Peterson, Harris, etc....

[Silva]

Going off the hype, you'd think he had mastered the latter. Far from it, and I wondered what I'd been missing when I eventually bothered to check out one of his talks.

he just hits the right buttons

"we're being forced to call people their prefered pronouns"

"i won't call a student their prefered pronoun"

"enforced monogamy will make men less violent"

"i benched 225 pounds"

"clean your room and chaos won't shout at you"

 

[DOTA]

Not a serious person.

 

[Fener1907]

he just hits the right buttons

"we're being forced to call people their prefered pronouns"

"i won't call a student their prefered pronoun"

"enforced monogamy will make men less violent"

"i benched 225 pounds"

"clean your room and chaos won't shout at you"

"Bloody..."

Damn, that guy's classy.

 

[Raoul]

Going off the hype, you'd think he had mastered the latter. Far from it, and I wondered what I'd been missing when I eventually bothered to check out one of his talks.

He's just not built for soundbites, which is odd given his rise on social media.

 

[Brwned]

I ended up getting recommended videos of this Peterson bloke, presumably as a result of reading this thread. He's really not very thought provoking.

I actually quite like a meandering, stream of consciousness type of talk, at least in part as an antidote to eerily polished talks from the other talking heads. He just doesn't say anything new, and the only time he becomes interesting is when he disregards the research and just makes things up.

He's not so bad when his ideas are anchored on the literature but every now and then he just throws that out the window and jumps into pure ideological nonsense. His one about women's make up above is absurd but there's less outrageous ones. Like this...



The reason he wants everyone to be married isn't just because he believes it makes men less aggressive, but bevause he essentially thinks all people are "trouble" and if not for this legal and religious bind, one person will eventually see the other person as trouble and then want to move on. And divorce is a non lethal cancer. Pretty much destroys your life. Give up on the idea of having any success after that. So just lock everyone up in this voluntary slavery otherwise the world starts to crumble.

Someone who jumps into that kind of mode so easily, so often shouldn't have much credibility. Surprised @Raoul thinks he's generally accurate.

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

I ended up getting recommended videos of this Peterson bloke, presumably as a result of reading this thread. He's really not very thought provoking.

I actually quite like a meandering, stream of consciousness type of talk, at least in part as an antidote to eerily polished talks from the other talking heads. He just doesn't say anything new, and the only time he becomes interesting is when he disregards the research and just makes things up.

He's not so bad when his ideas are anchored on the literature but every now and then he just throws that out the window and jumps into pure ideological nonsense. His one about women's make up above is absurd but there's less outrageous ones. Like this...



The reason he wants everyone to be married isn't just because he believes it makes men less aggressive, but bevause he essentially thinks all people are "trouble" and if not for this legal and religious bind, one person will eventually see the other person as trouble and then want to move on. And divorce is a non lethal cancer. Pretty much destroys your life. Give up on the idea of having any success after that. So just lock everyone up in this voluntary slavery otherwise the world starts to crumble.

Someone who jumps into that kind of mode so easily, so often shouldn't have much credibility. Surprised @Raoul thinks he's generally accurate.

This is an interesting criticism and one I have to push back against. First to someone who is 40+ and well read nothing is going to sound new. No one talking in 2018 in pop media is saying anything "new". Its all just rehashed, regurgitated old ideas. Obama said nothing new, Trump said nothing new. The only people really saying "new" things are academics and researchers who rarely get any pop media time unless its something controversial. or something related to helping old rich men get more sex.

But the thing some of us have to realize, is that just because something is "not new" to a 40 year old well read person, it *is* still new to 14-25 year olds who haven't heard a lot of it before. Heck, some people have even heard it before but because it came from their parents or family members they just fecking tuned it out. So I don't think not saying anything new is a valid criticism of anything. Its not about whether something is new. Its about whether the repackaging can reach an audience and have a beneficial influence.

 

[Raoul]

This is an interesting criticism and one I have to push back against. First to someone who is 40+ and well read nothing is going to sound new. No one talking in 2018 in pop media is saying anything "new". Its all just rehashed, regurgitated old ideas. Obama said nothing new, Trump said nothing new. The only people really saying "new" things are academics and researchers who rarely get any pop media time unless its something controversial. or something related to helping old rich men get more sex.

