The Jordan Peterson Thread - V2 -

[Islam Imamate]

I'm not aware of college/young person activists restructuring society and overthrowing things being a successful game/pattern that has repeated itself over millenia. I guess I would need some more substantiation for this claim.

Student activists are very common in political movements in general. The Civil Rights movement is a good example, do you think that was successful?

 

[Der Eisbär]

Student activists are very common in political movements in general. The Civil Rights movement is a good example, do you think that was successful?

The civil rights movement was not merely a student activist movement though. It wasn't even primarily that. It was an entire race of people standing up and demanding their rights, with their student activist and white allies. There are also negative examples of student activism such as the Bolshevik revolution, which was a white intellectual movement spread throughout Europe.

Student activism is merely a vehicle for chaos and change. It's not necessarily an archetype that has exhibited individual success. And again, I don't believe Peterson is inherently against student activism as a whole and I'm not aware of any instance where he's stated as much. He's against the misguided activism of entitled young people who's lives are totally out of order and who do not even understand what they're protesting for, or against.

 

[Der Eisbär]

What makes him different is that he's a clinical psychologist with the kind of training and experience and evidence based techniques to distinguish him from hack life coaches like Robbins. IIRC he even designed a program to help students perform better that has had good results. So its true that on some level hes a life coach but not all life coaches are equal just like the legal advise of of an intern at a law a office isn't necessarily equal to that of the lawyer running the law office.

That program was featured in an article by NPR themselves in 2014, before he became the alt right boogie man (Just shows how partisan the left has become). That self authoring program was actually adopted as an entire class by the Rotterdam School of Management and showed tremendous potential in lifting up the academic performance of minority men.

So JBP designs a program that shows clinical results in elevating the performance of minorities, gets featured by NPR for it, but 2 years later he's a bigot, racist, transphobe, reeeeeeeee!

 

[FIMN]

. It was an entire race of people standing up and demanding their rights, with their student activist and white allies.

Goddamn identity politics.

 

[Der Eisbär]

Goddamn identity politics.

When identity politics becomes the standard mode of operation, as it has on the left, that's not very good.

 

[Concrete]

This sounds too much like Derridean "undecidability" for my liking (http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/#H5). Hindsight is always 20/20 but the game of life isn't played sitting in an armchair watching SportsCenter on Monday morning. Any position that promulgates moral neutrality and that encourages people to just sit on the sidelines and hope for the best is worrisome to me.

Additionally, I think Peterson actually has history on his side, as the endgame for the activists at whom Peterson has taken aim, as he has persuasively argued, is totalitarianism the likes of which we've already seen in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Given the outcomes there, a "wait and see" attitude strikes me as the opposite of pragmatic.



Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. weren't teenagers. Who are the leaders/spokespeople for today's nonsense? Who are the extraordinary minds and orators standing opposed to the Petersons and the Shapiros of the day? Who are the singular individuals communicating profound truths to galvanize the activists?

To equate what's happening today with the Civil Rights era is an insult to the people who lived and fought through that era. Today, it's just vague, directionless disaffection and resentment. Even acknowledging good intentions doesn't change the fact that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the fact that we've already seen the hell to which this road leads - and not centuries ago, but just a few decades ago - makes the insistence of people eager to go right back down it all the more difficult to comprehend.

I was formulating a far less succinct response to pan am when you posted this, so thank you! Peterson has been studying the horrors of the 20th century his whole life. Young people want to change the world, that's a good thing, but positive intent or a utopian vision doesn't mean you have any idea how to reduce the suffering in the world. In fact if your plan is based on lies you will probably make things much worse.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

I listened to most of the Joe Rogan podcast with him and I had a really hard time disagreeing with much of what he said. What it all boils down to is "You can make your life better if you try" and that is absolutely true. Maybe you won't be a millionaire, but you will be better. And if you pass that on to your kids they will be better than you.

 

[Devout Pessimist]

source:

 

[Cirris]

Since the Cathy Newman interview, his Youtube subscriber count has gone up by 100,000.

The interview itself is closing in on 6 million views. I am not surprised by the massive upsurge in subscribers.

Even on a superficial level you have to admit, Peterson handled Newman's disingenuous badgering with a high level of skill and class. That type of confidence is attractive to people and would garner continued perusing of Peterson's work.

