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What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

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Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#131

Post by pluto9 »

beat wrote: post #24

Thinking to his issue over pronouns... He's arguing that he should not be coerced into using preferred pronouns. Ok, that's fine. But he should use preferred pronouns anyway, in order to not be an asshole . Because refusing to use preferred pronouns isn't standing up to oppressive postmodern SJWs. It's being an asshole. And this is the real headache with Jordan Peterson. He may be thoughtful and interesting. But for…

Perhaps the asshole is the person who expects the rest of the world to jump through linguistic hoops in order to protect their carefully maintained delusions.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#132

Post by mizzack »

Yetanfou wrote: post #120
_pvu0 wrote: post #64

Jordan Peterson is not extreme at all. We are just currently in a climate where nuanced opinions and observations are ignored by radical ideologues.

He is not radical but he is outspoken and does not let himself be cowed. This antagonises other outspoken people who have been able to silence a large part of their opposition by labelling them as racist, insert-whatever-identity-phobe, nazi and such. When they tried the same with Peterson by calling him a 'transphobe' their attempts spectacularly backfired in that they drew the attention of the general public to Pet…

It's the same pattern with Nicholas Christakis and Bret Weinstein. An association the article pointed out, but didn't mention the pejorative labels applied to those two.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#133

Post by beat »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123
beat wrote: post #24

Thinking to his issue over pronouns... He's arguing that he should not be coerced into using preferred pronouns. Ok, that's fine. But he should use preferred pronouns anyway, in order to not be an asshole . Because refusing to use preferred pronouns isn't standing up to oppressive postmodern SJWs. It's being an asshole. And this is the real headache with Jordan Peterson. He may be thoughtful and interesting. But for…

I think I generally agree with your second paragraph. We should not deliberately be jerks to others, even if they are different from us. And also, we should not be under legal coercion to not be jerks - that way lies at least serious trouble, and maybe social madness. But I think I disagree with your third paragraph. People who have thoughtful, interesting things to say should say them. (They should also take care to…

There's the rub, though. When you have something interesting to say that may well be taken the wrong way to justify things you despise (as I believe is the case here), you should take care to clarify as well as possible - and clarify up front, with caveats, to reduce the number of people hearing only the first half of your sentence.

And even then, people will hear what they want to hear. However carefully Peterson speaks his thoughts on this manner, there will still be a lot of people who now think it's the intellectual thing to do to beat up a dude in a dress. Which makes speaking one's mind, however truthfully, an ethical dilemma.

This is the hole below the waterline in the sinking ship of radical honesty. This is why "Don't be an asshole" is more complicated than it sounds.

I kind of hate to beat on Peterson too hard for this, though. He's suddenly acquired a large and unexpected following that he didn't actively pursue. But he needs to deal with the ugly reality of what kind of people make up the bulk of that following, and how his words and ideas affect them. It's an ongoing learning experience.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#134

Post by krick »

So, to put it short: "What's dangerous about Jordan Peterson is that he makes ideas we don't like sound plausible"? I don't really see an answer to the question in title.

Anyway, his lectures for psychology students on youtube are quite nice to listen, even though I find it problematic how often he treats hard facts off-handedly to speak in favor of his overall narrative. I wonder if there are more courses (especially on non-technical subjects) of the same quality freely available on youtube.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#135

Post by [deleted] »

mywittyname wrote: post #130
Erik816 wrote: post #75

What is often lost since Peterson became "famous" after the whole gender pronoun controversy is the quality and depth of his thinking and lecturing that was already available on YouTube. This article starts with that, and explains his popularity as a teacher at Harvard and Toronto. I had been watching his lectures for about a year before the pronoun issue, and his ideas are fascinating and deep. They tie together man…

I was quite surprised to discover that the alt-right venerate him. I got the impression that he was pretty liberal. I mean, I support LGBTQ rights, but don't agree that people should be forced to use appropriate gender pronouns. I thoroughly enjoyed his old lectures, but I've avoided watching any of his newer stuff for fear of finding out if he's begun to pander to his (largely) awful followers.

[deleted]

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#136

Post by beat »

stcredzero wrote: post #128
beat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a civil libertarian myself. It makes me uncomfortable. But people seem hell-bent on missing my point in order to correct me for God forbid equating coercion and oppression. My actual godddamned POINT is that, whatever the logical merits of Peterson's position coming from him , the practical effect is for a hundred thousand red-pill assholes to share excerpted clips around, and thinking it means that a wise philos…

No matter what position you pick, some gaggle of idiots on the Internet are using it as a pretext for being a dick. A lot of the acrimony coming from the Right is a reaction to others doing it using pretexts from the Left. The solution is to have reasoned dialogue. If you follow Peterson's message, he seems to have explicitly decided to minister to lost young clueless right-wing men, by urging them to clean their roo…

Oh, undoubtedly. There's no small amount of tribalism and moral sadism among the SJWs, using these sudden shifts in vocabulary as an excuse to berate people they didn't like in the first place.

