Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?
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One of my favorite examples of Jordan Peterson stupidity is when he was lecturing about some ancient civilization artwork that showed two serpent creatures creating humanity. He said that because the snakes were drawn in a double helix that this ancient civilization knew about and wanted to represent DNA.
Snakes coil around one another in a double helix when they mate. The snake creatures in the art were just fucking.
Source is at 1:15:39 in this vid: https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=MPWip62wkrMX_bP7
Stuff like this is why I will never understand people following him. Like, I get it. It’s the bigotry. And when it comes to that, nothing else matters. I understand it on paper.
But at the same time… why? When he’s constantly wrong, or when they have to constantly lie about the things he says, why keep listening to him? Why are they like this?
Because he ‘sounds’ smart, so they latch on to that as their plausible legitimacy as to why what he says must be true.
When he talks/writes, he says a lot of words that communicate nothing. You have no idea what his point is.
Which is a kind of superpower that makes him hard to criticize. Whenever he commits to a fact or something, that’s easy to disprove, and people do it all the time. But, when he just says something about cultural marxism or whatever, it’s so hard to unpack what he’s actually saying that it’s hard to prove he’s wrong.
That lets his followers say that he’s so smart that even the leftist intellectuals can’t take him down. Obviously they don’t understand what he’s saying either, but that doesn’t matter. It lets them adore him as some kind of intellectual hero.
Peterson’s got the act of a public intellectual down pat. He’s never seen without a suit or with a smile, he has a distinguished haircut and a trimmed beard. He shows no sense of humour and uses big sciencey-sounding words.
That lets him have a symbiotic relationship with incels. He makes money selling them things like books, they get to point to a “public intellectual” who’s on their side.
He gish gallops word salads.
But not in an obvious way like say Ben Shapiro. He does it using words that sound plausibly scientificalish.
I just want someone to say to him “So, they say when you truly understand something, you can break it down so that other people can understand it. So, break down what ‘cultural marxism’ is so that one of these poor young men you worry so much about can understand what you mean”.
I’m sure he’d try to deflect, try to gallop, try something. But, I would bet that a good interviewer, just keeping him focused on those two words, would show he has no idea what he’s talking about.
Oh I know this one, it’s called being “Not Even Wrong”
I don’t think so. Not even wrong is for something where you can understand what they’re saying, but what they’re saying is so nonsensical that it’s not even wrong. Peterson instead uses words that seem like they could belong together but that are borrowed from many different fields to end up with something that sounds like it could plausibly mean something if you could unpack the words he’s using, for example, in a debate he said this: “We lose the metaphorical substrate of our ethos.”
That’s not “not even wrong”, it’s just words that have never been used in that order by anyone else, so they could essentially mean anything. Unless you can get him to explain what he means by those words, you can’t say that he’s wrong. But, he’s using those words to deliberately obfuscate what he’s saying, and if you ask him to explain what it means, he’ll just drive the conversation somewhere else.
I can easily deduce from his inability to elaborate, that he has no idea what he means and likes those words together.
Don’t forget the time he wanted to quit benzos to show how masculine he was. His doctors wanted to taper him down so his brain didn’t fry (benzo addiction alters brain chemistry and withdrawal can seriously screw you up or kill you if you stop), but trying to taper off over several years wasn’t manly and powerful. So he flew to Russia and got a few potentially sketchy doctors to put him in a medical coma for a month, and that’s part of why he’s so fucked up now.
Oh, or the part where his daughter convinced him to only ever eat red meat, and literally nothing else.
Even though facing the road to recovery like a man is manlier than an easy band-aid fix where you go nap-nap for a little bit and wake up crazy, but unaddicted.
Thanks for connecting the dots for my dumb ass - it was on the tip of my frontal lobe but I just couldn’t quite make it…
Lobster Peterson: “The way these snakes are drawn in resemblance to the structure of DNA, it is evident that ancient civilizations were familiar with the concept of DNA.”
