This guy seems to have some good ideas but what the fuck is postmodernism

Tell me more about this person. I dont think he has EVER been discussed here before.

[quote]what the fuck is postmodernism

It's that shit that ruined being an English major back in the late '80s/early '90s.

Hi Boris at OP!

Back on the day shift in Moscow, are we? For your next assignment, I think a couple more trans threads would serve nicely to distract from all those undesirable political discussions.

Happy trolling!

And don't forget the uglitechture.

Heh.

also

[quote]jordan peterson has been crowned as a brilliant philosophical mind, but is he really? our editor @NathanJRobinson takes one for the team by subjecting himself to primary source material.

[quote]tldr: peterson’s currency is vague, tedious, academic gibberish.

R2, marry me.

Jordan Peterson calls everything that he doesn't like 'postmodernism', I don't think he know what he means by it. He's a twat, don't listen to him. Pseudo-intellectual bollocks.

He has no ideas so they can't really be good or bad. He's a paper-thin reactionary troll who's making money telling white boys they're oppressed.

Peterson is a rightwing creep telling men that women are oppressing them and that if they don't rediscover their masculinity, they might not be smart enough to vote for politicians like Trump.

He is basically Putin's idea man in the West.

I actually read about him and read part of his recent book. I honestly don’t get the hate. He is standing up to the trans madness in Canada and helping a lot of men in their 20s to do things their parents didn’t teach them to do like work hard, be clean, take responsibility for your actions. Can anyone specifically tell me why he is so bad?

I’m not OP, by the way, so save that reply.

He might have an interesting thought or two, but file under "a broken clock is right twice a day," because the other 98 percent of his shit is misogynistic, backwards bullshit.

Wow, I just read the article at the link. I cannot believe that anyone takes him seriously.

From Wikipedia:

[quote] Peterson studied at the University of Alberta and McGill University. He remained at McGill as a post-doctoral fellow from 1991 to 1993 before moving to Harvard University, where he was an assistant and then associate professor in the psychology department.[7][8] In 1998, he moved back to Canada, as a faculty member in the psychology department at the University of Toronto, where he is currently a full professor.

So is he bitter because Harvard didn't promote him to full professor?

^^ Ever think it may have been his, not Harvard's, choice?

Nope, r14. Nobody thinks that.

I despise postmodernism as much as Peterson and I know as little about it as he does.

So no critique on specifics, other than he left Harvard for another university?

He's not even a hot daddy.

Fuhgeddaboudit.

He's decided that all the ills of the contemporary word can be summed up with the word "postmodernism." Peterson has not offered a coherent critique and it's not worth anyone's time to engage with him.

LOL at Jordan Peterson complaining about obscurity. Have you even read a paragraph written by this man? He makes Judith Butler sound like Cicero.

Here are some selected examples of sentences from his books:

“Meaning is manifestation of the divine individual adaptive path”

“Meaning is the ultimate balance between… the chaos of transformation and the possibility and…the discipline of pristine order”

“Meaning means implication for behavioral output”

“Meaning emerges from the interplay between the possibilities of the world and the value structure operating within that world”

It's much easier to extract meaning from a postmodernist than from the self-satisfied mystic gibberish this man writes.

R19 You hear him talk but no coherent or interesting ideas come out. Just gibberish or nonsense. He may as well be female.

You understood my post yet I am a female. Maybe the problem is you.

Of course you are female; I am female; the future is female!

R11 = OP

R16 I read his whole PDF dialogue and still had no clue WTF he was on about. Shows there is nothing of substance there. Just like how the whole female identity will be scrubbed out by the men who call themselves "trans women."

"You might say societies do tend to be self-serving, and people in power do tend to act in their best interests, but a tendency is not an absolute. That is one of the things that these people need to consider continually. There are no shortage of flaws in the manner in which we have structured our society and compared to any hypothetical utopia, it is an absolutely dismal wreck. But compared to the rest of the world, and the plight of other societies throughout the history of mankind, we're doing pretty damn well, and we should be happy to be living in society we're living in."

You can easily refute every word or claim he makes. In a world where the 99% mean nothing and have nothing, we should be grateful for that? Ok, Mary.

Thanks, OP.

Fucking Satan, himself, with those black eyes.

That passage at (R26) is clumsily written, especially - 'but a tendency is not an absolute. That is one of the things that these people need to consider continually. There are no shortage of flaws in the manner in which we have structured our society and compared to any hypothetical utopia.'

