Peterson, Harris, etc....

I'm intrigued how many of the early thread Shapiro/Peterson fans are still flying the flag. Both have been pretty comprehensively exposed as vacuous blow hards as far as I'm concerned, but I was admittedly already in the anti-camp.

What one tended to find, was that Shapiro fans, exposed to his ideologically empty "cartoon villain from a 90s college set indie film" nature, would defer to Peterson as the "better, more intellectual" version. Which is amusing considering the juvenile breakdowns he has on twitter whenever anyone criticises his work (or his hilarious attempts to start fights with a Noam Chomsky quotes account)

All of which lead me to actually read some of his work for the first time, and feck me, is it hilarious. If intelligence is the ability to understand and communicate complex ideas in a simple fashion, then Peterson's ridiculously overwritten, overwrought pontifications on the vague nature of everything and nothing, accompanied by BATSHIT CRAZY DRAGON THEMED DIAGRAMS!! is surely an example of the polar opposite?

Who actually digs this shit?
 
parkthebuslads said:
Probably not the best example of how awful Shapiro is, given how much worst Cenk is.

The worst thing about Shapiro is that he appears smart, at least initially (he's well spoken)
. But how smart can a man be whose incapable of challenging his own religious and political dogma?
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That last bit is key. He seems to do well at having an end state (such as his religious views) then proceeds to go selective fact shopping to reinforce and validate his end state, and in the process throw out a few strawmen to keep people from questioning the validity of his own logic.
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
I like Peterson a lot, not ashamed of that.
Click to expand...


X9RldUF.png

Would you like to invest in a juice bar?

Jordan Peterson. The @Successful of philosophers.
 
i think the recent chapo made a good point about why people like peterson.

"And for the young men he's talking to, nobody in the monoculture is talking to them or addressing them. The only people who are talking to them are on YouTube. And he's talking to them through YouTube, and he's telling them a story that makes sense, or acknowledges some truths that make sense or are not acknowledged elsewhere."

"And it flatters prejudices that they already have. It challenges in a superficial way, in that they should clean their room or stop gaming every four hours ... but in the deeper sense, it's absolutely flattering every lazy prejudice."
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
If only I was as clever as you @Mockney
Click to expand...

Well if you’d like I can draw you a very silly diagram, whilst paraphrasing the cliff notes of Jung & Neichze in no less than 9,000 words? And then kinda tie it all into Gamergate, or something.

Eboue said:
i think the recent chapo made a good point about why people like peterson.

"And for the young men he's talking to, nobody in the monoculture is talking to them or addressing them. The only people who are talking to them are on YouTube. And he's talking to them through YouTube, and he's telling them a story that makes sense, or acknowledges some truths that make sense or are not acknowledged elsewhere."

"And it flatters prejudices that they already have. It challenges in a superficial way, in that they should clean their room or stop gaming every four hours ... but in the deeper sense, it's absolutely flattering every lazy prejudice."
Click to expand...

Have you actually read any of his prose though? I’ve admittedly only read snippets, but it’s all been kinda ridiculous. Ideological Barnum statements sieved through a Thesaurus. If he was Superhero, he’d be Obfuscation-Man!!
 
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Raoul said:
I've seen Peterson's name a lot, but have never clicked on any of his videos. What's his general schtick ?
Click to expand...

Depends who you ask really. I will try to give a fair and brief summary.

He's a college professor at Toronto, formerly of Harvard and a practicing clinical psychologist (perhaps until very recently).

He has a background of psychology (obviously) and also has done a lot of studying of the old testament (he hosted a series of lectures on it which you can find on his Youtube channel, I'm finding it fairly interesting). The long and short of it is finding metaphorical truths in the stories, as opposed to literal interpretations I guess.

He came into the spotlight heavily after in Canada they changed the law regarding how one refers to transgender people in the workplace, i.e. if you didn't refer to someone in their preferred pronoun, including new 'made-up' ones like 'ze' and 'zer' then you'd be committing a crime, I'm sure I've butchered that a bit and you can find the details elsewhere if you want. His issue was that it was a form of governmental compelled speech and he said he would refuse to obey this law. This was also interpreted by some that he was being 'transphobic' and that he's a bigot and a part of the alt-right and such.

I think partly because of this he now feels like he has a dog in the fight against 'social justice warriors' and that whole culture which he dubs 'cultural marxism' or something. He goes on about this quite a lot and a criticism some people have is that this doesn't exist but a counter argument could be that the phenomenon exists and he's just given it his own label.