Bro, they fucking
I love that channel. It’s one of the best channels I’ve discovered all year. A perfect balance of entertainment with deep dives into current hot topics. It’s like John Oliver but triple the length and even more sarcasm.
Really? He’s on the “Ancient Super Humans were Super Geniuses!” pack? I expected him to have a higher level of research than fucking Spirit Science, but naw.
Hell even if they had ladder double helixes the most reasonable explanation would be a laborer did some psychedelics and either blew a priest’s mind with it or decided to incorporate the thing that blew their mind into some detailed work. It’s not difficult structure to imagine while tripping and ancient people sure did trip from time to time.
In general, assume ancient people were on drugs before you assume ancient people had knowledge of the complex structures they didn’t have the tools to observe.
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To be fair, the DNA Helix as we understand it is literally based on an acid trip had by some scientists
Is he the guy that went to Russia for coma treatment?
I see a lot of people here talking about how unpersuasive his arguments are. So I think this misses the real issue at hand. Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening. If anything it will impower in-group type thinking. It’s much more important that we tackle these problems at their source: combat the emotional abandonment of young men
goes out to adopt 1,000 young men
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You can’t solve emotional needs with logic
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You’re trying to tackle the problem at the problem rather than prevent it all together. Peterson is a symptom not the real issue
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Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening.
There really isn’t a way to stop this from happening, short of a complete shake up of American culture and government. The only reason young men gravitate towards JP is because he is telling them what they want to hear.
For the first time in American society, young white men with degrees are no longer guaranteed the middle class life they have always been told they deserve. Instead of realizing that that has been the status quo for literally every other person in the country, and that the system is inherently corrupt…
They are told that they should feel angry, they are told they need to fight to maintain the status quo and domination of power. Jordan Peterson isn’t combating the emotional abandoment of men, he’s stoking it. His only care is to maintain the social norms racial and sexual supremacy.
Also… I don’t buy that young men have been emotionally abandoned, at least not moreso than any other time in history. Just compared to 30 years ago when I was a kid, men now a days have a plethora of ways to connecting to people, or seeking help.
It’s the worst kind of job. Taking advantage of developing teens and their self-issues to make money like that.
How did you steal my alt account? I thought I was the only dipshit on here.
I used to like him. I fell for the crap. To my 16 year old brain what he said made a lot of sense. He had a handful of good points, and it made me believe the rest of the shit he peddled.
I see him now, I look back on how I hung onto his words like a lost lamb, and I can only facepalm.
I realised that the only thing he is good at is marketing, not psychology…
Being 16 is the best excuse you could have for believing anything that cretin says. You’re good bro.
It’s understandable - back in the day, he had some reasonable points and an academic veneer. If course, what he was saying tended to have a strong bias, and didn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s hard to fault a 16 year old looking for guidance for falling for it. Hindsight is 20 20 - particularly when the negative tendencies ratcheted up rapidly over time.
Since his Russian benzo coma (remember, kids - clean your room and don’t criticise others or systemic issues unless your life is perfect… pay no attention to my crippling addiction as I peddle that advice), things took a hard turn. I honestly think he suffered non-trivial brain damage. He’s far more erratic, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (while trying to sell “traditional” masculinity, his takes have lost their academic veneer and are self-evidently stupid. There’s a reason he may be stripped of his accreditation.
TL;DR: Peterson went from being a pseudo-intellectual preacher to a lolcow, and (to me) the benzo coma seems to have been the catalyst for that shift.
I didn’t know about the benzo thing. And that was the advice from him I appreciated; the clean your room, etc.
I didn’t realise he was a walking blackout the entire time.
And I think his as following grew, so did his ego, and he began to think he knew way more than he actually did.
Ah well. An oversized ego is as bad as a termite infestation - if you let it grow it’ll eventually make things collapse…
Yeah - it speaks to his long-term lack of principles and integrity, but that’s not on you as a teenager. I’m just glad you grew from it, acknowledged when you were wrong, and grew from it - that’s no easy thing to do.
I’m still pissed that because he badly quotes and misinterprets Jung all the time, people assume Jung is bullshit by association.