It reads like an undergraduate essay, or a comment on the guardian website, that uses an unnecessarily complicated way of writing in order to sound clever. It always reads badly and when people need to try and sound clever they almost certainly aren't. If I was going to rewrite it it would sound much better to say 'but a tendency is not an absolute, which these people need to always keep in mind. There are no shortage of flaws in the structure of our society, and compared any hypothetical utopia...' - See? a few minor changes and it is much easier and nice to read and doesn't sound like a person who is trying to hard to be clever.

^ should read 'trying too hard to be clever' at the end.

He is an old-guard white male intellectual trying to stay relevant in a world where no one cares or needs to care what they think. Of course, that does not mean he should not have an opinion. But as you said, he clumsily tries to replace the complexities of the modern world with this empty philosophical concept called postmodernism.

I had to stop where he complimented America on its black people.

This guy is a total douche nozzle.

“Jordan Peterson, the obscure Canadian psychologist turned right-wing celebrity, explained Who Peterson is, and the important truths he reveals about our current political moment.”

[quote]There are no shortage of flaws

Shouldn't it be "there IS no shortage of flaws"?

R34 You are right. Get your complimentary anal beads at the door.

Postmodernism is a straw man. Canadians are just about the most muddle-headed morons in the OECD.

R36 That applies to SoyBoy Justine Turd-eau for sure but not the rest of the country you fuck.

He deems homosexuality emasculating. Next.

R37 forgot “cuck”. F&F

Getting hundreds of cocks in your mangina is emasculating. Real men would never take a man's cock in their back holes.

The alt Right, like the former Nazi Party is made up of gay men. Why? Who knows. Daddy issues probably. It really is sick and sad. Here again we have gay men sucking up to a man who would put them in camps if given the chance.

How much of Scruff is alt Right? I see so many bad haircuts on there.

They all have nazi haircuts these days. WTF is that? Not attractive.

OP is trolling. Promoting Peterson while feigning unfamiliarity.

OP, just say that you like him. Or maybe pick something more reasonable/believable about which to feign ignorance. Everyone knows what postmodernism is.

Bitch needs to marry a moose and go live in a log cabin without internet connection near Baffin Bay.

R44 Fuck off and choke on a dick. It is an empty meaningless term. His claims are empty and hollow just like your head.

Jordan Peterson is pretty much Tony Robbins for MAGA cultists.

I'm sure he's a massive cunt in more ways than we will ever know but I Googled and found this list of 12 rules for life he has written. It actually looks pretty good on a superficial glance.

r44, Peterson clearly doesn't. He's stereotyping it grossly – e.g., postmodernists don't believe in logic. False. Post-modernists explain how logic is not an exacting science that explains the universe, but rather is based on loaded, cultural presumptions that can be deconstructed with that same logic.

He's a defensive right-wing loon. Canadians have them too.

R48 I cut and pasted his 12 rules, some of them are pretty good.

Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. There is a part of your brain that is constantly monitoring signals to figure out your position in society. How you see others, and how others treat you, affect how you view yourself. If others kowtow to you, you elevate your own impression of status. If others denigrate you, you lower your internal status. If you slouch, you convey defeat and low status to others; they will then treat you poorly, which will reinforce your status. (This can be reinforced in serotonin signaling, related to depression) Fix your posture to get others to treat you better, which will make you feel better and stand tall, thus kicking off a virtuous cycle. Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. Many people are better at filling prescriptions for their dogs than themselves. Similarly, you may self-sabotage yourself daily – by not taking care of your health, not keeping promises you make to yourself. Peterson argues that you do this because of some self-loathing – that you believe you’re not worth helping. Instead, you have to believe that you have a vital mission in this world, and you are obliged to take care of yourself. Nietzsche: “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.” Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you. Surround yourself with people who support you and genuinely want to see you succeed. You will push each other to greater heights; each person’s life improves as the others’ improve. They won’t tolerate your cynicism, and they will punish you when you mistreat yourself. Don’t associate with people who want to drag you down to make them feel better about themselves. Don’t accept charity cases by helping people who don’t accept personal responsibility for their actions. People who don’t want to improve can’t be helped. Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. With mass media, it’s easy to compare yourself to the best of every field (looks, wealth, marriage, career) and think of yourself as miserably outclassed. But modern society is so complex that everyone has different goals – which makes comparing to other people pointless. Drill deeply into your discontent and understand what you want, and why. Define your goals. Transform your goals into something achievable today. If it’s not within your control, look somewhere else. Let every day end a little better than it started. If you do this correctly, you’ll be unconcerned with other people, because you have plenty to do yourself. Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Children test boundaries of behavior to learn the rules of the world. As a parent, your purpose is to serve as a proxy for society. You must teach the child what is acceptable, and what isn’t. Children who receive no/incorrect feedback will learn the incorrect boundaries of behavior. They will be poorly adjusted and rejected by society, which will severely hamper their happiness. If you don’t teach children the rules, society will punish them for you, far less mercifully. Set the rules, but not too many. Use the minimum necessary force to enforce the rules.