 

[Devout Pessimist]

The Atlantic published an entire article on the Peterson-Newman interview:

Why Can't People Hear What Jordan Peterson Is Saying?

...one of the most important things this interview illustrates—one reason it is worth noting at length—is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”


...there is a way to reduce needless division over the countless disagreements that are inevitable in a pluralistic democracy: get better at accurately characterizing the views of folks with differing opinions, rather than egging them on to offer more extreme statements in interviews; or even worse, distorting their words so that existing divisions seem more intractable or impossible to tolerate than they are. That sort of exaggeration or hyperbolic misrepresentation is epidemic—and addressing it for everyone’s sake is long overdue.

 

[panamaican]

What makes him different is that he's a clinical psychologist with the kind of training and experience and evidence based techniques to distinguish him from hack life coaches like Robbins. IIRC he even designed a program to help students perform better that has had good results. So its true that on some level hes a life coach but not all life coaches are equal just like the legal advise of of an intern at a law a office isn't necessarily equal to that of the lawyer running the law office.

No, not all life coaches are created equal. But there are dozens of effective ones with people who swear by their techniques. Which is why I referenced Tony Robbins and religion. Tony Robbins is easily more successful than Jordan Peterson in the "life coaching" business with thousands, if not millions, of people who have been helped by his programs. Organized religion is obviously even more successful than both. Life coaching programs like Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been effectively improving the lives of their adherents for thousands of years. So, while he might be a good life coach (the term applied to him by someone else in this thread, not me) with a philosophy that many people adhere to, there's nothing particularly unique about that.

 

[panamaican]

This sounds too much like Derridean "undecidability" for my liking (http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/#H5). Hindsight is always 20/20 but the game of life isn't played sitting in an armchair watching SportsCenter on Monday morning. Any position that promulgates moral neutrality and that encourages people to just sit on the sidelines and hope for the best is worrisome to me.

Additionally, I think Peterson actually has history on his side, as the endgame for the activists at whom Peterson has taken aim, as he has persuasively argued, is totalitarianism the likes of which we've already seen in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Given the outcomes there, a "wait and see" attitude strikes me as the opposite of pragmatic.

You misunderstand me. I'm not arguing for "undecidability" or moral neutrality or that people sit on the sidelines. People should certainly decide on what they think is right, based on their morals, and then act on it.

What I'm criticizing is the idea these activists and their approach is objectively wrong, which is what it appears that Peterson is advancing. That based on his analysis of limited iterable games and such, that he can determine that some subset of activists are provably detrimental to society in the large sense. And so he can say with certainty that some of these activists should not be acting on what they think is right, based on their morals, unless they choose do it in one of the limited fashions that he has deemed acceptable.

Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. weren't teenagers. Who are the leaders/spokespeople for today's nonsense? Who are the extraordinary minds and orators standing opposed to the Petersons and the Shapiros of the day? Who are the singular individuals communicating profound truths to galvanize the activists?

To equate what's happening today with the Civil Rights era is an insult to the people who lived and fought through that era. Today, it's just vague, directionless disaffection and resentment. Even acknowledging good intentions doesn't change the fact that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the fact that we've already seen the hell to which this road leads - and not centuries ago, but just a few decades ago - makes the insistence of people eager to go right back down it all the more difficult to comprehend.

I'm not equating it solely with the Civil Rights Era, I also referenced the revolutionary periods of Europe, but it doesn't change any of what I'm going to say next.

THe Civil Rights Era certainly had its Rosa PArks, MLK's, and Malcolm X's. But there were also protests and sit ins and whatever organized by college students, by people with no formal education. Malcolm X and MLK had diametrically different approaches to their "activism".

You call the modern activism "vague, directionless disaffection and resentment" but is through these starts and stops and fits that formal leadership arise. To return to the Civil Rights Era, MLK wasn't the first step of that era. It was an era that literally spanned decades. An MLK only arose after decades of "vague, directionless disaffection and resentment".

The end of monarchical rule in Europe also took decades, riding a wave of vague resentment interposed with times of structured leadership. It wasn't just one thing at all times. So, no, we have not seen where this road leads. All we've seen is that activism, over the millenia has been vague at times and it has had strong leadership at times. It has been peaceful at times and it has been violent. There is no "right" form of activism and no "right" type of activist. People can disagree on a movement's goals but it's patronizing to claim some people aren't doing it right and they have to pass some non-existent criteria before they're granted the right to advocate for change they believe in.

