It always amazes me when some cited expert’s credentials (particularly educational) are unassailable when someone agrees with their position and inconsequential when they don’t. With that in mind, Peterson’s credentials are pretty impressive. So for those who believe Peterson or his opinions are lacking in intelligence, how do you reconcile that with his not only having a PhD in psychology from one elite world university (McGill) but conducting his post-doctoral fellowship there before going on to teach at two more elite world universities (Harvard and University of Toronto)?
My bolding.
Is there anyone here who believes his opinions come from a lack of intelligence? Can you find that in this thread? If so, please show me.
Highly intelligent people can people can believe very stupid or even crazy things. That happens all the time.
The ideas need to be debated on their merits. What do you think about them?
CANADA’S GENDER IDENTITY RIGHTS BILL C-16 EXPLAINED
For Petersonites Canadian law will be a hyperbolic discussion about SJW authoritarianism so its good to ground everything in reality by simply stating what C-16 is from Canadian legal scholars and leave it at that. Don’t let the rhetoric drown out reality.
I think many of his views are bunk and find him to be a dangerous grifter and snake oil salesman who preys on the emotional vulnerabilities of earnestly aimless people. However I’m willing to cede that he is not an idiot. An idiot couldn’t become such a successful predator (and Peterson is very successful at eating-well off of his enthralled supporters).
Its not his intellect, but his judgment, that I heavily question. Its sad that neither he (nor his legion of admirers) put a fraction of skeptical challenge in JBP’s judgement. If anything, let this latest current event be a damning testimony of JBP’s poor poor judgement.
Have you actually read the rest of the thread?
iiandyiiii
From what I’ve read of his ideas, he’s a weird, sexist, pseudo-scientific ignoramus. Not surprising that he’s apparently harmed himself with substance dependence and quackery.
nearwildheaven
Jordan Peterson is a nutcase, pure and simple.
Bill Door
Yeah, but his solutions are clear and simple, and that has an undeniable appeal to people who aren’t smart enough to see the flaws in them. I don’t think he’s a nutcase, I think he’s a conman who knows how to appeal to suckers and thereby get rich. Like Dr. Phil, or Rush Limbaugh.
So here we have Peterson referred to as “pseudo-scientific ignoramus” while offering no debate on the merits of his ideas and seemingly ignoring his credentials as, you know, an actual scientist. We also have the bare assertions that he is a “nutcase” and a “conman” once again without debating his ideas on their merit. None of those really scream an endorsement of Peterson’s intelligence do they?
And highly intelligent people can indeed be wrong or even have crazy ideas. It most often occurs however when such people venture beyond their area of expertise and much of Peterson’s work is tied directly to psychology, which is his area of expertise. I would also take issue with it happening “all the time” for most definitions of the phrase. It may happen fairly frequently but certainly not to a degree that it is a likely outcome let alone anything resembling a default presumption.
And Peterson has hundreds of hours of his ideas and opinions available for public consumption. If you actually want to begin discussing his ideas on their merits, as others have failed to do so far, then maybe you could narrow it down a bit.
I’m basing my legal analysis of Peterson’s free speech arguments on my own knowledge and education, not on the opinions of his fans or critics. And you seem to be failing to make the connection between C-16 and the operation of the Ontario Human Rights Commission/Tribunal. See one of the things you learn in law school, whether in the US or Canada or any Common Law country, is that citing just the text of a law is fairly meaningless. That is just the first step in statutory analysis and not even close to the final one.
The language of a law is only meaningful when you see how courts (or other, similar institutions eg. Commissions and Tribunals) have interpreted that language. And when you cite “legal experts” (the three in your linked article) do you for some reason believe that represents the unanimous opinion of all the relevant legal scholars on the issue? And did you miss the part in your linked article where those experts acknowledged that Peterson could face a monetary penalty (and once again, the costs of his defense, even if found to not be liable)? How about where his stance was again disingenuously characterized as based on a misunderstanding of the law and that any financial injury assessed under the law is inconsequential because he wouldn’t face imprisonment?