But the thing some of us have to realize, is that just because something is "not new" to a 40 year old well read person, it *is* still new to 14-25 year olds who haven't heard a lot of it before. Heck, some people have even heard it before but because it came from their parents or family members they just fecking tuned it out. So I don't think not saying anything new is a valid criticism of anything. Its not about whether something is new. Its about whether the repackaging can reach an audience and have a beneficial influence.

I'm still rummaging through Peterson's critiques of post-modernism as a disguise for marxism after the latter become discredited when the Soviet Union went wrong. This is one area where I think he has some serious exposure to criticism imo.

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

I'm still rummaging through Peterson's critiques of post-modernism as a disguise for marxism after the latter become discredited when the Soviet Union went wrong. This is one area where I think he has some serious exposure to criticism imo.

I completely agree on that level. I think when he is in the realm of personality and psychology and self-help related to that, he is relatively uncontroversial and not much to even criticize. But its the when he gets into attacking post-modernism and cultural marxism where he just doesn't get things accurate.

On a very basic level he seems to miss the point that a lot of the post-modern deconstructionists entire point is to criticize grand systems and Marxism is a famous grand system they criticize. He really doesn't get the intellectual history correct here.
I think I mentioned it before, but its a shame Richard Rorty isn't alive because Rorty really would be the perfect person to correct Peterson on post-modernism since both Peterson and Rorty are big American Pragmatists.
I'll check out that video, cheers

 

[Brwned]

This is an interesting criticism and one I have to push back against. First to someone who is 40+ and well read nothing is going to sound new. No one talking in 2018 in pop media is saying anything "new". Its all just rehashed, regurgitated old ideas. Obama said nothing new, Trump said nothing new. The only people really saying "new" things are academics and researchers who rarely get any pop media time unless its something controversial. or something related to helping old rich men get more sex.

But the thing some of us have to realize, is that just because something is "not new" to a 40 year old well read person, it *is* still new to 14-25 year olds who haven't heard a lot of it before. Heck, some people have even heard it before but because it came from their parents or family members they just fecking tuned it out. So I don't think not saying anything new is a valid criticism of anything. Its not about whether something is new. Its about whether the repackaging can reach an audience and have a beneficial influence.

He is an academic, though. I found it odd for an academic to have so little of his own ideas or so few references of his own work. I'm not saying popularising ideas is less important than devising new ones at all. I appreciate his supposed value comes from the former. I just thought it odd for someone in his position to have none of the latter, is all.

I'm 27 and not particularly well read, so I think we're being overprotective of the young folk here. His ideas are already well established and I don't think they're being repackaged in a way that makes them more palatable for a new audience. I'd be very surprised if he remained relevant for long.

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

He is an academic, though. I found it odd for an academic to have so little of his own ideas or so few references of his own work. I'm not saying popularising ideas is less important than devising new ones at all. I appreciate his supposed value comes from the former. I just thought it odd for someone in his position to have none of the latter, is all.

I'm 27 and not particularly well read, so I think we're being overprotective of the young folk here. His ideas are already well established and I don't think they're being repackaged in a way that makes them more palatable for a new audience. I'd be very surprised if he remained relevant for long.

I can understand your views and I thought similar a short while ago but I've spent about a month trying to read/watch learn up on Peterson and I think there are basically two different Petersons. One is the academic psychologist who stays in his wheelhouse and talks about mostly dull topics like personality and self-improvement. The other is the firespark "free speech" champion who attacks post-modernism and cultural marxism as the same thing and goes outside his specialty but attracts far more followers. I think its important to separate the two.

Similar in a lot of ways like Slavoj Zizek another super popular one among that age group. Literally nothing Zizek says is new. Its all repackaged ideas and I know a former Philosophy major that thinks he has zero appeal. But reality is, Zizek actually does have appeal because he can speak to people that have different foundations than myself or maybe even you, just slightly outside the 14-25 bracket I mentioned and certainly different to a 45 year old Philosophy PhD.

These might not be the people I would choose to represent different ideas. I wish more people knew Richard Rorty or Amos Tversky or Henri Tajfel. But these are the people we have to work with so let's make the best of it. I pour myself a scotch and soda now haha

 

[Silva]

One is the academic psychologist who stays in his wheelhouse and talks about mostly dull topics like personality and self-improvement.

and dragons and chaos and shit

The other is the firespark "free speech" champion who attacks post-modernism and cultural marxism

and wimmins being the cause of all evil on the planet

 

[KirkDuyt]

So basically, what Peterson is saying can be brought down to; men have become pussies, men should be more manly and start clubbing each other on the head.

