Jordan Peterson

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daylen
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by daylen »

@BRUTE Yes, according to Jordan Peterson these themes are archetypal. Everyone recognizes the validity of these truths because they encounter them in their own life experience.

A story is essentially the data structure that best encapsulates the experience of being a human. In Jordan Peterson's book "Maps of Meaning" he attempts to abstract out truth from various archetypal themes. In doing so he finds a connection with the works of various religions. This makes sense considering that religions are like meta-stories. Stories evolve and get selected for across time based on their ability to mirror reality through the eyes of the audience; only the stories that have archetypal elements are retold at the campfire. Eventually, we started to abstract out common elements across many stories to create general rules of action that resulted in good outcomes (the exact definition of good varies from culture to culture across time). The set of such rules is a belief system, and a religion is a belief system with an established tradition of accepted action.

Belief determines action, action determines social structure, and social structure determines belief.

IlliniDave
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by IlliniDave »

So, I'm late to the party on this one. Because of this thread I made a note to check out Peterson and finally got around to listening to a couple of his longer talks. I was impressed enough I'm considering reading one of his books.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ZAFCorrection »

I also jumped on the train super late. Peterson's self help stuff seems like sharpened versions of ideas I came to on my own after much derping around. 10-years-ago me would have been truly amazed and possibly saved some time.

That being said, beyond the self help I get the vibe that he is the guy who, having found a hammer (Jungian traditionalism), sees nails everywhere and won't be told otherwise. It might be asking too much to expect public intellectuals to be continuously holding themselves up to scrutiny.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by IlliniDave »

ZAFCorrection wrote:
Fri Jun 01, 2018 6:09 pm
That being said, beyond the self help I get the vibe that he is the guy who, having found a hammer (Jungian traditionalism), sees nails everywhere and won't be told otherwise. It might be asking too much to expect public intellectuals to be continuously holding themselves up to scrutiny.
His time in the limelight has been quite brief, and he was propelled there by his free speech crusade, not his academic pursuits. Everything I've watched of his was either the "political" stuff or talks related to Maps of Meaning, I think generally taken from the course lectures that either led to, or derived from, the book. I guess what I like most about him is his ability to stand firm and clear in the face of the sometimes dubious rhetorical landscape of politically motivated social discussion/debate. Some of his ideas about psychology pique an interest in me (psychology is not an area I've invested much time in beyond taking an MBT assessment, so I wouldn't know Jungian traditionalism if I tripped over it) and lately I've been hungry for something to read outside the usual fare. Might be a waste of time and effort.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jacob »

I just finished the "12 rules for life" book and I think it would have been clearer had it contained more diagrams and equations :mrgreen:

Seriously, though, I didn't enjoy it. When Ni+Fe communicates it always feels as if the person is painting a landscape by drawing a little bit here, then a little bit there, then changing the color of the tree, ... kinda like listening to a random audio-only mash-up of a few Bob Ross episodes while trying to figure out what he's painting. That's what Ni+Fe sounds like. The picture being painted is a reflection of the inner state of mind (Ni) which is rich and complex but on the whole doesn't make it easy from a T-perspective because our particular minds are not arranged in terms of symbolism, allegories, and narratives.

I don't enjoy watching Bob Ross either, but at least he paints in order :)

I'm reminded about something I once heard about how cops divide people into 1) other cops; 2) perps; and 3) others. Point being that cops mainly deal with 1 and 2, so they develop their view of humanity based on that. Apparently, it's a occupational hazard. I think psychotherapists tend to do something similar, namely: 1) other psychotherapists; 2) patients; and 3) others. Thus, I was left with the impression of trying to develop a world-view (the painting) primarily based on experience with damaged people. That a bit like trying to understand why cars are put together the way they are (four wheels, seats, windshield, ..) by sifting through a junkyard. You see the broken cars once they're hauled into the junkyard... but you never see the functional ones that move around in traffic. Thus, I don't think it's wise to extrapolate any lessons learned from psychotherapy sessions towards understanding how a non-broken or basically functional human is or how a functional society works. I mean most of the rules are about how not to be/act/like/feel like an idiot, no? That's of course a good thing. I was expecting a bit more though.

