
The curious star appeal of Jordan Peterson - mpweiher
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/the-curious-star-appeal-of-jordan-peterson/
======
skrebbel
I'm sad that some enthusiastic well meaning lefties often associate Peterson
with the extreme right. If anything, this man is radically centrist. It's just
that he debunks extreme right wing arguments in 5 sentences instead of the 2
hour long talks he uses to address what he calls neo-marxism.

I think people like him might very well help keep disgruntled young men _away_
from the extreme right, by offering a moderate alternative.

We should celebrate that long, balanced arguments get so much mainstream
attention, even if we don't agree with them.

~~~
Synaesthesia
It’s when he refers to so-called “cultural marxism” taking over universities
and political correctness being a huge problem that sets off warning bells for
me.

~~~
ghoststories
What exactly bothers you here?

How else would you refer to the processes that lead to forcing professionals
at these universities to use dozens of novel non-binary gender pronouns, or to
shield students from content that may be considered "offensive" or
"triggering"?

If you don't think those things are in fact serious problems, then I guess you
aren't "woke" to that side of the debate. The "campus left" has done
everything to brand all dissenters (including Peterson) as fascists, racists
and trans/homophobes. _That 's_ an even bigger problem, because it signals
cult-like behavior.

Maybe it's not bad at your particular university, maybe the examples in the
media are not representative, but they _are_ real.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Is that really so oppressive though? I'm glad trans and other people are
getting more respect.

~~~
ghoststories
First of all, don't you know you should not _otherize_ people? You better
check your privilige!

Sarcasm aside... they _aren 't_ getting more respect. You can't force people
to respect anything.

Here's what actually happens: People control their speech (but not their
thoughts) around those "other" people for fear of social reprisal. They'll
simply _avoid_ socializing with those people for the rest of their lives.

Will they _hire_ a gay/trans/black/muslim person? What a minefield! Better
find something in their CV that makes them "less qualified"...

Few people will say these things openly, just like how fewer people would
_admit_ to voting for Trump. In the real world, Trump is _still_ president.

~~~
gizmo
If an employer discriminates against gay/trans/black/Muslim job applicants
because _other people_ did something they didn't like, then that employer is
totally unreasonable. You can't blame anti-bigotry activists for that.

This is the "anti-racists made me racist" argument. Non-racists don't turn
into racists when their behavior is criticized. That's absurd.

------
err4nt
I think a lot of why people like him is he speaks so CLEARLY, whether you
agree with him or not you thoroughly understand his position, and he usually
has some thought-provoking reasons for everything he says or does.

I think people are starved for somebody who can be persuasive and calm, not
relying on hyperbole or name-calling to make their points, and he shows
everybody a way they can do that.

~~~
Fezzius
Have you ever listened to him for one hour? He never answers a direct
question, it's always wordsalad(no wonder people don't understand him) , he
has a few interesting concepts which he repeats constantly His claim to fame
is misunderstanding a discrimination law about transgenders. Which is all you
need to know about him.

~~~
ghoststories
_" His claim to fame is misunderstanding a discrimination law about
transgenders."_

If that was true, why did his university send him a warning letter that
essentially confirms his concerns? He consulted a lawyer on the matter, he
confirmed them as well.

Laws are subject to interpretation, bad laws are subject to bad
interpretations. He considers bill C-16 a _bad law_. There no "one correct
understanding" of a law, otherwise we wouldn't need lawyers and legal cases
would be trivial matters.

The fact that you refer to bill C-16 simply as "a discrimination law about
transgenders" shows that you poorly interpreted it yourself.

 _" Which is all you need to know about him."_

I interpret that as a display of pure and utter ignorance - was that your
intention?

~~~
dingoonline
> If that was true, why did his university send him a warning letter that
> essentially confirms his concerns? He consulted a lawyer on the matter, he
> confirmed them as well.

The Canadian Bar Association which represents over 37,000 lawyers, judges,
notaries, law associates, law professors and students across Canada says this
is a good thing and not the freedom of speech slippery slope that its been
made out to be.

[https://www.cba.org/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=be34d5a4-8850...](https://www.cba.org/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=be34d5a4-8850-40a0-beea-432eeb762d7f)

------
petercooper
To me, it's a shame (and a sign of where media and culture are, right now)
that the drama around pronouns and feminism are what people are jumping at
with him. His teachings on the ideas of self identity, motivation, and the
redefinition of religion as a system of archetypes and hierarchy are far more
interesting and grounded in fact.

~~~
gizmo
Maybe it's because he jump-started his popularity by picking on transgender
kids, using the flimsiest possible pretext.

It shouldn't come as a surprise he has nothing of value to say about
(identity) politics, because on that topic he doesn't have any expertise. He's
just another guy with poorly conceived opinions. On the other hand he has been
a clinical psychologist for 20 years and so (surprise!) he has accumulated
some valuable insights along the way.