Also, dragons.

?

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

and dragons and chaos and shit

and wimmins being the cause of all evil on the planet

Not the impression I got, but I am definitely willing to look at any links

 

[Silva]

Not the impression I got, but I am definitely willing to look at any links

Also, silly diagrams..

that's from his work

 

[Silva]

aww someones angry his fanboys turned out to be stupid

 

[DOTA]

I'd forgotten he existed. Must've managed to resist saying anything too spectacularly stupid for a while.

Maybe one day I'll be able to say the same about Greer.

 

[Raoul]

I can understand your views and I thought similar a short while ago but I've spent about a month trying to read/watch learn up on Peterson and I think there are basically two different Petersons. One is the academic psychologist who stays in his wheelhouse and talks about mostly dull topics like personality and self-improvement. The other is the firespark "free speech" champion who attacks post-modernism and cultural marxism as the same thing and goes outside his specialty but attracts far more followers. I think its important to separate the two.

Pretty much how I see him. There's the largely academic version of Peterson who stays in his lane and generally talks about things in the Psychology realm. That is where he is more effective imo. Then there's the IDW/anti-postmodernism crusader Peterson who goes around and cherry picks things from a variety of different disciplines ranging from philosophy to evolutionary biology to mythology to anything else he has an interest in - to support his own advocacy projects related to things like human agency, sovereignty of the individual, self-ownership etc. This is where (imo) he runs into a bit of trouble since his understanding of some of these topics is either incomplete and/or he cherry picks elements from them to support his grand narrative and omits other things that don't support it. That's why the above video where a YouTuber questions the veracity of Peterson's references to Derrida and Foucault comes into play. There are other instances where he plucks things from other fields or completely misinterprets them to fit his narrative. He is going to have to tighten up his game in this area to be taken a bit more seriously imo.

 

[Fridge chutney]

What about when he said women who wear makeup are hypocrites for not wanting to be sexually harassed?

So recently I heard Peterson talk about workplace sexual harassment and more generally about men and women working together. He didn't say what you quoted here (although he may have at some other time) but his POV is that women and men have only recently started working together so we don't really know the rules of engagement. Make-up is meant to spark sexual arousal, so women who wear make-up at work risk 'arousing' men - although it is worth noting that he specifically made a point to say that men sexually assaulting women is unacceptable.

Underlining his thinking is the following theory: because women and men have only been working together for 35~ years, we don't know whether they can work together yet. We don't have enough data.

Truthfully I find his line of reasoning on this topic arbitrary and daft. Not sexually assaulting someone shouldn't be too difficult. Not placing them in uncomfortable situations shouldn't be either. And his solution, that men and women wear the same monotone uniform, seems unnecessary and impractical. And in what world is 35 years of something happening 'not long enough' to understand whether it works or not?

With that said, he articulated what i wrote above much better than I have, but i still disagree with him.

 

[Charles Miller]

What Jordan Peterson is doing is recycling stupid points that were debunked and ridicularized 10.000 years ago. Deep thoughts like: "if you act in a ethical moral way you're not really atheist. You're a believer in god at some level, you just dont realize it". Its not a literal quote tbf, but its what he is preaching.

Jordan Peterson is a very limited individual who somehow managed to be seen as a public intellectual.

In the past he would need be endorsed by the Academy. But now with the social medias you only need good oratory skills.

 

[Halftrack]

aww someones angry his fanboys turned out to be stupid

A lot of replies from people who think atheism is anti-theism.

 

[KirkDuyt]

What irks me most about this thread is Shapiro and Hitchens lunped together by the way.

Shapiro is a muppet voiced wum cnut, Hitchens is an actual person with an actual brain.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

So recently I heard Peterson talk about workplace sexual harassment and more generally about men and women working together. He didn't say what you quoted here (although he may have at some other time) but his POV is that women and men have only recently started working together so we don't really know the rules of engagement. Make-up is meant to spark sexual arousal, so women who wear make-up at work risk 'arousing' men - although it is worth noting that he specifically made a point to say that men sexually assaulting women is unacceptable.

Underlining his thinking is the following theory: because women and men have only been working together for 35~ years, we don't know whether they can work together yet. We don't have enough data.

Truthfully I find his line of reasoning on this topic arbitrary and daft. Not sexually assaulting someone shouldn't be too difficult. Not placing them in uncomfortable situations shouldn't be either. And his solution, that men and women wear the same monotone uniform, seems unnecessary and impractical. And in what world is 35 years of something happening 'not long enough' to understand whether it works or not?

With that said, he articulated what i wrote above much better than I have, but i still disagree with him.

35 years ago it was 1983. To suggest men and woman didn’t share work environments before that date is preposterous.

 

[Fridge chutney]

35 years ago it was 1983. To suggest men and woman didn’t share work environments before that date is preposterous.

He may have said 50 years, I can't remember how he defined "recently", and I think he was talking about working together "en masse" rather than denying specific instances where men and women worked together historically. But whether he used 35 or even 60 years as a frame of reference, I agree with you.

His line of reasoning on this subject is bizarre.

 

[Fridge chutney]

What irks me most about this thread is Shapiro and Hitchens lunped together by the way.

Shapiro is a muppet voiced wum cnut, Hitchens is an actual person with an actual brain.

Agreed. I dont know who Harris is but Hitchens is very different from that cretin Shapiro who is very different from Peterson etc. It's a bit disingenuous to lump them all together.

 

[Cheesy]

Pretty much how I see him. There's the largely academic version of Peterson who stays in his lane and generally talks about things in the Psychology realm. That is where he is more effective imo. Then there's the IDW/anti-postmodernism crusader Peterson who goes around and cherry picks things from a variety of different disciplines ranging from philosophy to evolutionary biology to mythology to anything else he has an interest in - to support his own advocacy projects related to things like human agency, sovereignty of the individual, self-ownership etc. This is where (imo) he runs into a bit of trouble since his understanding of some of these topics is either incomplete and/or he cherry picks elements from them to support his grand narrative and omits other things that don't support it. That's why the above video where a YouTuber questions the veracity of Peterson's references to Derrida and Foucault comes into play. There are other instances where he plucks things from other fields or completely misinterprets them to fit his narrative. He is going to have to tighten up his game in this area to be taken a bit more seriously imo.

I'm not sure his goal is to really be taken seriously in those academic areas though.

It's to spread his theories to as many people as he can while making some money in the process. He's realised he's hit the jackpot after coming to notoriety and most of his followers don't really give much of a feck about academic credibility.

 

[McUnited]

What irks me most about this thread is Shapiro and Hitchens lunped together by the way.

Shapiro is a muppet voiced wum cnut, Hitchens is an actual person with an actual brain.

Your first sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.
You misspelt 'lumped'.
You describe someone as a 'muppet voiced wum cnut'.
You describe Hitchens (presumably Christopher, not Peter) as an actual person, implying that Shapiro is not in fact a person.
You describe Hitchens as having an actual brain, as opposed to simply having a brain. Again, seeming to imply that Shapiro does not have a brain.

It's remarkable what people say with apparent disregard to their own appearance when they can hide behind a computer screen. Truly remarkable.

 

[Raoul]

 

[Tarrou]

muppet voiced wum cnut is great

 

[Halftrack]

Your first sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.
You misspelt 'lumped'.
You describe someone as a 'muppet voiced wum cnut'.
You describe Hitchens (presumably Christopher, not Peter) as an actual person, implying that Shapiro is not in fact a person.
You describe Hitchens as having an actual brain, as opposed to simply having a brain. Again, seeming to imply that Shapiro does not have a brain.

It's remarkable what people say with apparent disregard to their own appearance when they can hide behind a computer screen. Truly remarkable.

His first sentence makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't a raging cnut. Are you planning on ever contributing anything of substance, or are you going to continue correcting non-native English-speakers minor mistakes and insinuate that anyone who dares criticise your darlings are just dummies who lack the intellectual capacity to do so?

(Apologies if I made any mistakes. Underdtand that I did not make them in order to offend your superior brain. I am but a humble simpleton for whom English isn't a native language.)

 

[Sweet Square]

Your first sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.
You misspelt 'lumped'.
You describe someone as a 'muppet voiced wum cnut'.
You describe Hitchens (presumably Christopher, not Peter) as an actual person, implying that Shapiro is not in fact a person.
You describe Hitchens as having an actual brain, as opposed to simply having a brain. Again, seeming to imply that Shapiro does not have a brain.

It's remarkable what people say with apparent disregard to their own appearance when they can hide behind a computer screen. Truly remarkable.

wtf

 

[2mufc0]

 

[Maagge]

Your first sentence doesn't make grammatical sense.

Hang on, wasn't it you who did this to me as well and never returned when I replied to you?