One of his core attitudes/beliefs in general that he often mentions in one form or another is that the individual takes responsibility for themselves, rather than to blame someone else i.e. an oppressor, and to become bitter and resentful. He hates identity politics, be it on the left or the right, and sees it as the introduction to chaos, drawing comparisons to Nazi Germany, Mao' China and Communist Russia.

He also has a vast career as a clinical psychologist and personally I think a lot of his anecdotes from his career are really interesting and I think he's good at picking out the insight from them.

Overall I think he is just an interesting person to listen to, if you're really interested you should just see for yourself. ;)
 
Mockney said:
Have you actually read any of his prose though? I’ve admittedly only read snippets, but it’s all been kinda ridiculous. Ideological Barnum statements sieved through a Thesaurus. If he was Superhero, he’d be Obfuscation-Man!!
Click to expand...

There's a lot of standard self-help stuff in the midst of the psychology and theorising.
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
I think partly because of this he now feels like he has a dog in the fight against 'social justice warriors' and that whole culture which he dubs 'cultural marxism' or something. He goes on about this quite a lot and a criticism some people have is that this doesn't exist but a counter argument could be that the phenomenon exists and he's just given it his own label.
Click to expand...

Yeah, no... He hasn’t “given it his own label”...Cultural Marxism was already a label. One genuinely invented by the Nazis in fact. A very prominent and historically relevant form of right wing brainwashing.

So you can probably see why some people find it tripe race baiting alt right bullshit?

But on the flip side, Dragon diagrams, so....?
 
Mockney said:
Yeah, no... He hasn’t “given it his own label”...Cultural Marxism was already a label. One invented by the Nazis in fact. A very prominent and historically relevant form of right wing brainwashing, in fact.

So you can probably see why some people find it tripe race baiting alt right bullshit?

But on the flip side, Dragon diagrams, so....?
Click to expand...

Okay
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
He came into the spotlight heavily after in Canada they changed the law regarding how one refers to transgender people in the workplace, i.e. if you didn't refer to someone in their preferred pronoun, including new 'made-up' ones like 'ze' and 'zer' then you'd be committing a crime, I'm sure I've butchered that a bit and you can find the details elsewhere if you want. His issue was that it was a form of governmental compelled speech and he said he would refuse to obey this law. This was also interpreted by some that he was being 'transphobic' and that he's a bigot and a part of the alt-right and such.
Click to expand...

this has been proven to not be accurate

http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
Okay
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I completely get why a couple of annoymous arrogant nobodies on an Internet forum ripping into a best selling academic might seem unconvincing, but remember, we live in a world where Donald J Trump is the President of the United States, and Info Wars is a genuine part of his propaganda network...

A previously unknown middle aged academic outlier, suddenly gaining fame and prominence for tacitly supporting vague right wing ideology isn’t exactly a reliable appeal to authority these days, is it?

Just wait until he starts selling Brain Force Plus.

berbatrick said:
There's a lot of standard self-help stuff in the midst of the psychology and theorising.
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Kinda. There’s also a lot of quasi-Randian “be a man” type guff too. Which can be as damaging to as many as it’s helpful.

He’s obsessed with masculine myth making, which is unfortunately fitting considering his audience is in fair part the kind of MRA Gamergaters whose obsession with toxic masculinity is only liable to make them more and more depressed in the long run.
 
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Mockney said:
I completely get why a couple of annoymous arrogant nobodies on an Internet forum ripping into a best selling academic might seem unconvincing, but remember, we live in a world where Donald J Trump is the President of the United States, and Info Wars is a genuine part of his propaganda network...

A previously unknown middle aged academic outlier, suddenly gaining fame and prominence for tacitly supporting vague right wing ideology isn’t exactly a reliable appeal to authority these days, is it?

Just wait until he starts selling Brain Force Plus.
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To be honest mate, you and @Eboue not liking Jordan Peterson is one of the least surprising events that has ever been observed in my own universe, so I'm not going to get into some kind of debate with you about him or take the condescending rhetoric too personally. I get that guys like yourselves really don't like him or much he has to say. It doesn't bother me, more power to you. Like I said I just about knew that would be the case anyway. You aren't that anonymous to me, I've seen your formulaic put downs and posts about current events/political/social/religious views for years, countless times. They haven't changed at all. You're far cleverer than everyone else and that's that.
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
To be honest mate, you and @Eboue not liking Jordan Peterson is one of the least surprising events that has ever been observed in my own universe, so I'm not going to get into some kind of debate with you about him or take the condescending rhetoric too personally. I get that guys like yourselves really don't like him or much he has to say. It doesn't bother me, more power to you. Like I said I just about knew that would be the case anyway. You aren't that anonymous to me, I've seen your formulaic put downs and posts about current events/political/social/religious views for years, countless times. They haven't changed at all. You're far cleverer than everyone else and that's that.
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That’s all well and good, but Cultural Marxism is genuinely a Nazi phrase, and was only brought back into the modern public consciousness by Anders fecking Brevik.