Rule 6: Put your house in order. It’s easy to blame the outside world, a group of people, or a specific person for your misfortunes. But before you do this, question – have you taken full advantage of every opportunity available to you? Or are you just sitting on your ass, pointing fingers? Are you doing anything you know is wrong? Stop it today. Stop saying things that make you feel ashamed and cowardly. Start saying things that make you feel strong. Do only those things about which you would speak with honor. Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Doing good (preventing evil from happening, alleviating unnecessary suffering) provides your life with meaning. Meaning defeats existential angst; it gratifies your short-term impulses to achieve long-term goals; it makes your life worth living. Think – how can I make the world a little bit better today? Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Think more deeply – what is your true nature? What must you become, knowing who you are? Work toward this. Rule 8: Tell the truth. You may lie to others to get what you want; you may lie to yourself to feel better. But deep down you know it’s inconsistent with your beliefs, and you feel unsettled. You must develop your personal truth, and then act only in ways that are consistent with your personal truth. Lies can be about how much you enjoy your job; whether you want to be in a relationship; whether you’re capable of something; that a bad habit isn’t that bad for you; that things will magically work out. Once you develop your truth, you have a destination to travel toward. This reduces anxiety – having either everything or nothing available are far worse. Act only in ways that your internal voice does not object to. Like a drop of sewage in a lake of champagne, a lie spoils all the truth it touches. Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. People talk because this is how they think. They need to verbalize their memories and emotions to clearly formulate the problem, then solve it. As a listener, you are helping the other person think. Sometimes you need to say nothing; other times, you serve as the voice of common reason. The most effective listening technique: summarize the person’s message. This forces you to genuinely understand what is being said; it distills the moral of the story, perhaps clarifying more than the speaker herself; and you avoid strawman arguments while constructing steelman arguments. Assume that your conversation partner has reached careful, thoughtful conclusions based on her own valid experiences.

Rule 10: Be precise with your speech. Anxiety usually comes from the unknown. You don’t know what the problem is, or something vague seems really scary. Specificity turns chaos into a thing you can deal with. If you had a cancer in your body, wouldn’t you want to know where it is, what it is, and how exactly to treat it? Why don’t you treat every other problem in your life with the same clarity? Be precise. What is wrong, exactly? What do you want, exactly? Why, exactly? In interpersonal conflicts, specify exactly what is bothering you. Don’t let it spiral into an inescapable cobweb. If you let everyday resentment gather, eventually it may bubble up and destroy everyone. Rule 11: Leave children alone when they are skateboarding. Modern parenting has gotten overprotective. This is partly out of protecting children from danger, partly out of a call to equalize gender treatment, to ‘feminize’ boys and lower aggression. Boys by nature are more aggressive. This is biological. They want to prove competence to each other. They want to inhabit that level of risk that pushes them to grow. Let kids alone when they push against authority, toughen up, and do seemingly dangerous things. They need it to grow.

Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. Life is tough. Good people get hurt. Suffering is pervasive. You can hate the universe for this. Or you can accept that suffering is an undeniable part of existence, and loving someone means loving their limitations. Superman without any flaws is boring and has no story. Notice little bits of everyday goodness that make existence tolerable, even justifiable. Watch the girl splash into a puddle. Enjoy a good coffee. Pet a cat when you run into one.

So Chicken Little's birth name is Jordan Peterson.

The hysterical slanderer needs to dry out his panties. Postmodernism is just an aesthetic that's rightly critical of peoples' ability to progress in modern systems. Nihilistic and reflexive at times, for good reason.

The threats to human progress and freedom are real and they need to be taken seriously. The criticism is all for the sake of human enlightenment and the pursuit of progress and ideals -- not a "rejection" of them.

None of Peterson's hyperbole is true. There is NO UNIFORM, POSTMODERN BELIEF such as "completely rejecting the structure of Western civilization" or "not having a shred of gratitude."