EDIT: Yes it was:

You seem to be implying people on football forums can't be highly educated and that selling books and giving talks are the de facto seals of approval. That's two poor assumptions in as many.

I'm not suggesting that you're not highly educated, but your final sentence appears to be incomplete.

How so? English isn't my first language so I thought it was grammatically correct. At least it seems to make sense logically, although grammar, of course, doesn't always adhere to logic.

Made sense to me.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Out of interest, can anyone nominate any impressive thinkers who could counter the more erroneous crap put about by Shapiro, Hitchens, Peterson et al? There does seem to be a big gap in the market. Conservatives seem to be all over the interweb, moaning about free speech and influencing impressionable youth. I'm actually quite worried about the lack of any sort of coherent spokesman/woman for a more liberal, left-leaning view of the word. Right now, the whole thing seems very much like a one way street.

 

[Maagge]

Out of interest, can anyone nominate any impressive thinkers who could counter the more erroneous crap put about by Shapiro, Hitchens, Peterson et al? There does seem to be a big gap in the market. Conservatives seem to be all over the interweb, moaning about free speech and influencing impressionable youth. I'm actually quite worried about the lack of any sort of coherent spokesman/woman for a more liberal, left-leaning view of the word. Right now, the whole thing seems very much like a one way street.

Someone like Jacob Mchangama maybe? I'm not entirely certain of his political leanings (but being Danish he's probably fairly left by US standards), he's been critical of the far-right policies in Denmark at least (but who wouldn't?). He's usually very idealistic about his approach to free speech as far as I'm aware (which is based on following him on Facebook).
He does a podcast with a very historical take on free speech. I haven't listened to it though. So yeah.

 

[Silva]

Noam Chomsky, Douglas Lain, ContraPoints, Chapo Trap House, Bernie Sanders etc.

 

[Borden]

Out of interest, can anyone nominate any impressive thinkers who could counter the more erroneous crap put about by Shapiro, Hitchens, Peterson et al? There does seem to be a big gap in the market. Conservatives seem to be all over the interweb, moaning about free speech and influencing impressionable youth. I'm actually quite worried about the lack of any sort of coherent spokesman/woman for a more liberal, left-leaning view of the word. Right now, the whole thing seems very much like a one way street.

Harris and Hitchens can hardly be called conservatives, unless you're talking about Peter. Shapiro is probably the only one of them responding to the name, the rest of them seem to go both ways depending on the issue. I guess it also depends on what you mean by 'conservative', but to my mind most of these people seem to be more left-leaning than anything else, even if they're despised by the twitterleft. I'm certainly struggling to see what's particularly right-wing about them.

 

[McUnited]

Hang on, wasn't it you who did this to me as well and never returned when I replied to you?

EDIT: Yes it was:

Sorry, I must have forgotten to reply.
But then again, maybe it's easier not to take seriously those messages from people who decide to write beside their name that they 'enjoys sex, doesn't enjoy women not into ONS'.

 

[Raoul]

Harris and Hitchens can hardly be called conservatives, unless you're talking about Peter. Shapiro is probably the only one of them responding to the name, the rest of them seem to go both ways depending on the issue. I guess it also depends on what you mean by 'conservative', but to my mind most of these people seem to be more left-leaning than anything else, even if they're despised by the twitterleft. I'm certainly struggling to see what's particularly right-wing about them.

Shapiro aside, I don't think any of them are conservatives. They do get branded as such by people who don't like their views on various topics but i haven't seen much in the way of evidence that any of them are.

 

[Maagge]

Sorry, I must have forgotten to reply.
But then again, maybe it's easier not to tale seriously those messages from people who decide to write beside their name that they 'enjoys sex, doesn't enjoy women not into ONS'.

So taglines is another thing you don't get.

 

[McUnited]

His first sentence makes perfect sense to anyone who isn't a raging cnut. Are you planning on ever contributing anything of substance, or are you going to continue correcting non-native English-speakers minor mistakes and insinuate that anyone who dares criticise your darlings are just dummies who lack the intellectual capacity to do so?

(Apologies if I made any mistakes. Underdtand that I did not make them in order to offend your superior brain. I am but a humble simpleton for whom English isn't a native language.)

This was a better effort, though you misspelt 'understand', and left out an apostrophe. I have nothing against people not writing correctly, but when in a discussion where they're criticising the brain power of certain people they disagree with, it seems rather ironic that they're unable to formulate sentences properly or express themselves clearly.