#24

Or could it be that his more recent publications have similar rigour and merit, but they don’t square with the way you see the world?

#25

Actually could be expert in one field starts to think he’s great at everything else

He’s a good linguist, and is good at making complex things readable, but I get a weird disconnected vibe from him lately (not sure about his Enlightenment fanboying, bit close to Facts ‘n’ Logic). He’s not in the same league as Peterson et al by any means, but it’s disappointing when someone you rated starts to fall off

Basically I don’t need him to show me how to see the world, just to be an expert in word and brains

tl;dr I preferred his earlier stuff

#26

Yeah I hear that. Especially with regards to Peterson whose central project it seems is to combine psychology, sociology, biology, neurology, theology, philosophy and psychoanalysis etc. into One Big Explanation For Absolutely Everything. In a way it’s quite admirable seeing someone trying to take it on, although it’s absolutely and totally doomed to failure. It’s quite funny too seeing as on one of the videos I watched he’s going on about the Tower Of Babel as a warning against, I dunno, government overreach or something. Perhaps he should watch it back.

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#27

Kind of admire Chomsky as a counter-example to that. He does two things, linguistics and politics and that’s it (and he’s retired from the former). Even in linguistics, he only really did syntax and acquisition, dgaf about anything else. He’s a more credible specialist as a result I think (and he does generally know what he’s talking about)

The Tower of Babel was actually the leading theory in historical linguistics until 19th century sometime! Very clever people supporting the traditional religious answer in totally wrong shocker

#28

One of the cruelest tricks ever played by media twats on twitter is somehow convincing people to care about the intricacies of their colleagues’ lives and works and beliefs. That goes for the Chapo bros and Matt Zarb Cousin just as much as for Hugo Rifkind or whoever

#29

They all remind me of them fellas who sniff My Little Ponies.

Just castrate the lot of 'em and it’ll be fine.

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#30

Well that was unexpected

(Like Jim Jeffries, his bit about taking his disabled friend to a brothel was ace)

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#31

I had exactly the same gay wedding cake argument with my former housemate but unlike Peterson he didn’t accept it, went on for about an hour, I ended up losing my cool shouting at him and slamming my door (one for the flip out thread), which was annoying because it allows him to write me off as irrational in the face of his rubbish argument

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#32

Classic hot take by The Lobster King here

#33

the world is out of balance when “literally an apple” is not regarded as equivalent to “literally an orange”

- very, very intelligent man

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#34

tbf I don’t have an issue with Peterson in this territory. He lays down quite a good question with regards to it being easier to identify “when the right are going too far” vs “when the left are going too far” (although I don’t agree with his conclusion on it so far).

I personally get a bit spooked by people calling themselves communists and knocking the hammer and sickle about myself.

#35

The Nazi’s literally rounded up and executed members of Germany’s communist party and numerous other socialists and social democrats during their ascent to power. Conflating the two the way he’s done is entirely nonsensical.

There are some genuine Marxist Leninist still, and I’d agree that it’s wise not to ignore the terror visited by regimes with that particular ideology, but they are generally the minority among the even the far-left.

#36

Not entirely. I mean - who ended up in the gulag?

Yes it seems that way to me, but I don’t think it should be left unchallenged. To bring this back to Ash Sarkar I’ve heard her articulate what she in particular means by communism (I think) and she seems to talk about it with regards to technological development and what that means for societal structure in future etc.

#37

hmmm…idk. i mean there’s a lot of historical context we’re missing out if we’re going to say nazism and communism are as bad as each other.

#38

Good job I’m not saying that then. But it isn’t “entirely nonsensical” (quote) to point out a correlation between tyrannical regimes who rounded up and executed/imprisoned political opponents during the 20th century. You can argue about the distinctions between them, of course, but it’s not a parallel which is absent of sense.

#39

i wasn’t saying you were saying that geoff! but that’s obviously what peterson is saying here.

he’s pushing standard horseshoe theory innit.

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#40

I mean yes both Hitler and Stalin jailed what they saw as political dissidents but I would argue conflating even Marxist-Leninism with national socialism is a mistake and in my opinion it’s one Jordan Peterson makes deliberately.

Marxist Leninism was based on the idea of vanguardism, essentially members of the proletariat who through their advanced political understanding would lead the revolution. However what we saw time and time again what actually happened the vanguard became a new political class in and of themselves which lead to the forms of authoritarianism and cult of personality we’re by now all familiar with.

By contrast Nazism is by definition an authoritarian dictatorship based upon rapid militarization, nationalism and evolutionary humanism/scientific racism.

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#41

imagine thinking even for a second that a conspiracy theory based around ideologically seducing the public with dense postmodern theory might actually be feasible

#42

The “out of balance” bit is the most essential part of that tweet tbh. Imagine the blinkers you’d have to be equipped with to look at the world today and believe we’re skewing too far to the left.

#43

Yes this is one of the central flaws with Peterson in that he is far more relaxed about indicators of far right extremism than he is about far left extremism. Which suggests to me he’s looking out at a world that bears very little commonality to the one I look out at.