That's just reactionary slander.

R54 Thanks for your comment. As others have said I think almost anything he claims can be easily refuted.

Sounds like mundane boilerplate self-help advice to me. Why bother with this guy?

I find he uses an inordinate amount of words to describe concepts that are actually pretty simple.

Someone keeps posting about Peterson and paglia. Both individual threads and threads about the two of them. Someone has a crush on right wing trolls.

R58 Fuck off, delusional cunt. I have never even heard of Peterson. DLers are allowed to have discussions here, you nazi cuntbag.

R59 Your tone seems slightly hostile.

R58, I made an observation. The observation is: someone keeps creating threads about the intellectual acumen of both Peterson and Paglia, two poor writers who love the shiny buttons of a Hugo boss designed SS uniform.

I love Camille Paglia, so stick it.

R49

The fact that post modernists reject logic, when logic is the basis for all civilization, tells you all you need to know about the anti-civilization agenda of postmodernism. Peterson apparently understands that far better than you do.

Derrida and Foucault destroyed literature departments, then history, then political science, and now they are hell bent on destroying science itself.

He's a bit Canadian and all.

What do you mean by this? I know nothing of these two. I Kant understand, if you will.

Derrida and Foucault destroyed literature departments, then history, then political science, and now they are hell bent on destroying science itself.

So let me get this straight... some Canadian prick with a PhD realizes that a bunch of disaffected, make virgins in the developed world are ripe for being hoodwinked?

Who ever heard of such! Call Interpol!

r63, again, post-modernists don't "reject logic". You've joined this guy's cult and now you're parroting his errors. Many post-modern scholars and writers explain flaws in what is perceived as logic. There's a big difference.

Bigger tip for you: There is no one form of post-modernism, no single school of thought that everyone who has a link to post-modernism joins. Post-modernism describes the general state of philosophy and other scholarship that rejects grand unifying theories to explain things. After that, there is no bible, no common philosophy, no single theory that unifies post-modern thinking.

I'll simplify it for you. This is how Peterson's "logic" would work and what many post-modern thinkers would laugh at. Homosexuality is the rejection of nature and the biology of sex. Homosexuals reject the distinction of male and female and its central importance to creation. Homosexuals do not believe in an ordered universe. Homosexuals are ....

See how that works? You can't generalize about post-modern scholars based on their membership in a class. For what it's worth, Derrida and many other scholars who share with gay thinkers and feminists the notion that there is no logic in believing that just because a person is in the category of "males" doesn't mean that the person should share the traits of most people in that category, like being attracted to women. It's just one of many examples to illustrate why what is perceived as logic is often based on assumptions.

In fairness to these two (justifiably marginalized) shit-stirrers, r61, who WOULDN'T love a Hugo boss-designed SS uniform, with or without shiny buttons?

Jordan " I don't agree with everything he says but he has some good ideas" Peterson doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time. He's cocky enough to fake competence which is why he appeals to a " certain demographic" who are secretly more impressed with his strict daddy image than they are with anything he actually says.

....

R67 Thanks for trying to explain this shit to us plebes, dummies, & morons. I have a better understanding. But why is Foucault trying to destroy everything? Have heard of him but never read up on him.

I read somewhere that Peterson is a stupid person's idea of an intellectual - I'd agree with that.

What a closed minded thinker. No creativity at all.

R73 Creativity would be a chaotic, feminine impulse. Not Peterson's style. :-)

R74 He begins with a biased opinion and sticks to it regardless of obvious flaws. Creativity/openness would be him challenging those flaws along the way. He doesn't. It's shallow thinking.

Indeed, I agree.

Good to know who this stupid fucker is. I had never heard of him.

Postmodernism is like modernism. We all know roughly what it is. OP is a conservative troll promoting Peterson.

"This guy" is completely famous now, and OP acts like he's never heard of him before. Fucking disingenuous troll.

R78 You are the biggest fucking asshole. Peterson is a nobody. Why would anyone give a fuck about him or have heard about him.

An interesting article by the guy who got him his job at UotT. He points out that years ago Peterson recognized what makes good fascist leaders and he is currently copying that model.

All in all, Peterson is a sack of shit who has become famous for being an asshole.

I suspect the floor of his office is covered with many many sticky kleenex.

r5 Is that guy trolling?

"Jordan Peterson told me to clean my room so I cleaned my room. I keep asking my messy girlfriend to clean her disorganised room but she ignores me. I have no idea how she gets all As. I get all As too, apart from those 2 Cs."

