Jordan Peterson

[IlliniDave]

Maybe because Haidt, although cognizant of higher degrees of complexity, is better able to offer sensible explanation?

...

Could be, I never bothered to think about it that way. I'm not trying to rank-order the two, I was just observing that, to put it a different way, Haidt is easier for me to listen to and follow. A significant aspect of my profession involves distilling detailed results to something one or two steps deeper than executive summary-type material. So Haidt's presentation style is familiar to me. It also means I'm well aware that there's a lot beneath the surface. Peterson is more like what you get if you haul your best scientist out of the lab and throw him in front of an audience. You don't just get the what's and the top-level whys, you tend to get the whys behind the whys and sometimes the whys behind those. So it can be a lot of work keeping up. FWIW, although I don't merit the handle "scientist", my natural mode of technical communication is more like Peterson's than Haidt's.

I like Haidt and Jordan both, so I don't set them in opposition to one another. As an occasional leisure listener, I think they are complementary. While it may be the case that Haidt is the superior intellect, I have no reasonable basis on which to make that judgement. But I'd be very hesitant to bet against Peterson in a complex thinking competition irrespective of his "opponent".

Edit to add: Regarding Pierre Bourdieu, don't know anything about him. Listening to Haidt talk, I don't get the impression he self-identifies with postmodernists, and even if he does, I don't see the point. That he and Jordan may or may not have differing philosophic frameworks behind the subset of their observations that seem to be in agreement doesn't mean much to me, honestly. I'm not motivated to judge one or the other of them wrong, nor am I competent to do so. Whatever differences they have, it doesn't seem to matter much to them--at least Peterson recommends Haidt's latest book on his website.

Edit again to add: one of their talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqCNTopdBBs

[Campitor]

I wasn't trying to rank Haidt or Peterson either. I was just stating that Haidt has a better paradigm for exposing the flaws in ideology at a general level while Peterson has a better paradigm for getting an individual to rethink their position or at least pointing out the flaws in their logic.

Peterson's type of argumentation is weaker at the group level because others will automatically differentiate their beliefs from the logic disproven for an individual. So if Peterson's disproves someone's point, others will just rattle off how their beliefs are based off of a more nuanced understanding not covered by Peterson's refutations.

Haidt on the other hand sticks to the major points of ideology in such a way that makes it difficult to defend any viewpoints in counterpoint - great for targeting the flaws in broad strokes but less effective at challenging individuals to change with any urgency.

Both methods are needed to combat poor ideologies but Peterson generates more views so Haidt gets less attention.

[7Wannabe5]

one of their talks

Good example of Peterson being a 3 trick pony. Increased suicide rate among young teenage girls in recent years is mentioned, and somehow Peterson, once again, jumps to post-modern political philosophy and radical feminism on campus as possible explanations ????? Off the top of my head, I could come up with 2 other recent social trends much more likely to be causative. The first being dearth of siblings to offer buffer against negative peer social interactions, and the second being the obesity epidemic.

Anyways, I agree with Peterson when he says "no serious scholar...", but the point that I was trying to make is that Peterson himself is throwing the serious scholars out with the bathwater when he over-GENERALIZES with phrases like "post-modern Marxist." I mean to the extent that he uses that phrase it just starts to sound something like "kind of person who would eat a dog."

[IlliniDave]

Are you referring to Peterson offering the ideas of intersectionality theory and patriarchy theory (along with technology-induced political polarization and 2-3 others that went unnamed) for Haidt and his co-author to comment on? Haidt didn't seem to object to inclusion of the theories under the postmodern/marxist umbrella.

They actually talk about smaller family sizes later in the conversation. IIRC it was Haidt who debunked that when Peterson brought it up as an idea. They didn't talk about obesity specifically that I recall, but Haidt at the beginning did talk about the possibility of "social comparison sites", naming Instagram as an example, as something that seemed to affect girls adversely more than boys.

[7Wannabe5]

Are you referring to Peterson offering the ideas of intersectionality theory and patriarchy theory (along with technology-induced political polarization and 2-3 others that went unnamed) for Haidt and his co-author to comment on?

Right. I was especially struck by how Peterson jumped from suicide rate among young teenage girls right to "technology-induced political polarization." I mean, you and I and Peterson and Haidt and everyone else who is old enough to remember the good old days of Sam Donaldson, George Will and Cokie Roberts engaged in civil debate on This Week with David Brinkley, realizes that there has been a significant change in this realm, but...