I don’t really care what you think of me. But I genuinely do really really want you (and anyone who finds these arguments persuasive) to appreciate that.
 
Bloke has some weird fans.

DYwoUfJVMAAfmlL.jpg:large
 
Mockney said:
That’s all well and good, but Cultural Marxism is genuinely a Nazi phrase, and was only brought back into the modern public consciousness by Anders fecking Brevik.

I don’t really care what you think of me. But I genuinely do really really want you to appreciate that.
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I'm sure you're correct, I just included it try and give Raoul a fair assessment on what Peterson likes to talk about. I'm not particularly engrossed in 'cultural marxism' when he or anyone else talks about it. For what it's worth, even if it is a 'Nazi phrase' originally, listening to everything he might say about 'cultural marxism' itself (as he defines it), I don't hear any alarm bells personally in the content. But hey, maybe I'm missing something, or I'm a nazi.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Bloke has some weird fans.

DYwoUfJVMAAfmlL.jpg:large
Click to expand...


"One yeah i dance, but the dedication i put into breakin alone is far more than you've probably put into anything.
how you gonna act like it's something all feminne when the bboy culture is far more battle/fight than football is.
You insulting me cus i dance is pretty low, that's my life you basically cussing off. so it's personal."
 
Mockney said:
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewers head
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I'm familiar.
Eboue said:
"One yeah i dance, but the dedication i put into breakin alone is far more than you've probably put into anything.
how you gonna act like it's something all feminne when the bboy culture is far more battle/fight than football is.
You insulting me cus i dance is pretty low, that's my life you basically cussing off. so it's personal."
Click to expand...
I'm not...
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
Even if it is a 'Nazi phrase' originally, listening to everything he might say about 'cultural marxism' itself, I don't hear any alarm bells personally.
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I mean, I’d like to counter with the notion that any sentence that begins “even if it is a Nazi phrase” should constitute an alarm bell in of itself, but I’ll admit you’ve check-Godwin’d me there.

Still. Think about it. Please.
 
Mockney said:
I mean, I’d like to counter with the notion that any sentence that begins “even if it is a Nazi phrase” should constitute an alarm bell in of itself, but I’ll admit you’ve check-Godwin’d me there.

Still. Think about. Please.
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Just because it's the same two words mashed together doesn't mean they have the same meaning to Peterson as they did at the time. You're too clever to be this lazy and disingenuous, though admittedly it is 4am.
 
Vidic_In_Moscow said:
Just because it's the same two words mashed together doesn't mean they have the same meaning to Peterson as they did at the time. You're too clever to be this lazy and disingenuous, though admittedly it is 4am.
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But consequently, he’s too clever to not know it’s connotations. I mean, why has the term Marxist even been resurrected to apply to modern day Social Justice Warrioring? What does Marxism and its largely economic 19th Century outlook have to do with PC culture, feminism and identity politics in 2018? Absolutely feck all, is what. So why use a phrase - and a scaremongering tactic - so explicitly associated with fascism?
 
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Mockney said:
But consequently, he’s too clever to not know it’s connotations. I mean, why has the term Marxist even been resurrected to apply to modern day Social Justice Warrioring? What does Marxism and its largely economic outlook have to do with PC culture, feminism and identity politics in 2018? feck all. So why use a phrase - and a scaremongering tactic - so explicitly associated with fascism?
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Far too complex a topic for me to speculate, I guess you would have to ask him or watch him talk about it and see if you can find the link.
 
He shared this on Facebook, so I think he sees the link.

The cultural Marxism that our societies are infected with is a particularly Western phenomenon. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Marxists in Europe believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat was at hand. They were wrong. The revolution failed to spread. In despair, and in one of Mussolini’s prisons, a young Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci wrote that the problem was the Christian bedrock of Western European cultures. He encouraged Marxists to develop a fifth column inside these countries to destroy the foundations of Western cultures. Only then would international socialism be achievable.

This call to subversion was picked up by Marxist scholars based around the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. In the tumultuous milieu of Weimar Germany, theorists such as Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno and Georg Lukacs integrated the theories of Sigmund Freud with classical Marxism to develop the foundations of critical theory, deconstructionism, post-structuralism and postmodernism. Known as the Frankfurt School, many of these intellectuals fled Hitler’s Germany for the United States where they were welcomed by Progressives and socialist intellectuals. The theories of the Frankfurt School unified the vanguard of the 60’s countercultural movement and have since spread to every discipline in our universities, colleges and schools. These theories, which obsess about colonization, subjugation and oppression, have indeed colonized higher education in the West.
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/29/cultural-marxism-is-destroying-america/

EDIT - You can have the Facebook link, as well, just in case anyone doesn't believe he really posted a Daily Caller article...

https://www.facebook.com/drjordanpeterson/posts/1199364426794357

And as far as I can tell that is indeed the Facebook account his official website links to, so gonna assume it is his.
 