I mean a lot of Jungs work is sorta bullshit.
I did what I did for everything, and I took it with a grain of salt. This had the unfortunate side effect of just not following others and keeping up with the latest trends. Oh well, I feel happier than ever before
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But by that logic, there’s a terrifying number of adults who also shouldn’t vote.
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And we keep that in check how? I ask because I’ve never seen it done successfully and sustainably - even well intentioned autocracies lead to terrible outcomes in pretty short order.
I’ll remind you that the GOP not only exists, but is the party of choice for a little under half of voters - MTG, DeSantis, Trump, Boebert…
He is such a disappointment to me. Early Peterson was just a clinical psychologist who actually gave a shit about men’s mental health. You could filter out his religion and actually get something out of it. Then he turned into… something else.
I think this is right. I always thought of him (when I thought of him at all) as a mostly apolitical self-help guy, then I noticed that he’d become a kind of villain for the left so I looked into it and he really does seem to have gone off the rails at some point.
There’s some kind of radicalizing feedback cycle at work with guys like Peterson --to name only one prominent example-- and I’m not sure that it’s simply that they were always assholes to begin with. You see a similar dynamic with Elon Musk; it’s almost like they take personal offense at any criticism and instead of thinking about it, they just double down.
Some of it is just inherent to being rewarded for certain things. You don’t have to consciously choose to go that way, but whenever you stray that direction you get social and financial feedback.
Yes, around a decade (or a bit more) ago I also found him interesting, based on a few short youtube videos or things I’ve read. Was never a fan, but as some other comments mentioned, young men were/are looking for these types of belonging and guidance.
Then I of course grew up, formed my own opinions of the world, and the same time he went further and further to the unhinged side, so yi can’t take him seriously anymore.
He’s been oppressed by the soviet propaganda posters he hangs inside his house. You can’t just take those things down! You must remember!
Never take advice on personal responsibility from a guy who intentionally put himself in a coma to avoid taking responsibility for his addiction to a narcotic with zero medicinal properties.
He’s so smart and articulate! Yeah, if you ate lead paint chips as a kid, or decided that huffing glue as a past time was a great idea.
Why is it that the cringiest fucking weebs like this guy? Does the suit give him some sort of weird dominion over them? These losers should be case and fucking point as to why you need Critical Thinking classes in schools…and it should also fucking highlight why Republicans are desperately trying to make public schools systematically dumber. A generation of highly educated people is detrimental to the conservative ideology (unless your making literally millions of $$$).
A lack of visible positive role models is a big part of it. When nobody else wants to engage with isolated and directionless young white men, people like Peterson will fill the vacuum. Couple that with amoral algorithms of social media generating engagement at any cost, and they soon have an audience.
Ensuring everyone has opportunities and and a sense of inclusion would go a lot further than just trying to teach everyone to recognise false shepherds. That’s just treating the symptom and not the cause, and would likely end up with them falling prey to another wolf with a better sheepskin.
Oh, I don’t disagree. There’s many systemic failures that have to occur for this to happen. YouTube thankfully has gone through efforts to remove it’s radicalization issue, so hopefully we’ll start to see it slow down or peter out over the next decade or so. However, I’m worried that the damage is already done.
Tell me one thing he says (other than his religious takes or takes on trans) that you disagree with. I am curious why people would be against his statements as his ‘clean your room’ style is very general
I also believe nobody knows what he teaches and likes to circlejerk against him
Tell me one thing he says (other than his religious takes or takes on trans) that you disagree with.
I mean, that’s like saying “tell me one thing Hitler says (other than racism and politics) that you disagree with”…
His “teachings” are completely entangled with religion and culturally conservative dogma. This aspect of his character isn’t really separable from his teachings or his actions.
To be honest, his actual “philosophy” is just a bunch of word salad that individuals can gleem meaning from when it suits them.
Except hitler is known for his politics and racism. The meme was about mens health and how he is a bad resource for that view. I think you can dissect that from his philosophy and religious teachings.
Except hitler is known for his politics and racism.
