The (great/abject) Views of Professor Jordan Peterson

As most of you know the Canadian professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson is becoming somewhat of the spokes figure for the rapidly growing no nonsense school of conservative sanity.
He has also made the memosphere.

If you don’t know the guy check out one of his lectures.
Just go to this video, watch it, and then follow the suggested links.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA96Kf30TQU[/youtube]

Tell me what you think of the JP message.

I have watched a couple of his videos in the last two days one on Free Speech and one on Existentialism
I find him to be an excellent thinker and orator and I fully intend to watch all his speeches and lectures

I’ve watched a huge amount of videos of this guy, not because I am a follower, not at all, initially it was because he showed up on my youtube feed and the title was probably the kind of provocative thing that I like to listen to that challenges common points of view or even my own.

There are areas where his knowledge is annoyingly lacking, which is what drove me to continue to listen to him - to see if he could expand on it and justify it better, and happily his understanding of his position was far more founded than I am used to, even to the point where I wasn’t quite sure why he was wrong on certain points and had to give it a good think - which is exactly what I’m looking for. He’s even right about a great deal and well-foundedly so - no doubt the source of his appeal. But he’s clearly straight out of North America, and what he has the most to say about seems to be predominantly about North American issues which are different to European ones. As a European it’s hard to get as into these issues when you don’t see them as much. Sure, SJWs exist over here, but it seems like their severity and influence doesn’t even closely match that of those on the other side of the Atlantic. As such, I don’t have a strong opinion on his psychoanalysis of them, seems ok to me.

I think his immediate environment, especially since he works in a university, has understandably significantly skewed his understanding of the left and he doesn’t seem to be able to separate the young and loud US left from more sober and objective approaches to it. I don’t have anything against his primary aim, but I do have plenty against its collateral damage to too-easily-associated movements, which only serves to magnify the already distorted view of the left held by far too many North Americans already. He professes the scientific method, and has plenty to back up his use of it, but it really doesn’t seem like he applies it sufficiently to the left.

One of the most glaring contradictions in his methods though is to correctly argue in favour of and to represent free speech, but to use it to try and silence those who he is against. Though personally I take seriously the argument in favour of a conditional version of free speech, which is to violate the free speech of those who are against free speech/pro censorship. Obviously it’s scarily utilitarian to support this argument, just think of all the possible abuse and twisting of it, but what good is free speech if you can’t use it to defend your free speech by calling for the silencing of those who are trying to take it away free speech from everyone except themselves and others with whom they agree? As such I have a certain sympathy for his struggle, but disrespect his lack of awareness of its issues in consistency. To be honest, everybody already expects certain moral conditions to free speech: that those who are logically and/or empirically wrong ought to be silent, and that those who are lying ought to be silent. It’s not so much of a big step to extend this to those who are trying to take away free speech - that they ought to be silent.

Anyhoo, yes he’s a very domineering and engaging public speaker, a good communicator and despite his rambling he keeps it interesting and even brings up some very thought-provoking ideas much more often than most. Unlike his followers… I absolutely detest the parroting and the unthinking sycophancy that they spew out, genuinely nauseating, never mind frustrating. I often find it hard to resist the urge to set them straight. Those who just listen to what they want to hear for validation and a feeling of strength and courage to subsequently voice some suspicions or shallow musings with a new-found coherence using somebody else’s words just depress me… and the sheer amount of likes that these comments get(!)

Just like Zizek… “he uses outdated or inaccurate theories!”

Like what? Give me an example.

“…”

Yeah. Lol.

Read Zizek’s critiques of JP that he published recently, it’s hilarious nonsense. Sort of reminds me of the crazy SJWs that people were asking in the streets at protests why they were protesting…

“So what are you protesting?”

“Down with Trump.”

“What don’t you like that he has said?”

“He is a racist!”

“What is one racist thing he has said?”

“…”

People who “critique” JP follow the exact same program. The REAL reason why they don’t like JP is that he forces them to confront their own bullshit, they are unable to defend it, and so they get emotional and defensive. JP uses reason and facts to “red pill” (deprogram) people from the matrix of leftism. See that in the Cathy Newman interview. As Scott Adams said, she is not only being forced to confront her own unjustified beliefs, it is producing so much cognitive dissonance in her that she is basically hallucinating in response, which is why her statements and follow up questions often make no sense at all, or totally obviously misconstrue what JP said, or flat our ignore it, or just keep repeating the same thing over and over despite that JP already demonstrates how wrong it is.

Leftism is disease of the mind. JP is a great deprogrammer of the deceptions.

Same as the previous poster is doing, another Cathy Newman wanna-be making nonsensical statements against JP just like Zizek did, all in attempt to justify his emotional reactions in the absence of having any actual ideas, facts, or arguments:


There are areas where his knowledge is annoyingly lacking, which is what drove me to continue to listen to him - to see if he could expand on it and justify it better, and happily his understanding of his position was far more founded than I am used to, even to the point where I wasn’t quite sure why he was wrong on certain points and had to give it a good think - which is exactly what I’m looking for. He’s even right about a great deal and well-foundedly so - no doubt the source of his appeal. But he’s clearly straight out of North America, and what he has the most to say about seems to be predominantly about North American issues which are different to European ones. As a European it’s hard to get as into these issues when you don’t see them as much. Sure, SJWs exist over here, but it seems like their severity and influence doesn’t even closely match that of those on the other side of the Atlantic. As such, I don’t have a strong opinion on his psychoanalysis of them, seems ok to me.

I think his immediate environment, especially since he works in a university, has understandably significantly skewed his understanding of the left and he doesn’t seem to be able to separate the young and loud US left from more sober and objective approaches to it. I don’t have anything against his primary aim, but I do have plenty against its collateral damage to too-easily-associated movements, which only serves to magnify the already distorted view of the left held by far too many North Americans already. He professes the scientific method, and has plenty to back up his use of it, but it really doesn’t seem like he applies it sufficiently to the left.”

Lol, what does that even mean? Is there even an argument against JP anywhere in there? What about the “scientific method” does he not apply to “the left”? Of course we aren’t told, because it’s just gobbly gook.

Where is JP’s “knowledge annoyingly lacking”? Lol. We aren’t told.

Hmmmmmmm

Urgh #-o

Any civil person would have phrased the above as a question about me elaborating on specifics and waiting for a response, but instead you gotta immediately assume they don’t exist. Now, I’ve made the mistake of spending a whole sentence not directly answering your questions, which you’ll no doubt take as indisputable evidence that your presumptions were obviously correct…
But even when I do, you will either dismissively associate them with some meme after merely skimming them without exploration or any attempt to create a constructive personalised conversation, or you will claim I’ve not even tried to answer them in the first place and carry on thinking in exactly the same way, and holding yourself in just as high regard. You even think I’m just stalling at this point, rather than perfectly predicting exactly the nature of your non-response that you are at least ready to parrot and may even still dare to splay out in spite of this preamble.

I’ve heard JP lumping together Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Feminism and Social Justice Warring without any hint of recognition of the significant differences between the terms. Just the same as so many anti-leftists that I continuously come across from North America. But apparently there’s a lot of people on the left in NA who try to do the same thing in order to attempt to intellectually bolster their own agendas in favour of the far-right authoritarian movements of social control that are currently masquerading as “Leftist” over there at the moment - or so I am led to believe, from over here. Assuming such reports are accurate, I guess it’s unsurprising that JP falls into the same lack of scrutiny on the subject.

You cannot claim that Marxism has been exhaustively tested in all environments and without outside attempts to sabotage the efforts of such experiments. To do so is exactly unscientific, and to then claim to be a scientist (and I do regard him as one in his areas of expertise at least) is at least partially dishonest. It seems very much as though his knowledge is lacking in the historical materialism and economic ideas of a Marxist analysis of Capitalism, because I’ve not even heard him address any of these concepts in the many 10s of videos I’ve watched of him. Maybe he does know, but is accidentally or even deliberately failing to go into it, which just so happens to fit into his own agenda?