------
bitoneill
My first exposure to Peterson were through his YouTube talks on depression.
It's a family disease in his case since he, his father and daughter all
suffered from severe depression. His YouTube video with his daughter about how
they were able to get help with medication was very interesting. I am very
glad he seems to have recovered and has gone on to make an impact in other
areas.

------
markdog12
Channel 4 interview with Peterson that's popular atm:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54)

~~~
skrebbel
Thanks. I watched it, and I love it. I really like how the interviewer did,
she presented the feminist view pretty well, while keeping her cool.

Sure, she used her position as the one controlling the agenda well, quickly
switching topics when pressed into a corner, but that's her job.

~~~
markdog12
Not sure if sarcastic...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkcXRC4HZqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkcXRC4HZqc)

------
Synaesthesia
I personally love Noam Chomsky, but he’s not easy to watch speak (very
motonous sounding) and his books are also mostly fact-laden. I think he’s
toned down his heavy academic style a bit in his newer publications. Still his
knowledge and wisdom are second to none IMO

~~~
gizmo
This is somewhat offtopic, but Chomsky speaks that way to stop his detractors
from talking about his style. If he's too loud, too animated, too flashy,
people will focus on him as a person as opposed to his ideas. His solution is
to be as bland as possible, in the hope this forces people to engage with the
substance and nothing else.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Yes he also dislikes appeal to emotion, or emotive talking, as it can be
abused or be misleading.

------
0x445442
I don't know how it happens but Peterson seems to always be engaged by the
most logically challenged and intellectually dishonest individuals society has
to offer. The recent channel 4 interview is the prime example of this. Now
maybe it was all for show but the interviewer was utterly incapable of
stringing even a few ideas together and at one point in the interview her mind
visibly began to short circuit attempting to do so.

~~~
raguuu
It would be fun to see a debate with someone very different than him but
actually someone who has arguments and date to back it up not just blind
ideology.

~~~
alexpetralia
I'd recommend Sam Harris' podcasts with Jordan in that case.

~~~
0x445442
Yeah, a much higher level of discussion between two individuals exploring
ideas.

------
scribu
I prefer the chronicle.com article that appeared on the HN frontpage yesterday
(and was swiftly burried, I suspect). It offered a broader context.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188789)

------
Dowwie
To give someone a better idea who Jordan Peterson is and his experience with
those in mass media: [https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/watch-cathy-
newmans-ca...](https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/01/watch-cathy-newmans-
catastrophic-interview-with-jordan-peterson/)

I knew _of_ Peterson but never read his work nor heard him speak.

This interview could be an important piece for university level discussion. I
think it summarizes problems among the media and intellectuals like Peterson.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_Watch: Cathy Newman’s catastrophic interview with Jordan Peterson_

I don't really know who he is other than seeing his name popup on Youtube
regularly however I do note that his supporters always use that sort of
language, often watch X destroy Y in an interview.

There seem to be minorities at the extremes shouting past each other whilst
the rest of us get on with our lives and wonder what all the fuss is about.

~~~
josephg
I think "watch X destroy Y" is just youtube's version of clickbait. I suspect
you'll find videos like that tailored to most groups on youtube. I sometimes
use them as trailers for longer talks that I might enjoy - although I always
feel a little guilty for encouraging this sort of thing.

In this case I found their interview to be excellent viewing. She was harsh
and honest with him, and hurled most of the standard criticism at Peterson
that people talk about. And while doing that she gave him the time and
opportunity to respond. And he stayed calm, considered, articulate and
entertaining throughout. I don't agree with everything either of them said,
but I enjoyed watching that interview immensely - its exactly the sort of
thing I want to see more of on youtube and in the public sphere.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54)

~~~
Radim
_" Let me get this straight… you're saying we should organize our societies
along the lines of the LOBSTERS?!"_

Harsh, perhaps. Honest, not so much. I found most of her ripostes a dishonest
caricature of Peterson's position, or downright lies.

[https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?t=1331](https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?t=1331)

~~~
dfraser992
He didn't explain that point so well, but I grokked what he was getting at (I
think). I don't think she was smart enough to understand it, or see beyond it,
so thus the gross simplification. That's my impression of her - less conscious
dishonestly as opposed to just not smart enough. Then again, most people have
an IQ under 120, and 120 is not that impressive either

I would have said that humans are little more than talking primates, and so
our societies (West and East) are organized according to how primates organize
themselves - e.g. hierarchies. We're more sophisticated than chimpanzees, but
not by much. Once you understand this idea, then all the stupidity humans get
up to is understandable.

------
apocalypstyx
Having been raised in fundamentalist Christianity, Peterson always sets off
preliminary warning bells for me:

The enemy is all around you.

Access to secret "true" knowledge.

The world is corrupt.

A plan that if you follow correctly will lead to good things.

An enemy that alternates between specific and generalistic states.

Everything has to be framed through a set of ideological points at all times,
which are reiterated in the otherwise minorist points of life.

That is not to say that he definitively is something of that kith or kin to
that, necessarily. Just that I see several public figures these days that come
out of one branch of science, platforming their knowledge of one field to the
world of knowledge at large, and espousing thinking --- right down to
phraseology, at times --- I have heard too often from sources these same
individuals would claim to violently disagree with. Taking on Peterson's own
postulations related to the co-evolution of the biological and memetic aspects
of humanity (which in general I would agree with): I think the push to a what
would otherwise be called a 'religious sensibility' can be --- and often is
--- clothed in scientific language.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
A warning bell for me is that (in my experience) his fans almost uniformly
recommend watching or listening to recordings of Peterson himself speaking.
Not transcripts, not articles, not a canon of closely aligned materials by his
grad students. The power to convey these truths evidently resides in Peterson
and Peterson alone. That suggests to me something closer to a cult of
personality than anything like a robust theory.

I'm biased, though, because I find his lectures really difficult to follow. At
least in the ones I've watched, he exhibits an oddly rambling style of speech
that seems optimized more for some kind of narrative rhythm than for clearly
conveying semantic content. He's very good at making it _feel_ like every word
is important, but then when I go back and try to figure out the actual
statement being made it's like whole sentences just sort of fold in on
themselves until nothing is left.

~~~
DanAndersen
>Not transcripts, not articles, not a canon of closely aligned materials by
his grad students. The power to convey these truths evidently resides in
Peterson and Peterson alone.

I don't think that's entirely true. The Peterson fan-groups on Reddit often
have group readings of books that haven't been written by Peterson but have
been recommended (Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn).

I do agree that there's something of a cult of personality surrounding
Peterson, and for that reason I try to keep that in mind and keep him at arm's
length despite agreeing with a lot of what he says. But I do think that such
behaviors are common and inevitable. Consider the "I f*cking love science"
crowd and their focus on clips from Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan (their
written material is a distant second in popularity to their broadcast
presentation) or the trend a few years ago of receiving news through a
Stewart/Colbert-style format of ideology + humor. There's something almost
inescapable about the human desire to associate with a group/club/tribe, to
find a leader to rally around, and to indulge the urge to worship.

------
sgdesign
> In 2016 he made a stand against the Canadian government’s introduction of a
> law that aimed to make it a crime not to address people by their preferred
> gender pronouns (regardless of chromosomes).

I'm pretty sure that's a gross misrepresentation of that law. From the little
I know about it, I think it was more about adding "using the wrong pronoun" as
a possible aggravating circumstance to consider when somebody is _already_
being harassed:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/canadian-
lawmakers-p...](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/canadian-lawmakers-
pass-bill-extending-transgender-protections-n773421)

> The bill adds prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of gender
> identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act, amends the
> criminal code to extend protections against hate speech and allows judges to
> take into consideration when sentencing whether a crime was motivated by
> hatred of the victim’s gender identity or expression.

~~~
larrykwg
No, the widely accepted interpretation of that law is that, if I have a
coworker who wants to be called xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself, I have to comply or
face punishment, since not be accommodating of this can be construed as
harassment. Ideologues want to dismiss everyone who is against this law as
transphobic, but this is demonstrably not true, one can be accepting of the
human rights of trans people while simultaneously disagreeing with the extend
of protections and privileges granted to them. I think what most people
ultimately take issue with, is that this law was evidently ideologically
motivated and it felt like no logical arguments could ever be discussed.

~~~
upofadown
The "it is illegal to use the wrong pronoun" interpretation is only widely
accepted by those who have trouble with the definition of the word
"discrimination". If I use the wrong pronoun when referring to someone it
might rise to the level of harassment if I do it deliberately and repeatedly.
It can't be a violation of an anti-discrimination law because it isn't
discrimination.

~~~
tomohawk
I see. So If I insist that my pronoun is "his majesty" and others don't use
it, that would be harassment?

[http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29230/](http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29230/)

For those of us who think that objective reality is more important than what
someone's feelings may or may not be, this imposition of a speech code is
clearly harassment.

~~~
aalleavitch
No. That wouldn't be harassment. Here is the Canadian legal definition of
harassment:
[https://www.crcvc.ca/docs/crimharass.pdf](https://www.crcvc.ca/docs/crimharass.pdf)

Now, if I repeatedly followed you around, loudly mocking you and your use of
"his majesty" and interfering with your life, then yes that would be
harassment.

~~~
dwaltrip
I'm confused. If someone requested a certain pronoun, and someone else
politely but repeatedly refrained from using it, would that be harassment
under the new bill?

~~~
upofadown
The new bill is about discrimination, not harassment, so no.

