Jordan Peterson is not an evolutionary biologist.

"Lobster boy" is an appellation that people have stuck to Peterson since he has said that humans are basically lobsters. A species, I might add, that communicates with one another by pissing on fellow members of the species.

Which shows how little you understand the issues. Because most lefties don't hate Peterson, they just think that he's an addled twat who shouldn't be given the time of day. The same way that nobody should take Gwyneth Paltrow's advice when it comes to sticking things in their vagina. Or to put it another way, and as something with which you and can both agree on, regardless of what we might think of the show, calling Jordan Peterson a "serious thinker" is identical to calling Lower Decks "serious Star Trek." Nobody in their right mind should say that, just as no one in their right mind should say that Peterson is a "serious thinker." He's not.

You should have. Because then we could have had a serious discussion about him, and the issues, and we both might have learned something.

I am certain that he holds views that I don't disagree with. I don't dislike him because I happen to disagree with him about things, I dislike him because he is objectively wrong about many of the things that he says, and refuses to admit that he's wrong.

Because there are times when someone should raise questions about a person, based on who supports them. If you found out that your employer was able to get his start in business because they got help from Harvey Weinstein of Jeffery Epstein, wouldn't you look at them a little askance? Sure, they might not have known that they were getting help from a rapist, but they had have known that there was something a little off about the guy, right? I mean, ~10 years ago, one of my neighbors got arrested by the police for trying to sell his underage daughter on the internet. I didn't know the guy, had only spoken to him once, and rarely ever saw him, but when I found out what happened to him, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Oh, that explains why he seemed so creepy to me." Until they abandoned the board, both Tuttle and Paladin were willing to defend anything and everything that Trump did. To your credit, you have not, even if you haven't objected to his actions as much as I think that you should. Both Tuttle and Paladin have slobbered over Peterson as much as they have Trump. To me, that raises a lot of questions about all of them. It is one thing to point to a despicable person, like say, Weinstein, and point out that he did produce some good movies, despite being a hideous human being. It's quite another thing to say that the movies Weinstein is responsible for outweigh him being a rapist. I mean, I love some of the movies that he was involved with, but if we never got Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back because he went to jail, I'm cool with that. Fun fact: There are some lefty-types who have said that the kind of art a person creates outweighs the horrible actions that a person might do in their life, and few people talk about this. Norman Mailer rather famously defended a murderer in court, by saying that the novels the guy wrote were so good that it didn't matter if he killed people or not. That's some seriously fucked up shit. Funny how few people on either side of the political spectrum talk about that.

Then you should have said that. Because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, nobody takes Stalinism/Leninism seriously any more. The only people who cite that are idiots, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they might fall on. Even discussing Marxism is questionable. I mean, if you went to a doctor, and the only medical book he referenced was one written in the 19th Century, you'd think that was some fucked up shit, right? I mean, sure, the book is right when it says that cancer is serious and it can kill you, but we've figured out all kinds of things about the disease in the centuries since then, and while I might not have a problem with such a doctor treating me for a cut (though I probably would, since germ theory didn't really catch hold in the US until the 20th Century, despite the first works on it being published at about the same time Marx started publishing), I'd damn sure stay the fuck away from the guy if I had any form of cancer. Discussions about economics written before things like the explosion of mass-production and the advent of automation, are akin to talking about Faster-Than-Light travel using only Newtonian Physics. There's a few elements that apply, but if you're not going to include the work of Einstein and Quantum Mechanics, you're not going to come up with anything meaningful at all.

