Professor Jordan Peterson

[Brewster McCloud]

Lunatic or what? I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt until I heard him espousing a beef only diet. Even Joe Rogan raised an eybrow at that. I quite like the fact he's around, saying things that no one else tends to do with any credibility, and sometimes he hits the nail on the head, but he's no Christopher Hitchens, is he?

[neil]

Who needs Professor Jordan Peterson when you have Professor Paul?

[Keith Houchen]

Where has  bin?

[BomberPat]

Can't stand him. A vaguely academic veneer on old-fashioned misogyny and the Protestant work ethic. Even as a Psychologist, his ideas range from decades out of date to fundamentally wrong. An academically dishonest charlatan.

 

[SpursRiot2012]

I can't fucking listen to Rogan these days. He's got every twat with a dog in the "culture war" fight on his show and, more often than not, it's somebody bleating on about the "regressive left" or some other bullshit.

[Teedy Kay]

I look at Peterson and the only thing that comes to mind is;

"At least he's not an outright cunt like Milo"

There are some fucking idiots out there at the moment, Shapiro is a dick, Lauren Southern is a melt and that whole circus of anti left wing youtubing for easy cash are idiotic.

Peterson at least tries his hardest to distance himself from the right, but he's clearly doing what he's doing for simple book sales and YouTube money, shilling is wiles to the right he tries so hard to keep at arm's length.

[Brewster McCloud]

9 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Can't stand him. A vaguely academic veneer on old-fashioned misogyny and the Protestant work ethic. Even as a Psychologist, his ideas range from decades out of date to fundamentally wrong. An academically dishonest charlatan.

 

I wouldn't go that far! He clearly does good work as a psychologist and has academic credibility. The numerous accounts from his patients of how much he helped them attest to that. It's when he steps out of his field of expertise that I think he runs into trouble and sounds like a bit of a weirdo, particularly his daft opinions about evolution/Christianity and lobsters. He uses statistics to back up his claims, which is a good thing, but then he'll say something profoundly stupid like "women have never been oppressed" before tying himself in knots trying to defend it. 

He's the kind of person I like listening to, even though I disagree with him about a lot of things, much like the Hitchens brothers and Jonathan Meades. Which of his ideas do you consider fundamentally wrong? Not having a go, or advocating for him, just curious.

[Brewster McCloud]

10 hours ago, SpursRiot2012 said:

I can't fucking listen to Rogan these days. He's got every twat with a dog in the "culture war" fight on his show and, more often than not, it's somebody bleating on about the "regressive left" or some other bullshit.

Rogan can be guilty of pandering to the "alt-right", but he's also capable of challenging people with extreme views. He's not the swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist he used to be. When he talked to Peterson it wasn't a case of merely nodding along, he was frequently asking him to explain himself and being sceptical about some of Peterson's more out there ideas. Rogan's fine when he's got someone with credibility on his show (great episode with Jon Ronson, for example) but he's rubbish when it's just one of his comedian mates and they try to be edgy and oh-so-daringly non-pc. 

[Dead Mike]

Peterson is a genius, tapped into that sweet incel market. Theatres packed with fragile white blokes with persecution complexes. 'Wanna know how to really trigger those snowflakes? Wear one of my t-shirts!'

[Brewster McCloud]

Well, better them going to theatres rather than mowing down pedestrians in vans, eh? If they do actually listen to him and follow his 12 commandments, then they're less likely to be hateful. He's trying to cure their persecution complexes, not inflame them, obviously. It's a pity a vocal minority of his supporters get all the attention, a bit like the unsavoury element in the ska fanbase. 

[BomberPat]

The problem with "oh, he's not as bad as Milo" or "he's not alt-right, it's just that his supporters are" is that the academic credibility he lends some of his statements (the glorified self-help book) is also reflected on to the rest - so when his readers think, "well, he was right about some of the advice he gave me", then it stands to reason that maybe he's right when he says that the rise of feminism and rejection of Christianity are killing western culture. It's not possible to separate "good psychologist" (debatable) from "right wing provocateur" in his public image when he's actively courting a specific audience, and using the reputation of the former to lend credibility to the latter.