And I’m trained as a lawyer. I’m reflexively skeptical of just about everything. Maybe more of Peterson’s critics should be skeptical of their own conclusions, opinions, and ability to comprehend his ideas when his credentials far outweigh the vast majority of human beings on Earth including those critics.
As an example, how is this possibly conclusive evidence of Peterson’s poor judgement? Should he have overridden the judgement of his doctor(s)? Anticipated the rare reaction he experienced? Where does Peterson’s judgement factor into those and where did it fail? Was it when he suffered from depression when his wife was, I believe, diagnosed with terminal cancer? How classy on your part
Wrong to call you by a name you don’t prefer, but right to call a trans person by a name they don’t prefer.
Hmm.
What legal repercussion has Peterson endured as a result of his refusal to refer to someone by their preferred gender?
Slurs and epithets are worse than misgendering, sure… but if someone is punished for using a slur instead of an acceptable, non-slur identifier, is that not still an example of “compelled speech?” There is, as you pointed out, “no right not to be offended,” so why are you drawing a distinction between different types of insulting terminology?
This guy is a neurosurgeon. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, advanced degrees are not necessarily indicative of significant intelligence. All the degrees in the world won’t make something like this:
…not be completely fucking stupid.
Some of JP’s most idiotic statements (gathered from here):
“[H]ere’s the problem, I know how to stand up to a man who’s, who’s, uh, unfairly trespassing against me, and the reason I know that is because the parameters for my resistance are quite well-defined, which is: we talk, we argue, we push, and then it becomes physical. Right? Like, if we move beyond the boundaries of civil discourse, we know what the next step is. Okay, that’s forbidden in, in discourse with women, and so I don’t think that men can control crazy women. I — I really don’t believe it. I think that they have to throw their hands up in, in, in, in what?, in, in, it’s not even disbelief, it’s the cultural — there’s no step forward that you can take under those circumstances because if the man is offensive enough and crazy enough, the, the reaction becomes physical right away, or at least the threat is there.”
“There was no equality for women before the birth control pill. It’s completely insane to assume that anything like that could’ve possibly occurred. And the feminists think they produced a revolution in the 1960s that freed women. What freed women was the pill, and we’ll see how that works out. There’s some evidence that women on the pill don’t like masculine men because of changes in hormonal balance. You can test a woman’s preference in men. You can show them pictures of men and change the jaw width, and what you find is that women who aren’t on the pill like wide-jawed men when they’re ovulating, and they like narrow-jawed men when they’re not, and the narrow-jawed men are less aggressive. Well all women on the pill are as if they’re not ovulating, so it’s possible that a lot of the antipathy that exists right now between women and men exists because of the birth control pill. The idea that women were discriminated against across the course of history is appalling.”
“I don’t think there is any evidence that women are systemically held back. Not in the West. I think we’re past that by a decade.”
On the cartoon film Frozen: "Frozen served a political purpose: to demonstrate that a woman did not need a man to be successful. Anything written to serve a political purpose (rather than to explore and create) is propaganda, not art.
Frozen was propaganda, pure and simple. Beauty and the Beast (the animated version) was not."
What can I say to that. Clearly my skepticism of JBP’s motivations, actions, personal judgement, direct profiteering, and Canadian legal interpretations were unfounded.
I will also say that his followers are in no way so invested (emotionally and monetarily) in Peterson that it has prevented their ability/willingness to critically evaluate his actions and views in a routine, causal, or objective manner.
Unlike the majority of those other millionaire self-help gurus out there; JBP is no snake oil salesman, but the height of enlightened reason.
nm
The bolded part made me Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there!
What a super-huge load of bullshit that is in just 7 words! Did you make that up and shit it out yourself, or did you have help?
This is the best exchange in the entire thread.
Since many of us are either ill informed or insufficiently impressed with JP’s contributions to intellectual discourse, why don’t you share what you believe to be some of his more notable contributions and we’ll see if we can find some common areas of agreement.
Maybe you should start googling the term in a legal context so you can see how absolutely right I am and how monumentally stupid your response is.
HAHAHAHAHAHA You’re hilarious! Are you actually a comedian, trying out new material here or what?