Okay @The Night Funky. I took a little deeper dive into this. I understand what he's saying about cultural Marxism. He's not exactly right. A lot of professors in non scientific fields are left leaning. I encountered that in my own studies. I also encountered right leaning professors as well. Where they mostly agree is not so much human influenced climate change, but rather anthropology and human evolution. None of that has anything to do with JP, but it's just a point I wanted to make. I think, and I could be wrong, , is that men are taught to be tough. "We need to man up" so to speak. Psychologically speaking, if we have something that is bothering us, we need to face it head on (Read: in increments) rather than avoid them. For example; I am shitty with talking to girls. He suggests taking steps to the point where I can successfully talk to girls. I think we all agree with that. I think the problem comes is when he appliers to other doctrines. The main point is that, it's almost a Randian idea about selflessness, you must fix yourself before you can fix others or others. In that sense, then yes, I am a Randite. Selfishness is a virtue.

Furthermore; let's talk about transgenderism or being gay. Who are you to say it's not a psychological condition? I don't think it is entirely. I think it's a combination of genetics and psychology, but if I say the latter, I'm labeled homophobic or what not. We obviously don't know everything there is to know about the brain,. I think it's fair to say we don't entirely know what we don't know about the brain and that's the perspective I think Jordon Peterson might be coming from in that regard. That's also why I think he pushes back on the doctrine or dogma of the "science'. Because he thinks it's not a tested science like the field he's in.

And a lot of professors in scientific fields are also left-leaning. What's your point? "Cultural Marxism" is a phrase coined to scare people away from the idea of things like equal rights and that the US shouldn't interfere in the internal politics of other nations if those nations decide to adopt policies that we don't agree with.

Actually, the idea of fixing yourself before you can fix others goes back to Buddhism (which pre-dates Jesus saying that if one wishes to remove the mote in his neighbor's eye, he must first remove the log in his own), if not before that. It's also a bit simplistic. For example, say my friend needs $50 to fix their car, and I need $100 to fix my lawnmower. I've got $50, and I can, in theory, save up another $50 in a couple of weeks to fix my lawnmower, but if I give my friend the $50 they need to fix their car, it'll take me a month and a half to fix my lawnmower. What should I do? Selfishness says that I should fix my lawnmower. What am I going to do? I'm going to give the $50 to my friend so that they can fix their car, that way they don't lose their job. Maybe my friend will pay me back, maybe they'll help me out in other ways (such as giving me a ride when I need one), maybe they won't. In either case, by giving my friend the money, I can solve a problem. Sure, I can't solve my own problem, but at least I can help out someone else so that they can enjoy life a little better.

First and foremost, what's the harm in being gay or transgender? Forget what the cause might be, what is the problem with it? Neither situation is akin to being addicted to something like heroin where one can die of an overdose. Next, clinical psychology is not "tested science" the way that something like physics is. For one thing, certain types of experiments that could answer definitive questions are impossible to perform from both moral and legal standpoints (not to mention impossible). For example, if you want to demonstrate that beating a child daily is a bad idea, you can't test this in a lab. The best you can hope to do is analyze accounts of children who've had to endure such things and infer certain conclusions. If you do a good job of gathering the evidence (and that might be difficult to come by), you might be able to come up with a solid conclusion, but that still doesn't mean that it will be applicable in every case, or that you'll be able to successfully ascertain why it is true in some cases and not others.

We don't even have to go to such an extreme to see this. Lots of people suffer from depression, and even people who present the same forms of depression can't be successfully treated using the same methods. For some, drugs might work, for others, therapy works, and for others, nothing that we know works. We don't understand why this is the case. Heck, I was reading a piece the other day that suggested some forms of depression may not actually be a condition, but is a side-effect of something else entirely. I'm not bagging on psychology, I'm just trying to point out that it isn't a hard science, and won't be for some time.

Most people don't realize this, but ad companies, and tech companies like Facebook and Twitter, all have highly degreed psychologists on staff. They're not there to help the employees who have emotional problems, they're there in order for the companies to make their ad campaigns more effective. How many times have you been on a site like Facebook and it served up an ad for something that you had absolutely no interest in? The psychologists who work for Facebook would tell you that they're hugely successful at what they do and can precisely target ads to exactly the right people to ensure a sale. That's not true at all. They believe that, and there are, indeed, times when they can do that, but the bulk of the time, it isn't what happens. Yet, if Peterson was right about clinical psychology, they'd hit more than they miss. The dirty little secret of advertising is that the bulk of the money is wasted, but the times when you get it right, the pay-off is large enough to cover your expenses and turn a profit.