And I don't buy the argument that he's not consciously associating himself with the right wing anyway. He's smart enough to know exactly what he's doing. And you give up any right to claim that you're not courting the "alt-right" the moment you start re-Tweeting Milo, and banging on about "professional victims" and "cultural Marxism".

As for academic dishonesty - he's Tweeted essays about erasure of POC in Medieval Europe, with a line taken completely out of context to support his argument (that European history is almost exclusively the history of white men), when the essay in question says the complete opposite. He knows that the vast majority of people will read the Tweet, but not bother with the essay. And he's not stupid enough to do so unknowingly - to me, that's academic dishonesty.

In terms of being outdated as a Psychologist - one of the things that brought him to public attention was his lectures on Bible studies, and on symbolism in the Bible. They're full of Jungian and pseudo-Freudian arguments that haven't been accepted as part of mainstream Psychology for decades. 

Aside from the lobster debacle, he once claimed that the common usage of intertwined serpents as a symbol in ancient cultures was evidence of a genetic memory of the DNA spiral - that's harkening back to the most mystical nonsense of Jung, and to 19th Century theosophy and occultism, with absolutely no basis in scientific thought or in folklore or anthropology (plenty has been written about the use of snakes as religious or cultural totems without reference to hypothetical race memory). It's archaic, pseudo-religious nonsense, and astounding to hear it from someone held up as a leading public intellectual.

 

He did an interview recently with The Idler magazine - I was disappointed, as it was incredibly pandering, when in previous issues they'd been somewhat critical of him. It was this interview that made me realise that his entire philosophy was just the Protestant Work Ethic dressed up in academic language, and trying to argue that it was a universal truth. During the interview, the Marxist notion that people freed from the trappings of work-as-toil would have more free time to take on more fulfilling endeavours - write poetry, create art, whatever it is they want to do. Peterson (rightly) pointed out that it was a somewhat bourgeois, classist notion to assume that's what everyone ultimately wanted to do, but then insisted that the majority of people only find value through work, and that creative people are a rare exception. This is utter bollocks, backed up by no evidence.

[The Gaffer]

He seems to be the commander in chief for all these paranoid wankers who spend all day calling everyone a pussy on the internet but then throw a big, girly fit as soon as they wake up in the morning because they feel the wider world doesn't accept the balls in between their legs anymore. 

I'm not sure did he ask for Damien Sandow's old gimmick, but he has it now. 

[David]

Just another interesting dude as far as I'm concerned. I don't buy into what he's selling, but he's interesting nonetheless.

[Carbomb]

52 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Aside from the lobster debacle, he once claimed that the common usage of intertwined serpents as a symbol in ancient cultures was evidence of a genetic memory of the DNA spiral - that's harkening back to the most mystical nonsense of Jung, and to 19th Century theosophy and occultism, with absolutely no basis in scientific thought or in folklore or anthropology (plenty has been written about the use of snakes as religious or cultural totems without reference to hypothetical race memory). It's archaic, pseudo-religious nonsense, and astounding to hear it from someone held up as a leading public intellectual.

It's also completely wrong. The intertwined serpents symbol is frequently confused with the Caduceus, the symbol for medicine, which is one single serpent wrapped around a rod. The intertwined serpents are Hermes' aegis, and symbolise communications, hence why it's been used in military Signals units.

[Factotum]

I disagree with him on almost everything, but I find him interesting.

My main issue is those who interview him are not clever enough to really take him on. The Cathy Newman interview on Channel 4 is a perfect example of someone who wanted to challenge him but he was able to make her look stupid because she was peddling stuff that he could easily get around. Bomber Pat seems to have more knowledge of him than the majority of journos who seem to think that by shouting at him 'IS A TRANSGENDER WOMAN NOT A WOMAN?!!!' is what constitutes as challenging him, when really it just gives him a gift to talk around them.

I hate Ben Shapiro though. That guy is awful