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch and there ain’t no such thing as an objective standard for reasonableness. You can tell because any two people would need to agree on whether something is reasonable; that’s not objective by definition. Even the description of the term requires at least one person to subjectively decide if something is reasonable.
So your term is stupid and hilarious, like I said, because it has no basis in reality.
Hey, why not try and convince me that “alternative facts” is a phrase with some meaning next?
Did you miss the rather important qualifier “potentially” in that sentence?
Do you really not see the difference between prohibiting a small set of words and compelling the use of only a similarly small set of words? And no, legally punishing someone for using a slur has nothing to do with Compelled Speech whatsoever. Why would you possibly think it would when the gov’t did not compel the use of the slur? And once again, do you really not see the difference between a slur that is universally considered offensive and an ordinary word that is offensive only in a very specific, narrow context?
I’ve already acknowledged that very intelligent people can hold dumb or even crazy opinions. And I live in a college town and my wife is a professor so you don’t have to sell me on the idea that degrees don’t necessarily correlate with intelligence. But not all degrees are equal are they? I find a degree from an elite institution to be stronger evidence of intelligence than one from a low-regarded one. I also find something like a doctorate in psychology to be stronger evidence of intelligence than a doctorate in the vast majority of the liberal arts. Finally, I think teaching at elite universities such as Harvard is stronger evidence of intelligence than a typical practice or teaching at a junior college.
There is a reasonable presumption that highly educated people with impressive credentials are going to be rational and even correct the vast majority of the time, especially within their area of expertise. It may be a rebuttable presumption but it’s not like highly educated and otherwise intelligent people saying dumb or crazy things is anything more than a limited exception and not even close to the rule. I would think if saying crazy or dumb things was more the rule then it is the characterization of the person as intelligent or highly educated that is flawed.
All you are doing is rebutting the argument that no person who is highly intelligent or had advanced degrees ever says anything wrong, crazy, or stupid. An argument no one was making. If you want to characterize Peterson as someone who says stupid and crazy things then you’ll need far more than cites of Ben Carson saying stupid things or just calling it stupid without anything further, especially when the speaker has credentials like Peterson. Have you even entertained the idea that maybe the former Harvard/University of Toronto Psychology Professor and researcher knows some things you don’t or that you’re just plain wrong?
So, none, then? How long ago was this law passed? How long does it have to stay on the books with Peterson facing zero repercussions before you can concede that his concerns were unfounded?
There’s a trans woman in Peterson’s class. He wants to call her “him,” but is (allegedly) prevented from doing so by government regulations. He has to call her “her.”
There’s a black guy in someone else’s class - let’s say David Duke, if he were a professor. Duke wants to call this guy a nigger, but is prevented from doing so by government regulations. He has to call him black, or African.
Other than “nigger” being more offensive than misgendering, how is the former an example of compelled speech, while the latter is not?
I’m not sure what the “narrow context” has to do with anything, here. Lots of terms are benign in one context, and offensive in another. The majority of uses of the term “fag” in the UK refer to cigarettes. Does that make the use of the term in reference to gay people okay? Would your problem with this issue disappear if we had more synonyms for pronouns?
No, what I’m rebutting is your appeal to authority in asserting that, because Peterson has advanced degrees, he must therefore have good ideas. You haven’t actually presented any of his good ideas, you’ve just insisted that, because he’s got a PhD, he must therefore be smart. All the actual evidence in this thread - in the form of things hes actually said - indicate the opposite. Is it possible that I’m wrong? Sure. But you’re going to have to do a lot more legwork than shouting “HARVARD!” to convince me that there’s a direct line between my friend who uses ze/zer pronouns and has trouble coping when the local vegan restaurant is closed for the day, and Soviet Gulags.
In certain legal applications, there is an objective reasonableness standard, but transplanting it to this discussion is akin to quoting from the Uniform Commercial Code when faced with a traffic citation.
I’m not driving, I’m traveling!
“Highly intelligent people can people can believe very stupid or even crazy things.” This is correct. Rationalwiki refers to this as an “inverse stopped clock”. List of examples here: