The thing I've heard him criticized the most for was using Price's Law to explain inequality
I'd never heard of Price's Law until this post. Having just quickly run over to Wikipedia, it sounds kind of similar to a Pareto distribution. I'll leave it to people who know more about those two than I do to provide the nuanced discriminations that are beyond my capabilities, but I just want to make it clear that, when Peterson talks about inequality, it's the latter to which he always refers, not the former.
And on a personal level, I naturally discount people whose fans link to videos rather than writings.
Well, if it helps, most of what he says in his videos is either taken from or continues on from stuff he wrote in
Maps of Meaning. Some select bits that'll likely sound familiar to anyone who's watched any of his videos:
P. 10: "Acts of valuation necessarily constitute moral decisions … [Unfortunately,] we lack a process of verification, in the moral domain, that is as powerful or as universally acceptable as the experimental (empirical) method in the realm of description. This absence does not allow us to sidestep the problem. No functioning society or individual can avoid rendering moral judgment, regardless of what might be said or imagined about the necessity of such judgment. Action presupposes valuation, or its implicit or ‘unconscious’ equivalent. To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value. Lacking omniscience, painfully, we must make decisions, in the absence of sufficient information. It is, traditionally speaking, our knowledge of good and evil, our moral sensibility, that allows us this ability. It is our mythological conventions, operating implicitly or explicitly, that guide our choices."
P. 11: "There appears to exist some ‘natural’ or even – dare it be said? – some ‘absolute’ constraints on the manner in which human beings may act as individuals and in society. Some moral presuppositions and theories are
wrong; human nature is not infinitely malleable."
P. 180: "We act appropriately before we understand how we act – just as children learn to behave before they can describe the reasons for their behavior. It is only through the observation of our actions, accumulated and distilled over centuries, that we come to understand our own motivations and the patterns of behavior that characterize our cultures …
Active adaptation precedes abstracted comprehension of the basis for such adaptation. This is necessarily the case, because we are more complex than we can understand, as is the world to which we must adjust ourselves."
P. 181: "The most fundamental presumption of the myth of the hero is that the nature of human experience can be (should be) improved by voluntary alteration in individual human attitude and action. This statement … constitutes the truly revolutionary idea of historical man."
PP. 186-187: "We use stories to regulate our emotions and govern our behavior. They provide the present we inhabit with a determinate point of reference – the desired future. The optimal ‘desired future’ is not a state, however, but a process: the (intrinsically compelling) process of mediating between order and chaos; the process of the incarnation of
Logos – the Word – which is the world-creating principle. Identification with this process, rather than with any of its determinate outcomes (that is, with any ‘idols’ or
fixed frames of reference or
ideologies) ensures that emotion will stay optimally regulated and action remain possible no matter how the environment shifts, and no matter when."
P. 283: "If this descent is successful – that is, if the exploring individual does not retreat to his previous personality structure, and wall himself in, and if he does not fall prey to hopelessness, anxiety, and despair – then he may ‘return’ to the community, treasure in hand, with information whose incorporation would benefit society. It is very likely, however, that he will be viewed with fear and even hatred, as a consequence of his ‘contamination with the unknown,’ particularly if those left behind are unconscious of the threat that motivated his original journey. His contamination is nothing to be taken lightly, besides. If the exploratory figure has in fact derived a new mode of adaptation or representation, necessary for the continued success and survival of the group, substantial social change is inevitable."
P. 285: "This arrogant traditionalism, masquerading as moral virtue, is merely unexpressed fear of leaving the beaten path, of forging the new trail – the entirely comprehensible but nonetheless unforgivable shrinking from destiny, as a consequence of lack of faith in personal ability and precisely equivalent fear of the unknown."
P. 459: "This is the message that everyone wants to hear. Risk your security. Face the unknown. Quit lying to yourself and do what your heart truly tells you to do. You will be better for it, and so will the world."
P. 469: "What if it was nothing but our self-deceit, our cowardice, hatred, and fear, that pollutes our experience and turns the world into hell? This is a hypothesis, at least – as good as any other, admirable and capable of generating hope. Why can’t we make the experiment, and find out if it is true?"
P. 480: "Rejection of moral truth allows for rationalization of cowardly, destructive, degenerate self-indulgence. This is one of the most potent attractions of such rejection and constitutes primary motivation for the lie. The lie, above all else, threatens the individual … [insofar as it] is predicated upon the presupposition that the tragedy of individuality is unbearable – that human experience itself is evil. The individual lies because he is afraid – and it is not the lies he tells another that present the clearest danger, but the lies he tells himself."
P. 486 (note # 5): "The idea of the Savior necessarily implies the Judge – and a judge of the most implacable sort – because the Savior is a mythological representation of that which is ideal, and the ideal always stands in judgment over the actual. The archetypal image of the Savior, who represents perfection or completion, is therefore terrifying in precise proportion to personal distance from the ideal."
If anyone is wondering: I read
Maps of Meaning and copy-and-pasted a bunch of shit from it into a Word document for use in my thesis. I don't have the fucking thing memorized
Isn't JP a professor of psychology? Does he teach humanities too? I understood that he uses mythology as a means to teach his classes, but I didn't know that he also works the humanities.
Since he's been at the University of Toronto, he's primarily taught a psychology class called "Personality." However, during his time at Harvard, he taught a class based on the book that he was writing called "Maps of Meaning" (I can't recall if he also did it at the University of Toronto; I suspect he stopped doing these lectures once he finished writing and published the book). This class was much broader in scope and, if it had to be disciplinarily labeled, would've most accurately been labeled a humanities class (especially in light of his lectures analyzing
Pinocchio, for instance).
He was responding to a post that you made responding to me, so it was referring to me, indirectly or not.
Even so, it was a good faith question that I don't think warranted your level of aggression.
Even if it wasn't about me in particular it is still wrong if he meant it in general. He criticised the class (JP detractors) of which I am a member by dividing it into two sub classes: SJW leftists or Sam Harris atheists. I am neither. He stands refuted.
Actually, he said Peterson detractors
tend to belong to one of those two camps; he very clearly left open the possibility of there being detractors who did not fall into one of those two camps. And, as you presented yourself as one such detractor, he was intrigued enough to try to start a conversation with you. Unfortunately, all he got was hostility and aggression.
Can't you admit that your friend is wrong?
First off, he's not my friend. I know him but I honestly can't recall any previous interactions with him (my apologies,
@Gunny, if it turns out we've had dozens of conversations over the years or something
). Second, I'd have no problem admitting that he was wrong about something. He'd first have to be wrong about something, though.
You don't have to be erristical and pedantic all the time.
Actually, I do have to be pedantic all the time. Case in point: Eristic/eristical is spelled with one "r," not two.