Interesting book, but not for me. FWIW, I have not listened to any podcasts or youtube videos with Peterson, so this is strictly my opinion of that book.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

I was disappointed by the book (12 rules...). And I think its mainly because I think he's a better speaker than a writer. Something is lost in the editing process.
jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:17 am
our minds are not arranged in terms of symbolism, allegories, narratives, stories.
I disagree. Everything in our perceptual world is a narrative or story. Our individual and group identities, what things are important, what they mean etc. These are all stories. A culture is just a set of stories shared by a group of people. Prosperous cultures propagate their stories.

Think of a narrative as a virus-like meme. Memes can be parasitic, commensal, or symbiotic. If parasitic memes are too virulent, they kill their hosts before the meme can spread. Less virulent ones may persist but stifle both the host and the meme's propagation. Symbiotic memes are ones that increase the fitness of both host and meme. A common mythology that underlies the thinking of multiple prosperous societies throughout history is a good place to look for symbiotic memes.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jacob »

Consider, (A => B) <=> (!B => !A). The closest thing this is to being a narrative is as an abstractions of a lot of very small stories.

"When Ann went outside in the rain her hair always got wet. Later Ann went outside and her hair remained dry so it didn't rain."

I do not remember this as "The tale of Ann in the rain".

I remember that as "(A => B) <=> (!B => !A)" or basically "A causes B" = "No B so no A", so whenever someone says something like "A leads to B", I subconsciously check this against all my "Not B" knowledge.

E.g.
"Bob is a good dog (so he would never run into the street)" says the person whose mind thinks in terms of narratives.

I think "Bob has run into the street before (fact)" (!B => !A) happens automagically (the benefit of a strong Ni) so I say "Bob should be kept on a tight leash when near streets."

These abstractions apply to reality. If aliens do propositional logic, they will have within their system a set of rules for that that are EXACTLY like the one's humans have. As such, there are certain aspects about reality that are discovered (such as 2+2=4) rather than invented. A fundamental assumption behind this is that while humans have many stories, there's only one reality. I really don't wish to spend much of any time discussing the details of this. FWIW, I'm a pragmatic instrumentalist, so anyone (Jason?) who has read into philosophy will already know what I'm going to say.

My point above was that the way JP's mind is structured internally and the way mine is structured are different. We use very different raw material and methods for processing that raw material. I don't have a ready collection of Christian or religious symbolism to draw on to express my thoughts. Nor do I think in terms of stories. 7wb5 once mentioned that fiction was useful because a story might be appropriate for a particular situation. I do not dispute that. It's just I can not recall stories to the accuracy of what Ann and Bob did in scene #841 of whatever book. When JP points out what Ishmael and the whale symbolizes, it leaves me cold. To me Moby Dick was a story about renting a bench to sleep on and something about the whaling industry. This is likely a big reason why the book didn't hook me.

Ironically, I do remember a story about the problem of using stories and narratives as one's exclusive mode of thought.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok ... kinda illustrates the danger if the other person doesn't know about those supposedly deep cultural references.

Let me try to explain what I mean using metaphors and narratives:
Kira at Basi. Chenza at court, the court of silence. Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. The beast at Tanagra.

We're both abstract, but whereas JP focuses on people and feelings where stories are the appropriate descriptive technology and symbolism is one of the ways of processing/making sense of those narratives; I focus on knowledge of reality where data and [physical] laws are the appropriate descriptive technology, laws are ways of processing that data, and systems and theories are how to make sense of them.

In short, I think it's myopic to insist that all humans use narratives to explain the world. It reminds me of myself when I was 19 and had discussions about just that thing. I was absolutely sure that other people run internally on formal logic in which every conclusion derived from individual underlying axioms. Just like me! :P Insofar two people every disagreed on something it was either because the axioms differed; because one had incomplete information; or because there was a formal error in the derivation of the conclusion. It took me a long time to accept that many people make decisions based mostly on feelings.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 1:05 pm
It took me a long time to accept that many people make decisions based mostly on feelings.
I'm pretty sure the book Descartes' Error has been discussed here. Its about the Somatic Marker Hypothesis. People with damage to emotion processing areas of the brain can't make decisions. To decide on an action means to have an *emotional* preference about the outcome. (Philosophy is the "love" of wisdom. Science is the pursuit of truth insofar as truth is *desirable*.) Physiology influences emotion, which influences values, which influences behavior, which influences decisions. (Behavior comes before "decisions", because the conscious mind will rationalize our behavior after the fact. [Confabulation])

If you are familiar with Scott Adams' "Moist Robot" idea, that's kind of what I'm talking about. There's a lot we *feel* like we know about how our mind works that is empirically wrong.

Jordan Peterson picks up that idea and notes that large communities of humans are sometimes better at processing than any individuals. Kind of like how a Prediction Market [and an efficient securities market ?] is more accurate than any individual.

A group of termites is capable of doing things that no individual termite could possibly understand. The Peterson hypothesis is that the same is true about human societies. We can study how the use of certain abstract concepts have effected the survival of past societies. Its the only way to weed the "good" ideas from the "bad" ones. Even your preference for thinking in equations (an obvious form of abstraction) is subject to this selection. If it works out for you, you keep doing it. If it doesn't, you'll either stop or perish.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 1:05 pm
In short, I think it's myopic to insist that all humans use narratives to explain the world. It reminds me of myself when I was 19 and had discussions about just that thing. I was absolutely sure that other people run internally on formal logic in which every conclusion derived from individual underlying axioms. Just like me! :P Insofar two people every disagreed on something it was either because the axioms differed; because one had incomplete information; or because there was a formal error in the derivation of the conclusion. It took me a long time to accept that many people make decisions based mostly on feelings.
:lol: ;)

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by BRUTE »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:17 am
I just finished the "12 rules for life" book and I think it would have been clearer had it contained more diagrams and equations :mrgreen:
maybe Dear Leader jacob should leave an angry 1-star review on Amazon, citing the lack of diagrams and equations, and how the book was not nearly abstract enough and too actionable :D
jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 10:17 am
I mean most of the rules are about how not to be/act/like/feel like an idiot, no? That's of course a good thing. I was expecting a bit more though.
brute holds a similar opinion of JP. the 12 rules seem.. fine. but they're like the Wheaton level 1 (or whatever) equivalent of FIRE: "1.Get out of debt, 2.Build an X month safety buffer, 3.Live below your means". Not wrong, just... so fundamental.

but over the last 2 years or so, brute has realized more and more that the current generation of young (male? or all?) humans does not learn these basic facts any more. it might be an unintentional side effect of both parents working, of single parenthood, or maybe, as JP claims (it's fun to call him JP), because Judeo-Christian values have become lost.

there are now so many substitute father figures on the internet, and young male humans (it seems to be mostly males) are flocking to them. brute finds it positively amusing, but maybe there really is a lack of father figures in the lives of those young humans, something that brute and Dear Leader jacob's generation has not experienced? brute wouldn't say his own male parental unit was a glorious example of manhood, but thinking back, there were definitely "men" around. in culture, being a man was not portrayed as negatively as it is today. grandfathers were around, and they were tough as nails. neighbors with rifles chased kids off their lawn. even if each individual father might not have been perfect or around all the time, there was a general concept of fatherly figures present in communities and in culture. nowadays, the closest thing to those figures is Ron Swanson, who's the comic relief on a sitcom.

and if there is a need for internet father figures, JP is probably not the very worst possible. brute has seen some other ones, some he likes better, some he likes worse. most of them are less preachy and abstract than JP, some of them are more hateful. most of them, if they become popular enough, develop something of a guru personality, just like JP has in brute's opinion. maybe guruism is just what happens if a human is revered by enough other humans.
ThisDinosaur wrote:I was disappointed by the book (12 rules...). And I think its mainly because I think he's a better speaker than a writer.
oh god, really? brute finds JP a catastrophic speaker. interestingly, it's not the exact same criticism that Dear Leader jacob has.

brute's mind is actually largely full of narratives, stories, and analogies. but very few of them are about biblical and mythological stuff. sure, brute has heard of some or even most of those stories, but they really don't connect on an emotional level. just like DLj (heh) connects emotionally with Star Trek fan fiction, brute has his own personal canon.

thus, when speaking in allegories and metaphors, humans run into the risk of landing mostly NullPointerExceptions when they try to hit the allegories and metaphors in the other human's mind.

in addition, JP is one of the most confused, rambling humans brute has ever heard speak. it is really just as DLj describes the randomized Bob Ross. brute has listened to JP speak for 30 minutes straight without having an idea what he said.
Jordan Peterson paraphrased wrote: And it's, like, what are they even talking about? Look at the biblical story of Herp Derp, and he's, like, a lobster too! And by that I don't mean literally he's a lobster, but he's an animal, is he not? Animals are immoral! But that's what the neomarxist left doesn't want to accept! They're like, we like to have sex with lobsters, so fuck you JP! But it's just the nature of truth that <complicated philosophical term used incorrectly> begets <something completely unrelated>! So the lobsters are like, biblical figures, and the same is seen in all religions and metaphors and the greek mythology had the story of X, and it's like, they're all connected! So all of humanity is founded on this common theme of <something completely unrelated>, but gender pronouns are a clear violation of truth. and by truth I mean the flight of the arrow, the arrow strikes true, arrows predate truth. the usefulness of the arrow is inherent in its truth, it striking the target, thus the Aristotelian purpose of truth is to be useful, going back to the lobster.
most of JPs ramblings eventually compute to "wtf is he talking about" in brute's mind, and then get filtered out for insufficient signal to noise ratio.

but hey, if it helps some young male humans, and they don't follow the more hateful father gurus out there (alt right or woman hating or whatever), sure. JP seems like a relatively harmless one for now.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jacob »

@TD - Large groups of humans are only better at predictions/accurate estimates/etc. when those groups are composed of individuals who each do their own analysis. E.g. the classical one people estimating the weight of a cow at a market fair, or how many marbles there are in a jar. However, once these individuals start herding in groups and copy/echo with each other, prediction accuracy goes way down because effectively, the number of different opinions become much smaller.

Perhaps the same happens when large groups latch onto the same narratives, metaphor, and allegories? ;)

One of my favorite essays laments the popular use of metaphors.

Quick, is it correct to say "towing the line" and if so/if not, what does that idiom mean?

I wouldn't recommend survivor-bias as a sorting mechanism for truth. People thought the world was flat for a long time. Science was essentially the first break with that tradition (the falsification method). It doesn't really matter if everybody keeps telling each other that some story is true insofar just one person can show it's wrong. Now, my motivation to find out whether the world is flat or spherical is emotionally driven. I'll give you that. However, whether this planet is flat or round does not depend on what my motivation is.

A better (hot) topic is politics. There are people who pick their political party based on their ideology. And then there are people who pick their ideology based on their political party. The former tend to be either very rich or very highly educated. The rest are everybody else. (This observation primarily applies to countries with two-party systems. Research has been done.) That's essentially the difference between making a choice based on some internal framework consistent with one's ideological values ... and making one that's motivated by team-spirit and then doing a post-rationalization. The former is entirely possible even if it's not the mode of the human distribution.

My point is that Peterson's 12 rules that to me mostly uses allegories and metaphors to illustrate why people should behave at a basic level of being civilized is not really doing it for me. I'm obviously missing what the big deal is. I suppose it's similar to when some ERE readers complain about me using "complex equations" to illustrate simple points. I felt the same way through rather large parts of it. I don't posses the biblical vocabulary he's fond of using. I lack the computational power required to think in symbolism---similar to how many people lack the computational power to deal with algebra.

I've also read books by Fromm, Rogers, and Frankl(*). Same deal. I'm just not the target audience. They're talking about issues and problems I don't have while suggesting that all humans suffer from them. I stand by my comment about trying to explain the world based on observations of broken or semi-broken people as an occupational hazard. I think the psychotherapy/psychology field attracts a certain kind of personality type (INF*) who thinks in a certain kind of way ... just like other fields attract other types.

(*) My XGF was really into this stuff.

I'm still waiting for a book about rules for people who have their basic shit together already. Mostly my inspiration for this comes from weird (or maybe not so weird) places like operations research, management theory, or cybernetics research. I've learned more about how to live well from books like
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life- ... 1501124021
https://www.amazon.com/Over-Our-Heads-M ... 674445880/
https://www.amazon.com/Images-Organizat ... 412939798/
https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Nature-Nece ... 553345753/
... than I have from any number of psychotherapy books. That's just saying that the latter has failed to influence me. Or that my reading comprehension has failed me in trying to be influenced by them.

@brute - Well, if the school anecdotes in the 9.9% thread are any indication of the state of affairs, the world definitely needs some father (and mother) figures. Maybe more precisely, some parenting figures. Here's Berne (another psychotherapist --- one that made sense to me): http://www.emotionalintelligenceatwork. ... el-basics/ ... and in the framework of that it seems that parenting has gone missing over the past generation (X ... ours) as almost everybody is now a two-income household. This leaves children to be raised in group settings by various random teachers and institutions. That doesn't seem like a good thing at all. But it's a natural consequence of households making innocent decisions to make some extra money for their stuff, maybe some career liberty, ... but when everybody does it, there are consequences to society at large. Another Tragedy of the Commons (<- that's my kind of allegory). This would also explain why those "disruptive psycho-children" are now apparently common whereas in my time/place they were about 1 in 200 (like as in, there was only 1-2 per school and everybody in the school knew who it was).