And Jordan Peterson isn’t famous for his anti-trans dogma, or crazy fusion of religion and “philosophy”?
The meme was about mens health and how he is a bad resource for that view.
And I am staying that his religious and anti-trans attitude is a key reason of why he is a bad resource for that view. His views of religion and trans people are a inseparable part of his world view.
Yeah JBP is famous outside of his mentor crowd for different reasons. Some people flock to him for guidance, and others look at his other takes and judge him as a whole. It would be akin to having a conversation about good leadership skills and bringing up Hitler as a good model for using effective communication skills for uniting his base regardless of the outcome. I am not talking about Hitlers history of racism or politics.
I just want you to acknowledge that many people dont come to JBP for his stance on religion or trans issues. They come for a fatherly role model. I want you to criticize that not his stance on whatever philosophical problem because they can be seperated. If you can show me an example where it needs to be together then that is acceptable.
I just want you to acknowledge that many people dont come to JBP for his stance on religion or trans issues.
That’s kinda how propaganda works… Even if you don’t come for the trans and religion dogma, you will be exposed to it.
Hitler as a good model for using effective communication skills for uniting his base regardless of the outcome.
Lol, it’s the same model… Invent a boogie man, lie, cheat, steal, and hurl abuse at those who oppose you. Yes, it would be like bringing up hitlers “leadership skill”. But, then ignoring the reality of what that “leadership” really entailed.
show me an example where it needs to be together then that is acceptable.
You can’t separate the two because he does not separate them. His philosophy leads him to believe in, and justify his own dogmatic views.
This is not a “separate the art from the artist” as this person’s art is getting people to embody his own philosophy.
Thats not how propoganda works. Im asking you to formulate an opinion on one subject matter. I can talk about the bible on how it is the most important piece of literature of all time and not be indoctrinated.
You can take a quote of his, show me that it is both intended to bolster his dogmatic philosophy while also empowering young men. That would be an acceptable example. If you can show me that he does this I will give this to you.
Women wear make up ONLY to signal sexual arousal. Healthy women want kids (so do unhealthy women; healthy women can also want kids). “Sorry, not beautiful” about a woman. Telling people on Twitter to off themselves.
The dude is in trouble for calling himself a neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist ffs. I mean, do I need to go on? Or do you think it’s fair to say that his religious and trans arguments aren’t the only issues he’s currently facing removal of his licensure over?
This has nothing to do with empowering young men.
Saying that women only do things to serve or benefit men doesn’t empower young men? That is literally telling young men that women are subservient to them…
Who exactly is stealing the power away from these young men? And what exactly are they taking away?
Can you give us a example of how JP actually empowers men?
Saying that women only do things to serve or benefit men doesn’t empower young men
I have never heard JBP say this. I have heard him say that agreeable people tend to be stepped on and that women tend to be agreeable… but thats not the same thing.
Dont turn this on me. I asked if you could provide an example of how he isnt effective at empowering young men(which is the point of this meme). You cant reverse uno and ask me the same question
have never heard JBP say this.
I mean you asked for a quote and someone provided a quote. You can look up the quote and find articles about it.
It’s just one of the misogynistic lies he spews on the regular. I believe in the same interview he stated that high heels were invented to lengthen the legs of women to make them more attractive… In reality high heels were first worn by men to keep shit from getting in their shoes.
I have heard him say that agreeable people tend to be stepped on and that women tend to be agreeable… but thats not the same thing.
Lol, so much better… It’s your fault you are being stepped on, not the generations of oppression and systemic disenfranchisement. Does that apply to everyone? Is he saying that Africans were just to agreeable so we had to enslave them… Broken as logic.
asked if you could provide an example of how he isnt effective at empowering young men
Yes, I’m going to first prove God doesn’t exist, then I will work on proving the negative with JP … You can’t prove a negative my dude. If you are making the claim that he empowers young men, it’s up to you to provide the evidence that proves it.
If you are making the claim that he empowers young men, it’s up to you to provide the evidence that proves it.