What R72 said.

This is a man for those who think Trump is smart.

Rockefeller republicanism wrapped in a new agey/fuck you I got mine/moderately disguised Christian "Jesus WANTED me to have this!" , backchannel propaganda put out very smart people that want you to think in a certain way, as the planet cooks, wars continue forever, and the rich get theirs while the poor rip each other's throats out.

This is the weird part. If there was a war that made people and their loved ones participate, this country would snap out of its stupid phase real fast.

First of all, I am ashamed of my alma mater. Shame on you, University of Toronto. What happened? You were once known for your intellectual rigour.

Second, a psychologist really has no business delving into this sort of critique. Not their training, not their field. Only scholars devoted to interdisciplinary studies have the tools to unravel the layers of this onion. Sure there might be exceptions if you have brilliant, curious minds devoted to the growth of knowledge but he seems to promote the shrinking of scholarly inquiry. Cowering and weak. But I guess he will never lack funding with the right wing behind him.

Finally, Harvard throughout history does not make professors. It poaches them.

Next.

If not for the internet this guy would be unknown. We live in an age where if you're a loud enough asshole you'll become rich and famous. He's gotten to the point that he'll go to the opening of an envelope if it would get him on TV and a paycheque.

Prior to refusing to use certain words, the only people who went to his lectures were people who had to be there. He wrote books that no one read and he was a verbose nerd on a little watched TVO show. No one subscribed to his YouTube channel and no followed him on Twitter. He was just another nobody professor desperate to have his ideas recognized by others.

He realized his refusal to not be a prick got him attention and he ran with it. Nothing he is saying is new, or creative or interesting. People have said the same shit for decades. He's the current alt-right, (which he refers to as the "mythical" alt-right,) it boy and eventually they'll move on from him just like they did Milo.

The best revenge anyone can have on him is to just sit back and let him watch himself fall into obscurity. That will hurt him more than anything else.

R81 and a bunch of grainy pictures of Ayn Rand in his desk drawer.

I'd still fuck him.

Bravo R65

Postmodernism has destroyed the foundations of Western culture.

Whatever your feelings about the trans community, (I feel that too many femme boys are being transitioned out of their true gayness,) but this asshole stepped on the backs of the trans community, made it ok to hate them and catapulted himself to fame and fortune.

Anytime someone singles out a small minority group for ridicule and hate to make themselves superior I get angry.

He doesn’t hate the trans community. He just said he would not refer to a trans student in a neutral gender. He didn’t care if the student was he or she. He just refused to refer to that student as “they”.

R91 he described being trans as a mental disorder in a documentary made about him. He framed it all as "free speech" which is so much bullshit. Read the Toronto Star article linked above, the guy is a sociopath.

One of his favorite bumper sticker quotes is telling people to be an individual; and avoid identity politics. Oddly enough all of his defenses of his actions come down to identity politics.

He's also all for seizing the day, competition and meritocracy. Unless you're a woman, then you have to stop competing with the boys, drop out of school and get married.

In the documentary about him there were scenes where he was confronting women, yelling in their faces, putting his hands on them and being aggressive with them, yet he did not do the same with men. Clearly he loves pushing women around but won't dare do that with other men. Prick.

The anti-pornography twat.

I still say everyone should call this bitch by any name but his own. I find the whole trans surgery issue to be completely problematic (attacking the "gender binary" then cutting yourself to make you look more like one sex/gender?).

But it's basic courtesy just to call people how they want to be called.

Yes, basic courtesy, that's what Peterson says. He complains that it is a LAW to refer to people however they choose, no restrictions if that is zhe or zheir or anything they made up this very morning. He is 100% right, this is the sort of Orwelian law people should be afraid of.

This thread is full of straw man arguments.

Like [quote]Unless you're a woman, then you have to stop competing with the boys, drop out of school and get married.

What? 90% of his students are female. He is not telling them to drop out of school. Have you actually listened to him?

Peterson stood up to some bullshit and garnered attention for doing so because most others at the time backed down in the face of intimidation and bullying. Good for him. Some of what he was saying at the time was perfectly sensible.

He then ran with that attention. What did he have to lose ? It has to be better than getting shrieked at on campus daily while on an academic’s salary. He has a certain world view and he crowbars everything he encounters into it to fit his particular narrative. He is clearly deeply enamoured of his own perceived intellect and he now has a small army of fearful, incoherent white boys who see him as a mouthpiece for their painful alienation.