OTOH, I can't think of a sub-section of society less interested in politics than young teenage girls. They are mostly interested in Korean pop music and what Cardi B wore to some red carpet event last night. I mentioned the obesity epidemic, because the most negative thing I have heard come out of the mouth of a 12 year old girl recently was a very overweight girl describing herself as a "cow."

After seeing what many of them look at on Instagram these days, I immediately had the thought that many of them must feel as oppressed by their inability to fulfill the new style which requires relatively very large butt as I felt by the no-butt-at-all style popularized by my peer Brooke Shields when I was that age. But, at least I had a couple sisters with whom I could put myself through the torture of the "Adrien Arpel's 3-Week Crash Makeover/Shapeover Beauty Program" or riding on an exercise bike wearing sweatsuit constructed from Hefty bags while listening to Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls." Now that we are all middle-aged women we laugh until we cry remembering going through this phase, but we also laugh remembering our more simplistically politicized college days, for instance the time my sisters and my other bridemaids thought it would be a good idea to attend a Take Back the Night Rally for my bachelorette party, the theme of that particular rally being Lesbian on Lesbian violence I would further note that the bridesmaid most in favor of that plan is now a very successful investment banker in NYC, married mother of 2, and an obsessive knitter, and I have still never seen a male stripper show

My point being that when young women are feeling riled up about the "patriarchy", the emotional landscape they are inhabiting is almost the opposite of suicidal or anxious. They feel angry (granted perhaps irrational so) and energized. Although not entirely unrelated, what really often brings young women down is the extent to which they always have to be in their bodies while they are simultaneously attempting to succeed in other fields. I think it is wrong to blame individual men, even those who are blatantly offensive, for this, because this double-standard, as well as others, is often most vehemently enforced by other women. That is why a young woman needs a girl crew, a set of "sisters", she can count on to overcome this.

Of course, that is not to say that a good-enough father who clearly communicates that he values his daughter for qualities such as her intelligence, kindness, and good sportsmanship (even if she rarely catches a ball) , as well as her "pretty" is not an equally valuable social asset.

[IlliniDave]

7Wb5, okay, well, I didn't see the "jump" quite the same as you did obviously. More broadly they were talking about the mental health of student-aged kids (something that Haidt has dealt with numerous times). The rise in suicide among students of both genders was a data point Haidt brought up as a clinical data point (as opposed to self-reported statistics), to explain why they spoke more definitively on that topic of student mental health than they did in the original article of the same name. Peterson then started to list 4-5 potential causes of student angst he wanted Haidt to comment on, seemingly based on the contents of Haidt's book, but Haidt stopped him after the first two because he wanted to address those. It seemed to me that all Peterson was doing was giving Haidt and his co-author segues to talk about the different topics addressed their book. A decent percentage of Peterson's prompts were met with, "We wrote about that in Chapter X", indicating that Peterson at least read the Table of Contents prior to the interview, and wanted to give his guests an opportunity to plug their book. I didn't read Haidt's book myself, so obviously I'm speculating a little.

[7Wannabe5]

It does seem to be the case that most everybody feels victimized and vulnerable these days. I mean, I could keep myself well-fed just by listening to the troubles of recently divorced affluent middle-aged heterosexual white males over dinner My older multi-millionaire friend is obsessed with the topic of elder abuse and neglect. I mean, the man is worth close to 100 million, but he has to depend on employees and friends like me to remind him to take his pills or pick him up from the hospital.

Maybe I am missing something, but I just don't grok why a shortage of respect for masculine energy is seen as the primary problem in a culture that is clearly lacking in available strong feminine energy. How are young people being coddled when nobody even takes the time to cook a meal for their family anymore? Isn't it more likely that everybody being pushed to succeed on the exact same terms is causative of increase in anxiety and stress among young people? I know that I would feel a lot more stressed if I actually made an all out effort to follow the WSP "Efficiency" plan than I feel when I watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9ZukMyejLk


IOW, another possible explanation for increased anxiety is the world-wide exponentially increasing process of urbanization. Who is more neurotic, Woody Allen or John Wayne?

[IlliniDave]

I don't know that anyone has proposed disrespect for masculine energy is the primary problem in the culture. I can see why pressure to repress masculinity (i.e., the "toxic masculinity" interpretation of masculinity) might cause some angst among older boys/younger men who are still at a stage of growth where they and there bodies are still figuring all that stuff out.