Which in no way means intersectionality is a Bad Idea. Intersectionality is a major advance in the understanding of oppression.

I hope Peterson can actually wake up some of his red-pill followers, and do more harm than good in the long run. But for now, he really needs to apply that intellect to dealing with something he wasn't ever prepared to deal with - being a symbol of intellectual authority to a movement that stands for things he no doubt despises.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#137

Post by krick »

mywittyname wrote: post #130
Erik816 wrote: post #75

What is often lost since Peterson became "famous" after the whole gender pronoun controversy is the quality and depth of his thinking and lecturing that was already available on YouTube. This article starts with that, and explains his popularity as a teacher at Harvard and Toronto. I had been watching his lectures for about a year before the pronoun issue, and his ideas are fascinating and deep. They tie together man…

I was quite surprised to discover that the alt-right venerate him. I got the impression that he was pretty liberal. I mean, I support LGBTQ rights, but don't agree that people should be forced to use appropriate gender pronouns. I thoroughly enjoyed his old lectures, but I've avoided watching any of his newer stuff for fear of finding out if he's begun to pander to his (largely) awful followers.

It's not as much "alt-right venerate him", as his ("alt-left", I guss?) opponents like to mark him "alt-right" for no reason other than he is not as "left" as they are.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#138

Post by jnbiche »

mywittyname wrote: post #130
Erik816 wrote: post #75

What is often lost since Peterson became "famous" after the whole gender pronoun controversy is the quality and depth of his thinking and lecturing that was already available on YouTube. This article starts with that, and explains his popularity as a teacher at Harvard and Toronto. I had been watching his lectures for about a year before the pronoun issue, and his ideas are fascinating and deep. They tie together man…

I was quite surprised to discover that the alt-right venerate him. I got the impression that he was pretty liberal. I mean, I support LGBTQ rights, but don't agree that people should be forced to use appropriate gender pronouns. I thoroughly enjoyed his old lectures, but I've avoided watching any of his newer stuff for fear of finding out if he's begun to pander to his (largely) awful followers.

> I thoroughly enjoyed his old lectures, but I've avoided watching any of his newer stuff for fear of finding out if he's begun to pander to his (largely) awful followers.

I think he did pander a bit, but then realized how far to the right many of those followers were, so drew a clear line in the sand that pissed off and alienated all the fascists and racists (something about ethnic nationalism being an "idiotic ideology" or words to that effect). Peterson is no alt rightist.

However, if you look at places like /r/JordanPeterson, most of his followers were more alienated centrist and liberals than the alt rightists even before he made clear exactly how he felt about the far right/alt right.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#139

Post by stcredzero »

dragonwriter wrote: post #125
stcredzero wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm characterizing what he's saying using colorful language of my own, but the principles are the same. No. It's one thing to advocate that everyone should be nice and say "hello." It's an entirely different thing to advocate for a law that says you will be dragged before a kangaroo court for failing to say "hello," where a scientifically dubious "test of unconscious bias" will be used as evidence of your guilt. Eith…

> It's one thing to advocate that everyone should be nice and say "hello." It's an entirely different thing to advocate for a law that says you will be dragged before a kangaroo court for failing to say "hello," where a scientifically dubious "test of unconscious bias" will be used as evidence of your guilt. And it's yet another thing to criticize a law for saying that when, in fact, the law says nothing of the sort.

Only if you accept the dishonest sleight of hand, in that the Human Rights Tribunals are not courts of law. They are "kangaroo courts" by my estimation.

Re: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

#140

Post by AnimalMuppet »

beat wrote: post #133
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I generally agree with your second paragraph. We should not deliberately be jerks to others, even if they are different from us. And also, we should not be under legal coercion to not be jerks - that way lies at least serious trouble, and maybe social madness. But I think I disagree with your third paragraph. People who have thoughtful, interesting things to say should say them. (They should also take care to…

There's the rub, though. When you have something interesting to say that may well be taken the wrong way to justify things you despise (as I believe is the case here), you should take care to clarify as well as possible - and clarify up front , with caveats, to reduce the number of people hearing only the first half of your sentence. And even then, people will hear what they want to hear. However carefully Peterson s…

Well, there's no way I can see that you can say anything and prevent people from reading into it what they want it to say. (This is especially true if they're doing it deliberately - trying to use your stuff as a smokescreen to give support for their pre-chosen position.)

You can make it harder for them. But you can't stop them.

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