson is that he clearly holds a great deal of knowledge in certain subjects and in these subjects he can quite easily shift the conversation the way he likes. I think he shifts the conversation to things he can attribute as hard facts for example 'people have made predictions that fossil fuels will run out for years and have been wrong', implying that therefore people currently stating the same are also wrong. His motive for making comments like these seems to be to imply certain things whilst at the same time being careful not to make any factual errors which leads to his fans adoring his 'genius'.
A judge of his character is his preferred narratives and a lot of the topics he speaks about show a quite alarmingly negative side to his personality. Why is he determined to talk about hierarchies being biological rather than patriachal for example? Why does he speak about the fall in standards of 'Marxist' universities? Why does he gloss over issues young women face whilst dwelling so heavily on the issues young men face?
A judge of his character is his preferred narratives and a lot of the topics he speaks about show a quite alarmingly negative side to his personality. Why is he determined to talk about hierarchies being biological rather than patriachal for example? Why does he speak about the fall in standards of 'Marxist' universities? Why does he gloss over issues young women face whilst dwelling so heavily on the issues young men face?
I'd argue that we antibiotics would not be as effective, but it wouldn't 'kill' people.
Unless you mean we'd be able to save more in the future with more careful use of antibiotics now, to which I'd whole heartedly agree.
how?
Admittedly I’ve not read much of this thread, but I have to ask why Harris is grouped into this thread with semi-loonies like Peterson? Harris is neither right-leaning, nor is he ‘mad’.
He also does that extremely tiresome thing where he'll make a bunch of arguments, and if whomever he is talking to follows them to their logical conclusion and asks him "so what you're saying is *thing*", he'll go "no no, I didn't say that, you're putting words in my mouth!" He's said a lot of shit that seems to insinuate that women being part of the workforce is a bad thing, but if you push him on it, he'll go "no no, that's not what i'm saying" because he's an intellectual coward.
Dude's basically a full-on Islamophobe these days, he's a Charles Murray apologist, as well as being friends with a bunch of incredibly racist people. He defended Donald Trump telling four congresswomen from minority backgrounds to go back to where they came from (the US, in the case of three of them), claiming it wasn't racist (it was, Trump 100% said it because they're all racial minorities). I'm fairly sure he's also argued that systemic racism isn't real, and that black people aren't treated different from white people by the police and judicial system.
He's an intellectually dishonest charlatan, for whom facts and statistics only matter when they support his view. If non exist that support his view, he'll gladly take some out of context and misrepresent them as supporting his view. He most definitely belongs in the same waste bin as Peterson, Shapiro, Rubin and the rest.
@Halftrack perhaps I’ve missed the clear and obvious islamophobia. He’s fairly open in his criticism of most religions, and is at pains to distinguish between criticism of Islam as a religion, versus criticism of innocent muslims. I’d also add that the man is a staunch critic of Trump, so that seems an odd point to make...
the grouping was made here, by a fan of both
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
Ah okay, thanks.
And people actually worship this person?
even if it was true medical error is the third highest cause of death, thats only because medicine has eliminated loads of other causes of death
He has this magnificent ability to make his fans completely ignore all the stupid and shitty things he's said and done, and to simply only ever respond when presented them by saying, "Well, I like him."
I may suggest him in the next biannual cancel culture meeting.
I have no idea, what the superbugs were about, but I assume they were talking about this.
https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139
I've posted before about it, but basically he's right on most things, at least when it comes to psychology. He's astute, funny but most important for me he is completely genuine. He's less and less solid the more he drifts into politics, philosophy or religion BUT he always roots his opinion in research, articulates his evidence and acknowledges what he doesn't know, what can't be proven or hasn't yet been proven and the benefits of counter arguments. He's sincere in any discussion and is consistent whether he's in a discussion with someone brown-nosing him or someone attacking him. I think he's largely mischaracterised by the general public as a result of his loose association to others mentioned in this thread which is a shame (and also his own fault as he actively participates with some of them).
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Relax mate. The world isn't black and white, full of goodies and baddies, idiots and geniuses.
They're sort of in the same podcast sphere, and have overlapping audiences. They're different though, Harris is not as crazy generally but probably have the (bar Peterson) craziest and (bar Shapiro) most racist takes when he's on form.
It was along the chain of his thinking.
Superbugs etc have resistance to medical practices such as administering antibiotics etc.
Racist? Crazy? I completely disagree with that assessment.
Noted.
Having exposed yourself to his work, do you really think Sam Harris has ever intended to be racist? You don’t seem to like the man, I get it, but I don’t know how anyone could fairly accuse him of racism... unless you think critiquing Islam (read: Islam, not muslims) is racist?
Can someone point out a specific moment or clip where Harris was being racist?
That's not really been my impression either from watching full interviews, dialouges and debates with him. I havn't read any of his books though.
I think the problem with 1 or 2 minute clips is that people can run with it, and then say "this is how this person is" rather an listening to entire thing where they cover what they meant by this.
I don't really care about his intentions. I think in particular his views about genetic racial IQ differences and also things like his defenses of racial and ethnic profiling are racist.
Some of his views on Islam and Muslims - like the potential coming French civil war twice as deadly to them as WW2 - would fit very nicely in the crazy bag but probably not the racist one.
Have I missed something? Harris, if I recall correctly, cares not one iota about race with respect to IQ. His crime seems to have been hosting Murray on his podcast - does that constitute racism in your book?