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Whatever the weather, to me it seems like just an attempt to loosely tie him to the Nazis (or Anders fecking Brevik) for a nicely packaged strawman. I do know that I'm in over my head to discuss the origins of all things 'Marxist' be it cultural or any other kind that is for sure. I'd also bet that the majority of people who listen to Jordan Peterson are just as clueless on the matter and like Nazi's just as much as anyone else does. I've also listened to many many hours of him speaking and really struggle to find the Nazi in there at all.
 
Petterson reminds me of Sam Harris a lot, in that he's massively conceited about this whole intellectual thing - and loves the celebrity of it way too much. And while I find some of their viewpoints interesting and occasionally valid I mostly just hate them for being such massive thunder cnuts in life.

Petterson's interview with Vice is a good example of the massive tool-box he really is.

 
Tarrou said:
Petterson's interview with Vice is a good example of the massive tool-box he really is.
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Wow! Seriously, wow! That man is twisted and has some fecked up ideas. I think he has some issues to be fair. I hadn't really heard much about him before and can now say I should be thankful of that. I kind of wish I hadn't clicked that, but at least I now know to avoid him.
 
Finally cought what people are talking about once when I saw him make up absolute bs about the changes to ISP laws.

Same with Steven Crowder who made up statistics about Norway being worse than the US on gun-violence. (not that he ever was in a good light).

Now I'm waiting for something I know about from Peterson. But those hating on Dave Rubin I find hard to understand as most stuff on his channel is him giving a platform to others & the odd speech about the importance of having the option to speak.
But who knows, maybe I'll see what people mean there as well. I'll take it in my own, slow time though.
 
These theories, which obsess about colonization, subjugation and oppression, have indeed colonized higher education in the West.
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He deserves a kick in the face for writing something quite this wanky, let alone the crazy dragon picture.
 
What I personally find rather dispiriting about Peterson is his gratuitous, flirtatious, superfluous use of big words to enhance his talking points. I get it, you're a professor, you have an IQ over 9000, but if you can't get a point across without trying to sound like a thesaurus, it's probably not a very good point in the first place.

Other than that, I'm biased towards it since in Holland the alt-right adores him and if they adore you, you're obviously insane.

Also I found the insult "fopdoodle" on the thesaurus site.

Fopdoodle.
 
Eboue said:
this has been proven to not be accurate

http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it has, it would take some time for the full ramifications of the change in the law to work through to judgments in court and sanctioned behavior to be tested.

So your source here is according to google Brenda Cossman Professor of Law and the Director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. I guess a direct opponent of Peterson at his University and in a department, he is on record as being very insulting towards.


But from your source, we find the following,

"Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression may very well be interpreted by the courts in the future to include the right to be identified by a person’s self identified pronoun. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, for example, in their Policy on Preventing Discrimination Because of Gender Identity and Expression states that gender harassment should include “ Refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun”.

Isn't this exactly what Peterson is saying the law will do and why he thinks its wrong?

I'm not sure he can be dismissed on the basis that the state is only putting into national law the mistake ( as he would see it ) that various Canadian regions have already made.
 
Don't Kill Bill said:
I'm not sure it has, it would take some time for the full ramifications of the change in the law to work through to judgments in court and sanctioned behavior to be tested.

So your source here is according to google Brenda Cossman Professor of Law and the Director of the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. I guess a direct opponent of Peterson at his University and in a department, he is on record as being very insulting towards.


But from your source, we find the following,

"Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression may very well be interpreted by the courts in the future to include the right to be identified by a person’s self identified pronoun. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, for example, in their Policy on Preventing Discrimination Because of Gender Identity and Expression states that gender harassment should include “ Refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun”.

Isn't this exactly what Peterson is saying the law will do and why he thinks its wrong?

I'm not sure he can be dismissed on the basis that the state is only putting into national law the mistake ( as he would see it ) that various Canadian regions have already made.
Click to expand...

She is not the only law professor who has contradicted him:
http://www.canadalandshow.com/no-wont-jailed-using-wrong-pronoun/
 


The Right’s intellectual powerhouse there, discussing conspiracy theories about Disney’s Frozen of a Saturday morn...

And getting genuinely choked up about Pinocchio.



The man’s an absolute loon.
 
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