Study Pinpoints Source of Banned Gas That Saps Ozone Layer: Eastern China

"I realized that the proclivity of individuals to avoid responsibility and to lie, especially about their own lives and about their own experience, were really the reasons that those systems went so far astray."

That connects so directly to social media and contemporary "fake" "news". Not just in the obvious ways, but in how people lie through Pinterest images to make their life look more glamorous, or lie on resumés, school applications, exams, dating sites, faked hate crimes, faked crime reports, faked police reports, faked government investigations, faked scientific studies, etc....

We interact with the internet through diverse environments that change so fast that humans can't keep up with an accurate way of figuring out what reality looks like, or, rather, the average difference between the images of reality held in the minds/brains of any two people is expanding.

I think I might see 2 things Peterson didn't address in your quotes:

1. Deteriorating material / or otherwise not originally psychological conditions around a person could also independently increase the chance that they falsify their own experience. He may have cause and effect at least partially flipped.

2. Does telling the truth heal the psychological trauma? Is there an empirical basis for John's claim that "the truth will set you free"? In my memory of Man's Search for Meaning, I remember his theory was that finding a meaning to keep fighting to live often made the difference for survivors of the Holocaust. People who let the situation sink into them did better than those who held onto dreams that could hardly seem possible, given the circumstances. But that could indicate that "Hope", that thing with feathers, is only dashed when abashed by the most painful of truths - and is sometimes shielded from the storm by our so willing to "falsify" our own experience.

Our family and friends used to be a local pocket with its own local social weather sheltered from the tumult of wider society. Social media tore down the ability to keep family and politics and religion as separate spheres woven together by individuals capable of different modes in different spaces in different times. But the internet in the pocket collapses spaces and times together. And so, our local social weather is no longer sheltered into a friendlier micro climate, but just one point in a massive cultural climate zone.

Requiring companies to not do business in countries (or use specific industries in those countries) based on some specific goal is a form of sanctions.

> decided to concoct wild self-righteous theories to justify his bias rather than change his viewpoint

To what? Is there a "right" answer that would serve someone better? It's always going to appear self-righteous when you justify your own worldview. The utility of JP's views, is why other people adopt it, not some fictional "messianic cult". JP's reasoning has flaws and gaps as with all people. Even the utility is from other historical wisdom, not his own, repackaged into a story. Easily digestable and as rational as any other I have seen.

> Western corporations have done as much harm as they could get away with to make a quick buck as well.

I'm in agreement (for the most part)--historically speaking. I never said that this was purely relegated to China, although the topic of the article is indeed China.

I'll also take this opportunity to remind you about HN commenting guidelines [1], specifically when disagreeing to try to "reply to the argument", as opposed to calling names--or in your specific case implying emotional states or assumptions on worship.

I will share that I find it unfortunate that you seem generally opposed to Dr. Peterson's works: his Maps of Meaning (1999)[2], for instance, contains powerful ideas that cannot be easily dismissed.

Finally, humans are complex creatures. We can easily find an argument intrinsically stimulating and academically fascinating whilst simultaneously not feeling disillusionment.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Pete...

We also assumed as countries became more rich/industrialized/advanced they would become more democratic, and more concerned with human rights, and less zero-sum adversarial in dealing with the United States.

I think those hopes are no longer mainstream thinking in regards to China.

How confident should we be about the prediction that China will adopt similar policies to the US in regards to the things you are mentioning?