If you want to know what Jonathan Haidt thinks about mental coddling, he wrote a whole book on the subject. He and Peterson speak about it in the interview on Haidt's book; primarily Haidt from a social psychology perspective and to a lesser extent Peterson from a clinical psychology perspective. If you reject those lines of investigation, interpretation, and conclusions, then there probably isn't a whole lot of point in dwelling on it. Could be they are both incorrect.

[7Wannabe5]

I don't know that anyone has proposed disrespect for masculine energy is the primary problem in the culture. I can see why pressure to repress masculinity (i.e., the "toxic masculinity" interpretation of masculinity) might cause some angst among older boys/younger men who are still at a stage of growth where they and there bodies are still figuring all that stuff out.

I suppose that is possible, but I haven't seen any of this myself. What I have seen is young men dealing more erratically or self-violently with the eternal problems of jockeying for position with other boys/men and/or sexual rejection from females.

OTOH, there is a level on which the entire basis of civil society is the repression of masculine energy, and this is especially true in the school, library or academy. In an affluent school district possessing large well-equipped playgrounds with woods attached, the children are given the opportunity to burn off their energy, before being asked to co-operate in maintaining relatively quiet, calm learning environment for themselves and others. In poor school districts, nobody can learn when "youthful masculine energy" runs loud and wild in the classroom and hallways, and is given no other outlet. I believe that Peterson made the observation that boys lacking decent paternal role models are less likely to know the rules regarding where rough-housing stops and violence begins, and that has also been my observation.

What I am suggesting is that as we become ever more urbanized and competing for thin margin of efficiency as a society, even those boys with many advantages will find themselves crowded out of full-expression of their masculine nature. It may very well be the case that females now exerting their desire and/or right for a rung on the ladder is directly additive to this process, but it's not like the girls have much choice either these days. In fact, I would suggest given (as noted in video)that young female suicide rates have increased by 70% vs. increase of 25% for young males, they might even have it a bit rougher in a dog-eat-dog elbow-to-elbow situation. I mean why isn't young girls being asked to repress their feminine nature regarded as equally problematic? What thoroughly modern G2/G1 father on either side of the spectrum would discourage his daughter from kicking azz on the lacrosse field or winning the case in court? Isn't this as likely to be detrimental to natural development as encouraging a son to be a kind, courteous gentleman? Is it really the case that suggesting that behaving like the current (or some former) POTUS might be found rather repulsive is equivalent to stamping masculinity as toxic? Would the average boy be more likely to achieve normative behavior if his mother was of the type to slap her thigh and guffaw at the humor of Trump?

[IlliniDave]

7Wb5, I don't know the answers to any of your questions. You pivot far too far afield for me to keep up with. I'd guess if you posed them to a subject matter expert the response would be something like there are a variety of factors contributing to the increased suicide rates among girls and boys (and more broadly speaking the increase in mental/emotional problems for both), and while the problems/causes may show trends that are different between the genders, it's not a contest between the genders over whose situation is better or worse, and it is equally bad if an adolescent/young adult female has serious mental/emotional health issues as it is if an adolescent/young adult male has mental/emotional health issues, and vice versa.

[7Wannabe5]

@IlliniDave:

Agree.

[niemand]

Not sure if anyone’s read about (maybe even watched or attended in person) the recent “duel” between Peterson and Zizek?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... sm-marxism


Looks like it was a bit of an embarrassment....

[pukingRainbows]

To be honest, I don't really trust the article you mentioned given JBP's treatment by the media.
I'll watch it once it's free online.
That's the beauty of this modern age. I can engage with the material directly and just judge for myself. There's no need for an interlocuter giving me their pablum version of it.

[fiby41]

JBP is in rehab. His daughter divorced herself from her husband and was last seen as armcandy of Andrew Tate.

Do not wish to turn this into celebrity gossip and this doesn't negate the content he has put out, but does he practice what he preaches?

I had his video downloaded in which he talk's about marriage and monogamy. Deleted it before hearing this news but listened to it often in the two years I had it to quote
The thing about marriage is you do not get to leave...
You subjugate yourself to logos...
You are all in, this is going to kill you...

[IlliniDave]

The story I heard from Rogan's podcast is that Peterson's wife has been undergoing cancer treatment. He got onto prescribed anti-anxiety meds during the worst of that, went into rehab to go off those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR15EKRlU8U

Dunno anything about his daughter, but I don't think it's unusual for children to not practice what their parents preach.

Edit to add: Here's his daughter's statement on behalf of the family

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