This, to me, is the crux of the whole issue. I don't care much about people's opinion of the underlying causes. What matters is that these people are not hurting anyone. So why not just let them be? Physical, verbal and/or psychological attacks on them should have no place in our society, at any level or to any degree. As long as someone holds to that and promotes it explicitly, what difference does his or her opinion make on the origin of the situation? But if one's opinion on the origin of the condition causes one to talk or act in a way that is intended to make them feel inferior, unwanted, unwelcome, or otherwise uncomfortable, and/or encourage others to do so, that is what should have no place in our society.

IOW, you're entitled to your opinions (I have no use for thought police), but if your opinions mean you think you can hurt others who aren't doing any harm to anyone, even in subtle, psychological ways, then there is a problem.

Here's where I think it comes from.

The rationale for slavery during the confederacy was that white people have their ("natural") place, black people have their ("natural") place, and everyone is happiest in their place, and when black people "get uppity", and step out of their place, or when whites get all "n---er lover", and step down from their place, it messes up God's natural plan, so you have to pull out the bullwhip, because that cruelty is actually kindness, because you're setting them on the right path.
It's like the Bible's authorization for child abuse on nuclear Hulk steroids.
And to refrain from that cruelty is actually the act of immorality.
They literally warped morality upside down.

The Nazis thought/did similar.
If you refrained from full-throated Jew hate, and ratting out neighbors, you were a dirty traitor, and could get beaten up and killed yourself.

I think that same mentality has trickled down through the generations of bigots.
Not only do you have to be a cruel bully, if you so much as refrain from the cruelty, your tribe turns on you, and bad shit happens.
Even if it's just clique ostracization, most pampered white people are such snowflakes, they can't even handle that shit.

So you've got an even 50-50 mix of genuine sadists, and cowards going on there.

I never said there is a harm in it, but it deserves academic, scientific and psychological study in order to understand it.

And as @Nova has posted about for quite some time now, there have been such studies. Lots of them. And they absolutely say that there is a genetic basis towards people being gay/trans/etc. How can you not know this?

Did I not say that I believed it to be genetic?

You said that there’s not been any studies on it, when there have been any number of studies.

No I didn't. Saying that it deserves study is not the same thing as saying there haven't been an studies on it. I know there have been studies, how else did you think I came to my conclusion?

You're clearly an educated man. Stop debating with a high school freshman.

Translation: we need to keep studying until we get the answers we want!

Get some new material.

What part of I'm agreeing with you do you not get?

Do it better.

So, why do you think that there need to be more studies? What would these studies reveal that we don't already know? Hypothetically, let's say that we can pin it down to a certain set of genes, how is that any more relevant than knowing which set of genes make someone left-handed?

To help people deal with transition. For academic purposes perhaps. For scientific purposes. I don’t know. It would be the same thing as saying, “we know humans evolved from apes, we’re done, nothing else to study.” I mean why wouldn’t you want to learn more about it?

Sure, there's all kinds of reasons why one should want to learn more about it. But Peterson is butthurt over the idea that people want to be referred to by certain terms. This is akin to me being upset that you use the name @Federal Farmer here, rather than the name your parents gave you. Seems kinda stupid, doesn't it?

@spot261 is an actual psychologist/psychiatrist, so he can speak to the subject far better than I can, but my understanding is that Peterson isn't known in the field for his actual work at helping people, but for being a wanker who doesn't like the idea of treating certain people in the LGBTQ+ community with respect. I'm just someone who majored in the subject for a couple of years and never finished his degree. I've kept researching the topic of human psychology, because I find it interesting, so the fact that I've not encountered a serious paper by Peterson shouldn't be a judgement about his work.