If someone disagrees with their goals, go challenge their goals.

 

[meauneau]

Two untrained philosophers discussing philosophy... I only got to the point where Shapiro compares JP and himself to Plato discussing with Aristotle, lol. Let's see how it goes.

 

[meauneau]

Now I agree that meaning, what ever it is, is important and valuable. It is a thing that improves our quality of life all things equal. But to claim that it is already determined by some force, God or whatever, is a big leap of faith. I understand the reasoning behind it: it is assumed that meaning is something metaphysical; it is something good, so good in fact that our lives would be better than without it; since it is such a good and God is good, God created lives with meaning. Therefore our lives have meaning, we just need to find it, seek it (in religion, through religion or with the help of religion or whatever, but we cannot create our own meaning or decide it for ourselves).

 

[Bullitt68]

You misunderstand me. I'm not arguing for "undecidability" or moral neutrality or that people sit on the sidelines. People should certainly decide on what they think is right, based on their morals, and then act on it.

What I'm criticizing is the idea these activists and their approach is objectively wrong, which is what it appears that Peterson is advancing. That based on his analysis of limited iterable games and such, that he can determine that some subset of activists are provably detrimental to society in the large sense. And so he can say with certainty that some of these activists should not be acting on what they think is right, based on their morals, unless they choose do it in one of the limited fashions that he has deemed acceptable.

Regarding my claim that your position strikes me as too close to Derridean undecidability for my liking, your response here is actually corroborating that claim, not countering it. My reason for saying that is because you immediately targeted the concept of objectivity, which is always (and necessarily) the first target of anything even remotely poststructuralist/postmodernist.

So the undecidability argument goes (as taken from that link that I posted):

"A decision cannot be wise, or, posed even more provocatively, [it] must actually be mad (DPJ 26, GD 65). Drawing on Kierkegaard, Derrida tells us that a decision requires an undecidable leap beyond all prior preparations for that decision (GD 77), and, according to him, this applies to all decisions and not just those regarding the conversion to religious faith that preoccupies Kierkegaard. To pose the problem in inverse fashion, it might be suggested that for Derrida all decisions are a faith and a tenuous faith at that since were faith and the decision not tenuous they would cease to be a faith or a decision at all (cf. GD 80)."

Regarding your post here, how is your position that there is no way to determine whether or not people are objectively right/wrong in what they think/do not promulgating undecidability? To avoid this charge, you'd have to nominate something in the absence of the concept of objectivity - even if it's only a selective/strategic absence and not a radical absence as promulgated by Derrida and his ilk - that could motivate decision-making. But what kind of moron acts without thinking that what he's doing is objectively correct? And who would argue that people should act without thinking that what they're doing is objectively correct? Furthermore, how can you reconcile the position that a person should decide on what they think is right and act accordingly with the position that a person who decides that today's activism is objectively wrong is (objectively?) wrong? On what (non-objective) ground(s) have you decided that?

It seems to me like you're struggling to come up with a way to have your cake and eat it. You say that you're not "arguing for 'undecidability' or moral neutrality or that people sit on the sidelines," but that's the logical endpoint of your argument. Either you're promulgating undecidability or the alternative that you're trying to formulate is not coherent enough to be viable (or, frankly, sensible). Perhaps I'm still misunderstanding you, but it seems like you're trying to work your way out of an internal contradiction and I've yet to get a handle on anything in your attempts to do so that makes sense to me.

Incidentally, this may not be as relevant as I think it is, but maybe this little detour into Cartesian philosophy will bring some of what we're discussing into clearer focus. In the Meditations, Descartes observes that "the pressure of things to be done does not always allow us to stop and make such a meticulous check" - this despite the fact that such meticulous checking is, according to Descartes himself, the only way to “unquestionably reach the truth.” This apparent aporia, which was noted upon the initial publication of the Meditations by Marin Mersenne, seems to echo what you think is an aporia in Peterson's position.

In response to Mersenne, Descartes not only pragmatically acknowledged that "from time to time we will have to choose one of many alternatives about which we have no knowledge, [and that], once we have made our choice, so long as no reasons against it can be produced, we must stick to it as firmly as if it had been chosen for transparently clear reasons," he also referred his readers to his earlier Discourse on Method, where he had posited the following:

"Since often enough in the actions of life no delay is permissible, it is very certain that, when it is beyond our power to discern the opinions which carry [the] most truth ... we at least should make up our minds to follow a particular one and afterwards consider it as no longer doubtful in its relationship to practice but as very true and very certain inasmuch as the reason which caused us to determine upon it is known to be so. And henceforward this principle [should be] sufficient to deliver [people] from all the penitence and remorse which usually affect the mind and agitate the conscience of those weak and vacillating creatures who allow themselves to keep changing their procedure."

Am I totally off-base for thinking that Descartes was working his way through something similar or am I right to think that maybe there's something here that can help you to clarify whatever you think I'm not clear on?

THe Civil Rights Era certainly had its Rosa PArks, MLK's, and Malcolm X's. But there were also protests and sit ins and whatever organized by college students, by people with no formal education.

This neither contradicts nor refutes anything that I said. Your point is that the Civil Rights era had both its Rosa Parks, MLKs, and Malcolm Xs and student protests and sit-ins. My point is that our current era has only student protests. And much stupider protests that contradict countless fundamental democratic principles (to say nothing of logical and moral principles) at that.

You call the modern activism "vague, directionless disaffection and resentment" but is through these starts and stops and fits that formal leadership arise. To return to the Civil Rights Era, MLK wasn't the first step of that era. It was an era that literally spanned decades. An MLK only arose after decades of "vague, directionless disaffection and resentment".

There was nothing vague or directionless about the Civil Rights era. Seriously, analogizing the Civil Rights era to today's student protests is an insult to Civil Rights activists. For one reason among many, to analogize Civil Rights era activism to today's activism is to imply that black people weren't capable of understanding or justifying their actions and that their attempts to do so produced irrational and immoral nonsense.

So, no, we have not seen where this road leads.

Peterson's argument is that we have. And this is an extensive argument that he has gone over in great detail on more than one occasion. This is what I meant when I said that he has history on his side: We have seen where this road leads and where it leads is objectively terrible.

If someone disagrees with their goals, go challenge their goals.

Peterson has been doing that for quite some time now

 

[S-dot]

Anybody gone to see him speak? I’m going to see him Monday in Toronto

 

[Islam Imamate]

No, not all life coaches are created equal. But there are dozens of effective ones with people who swear by their techniques. Which is why I referenced Tony Robbins and religion. Tony Robbins is easily more successful than Jordan Peterson in the "life coaching" business with thousands, if not millions, of people who have been helped by his programs. Organized religion is obviously even more successful than both. Life coaching programs like Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been effectively improving the lives of their adherents for thousands of years. So, while he might be a good life coach (the term applied to him by someone else in this thread, not me) with a philosophy that many people adhere to, there's nothing particularly unique about that.

Lol, because both religion and clinical psychology help people they're basically the same and tehre's nothing unique distinguishing the former from the latter? Okay...

 

[meauneau]

Can someone clarify this for me: does JP actually believe there is a God?

 

[Bullitt68]

Can someone clarify this for me: does JP actually believe there is a God?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer:

To my ears, he sounds like a textbook agnostic. He even builds to the agnostic "we don't know." And, FYI, the bit about Jung being careful not to say that because we can have an image of God there must actually be a God, that's also rooted in Descartes, as that was his argument: Because us imperfect human beings can conceive of a perfect being, and because Descartes believed that it was impossible for a perfect being to be brought into existence by an imperfect being, our ability to conceive of God was proof of His existence.

I've always felt that Peterson was an agnostic whose grounding in science makes it impossible for him at present to believe in God but whose grounding in mysticism makes it impossible for him to ever rule out, or deny his desire for, the possibility of His existence.

 

[meauneau]

If JP doesn't really believe in a God, as defined by orthodox monotheistic religion, what does he say is the source of meaning and purpose in human life? The way I see it is like this: those who believe in God maintain that meaning is necessarily dependent on God, so that if there is no God then there is no meaning. Some atheists bite the bullet and say yes, since there is no God and meaning necessitates God, then nihilism is the case. And the other atheists deny that God and meaning are necessarily connected, they maintain that we can have meaning in life even though there is no God. It seems to me that JP would agree with the last group, those who do not see meaning necessarily connected to God and so hold that there is meaning in a Godless world. Is this a fair representation of his view?

I am sure you guys have watched the lectures where he explains this. Could someone explain it here?