The Tyranny of Trendy Ideas in Academia

> I am assuming this is a sincere question, so I'll give a sincere answer.

It is indeed, so thank you. I will do my best to reply as well as you have. Although, it doesn't seem we disagree so I will doing more of a job of clarification of what I think are a few key and important points. (And, please note my disagreement isn't with you, but the initial misogyny claim which was made by someone else.)

> Peterson has consistently made two arguments (that come to mind) that cause these accusations...

He does do those two things. However, what is rarely ever touched on (in misogyny discussions) is whether his theories are actually ~correct observations of reality, as it is.

For example: "These structural realities inevitably hinder women's achievements in the workforce, which he suggests is purely natural."

The precise makeup of the current workforce (at any given time and place), is a result of some form of social evolution. Since men have essentially run the show on planet earth for all of recorded history, and there are observable differences between men and women, it shouldn't be surprising that the workplace might have evolved to favor men. If this is the case, merely observing the fact isn't misogynistic.

I'd argue the very same thing could be said about your second example.

> Both of these arguments make a, to some, very unwelcome point - that perhaps gains in women's rights have, and will, come at a huge cost to society that is only going to get worse, and that we're a couple of decades into a giant experiment that, for a lot of people, could turn out very badly indeed.

This seems perfectly plausible to me, in the current state of society. Could we redesign & improve society to overcome these negative consequences (you point out what seem like fine ideas below)? Maybe. But maybe not. I lean strongly towards the maybe side, but the fact of the matter is, no one knows for sure! Lots of people think they know, but almost no one realizes their beliefs are actually speculation, based on heuristics, memes, and a poor understanding of history and other subjects. (More on this below).

At the very least, we should be trying out lots of things to see what works and what doesn't. It's easy to have the implicit/subconscious/axiomatic belief that "they way things are" is due to some intentional and wise design process, and while I agree great caution should be taken when reordering societal norms, the idea that what we have now is anything near optimal or fair (across multiple dimensions, not just gender) seems highly unlikely.

> I don't, however, agree that the solution is to roll back divorce laws, or send women back to the kitchen (not that he said this, but he hasn't said NOT THIS!).

If we were able to make an anonymous but binding financial wager of sufficient size to justify me going through his hundreds of hours of speech in search of evidence, I think I could offer plenty of evidence to the contrary. Not to win an argument, as is usually the case in such situations, but to demonstrate something fundamentally important. As it is, technically, it is unknown (by you and I) whether he has explicitly stated disagreement with those ideas. This is a hard to see but very important distinction, and is an example of why I keep pounding the drum that epistemology should somehow be part of the HN guidelines. If any diverse community on earth is capable of objective discussion on such matters, HN seems like a prime candidate. I'd like to see us work towards it, because there are a growing number of very serious problems right now that seem to be in a state of impasse. If everyone says "not my problem", how do we expect these issues to ever get resolved?

> Anyway, that's the (perhaps unfair but anyway highly unsurprising) reason people think he's misogynistic.

I believe HN is capable of better. And I don't think it would require nearly as much work as one might think. Once a person understands what is going on, and can see (and admit to) this unintentional behavior in themselves, improving it is a matter of self-discipline and cooperative teamwork. Being in favor of undertaking such an initiative is a matter of opinion, but thinking this is impossible lacks epistemic humility, and is another example of the problem.

Kierkegaard doesn't use academic philosophy jargon, but he came up with his own, and the English translations of his work come off as cryptic and dense.

Let me excerpt an email from a friend:

> ...[H]ermeneutics is fundamentally about power, as Nietzsche described. But in Nietzschean terms it is not like Foucaultan terms, for Nietzsche includes "being a slave" or being incorporated into the power of another, as a potentially positive or potentially negative thing. For Foucault it is never neutral and rather black and white. And for Hegel. Which is why Nietzsche and Derrida are both superior to Foucault and Hegel whenever hermeneutics and the hermeneutic circle are issues of earnest import.

Now, I think this paragraph is entirely readable and gives a pretty good breakdown of the difference between, say, a Neitzschean and a Foucauldian understanding of power, freedom, and interpretation. Personalities here serve both as metaphors and as reminders that the world we live in is a _human_ world.

I'm sure the people this writer is talking about are insufferable, but this writer is also kind of an ignoramus.

This ignores the existence of a world outside a single country's political system. Opinions that are labeled "extremist" by the political class in one country, but which are held by leaders in other countries that don't suck, are about as easy to exterminate as cockroaches.

The Chinese government uses a massive Internet censorship apparatus to prevent organized challenges to its preferred ways of doing things. This has worked, but its necessity reflects the fact that key Chinese-government ideas are memetically uncompetitive on the world stage; China is severely handicapped when it comes to winning foreign hearts and minds, and it also isn't great at persuading its own talented citizens to stay when they have the means to emigrate to the West (though it is now benefiting from Western infighting).

Both sides of the US political class agreed to define "extremism" in 2015-16 to encompass sensible opinions that ran contrary to the political class's common interests. However, they did not have the Chinese government's Internet censorship capabilities at the time, so there was a winning play that ran contrary to your claim, and somebody executed it effectively.

> You wouldn't listen to someone who hasn't passed physics 1 about the whether the bridge you are building is stable.

It depends what they were saying about it. If they were claiming that it's obviously safe because it's made of steel, because steel is really strong, then no --- not even if they had a PhD in Physics and knew the exact tensile strength of the materials. But if they were mentioning that in their personal observation this particular bridge sure sways a lot when it's windy, I'd probably listen to them despite their lack of formal education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbOjxPCfaFk.