Jordan Peterson

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zbigi
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by zbigi »

Alphaville wrote:
Sun Jan 03, 2021 9:23 am
(...)
and while their lives may often be far from perfect the little lobsters have the right to criticize their world and whatever predatory practices the world allows, rather than naturalize them with lobster comparisons.
I think we're in agreement then. I think Peterson is defending hierarchies largely because he's fighting the most radical form of "cultural Marxists" [1], who claim that all hierarchies are a result of an oppressive patriarchy and should be destroyed, preferably in a violent way. I don't think he's against more sensible collective action, but he also doesn't focus on it. The value system he preaches can be viewed as deeply individualistic and thus it triggers a lot of people on the left, but I think that again he does that for therapeutic reasons - in order to treat depressed and apathetic people, you need to create a vision of individual life and goals for them first. Of course, this is not a panacea for society's all problems, but he doesn't claim it is.

[1] To what degree these people really exist is another question. You can see in the Peterson-Zizek debate that P. was ready to criticize many of stereotypical hardcore Marxists claims and was very surprised that they do not represent Zizek's beliefs.

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

zbigi wrote:
Sun Jan 03, 2021 9:47 am
I think we're in agreement then.
not quite, we disagree on jordan himself...
zbigi wrote:
Sun Jan 03, 2021 9:47 am
I think Peterson is defending hierarchies largely because he's fighting the most radical form of "cultural Marxists", who claim that all hierarchies are a result of an oppressive patriarchy and should be destroyed, preferably in a violent way.
this is a laughable straw man of his own invention, designed to bamboozle, and precisely where he succeeds at youtube but fails as an intellectual. remember zizek asked him to name names and he couldn't?

anyway here are some actual marxists (i think?) addressing the matter:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/jord ... m-ideology

this i've posted not to back marxism (i'm not a marxist) but to illustrate how he charges at windmills claiming they're giants.

and here's a little lobster with a straight back criticizing youtube lobster's scholarship:

https://medium.com/s/story/jordan-peter ... 4633558b75

zbigi
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by zbigi »

Fair enough. I usually mostly check out when JP goes deep into his mythological analyses... They're fairly handwave'y and, to me, you need to make much stronger arguments than he does to support the claims that those myths carry real hard truths in them. I don't think most people are interested that much in them either and, to me, all that handwaving can be an attempt to intellectually elevate something that's otherwise just a fairly common sense, if conservatist, CBT-based approach to fixing oneself, without anything novel or revolutionary in it. To me, JP's main talents lie precisely in communicating previously known ideas and not in scientific/intellectual discovery.

BTW the ads on his podcast are something that made me wary of him for the first time. If your goal is to help millions of people across the world, and you've already made plenty of money via publishing of the book and the book tour, why recite those tacky ads? It's just unsavory to me. Another pet-peeve of mine is the promotion of his annoying daughter. But overall, I think he's just a complicated individual that helped a lot of people through his talents in communicating psychotherapy-related concepts.

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

@zbigi

right, but mythology is fundamental to his fundamentalism, so you can't separate it from his inductive social theory bloviations. if he is wrong on the mythology he is also wrong on what he claims it implies.

i wish he had stuck to psychotherapy, where he could be useful, but his whole ideological edifice ends up poisoning common-sense cbt and deluding his believers.

eta: here's a better video from a more useful and competent researcher https://feelinggood.com/books/

7Wannabe5
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

A classic book in the series edited by Michael Pollan is "We Made a Garden" by Margery Fish. The author enters into a late life marriage with a quite grouchy fellow, and they buy a country house and proceed to squabble about gardening. He wants nothing but clear ground between the pavement slabs and she would prefer something growing and flowing between the pavement slabs. Then he dies, likely of heart failure due to excess grouchiness, and the garden defaults to her growing. flowing design. IMO, this is great example of what Peterson describes as the battle between masculine order and feminine chaos.

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Lemur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Lemur »

I do not think JP understands Marxism enough to criticize it. He backed out of a debate anyway with Richard Wolff and honestly JP would get eaten alive on that one...he’s full of gibberish talk anyway. I think he is useful for distressed young males - ones who need direction in life; especially the hopeless romantics. But that is the extent of it IMO.

peterlimberg
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by peterlimberg »

Jordan Peterson was my therapist for two years. I wrote about my last session with him here: https://thestoa.substack.com/p/rescuing-our-father

Looking at his ideas through a propositional lens: I think he gets the personal development/responsibility stuff right. The political stuff can be somewhat muddled, e.g. "post-modern neo-Marxist." My friend and colleague John Vervaeke has the best and most helpful critique I think: https://youtu.be/n6RFSgjnqAQ

I do think he got captured by the "outrage porn" incentive landscape of the culture war and is solely focused on the "woke versus anti-woke" battlefront (see: https://thestoa.substack.com/p/culture- ... art-2-woke), which has morphed how he looks at things. Overall, he is an important cultural figure, whether he triggers you or not, and understanding why feels like it would bear good fruits than solely focusing on where he is right or wrong.

chenda
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by chenda »

With regards to Peterson, there are people I respect who can’t stand the guy. And there are people I respect who find his ideas interesting. I was content to simply be neutral on the topic, and I did that mostly by avoiding him.

Until yesterday, when I saw a clip of him speaking about the Indian goddess Kālī...

I may not feel it’s my place to enter into a debate about his position on the use of trans pronouns and whether or not that should be legislated. However, I do feel qualified to take a position on what he has to say about Kālī. I’ve studied her for many years, I’ve read her relevant texts, I’ve been to her major and minor temples across the Indian subcontinent, I have had dialogues with temple priests and householders, and conducted podcast interviews with PhDs who’ve written entire books on her.

And there’s no getting around the fact that 99% of what Jordan Peterson said about Kālī — in two lectures — was wrong. And I mean just plain wrong, from a factual perspective
http://taptamarg.com/goddess-kali-swall ... %EF%BB%BF/

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

It’s nice I guess to have a captive audience of mostly 18-year-olds. Raise your voice, wear a tie, and make a few bold gestures, and suddenly whatever you say is right.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

thanks for that!

many gems in there. it's a good read.

Campitor
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Campitor »

It’s nice I guess to have a captive audience of mostly 18-year-olds. Raise your voice, wear a tie, and make a few bold gestures, and suddenly whatever you say is right.
One of my pet peeves, whenever anyone makes an argument, is the use of ad-hominems. Argue the ideas not the person. It was rule#1 in the socratic method of learning and argumentation I was trained in.

Impugning the person's character, even justifiably, proves nothing in regards to the veracity of the argument or knowledge that is being asserted. Josh Schrei may or may not be accurate in his depiction of how Jordan Peterson is utilizing "Callie" (gasp - a westerner mispronouncing a non-western name), however once he starts to venture into ad-hominem territory to basically dismiss Jordan Peterson's lectures and knowledge in his area of expertise then he starts to lose points.

Jordan Peterson's credentials are impressive in his area of expertise. To totally dismiss Jordan Peterson's impact and experience in psychiatry as a consequence of having a captive audience of 18 year olds who are mesmerized by his tie-wearing lectures and stentorian voice, is lazy thinking. Always argue the ideas and not the person. Why? Because humans are fickle and even good men and women have their detractors that would love nothing more than to silence those they don't like regardless of any virtue or knowledge the target of their detraction may have.

Ad hominems are not the way to enlightenment.

PS - The goddess Kali has been around for a long time and has many different depictions per the scholarly articles that I've read; her mythology predates the 6th century. And while I'm no expert on the goddess Kali, I can certainly see how the goddess Kali can be interpreted as a depiction of threat and how that aspect of her divinity could be used as the conduit for discussing the evolution of thought regarding threat in its various forms.

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

Campitor wrote:
Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:17 am
To totally dismiss Jordan Peterson's impact and experience in psychiatry as a consequence of having a captive audience of 18 year olds who are mesmerized by his tie-wearing lectures and stentorian voice, is lazy thinking.
the author is not criticizing jordan's expertise in psychiatry, but in mythology, and the way that his assertions go unchecked by his audience.

Campitor
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Campitor »

@Alphavile,

The author was fine until he made his statement regarding captive 18 year olds - it was implied that JBP's message is only valid because he's talking to malleable minds in a captive setting. Jordan Peterson is one of the most cited psychiatrist by his peers and his knowledge was deemed sufficient to make him an associate professor at Harvard and a professor at Toronto University. Of course I believe JBP can and does make mistakes - I've said as much in other threads (smart people do stupid things all the time).

When I looked at the video of JBPs Kali lecture - he wasn't trying to make a definitive summation of the goddess Kali. He was using a specific manifestation of Kali (her destructive form) to illustrate how humans manage and interpret threat, i.e, destruction (a.k.a.threat)and how it can have positive outcomes which must be managed. Kali's mythology includes stories of the other gods using her power to defeat evil but also the need to restrain her power when she started to lose control. This mythology is illustrative because it depicts how civilizations formulated their philosophies as well as what was running through their heads when trying to make sense of the world. I believe this is what JBP was trying to do even if his mythology wasn't an accurate depiction. I can certainly see how this would cause an expert in Kali mythology to question JBP's knowledge of Kali. What I don't see is any evidence on how this refutes JBPs expertise in psychiatry or how the validity of his ideas are only acceptable to captive teenagers.

edited for grammar.
Last edited by Campitor on Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

Campitor wrote:
Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:15 am
What I don't see is any evidence on how this refutes JBPs expertise in psychiatry or how the validity of his ideas are only acceptable to captive teenagers.
i see it, but i think it's pointless to continue arguing it at this juncture so i won't.

Campitor
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Campitor »

https://everything2.com/title/Argumentum+a+fortiori
Argumentum a fortiori is a form of argument or a rhetorical device in which one claims that since we have great confidence in one claim, we can also have great confidence in a related claim...

Informal argument forms of this sort are very common, and many people are more than willing to hide fallacies behind cromulent rhetorical forms. As you may have noticed, it does not logically follow that just because Mikey is picky you will automatically like what he likes. Nor does it follow that 'execution' and 'murder' are the same thing, or that if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere. Argumentum a fortiori is an attempt to link two ideas together, and it is easy to accept that because a link is identified it must be true. A smart audience will take the time to examine the link, and be ready to throw it out if it is not sufficiently fortis.

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Alphaville
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Alphaville »

lol, nice bait.

Campitor
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by Campitor »

Not bait - it's an arrow in the quiver of socratic learning. ;)

Having said that, I haven't proven you "wrong". I just haven't seen anything strong enough in my opinion, that warrants tossing out JBPs expertise as a psychologist in this entire thread. He's professionally certified (https://members.cpo.on.ca/public_register/show/19846) and he's still affiliated with the University of Toronto per their faculty directory: https://www.psych.utoronto.ca/people/di ... n-peterson.

The certification board has requirements - some ongoing:
Each member of the College, except for those members with a Retired Certificate of Registration, are required to satisfy the requirements of the Continuing Professional Development Program. The CPD Program is designed to:
  • promote continuing competence and continuing quality improvement among members;
  • remedy gaps in knowledge and skills identified in members’ self- assessment;
  • address changes in practice environments; and
    incorporate standards of practice and advances in technology
The CPD Program permits members to undertake continuing professional development and continuing education in a variety of ways as best suits their learning styles and needs.
Members with even registration numbers complete the self- assessment process in the even numbered years and those with odd registration numbers do so in the odd numbered years.
  • Annually, the College selects a number of members at random to participate in the Peer Assisted Review process. The Peer Assisted Review is an onsite review of a member’s practice conducted by two other members of the College.
So the people who certify psychologist in Ontario haven't revoked JBP's license nor has Univ. of Toronto dissociated themselves from JBP. If they say he's good enough to practice and teach then he's a psychologist in good standing until proven otherwise.

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