I even went into how JP claims to champion free speech whilst in the same speech fighting to silence his opponents… and you’re trying to pass me off as somebody who has no ideas, facts or arguments… moron.

I swear, the unrelenting stupidity of your inane commentary makes me angry sometimes - you’re so openly dishonest it’s embarrassing. You don’t even recognise the plain irony of you trying to associate my reasoned response with Cathy Newman when YOU are the one going “so what you’re saying is <insert distorted clichéd populist version of some of the words you said here>”.

Zizek obviously goes straight over your head, if you’ve even tried to understand his approach to philosophy, which unlike JP is anti-prescriptive, strictly theoretical and unfailingly outside the box, though just as rambling, humorous and referencing of pop-culture. Zizek is a genuine candidate for a genius, whereas JP is just a very solid and insightful intellectual, but you probably just can’t get over the fact that he’s a Leftist.

Is there actually an argument or a coherent point anywhere in there?

He’s not an economics professor, he is into psychology and to a lesser degree philosophy. And yet he still seems to know more than you at least when it comes to Marxism. He maybe could say more on the subject, but you’ve said nothing at all on it.

All those terms you throw up, “Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Feminism and Social Justice Warring”, why don’t you tell us about these “significant differences” between them that JP apparently ignores. I find it interesting you make claims like this without defending them. You claim there are significant differences and that he is ignoring those differences… ok, cool story bro, so show us. Let’s see it. Show me where JP uses the term “social democracy” and then show me where he uses the term “communism” and then show me how he uses those terms in ways that disregards the significant differences between them. Then of course you’ll have to define these terms so that we can actually see these differences.

Did you do any of that? Hmmm. Let me look again. Ummmm… nope.

I don’t recal JP claiming that Marxism has been tested in “every environment” or without attempts to sabotage it. Where exactly did he make those claims? Oh yeah, nowhere, that’s where.

You’re so emotional, reactive, hysterical and superficial as a reader that you just make shit up and attribute it to him. It’s emotional self justification, same as all those anti-trumpers shouting about racism yet can’t tell you a single racist thing Trump ever said, other than “he called Mexicans rapists!” which actually he never did. That was a nice piece of fake news. Go back and look at what he actually said, it was during when he first announced his candidacy back in June 2015.

So basically… no real facts, nothing backing your claims which are just assertions anyway, making false claims to things JP said that he never in fact said, and something about Zizek which you also fail to elaborate into anything resembling a coherent point.

Of course not, you know the guy.
And he thinks Zizek is over your head. That gave me a hearty laugh.

Called it.

Jesus, man. You want me to write an entire essay explaining every intricate detail and every depth to anything both I and JP say? Even then you’ll probably just skim and meme it with “Fake News” and/or “tl;dr”, claiming it wasn’t worth your time and spewing out more of your “I couldn’t see any coherent point in what you said, therefore there wasn’t one and there never will be or can be” that makes the whole idea of conceding to your impolite requests and elaborating even less appealing than it already is.

I even bet that you’d criticise the exact same method that you’re using if those you’re against used it: “if you don’t reference every single thing you say/can’t find where you heard it/neglected to address some random thing you demanding to be answered, then your ENTIRE argument is invalid, it always will be” and you will just put another brick in the wall that is closing your mind to even a hint of intention to give the benefit of the doubt to those who you have set yourself against and to whom you have claimed perfect knowledge with absolutely zero justification. Interestingly the same standards that you impose on others to justify things you do not apply to yourself!

You’re calling me emotional. In almost every single scenario in my life I show next to zero emotion, but stupidity claiming valuable non-stupidity as stupidity at the risk of convincing the stupid I will not tolerate, and I absolutely will display justifiable emotion. But to you, one display of emotion from someone with whom you disagree is enough to dismiss all their content as indistinguishable from all emotional people who you are against, along with anything at all that you pull out your ass that they did, to which you failed to see any justification (obviously their fault and not your own, to you).

