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Jordan Peterson

I have been wondering about what makes him controversial or even hated by some. His theories are interesting and give great insight. I find it difficult to fault many of them. (I am excluding his 'self help' stuff here as have not read that. This is about his academic work and lectures.) However, whenever I listen to him, I can't help but feel that - particularly on gender equality - he resembles people who say "I'm not a racist, but it is a fact that Asian people smell of garlic more often than white people". 

For example, he will say that he is a great believer in equality of opportunity but finds equality of outcomes a horrible concept. On the surface I agree, but in practice can a push for equality of outcomes be a 'phase' we (society) need to go through, or can it be an actual tool to get to where we want?

I would be very interested to hear other thoughts or views on him. 

Ok, another example about what bugs me. He says psychology studies show there are character differences between men and women. Those are a result of biological and cultural influences. It shows that men are more interested in things and therefore more likely to become engineers and women are more interested in people and therefore more likely to become nurses. In Scandinavia they are relatively successful in taking away the cultural influences and he says that studies show that this has increased the biological differences (the things vs people difference for example) thereby increasing the difference in for example choices men and women make re a career.

I can't check his evidence. What bugs me is that (i) I believe that although biologically different, men and women are more or less the same and his statements are only true for small groups at the opposing ends of the spectrum, but (ii) by presenting this as the truth he is not painting a true but a skewed picture of the differences between men and women - making them look bigger then they are, and (iii) he also stops here - he does not use his knowledge to test whether these differences are truly biological or perhaps cultural, and he also does not help with thinking about how we can show these groups that it is ok to pursue something else or help society choose to ignore the outliers and to educate them to just treat men and women the same. In other words, what he does is basically promoting the idea that men and women are different, but he is cloaking it.

It is bigotry dressed up as pseudoscience. 

I have zero time for these IDW numpties. There are so many other smart people that I’d rather listen to that don’t try and drive page clicks and podcast downloads by being so achingly contrarian as the likes of Peterson and Sam Harris.

Sam Harris is next on the list. I want to know what he is about.

Supes: recommend me some podcasts, man. I've gone deep into the 'IDW' and just about done with it.

Most of the stuff I listen to is political, so mayn't be of that much interest.

 

Tim Ferriss often has good people on (though he also has people like Harris on). I will admit that most of my exposure to IDW types is through his podcast.

Similar to Tim Ferriss is Chase Jarvis, though his podcasts are geared towards creatives (he's a professional photographer).

 

I still love Peter. You can tell he really wants the truth but has not lost his empathy and is not as hungry for attention as many of the others. And he's fit. But yeah, it's very technical. He makes me laugh when he's on Joe Rogan because you can just tell from looking at Rogan's beady eyes that it just goes *zoooommmm* straight over his head.

I also find Peterson to be a bit intellectually dishonest in his approach to religion. He would generally try to take the standard secular academic posture that teachings of all faiths are worth studying because they distill some ancient wisdom, but there would be these throwaway Biblical references, that led me to think that either (1) he believes all that crap literally--in which case he should have come clean from the get-go, or (2) he is just pandering to the religious nuts because he knos that what his base really is.

And don't get me started on his lobster analogy. I hated how he tried to make it all scientific in the set-up to make it look indisputable and objective, yet take it in a direction where he makes recommendations without any attempt to show why they work scientifically ...

As an example, both Peterson and Harris know that IQ is not set in stone at birth and that it develops over time. They still insist that IQ is genetic and thereby enable some considerably more bigoted theories (see Murray's Bell Curve).

“IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent, a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there, it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”.

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