Now, you want to talk about a psychologist quite clearly got shafted by the system, you need to look up Wilhelm Reich. Ostensibly, the Feds didn't like him over his ideas about orgone. This Kate Bush video was inspired by Peter Reich's account of what happened to his father.


The reality is that it was Reich's ideas about human behavior that so upset people. He'd figured out a lot of things about fascism and human sexuality that really upset people in the Fifties. (Reich seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with having sex for fun, to give you an idea of how "crazy" he was.) And while some of his work is available today, few psychiatrists/psychologists directly refer to Reich when they talk about his ideas as they don't want to end up like him. They absolutely, however, will agree with him on many things, without ever referencing him. I'm not aware of a similar situation with Peterson.

Behind the Bastards is doing a two-part series on Peterson. Only the first part is up but it's well worth a listen. (Some rather shocking revelations about folks like Joseph Campbell as well.)

Research psychologists are in a uniquely awkward position at times in that their professional lives involve commenting on human behaviour. Thus when they do so outside of their roles and give an opinion it's not hard to see how the two could become entangled in the mind of a listener or reader. That is sometimes a product of their audience's preconceptions, sometimes poor delineation by the author and very occasionally deliberate misuse of a position to lend authority to one's own musings.

Prior to taking a sideways career step my own research field was evolutionary, my post grad supervisor being arguably amongst the biggest names in the field (Robin Dunbar) so I'm very acutely aware of the potential tensions between the empirical and the ideological, but those tensions are by and large based on misconception.

The fact that psychology works in terms of statistical trends and evolutionary psychology in particular demands variance as fuel for selection means that even the most empirical observations should be considered in light of those limitations rather than blanket statements about "how people act".

Certainly they are not recommendations for "how people should act" and that cannot be overstated. I recall as an undergraduate being in a very awkward behavioural ecology seminar where a young lady objected quite aggressively to the observation of various gender roles in bird species. The hapless (and politically VERY liberal) lecturer was pinned by a barrage of accusations of sexism based on his perfectly reasonable discussion of observations in nature because the distinction between what is and what should be hadn't been explained to sparrows.

I feel the opposite is at play here with Professor Peterson in that he has become known more for his personal beliefs rather than his work, yet he has allowed the former to gain credence from the latter and overshadow it in the public domain.

Even I, with my background, know him primarily as the guy with a chip on his shoulder over pronouns so what hope does someone getting their information from Facebook have?

Of course they see his credentials and assume his opinion is rendered more valid by them.

It isn't and that's the crux of my answer.

What Jordan Peterson personally believes and what Professor Peterson can demonstrate are two distinct categories. Arguably they are, in fact, unrelated where they have no theoretical, or even potential, overlap.

He is entitled to his own opinion as is anyone else but his professional standing should, I would suggest, have no bearing on the weight given to that opinion.

As for Willhelm Reich, I'm not sure his unfortunate name didn't have some bearing on how people treated him.....

Part two of the Behind the Bastards podcast on Peterson is up. Apparently, he's suffered some serious health problems and might be permanently disabled. It's not clear exactly what caused those problems, it could have had something to do with the medical treatment he'd been getting for his addiction or it might be a result of him getting COVID.

This thread seems like the place to mention this:

https://www.indy100.com/ents/jordan-peterson-captain-america-nazi-b1827777

Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing Captain America comics these days and parodied Peterson's anti-feminist stance and 12 Rules For Life by having the Red Skull pushing similar ideas on the internet to recruit "weak, desperate young men" by "telling them they are secretly great".

Peterson got a bit pissed, but retaliated by posting some of his "rules" with the MCU Skull in the background as Tweets.

As at least one commentator noted, if your ideology transposes neatly onto a comic book supervillain, let alone a Nazi one, perhaps some self-reflection is in order?

Good, catch it again.
They says it's worse on round 2.

Peterson's back on the JRE Dicky is not overjoyed.

heh-he was just put out to pasture by the UofT.

his man baby meltdown was published here

"meltdown."