Now to turn some more things back on you:
Show me where I called Trump a racist. If you can’t then that invalidates every single thing you’ve ever said.
Show me everything I’ve ever said about Marxism and everything JP has said about Marxism. If you can’t then that completely invalidates your dismissal that “he still seems to know more than you at least when it comes to Marxism”.

Can’t do it? Guess I won the argument and ILP is full of repulsive losers, especially you, even though I still come here frequently and regularly :icon-rolleyes:

You say JP is not an economics professor in backing up your claim that he still knows more about Marxism than me. Is this apology a justification for his failure to address the what Marx is actually all about: economics? He’ll still repeatedly juxtapose Marxism with Post-Modernism without thinking twice but his undeniable prowess in the field of psychology does not excuse this. All I have to do is link the most recent video I watched today to show him doing this: youtube.com/watch?v=JEESNpAu1EU

I’ve heard him do this many times before but I’m not going to pore over every single video I’ve watched, often they are particularly long too, just to feed your own laziness to take responsibility and check out peoples’ arguments yourself. This also applies to what you called “All those terms you throw up” - I am not your errand boy, do some goddamn research and learn something yourself.

Just one more easily located example of him misunderstanding Marxism to its core though: youtube.com/watch?v=rSzpc2vh8Ow
You hear him argue that the essence of Marxism is finding grounds for the oppressed to unite against oppressors, whatever and whoever they are, which I hear is the foundation of what people call “Cultural Marxism”. Marx examined the economic landscape of history (historical materialism) and easily diagnosed two economic classes of people: one who uses money as capital as well as for consumption and the other who only uses it for consumption and must sell their labour to afford it - still valid today. He then extrapolated a pattern through primitive societies through Feudalism into Capitalism and beyond (it was Lenin, Trotsky et al. who came up with concrete plans on how to force this to happen, NOT Marx).
Does it therefore follow that Marx’s intention was merely to formulate whatever identity for an oppressed group to band together against whatever identity of supposed oppressors? Don’t be fucking stupid.
As if Marx was the first person ever to identify that certain people were getting fucked over by others anyway?! And why is it Cultural-MARXISM? Why not Cultural-Christianity? I mean, the supposed existence of Jesus happened nearly 2 millennia before Marx was even born. He was all about the oppressed getting the better over their oppressors. Questions like this make the anti-left sleight-of-hand obvious.

The problem was that Marx made a great point about economics that threatened to expose how certain people were getting a free ride at the expense of others. Naturally he had to be lumped in first with the brutal Authoritarianism of Stalin, Mao et al. and most recently socially retarded SJWs, in order for both to denigrate Marx. And it’s working, because Marx’s points still stand but nobody bothers to look into them anymore because of all the slander, and those that actually do either use it for their own separate agenda or they are lumped in with such people and the scandal continues. The name “Communism” is so obviously derived from an economic structure of communes (communities of cooperating working people, running themselves), and not some top-down dictatorship, which everyone who didn’t actually do their homework thinks it is. Communism-proper is run by the people NOT some singular over-arching leader, by definition.

Why then is JP talking in that video I linked about how Marxists are so arrogant that they want to try out being Stalin because they’d do a better job? Of-fucking-course not! It’s a cooperative self-run thing, read a book.

So I’ve analysed your fallacious style of argument, I’ve linked proof of JP misunderstanding Marxism and lumping it in with the entirely distinct philosophy of Postmodernism, and I’ve explained better than he did about what Marxism actually is - my source is “The German Ideology” by Marx and Engels in case you actually gave a damn about truth, which you obviously don’t. What the fuck more do you want? No real facts? Nothing to back up my claims/assertions? False claims about what JP said? Go blow it out your ass you unthinking parrot.

FC, Teletubbies is over this guy’s head.