Im just going to respond to this because im kinda over this. The claim was initially made by the meme. I am questioning this, yet you are here asking me for proof of the contrary.
This comment has nothing to do with your original comment, but if you need me to tie together how his misogyny hurts young men that follow him we can go over that
Show me an example of misogyny, please
Show me you can read my first comment, please.
That wasnt in respnse to what I said though. You just started spewing misogyny stuff
“The cure for that is enforced monogamy.”
About Alek Minassian, a man accused of killing six people after running them over with a van in Toronto: “He was angry at God because women were rejecting him. The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”
Oh, some incel murdered 6 people, must of been a woman’s fault somehow…
Is defending a literal misogynist terror attack enough evidence for you?
Send link if you can
Without writing a thesis and deepdiving into his rhetoric - He’s not a philosopher, yet often makes references to well known philosophical platitudes from people like Gödel in efforts to argue conservative and religious viewpoints. For example: Argument on Existence of God Notice how he takes a common sense observation, and then applies it to an idea. That’s okay, your supposed to do that. My issue with him is that he then makes another assumption, then another…then another. And soon, he’s making conclusions built upon a shaky bridge of assumptions that lead back to a small kernel of actual wisdom.
If your paying attention to him, it’s very similar to how conspiracy theories are created, you take a solid kernel of truth or seed of wisdom that you can use to anchor the idea…to someone that doesn’t know better, that’s all they need to believe everything else.
Jordan Peterson is not always wrong, I think he makes genuine points on some subjects when it’s based on his actual areas of expertise, but he’s sort of a smart sounding jack-of-all-trades when it comes to anything else. For example, he’s a psychologist…why did he come up with an all/mostly-meat diet? Because it worked in a niche case with his daughter? It’s entirely anecdotal, not researched, divergent from common sense dietary advice, and frankly dangerous.
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I said dont give a religious example as that is open to much criticism. I am talking in reference to his points on self-improvement and how everyone here believes they should be ignored. Please give an example on that.
I gave you an example of his argument style that I have issues with, not specifically an argument about religion that I disagree with. I noticed that a lot of his arguments try to use a strong basis on moral or objective reasoning and then provide flimsy but intellectually sounded deduction to stretch further and further towards his ultimate objective. I’ve given an example of it, and technically a second in regards to his promoted dietary practices. Do with them what you will. :)
This kind of post is what I was hoping to leave behind with Reddit.
JP fan spotted
I just want to say that if you are/were a young man, and found some value in some of what this guy was saying to you…thats’s OK. Don’t feel bad, or embarrassed or mad at yourself or whatever. We are all learning all the time, and doubly so when we’re young. Never think that you can’t take what is useful and reject what isn’t. Fuck knows there is plenty to reject about what this dude says!
I don’t know if it’s a new trend or something, but lots of people have something interesting to say, and say lots of hogwash besides and everyone gobbles it all up including the hogwash. You don’t have to go all in when reading someone’s work. For example, I read Freud and it was quite interesting. Most of it was horseshit (although historically interesting), but he still made the point that we don’t do all that we do consciously , which was hugely important.
Ideas and memes (in the original sense) are there to be examined and weighed against one another, not followed blindly.
So Petersen (I’m not really sure who that is), why not, he might have some salient points, even though he seems to be a controversial figure, apparently rightly so.
I’d probably say Andrew Tate is closer to that.
I get that Gus Fring look every time I hear “Hey, have you heard of Jordan Petersen? Let me show you one of his videos”
Just show them the “up yours woke moralists (…) I’d rather die than delete my tweet” video.
If that’s not enough to out him as a lolcow, whose brain was damaged by the Russian coma that was induced to get him past his benzo addiction (while he was peddling self-help books telling people not to criticise external issues until their house is in order), there’s little hope for whoever you’re talking to.
Thank fuck I’m 38.
Don’t forget a mountain of benzos.
Att least before his drug auxin, he wasn’t that bad and there were some alright takeaways between the lines.
Now it’s just sick ramblings from a diseased man.
