Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?

I could have as easily said the "masculine and orderly" if he was expressing that pattern of behavior. For instance, if he was being a full blown fascist, That´s how I would have replied. The feminine isn´t the "negative". It is the _extreme_ feminine. And likewise, the extreme masculine behavior is equally toxic. Hence the phrase, "toxic masculinity" which I´m pretty sure you´re familiar with. Is that not a thing? or is it just that the masculine is filled with toxicity but the feminine never is? That would be a naive proposition. btw, if you read this as an attack on the "feminine" by the "masculine" then there is no point in this discussion at all. It is the extreme pathological behavior that is the issue, not its symbolic manifestation.

> What I find more interesting is that this exemplifies what bothers me about Peterson schtick. So much of what he says isn't actually saying all that much, because it's couched in "one could argue that", "I'm just observing x", "an interesting thought" style statements, while at the same time the very choice of statements seem to imply something nonetheless. The frustrating thing is that I find much of this 'implied' message rather concerning, but it's difficult to talk about because he (and his fans) can deny all of it. Or accuse me of reading too much into his words, vilifying him, etc.

There need be no implication because he says it out right. Watch the video I linked to and he will say literally what he means. Everyone who dislikes Peterson that I´ve personally talked to always ends up talking about "the implicit evil that he holds behind closed doors". Everyone is suddenly a mind reader. What gives? we don´t do that for others when they talk. And besides, debunk his arguments as they stand. Either the arguments are good or bad. talking about the character or the intent of the person is irrelevant to the merit of the argument itself. Imagine if the most despicable human being (ex. Hitler) said 2+2=4 you wouldn´t go: the math is incorrect because he has "hidden motives". No. The math is correct and he´s a piece of shit. We have to decouple the message from the speaker for obvious reasons.

As for the reddit comment. The author talks about cognitive dissonance when he clearly suffers form a shit ton of it him/herself. It was one incoherent mess.

Look, I understand you, the other commenter and countrapoints (been a long time fan of that channel btw even if I disagree with a lot of what is said there) in that you are justified to feel uneasy. Peterson is _way too careful_ as if he is trying to mask/hide something from us. But the truth is much simpler than that. When you are constantly over the years met with extreme backlash you become very careful. Take the example of "forced monogamy". When Peterson was talking about a historical concept, that was portrayed as if he _wants to_ "distribute women to horny men" - a position no one has ever held. Imagine being exposed to that level of misrepresentation, heckling and hatred. You too, I imagine, would be more careful about what you say in order not to be misrepresented at every turn. Once you put yourself in his shoes you realize that it isn´t that there is an implied hidden agenda but rather the exact opposite. And so far, I have seen 0 evidence to the contrary.

> To be clear, I'm not accusing you personally, of all this, just that your comment reminded me of these thoughts. Furthermore, I ultimately do not know the details of what Peterson believes (I mean, who does?), and if his book and talks help people improve themselves I'm all for that.

Fair enough.

The second thing that must be said is that in order to communicate, we must use a consistent definition of the category for it to be useful.

The third thing that must be said is that when we argue "semantics", we're trying to figure out a shared definition of a category. Without it, there is no agreement. With it, arguments usually evaporate pretty quickly.

The left side of the aisle commits a dishonest fallacy constantly with respect to "alt-right". There is a category of despicable people. There is a category that includes non-despicable people. It's not right to waffle between the two to bolster rhetoric.

There is a category of despicable people that believe Western civilization is good because of its whiteness. These are the original "alt-right" people that everyone agrees are "alt-right". They are racist and pretty much everyone rejects them across the entire political spectrum. Maybe they number 100k globally with a very generous estimate.

There is a subset of those people who believe that enforcing ethnostate boundaries is good. They number maybe 10k globally, generously speaking. They are definitely "alt-right" by everyone's definitions.

There is a larger category that uses the word "alt" to imply simply an "alternative" right, which includes all conservatives that don't agree with traditional turn off the century neoconservative figures. So if you don't like Hannity and O'Reilly but do like Shapiro, then you're "alt-right" because you attach yourself to this new wave of conservative thought that doesn't agree with the old guard.

The definition here matters. People on the left want to stretch and shrink the definition to fit their rhetoric. But this is key here: the final category of alt-right doesn't really even overlap with the racist ethnostatists that everyone hates.

All that being said, Peterson isn't really even conservative. He just happens to be criticising more left leaning figures than right leaning figures because today, the left is far closer to totalitarianism than the right, in his estimation.

I like how you stated “I’ve never regretted the time spent reading him” as I don’t agree with many of his statements and sometimes his writings seem a bit self-involved or exegesis in need of a peer review, but I’ve found it valuable to read through and think the power of some of the ideas I keep, or just strongly disagree, are worth all the material I discard.