I wonder how well he does know me. I wonder how well you know me in order to be the authority on knowing who knows me? I’m not claiming to know him or you, for all I know he’s you on an alt-account with the amount he sucks up to you and how in response you give nothing but affirmation without the slightest hint of criticism that any honest thinker would provide anyone - no matter how much you agree with one another. I remember the days when you used to make an effort to provide extended content instead - maybe you still do, I can’t claim to be looking hard for it ever since it ended up being all the same about VO. The content of “UrGod” is rarely more than a meme or some alt-right youtube comment, and when it is, it’s just drivel - it might as well be his usual vacuous quip but he’s just typed more words to describe the same prescribed meaninglessness without even any logical explanation to any depth whatsoever. Like I said, I don’t know the guy, but I know that what he’s provided so far is consistent trash and I really have no faith that this will change any time soon. Hence my vitriol, my apologies for that to you if not to him.

Called it.

Dude, go find something you can do. Philosophy is not for you.

Still got nothing, thought so. Well, thanks for playing, gn.

By your approach to losing, I can tell that you are favouring a protection of ego through levity rather than attempting any self-evaluation and improvement in light of your cognitive dissonance brought about by a lack of ability to find reinforcement for your worldview. No surprise, but a great shame that cowards like you exist, having not been taught valuable life lessons on how to deal with losing, to enable you to deal with it in a constructive way. You’re unable to see me as a teacher of such lessons, much to your disadvantage, but at least it seems as though you are able to see JP as one. Keep watching his videos and seeking help on how to develop into a mature human being - I might have zero faith that you will develop at all here, but I wish you luck in the long term and in general. It would be worth you noting that you are using this place as a crutch, to validate your self-worth at the cost of imprinting upon it an idealised expectation of its inferiority to you, to which you attempt to fit everything you encounter whether or not it actually does fit this ideal. This explains why you keep coming here and act in the way you do, but we both know you lack the ability to admit this or even entertain its truth for a single second.

Feel free to drop another meme if it helps you cope.

I think he’s 100% right about the free speech issue and he’s correctly identified the source of the problem and is fighting the good fight against the SJW nutters, but whenever he starts talking psychology or philosophy he comes across as confused.

To be fair, I find the entire discipline of psychology to be a confused… So this is not to say he seems uneducated or gets the facts wrong, but that the methodology used to interpret the data into a model of the human psyche is entirely without merit and results in him (and other psychologists) to be dependent on metaphorical language to describe observed facts and then confuse those metaphors for explanations.

In other words he confuses the descriptive metaphorical language with a prescriptive truth or more accurately “reality”. But of course the metaphors cannot be “real” in a physical way, so he now has to subscribe to a metaphysical realm in which they can be thought of as real.

Otherwise, why lend them any predictive or prescriptive power?

Confused nonsense, that we would be better off without… but otherwise he seems cool.

Idiots are a nice compliment to this world. Like an appetizer. Begins to show you what is really going on, at the core of things.

About what in “psychology or philosophy” am I “confused”? What specifically have I said that you object to, and why?

You don’t say. So I call bullshit.

Just another douche cunt.

A lot, apparently. He wasn’t even talking about you :laughing:

Douche cunt.

I guess you demonstrate this pretty well.

Why are you still here?

I like to study the insanity, the mindless deathfetish that ‘people’ like you represent. For some reason it fascinates me, the morbid nothingness of it. Probably because I am the exact polar opposite value as you, I represent and value pure life itself, truth, being; therefore whatever manages somehow to do literally none of that, would arouse my curiosity.

I am indeed an expert on such things, having studied them up close for so long.

Of course I would be tempted to say that you would do well to get over yourself and start doing the real work. Ask real questions, for one thing. Pause, think, re-evaluate. Get into a legitimate conversation. But I won’t say it, because I recognize there is zero chance of you saving yourself from the hell-vortex trip you are on. This is fate. Idiocy and non-being are facts of this existence, thanks to strange eddies in how valuing logistics manage to unfold in complex multi-tectonic environments; you are free to acquire value (existence) from others at their expense, and so you do that. Never learning how to actually… exist.