IlliniDave
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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by IlliniDave »

So, I haven't finished 12 Rules yet, but I would have to agree that overall it's been a disappointment. I get where he's going with dipping into the ancient philosophies/stories as a way of illustrating humans' long-held understanding of themselves and life. There's a certain amount of intellectual resonance there but it's pretty dry (which was a surprise because he can be a very visceral speaker). Where the book has not been effective for me is, in some cases, not really tying the "meditations" to the rules in a way I feel I gain insight over the plain-diction statement of the rule. One exception was the lobsters. I enjoyed that chapter. We'll see how the remainder goes.

He's a professor of psychology by profession, and psychology is not something I've ever been knowledgeable about, or even terribly interested in. It's a tough read for a layman. I do like his underlying principle that life sucks so you might as well try to do enough good to make the suffering worthwhile.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jennypenny »

Up until the majority of humans were literate (a fairly recent development), narratives were how facts were conveyed/passed on. Narratives aren't facts themselves, they are learning tools. They are also very effective at conveying the consequences of those facts. Humans can remember stories and their meaning more easily than the facts. Besides, we all know how useless facts can be without context and narratives provide context.

Stories also convey the social norms related to those facts, which is important to know to avoid being an outcast. Even if you disagree with the narrative, you at least learn to keep your mouth shut about it and hide any transgressions. Of course, if you don't care about social norms, then narratives could get tiresome quickly. OTOH, our roles in human groups are defined by relationships, not facts, which help build social capital (IMO an important resource).

What Peterson is talking about is how to function within groups with dignity and self-respect (assuming that people who learn to act that way will form better social groups producing a positive feedback loop). It doesn't take a damaged person** to find something useful in Peterson's work. It takes someone who's trying to bridge the gap between knowledge and meaning; between personal fulfillment and social acceptance. A nihilist wouldn't see any value in that. Neither would an intellectual who sees social capital and liberal arts-type knowledge as unnecessary (or worse, beneath them).


**Not that long ago, a person who couldn't understand the meanings conveyed through narratives would be the one considered 'damaged'. I'd argue that the most enlightened people are the ones who can see both the facts and the narratives and absorb what is useful and relevant in both.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by ThisDinosaur »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:44 pm
mostly uses allegories and metaphors to illustrate why people should behave at a basic level of being civilized
...
trying to explain the world based on observations of broken or semi-broken people
Evaluating the defective specimens is an excellent way to figure out how the more typical specimens work. Some people suffer depression and other pathologies when they lose those allegories. From personal experience, going from theist to non-theist can lead to an unpleasant sense of meaninglessness. Psychology is a mess of a science, so there is a lot of room for someone like Peterson improve on it. He's helping large numbers of people find meaning in responsibility and becoming useful to the tribe. That's tentative evidence that its not all bullshit.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by BRUTE »

jennypenny wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:27 pm
A nihilist wouldn't see any value in that.
guilty

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jacob »

@TD - I dunno. I suspect that's just for lack of something better. Like how cognitive scientists try to understand the brain based on patients who've had different parts of the brain physically damaged/taken out. That method works best when the sum of the whole = the sum of the parts. This sentiment is very illustrative of western-type medicine, isn't it, though? Focus on the disease and then try to fix it. Learn about complex health by studying simple diseases. Eastern medicine approaches the learning process from the exact opposite side.

Maybe we need some psycho-something studies of the sanest people around. Maybe that's already being done?! I recently posted about Kegan in another thread (and there's a book link above). It seems that it's very easy to describe levels just below oneself ... but it's very hard to describe levels above oneself if one has never experienced them personally. This is related to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge (in reverse, kinda like how Imposter syndrome is the opposite for DK in terms of confidence ... but here in terms of actual insight... => the curse of ignorance of the meta-level) as well as Wheaton levels. As far as my searches have proceeded, I've found very little describing Kegan5. The Bateson parallel in learning levels figures these "people" must be gods. Then again, humanity as such has moved 0.5-1 Kegan levels up over the past 1-2 centuries, so maybe it's not inconceivable.

But that's the kind of stuff I wanna now, for me. I already know the 12 rules---I would say---from my mom & dad. Also see
http://www.kalimunro.com/learned_in_kindergarten.html (Missing here: don't run with scissors... that might have been in the book itself, good book BTW. Read it when I was 16/17 or so.) It seems to me that literally everybody used to know this stuff?!? (See my school comments above.)

As for society at large, if JP helps a lot of frustrated/aimless young people (mostly males), then godspeed to him. I didn't see anything bad in the book. It just wasn't enlightening to me. I suspect for the real societal impact, I should look towards the youtube videos. The book is likely more of a "teach the lieutenants"-type of guide. I can't imagine a frustrated young (mostly male?) person making their way through the book insofar they're a member of the subset who actually needs to learn it. I dunno...

Add: One thing I found fascinating (from the prefix) was JP's fascination with totalitarian/authoritarian regimes. He decorates his living space with old posters from the USSR (did he get them on eBay?) as a reminder of the danger when people go wrong. He makes continual references to Dostoyevsky (I've read Notes, Karamazov, and Crime) and Solzhenitsyn (I've read nothing, but it sounds like I should). There are some comments about the recent rise of authoritarian national-populism in the US and parts of Europe (Poland, Hungary, Turkey). I would like to see/hear more about his thoughts on that. Also Asia (China and Cambodia). Maybe there is youtube stuff?

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by jennypenny »

How are we defining 'sane'?

I bristle at this because I don't think being a knowledgable, stoic-ish person is necessarily the best persona for ERE. It's not well-rounded enough. So when forumites dismiss writers who attempt to bridge that gap I mentioned, I think they are missing the point ... or maybe dismissing skills that are useful to ERE despite the fact that they're hard to quantify.
Last edited by jennypenny on Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:19 pm

Add: One thing I found fascinating (from the prefix) was JP's fascination with totalitarian/authoritarian regimes. He decorates his living space with old posters from the USSR (did he get them on eBay?) as a reminder of the danger when people go wrong. He makes continual references to Dostoyevsky (I've read Notes, Karamazov, and Crime) and Solzhenitsyn (I've read nothing, but it sounds like I should). There are some comments about the recent rise of authoritarian national-populism in the US and parts of Europe (Poland, Hungary, Turkey). I would like to see/hear more about his thoughts on that. Also Asia (China and Cambodia). Maybe there is youtube stuff?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfH8IG7Awk0
You can try this one, but he's more focused on the extreme left because he feels that's the current threat in Canadian Universities. He's said though that he's spent a lot of time studying what went wrong in Germany/Italy, but I've yet to find anything extensive by him.

ETA: can skip the first ~hour.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by prognastat »

I would say there is a combination of factors affecting today's young men.

A growing percentage was raised with minimal or low father involvement and as such have no real father figures. This is likely in large part due to society providing enough support to be able to survive as a single mother and divorce being legalized and now destigmatized.

Another growing percentage has both a mother and father, but unlike in the past both are working full time or more and as such they have little to no guidance. Parents also feel guilty for this lack of time for their children and due to this are less likely to want to spend time disciplining their children and teaching them good values when they would rather enjoy what little time they have with them. Many also have fewer children which means they are more likely to be overprotective and the children have fewer siblings to socialize with.

Finally male participation in primary education has dropped dramatically as society now views it suspect if an adult man wants to be around young children and most men are aware of this and avoid it further removing male role models from boys lives.

So many of the lessons Jordan Peterson espouses would in the past have been considered common sense and nothing special. However an increasing percentage of young males need this message.

@jacob I can see your difficulty with him as it is similar to the difficulties I have with him. I appreciate much of his message and in if I weren't an INTJ I can definitely imagine being a more fervent follower, but as his message isn't provided in a way that really works for my way of thinking I struggle with a lot of his more allegory/religious based reasoning.

If you haven't seen his first discussion with Sam Harris I think the communication problems between the two of them are emblematic of the kind of disconnect we have with his form of messaging.

I have an easier time agreeing with him on his more political points and his psychological discussions that don't veer in to the religious/allegory as much.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: Jordan Peterson

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jennypenny:

Even though I am not a huge fan of Peterson in particular, I generally agree with you. For instance, when on some other thread Jacob said that making his first scientific discovery was even better than sex, he was heading in the direction of literature. He just needs to come up with something else that feels worse than maybe getting kicked in the face with a hockey skate, and Herman Melville watch out!! ;)

This guy I like in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIsRZi8EKRs

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