The Jordan Peterson Thread

Peterson comes off as a sham to me, the more people discuss him, the better it is for him.

He benefits off people who like, and dislike him. They all make him relevant, because he’s able to dupe (too mean, involve?) many with his pseudo-intellect.

Not to say he’s not intelligent, but his technique of speaking with authority on his thoughts are akin to gold plating on earrings.

He puts a lot out there, for anyone to latch onto with either support or opposition. The fishies do all the work gobbling up the crumbs he dropped in the tank.

He’s just a man, like any other. I sympathize with some of his opinions, but lost interest years ago. There is a lot of entertainment on this thread, IMHO

Too mean, and in my opinion ignorant in the classical definition of the word. Not that I think he is a brilliant intellectual.

I call this my ‘teaching voice’, lots of professors develop this over time (including academics on the political left, whom he despises)

This is true, but I don’t think it is a very interesting observation. It doesn’t mean specific ideas have no merit, or that other celebrities don’t have fishies gobbling crumbs. I guess I don’t see the point beyond, you don’t like JP. And here is why I defend him in this thread even though I don’t actually care about him or his ideas: people who don’t like him attack him because they don’t like him, and i don’t like it when people do stuff like that

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Well, that’s my thing with him. I’m sure I could pull out specific things he mentions that I agree with, and disagree with.

In the end though, the conversation of the individual issues he mentions, always comes back around to the quality of his character.

Like if someone starts an argument about pronouns, or whatever else he’s on about, it always ends up being a Peterson argument. Which I think kinda speaks to the success of his technique. He could easily express his views in a more reasonable way, it’s clear part of his design is to rile people up.

I actually agree with you, I don’t really care about him either way, and I don’t like it when people focus on attacking general character instead of debating specifics.

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Oh come on. The resemblances are pretty clear.

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Because - as he explains - lobsters are simple and well-characterized. Those other animals are more complicated, and I agree that his analogy doesn’t work well for that reason.

To mangle a phrase : when the only tool you have is neuroanatomy, everything looks like a lobster.

To be fair, if you read the book, it’s clear that he picks on lobsters partly for the entertainment value. I don’t think he intends for it to be taken too seriously.

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The thing with an ‘always’ is you just have to be wrong once and then that opinion is always wrong

i disagree, i think it is clear he just wants to help people

I feel like originally he was more genuine, and I actually don’t think he’s calculating like some media personalities, it’s just the nature of the beast.

When your business is your ideas, that’s what you evolve into. I’m not even saying he’s aware of what he’s become.

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He brought it up in that Kathy Newman interview, and does seem to give it some credence as an example showing that we evolved to be hierarchical.

TBH I think it’s a rather trivial point. Inevitably, within one species (or even between species occupying the same niche) there will be competition between animals of different abilities, and the only way of avoiding either a war of attrition or complete annihilation is the establishment of some sort of hierarchy. No other logical solution exists.

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Maybe. It’s just a weird example, and such things get picked up on. He doesn’t seem to mind milking it :slight_smile: I’m not sure if he ever said more about it and walked it back as would seem wise.

I don’t recall JP saying there was just one species of lobster he was interested in. But glancing at Wikiland, I notice that…

The first true lobsters also appear in the Cretaceous.[58]

…which would mean up to 145m years ago, and…

The fossil record of clawed lobsters extends back at least to the Valanginian age of the Cretaceous (140 million years ago).[68]

…as opposed to JP’s “350 million years”, for whatever that’s worth. :cactus:

Primates were evolving anyway, but they got a little “boost”. :wink:

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:notworthy:

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The question is when our branches split off on the evolutionary tree, which (considering how different we are) would naturally be before true lobsters or primates first appeared. The article I linked about says 350 million, but another one I read said it’s actually 500. It would go back presumably to an animal without either a shell or a skeleton, so some kind of worm. All meaning JP’s argument looks pretty silly, if he meant what he seemed to have meant.

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Not really relevant, IMO. As JP points out, Nature tends to repurpose stuff that works particularly well: the classic example, which he mentions, is the five-fingered hand, or some similar appendage. Lobster neurons do indeed work in the same way as human neurons, although their nervous system is quite different (they don’t have a ‘brain’ as such).

I myself choose the spiders. The only proper lifestyle is for the female to devour her mate after breeding.
Or maybe the anglerfish, where the tiny parasitical male joins the female, deriving his nutrients from her bloodstream and is slowly absorbed into her completely.
Using Petersonian reasoning, it’s natural, so it must be right!

Where have you seen him talk about it? Sorry if I missed it.

All his spiel about lobsters is summarized in his ‘12 rules for life’ book.

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I’ll try and find it somewhere! I only recall what l saw in that interview. I’ll watch that again in a bit too.