Every so often a conservative philosopher gets some media traction. He’s getting his. You can sense his time is already coming to a close. It usually does when they bring their religious beliefs into it.

Interesting.

[quote]...a tendency is not an absolute. That is one of the things that these people need to consider continually.

Thanks, R26 That excerpt is a great example of the useless “duh” filler that permeates Peterson’s blathering. Then he claims our society is “an absolutely dismal wreck” compared to “utopia,” which he does not define. (Maybe it’s a segregated white ethnostate where his superior Western European values are adhered to, and sexual harassment and discrimination against minorities has been decriminalized, eh?) Then in the very next sentence he asserts:

[quote]compared to the rest of the world, and the plight of other societies throughout the history of mankind, we're doing pretty damn well, and we should be happy to be living in society we're living in.

His use of vagueness, relativism, and contradictory claims masked under impenetrable academic jargon makes him hard to understand. Yet he loathes post-modernism? Really.

That is hard to understand? What is hard to understand? We got a good deal in the early 21st century west compared to most other places and times.

Simple enough? But I mean he is just saying it better.

I guess you really do not understand him, which is why you think he is arguing for discrimination against minorities for some reason.

r97, I have listened to him and he's a fucking crackpot. I've also met him and he's a homophobic, piece of shit.

Do tell about the homophobic encounter, r102!

He said once that he opposed marriage equality because he didn’t want to hand a win to postmodern Marxists

Peterson seems like a total tool.

Peterson is not fond of gay parenting because he believes that children need both a mom and a dad to model proper gender roles. He’s big on biological imperitives. Although he’s acknowledged that childfree people are happier, he claims it’s a delusional happiness because “the fundamental truth of life is tragedy and suffering” and has called women who don’t want to have kids “pathological” and doomed for lives of isolation and misery.

R101 Peterson believes that inequality is rooted in biology. He believes IQ disparities between populations (e.g. different ethnic groups and races) are the reasons for racial inequality, and he believes systemic racism is bullshit. JP does not pay much heed to environmental factors in a child’s early development that could affect his/her IQ. Based on those “facts,” racial discrimination either does not exist, or is warranted based on biology. The same goes for his belief that biological sex differences are the reason for workplace inequality between men and women - not sexism. This justifies stripping away anti-discrimination laws, because again biological truth over social constructs and “enforced equality.”

Here’s Peterson on race, IQ, “the Jewish question” and why men dominate the STEM fields:

[quote]The alt Right, like the former Nazi Party is made up of gay men.

Get raped.

Esp. if you're a bisexual or gay man, I fucking DETEST people who blame EVERYTHING on gay men.

Hitler loved pussy.

Another of Peterson’s contradictions is that while he’s against “forced equality” for women and minorities, he’s all for it when it comes to straight men who can’t get laid. He believes violent incels are the result of the unfair “distribution” of women to alpha males and that “enforced monogamy” is the answer. Yes - JP ironically wants affirmitive action for straight beta males!

Another contradiction in his meritocratic worldview is his declaration that ethnicity is a determinant of average IQ in various populations, but CAUTION: a person’s innate value and virtue is not based on their intelligence, but rather their character. So what exactly will become of these low IQ, unemployable people with no welfare benefits in his fantasy free market society based on individualistic values that he yearns for?

Even JP was perplexed by this conundrum in one of his lectures about low IQ people, and just fell short of suggesting that these unfortunates could survive by rendering domestic services to populations of “superior intellect” in return for food and lodging.

His explanation why there is more men in STEM fields is completely correct. I always forget that people deny such basic facts to defend their worldview. Men and women are interested in different things at different rates... I mean can anyone really try to deny it? I just can't wrap my head around that.

Everyone also knows that gay men are interested in acting and fashion design and such creative endeavours at higher rates than straight men. But if JP implied that I'm sure he'd be the worst homophobe.

R111 You have to factor in workplace hostility towards women and gay men who want to go into fields dominated by hetero men. Many I know personally could not take the stress of the constant harassment and gave up.

An overall trend of men and women being attracted to different fields of work does not mean discrimination and harassment does not exist, or that we should ignore claims of it. Peterson grossly simplifies the problem to promote his patriarchal Christian ideology .

Something shameful about discouraging and limiting choices for little girls and then claiming their lack of interest as a grown woman is biological

Who is limiting choices for little girls? They want to study psychology and biology, of course medicine and law - great studies - they don't want to study physics etc, at very high rates. They study whatever they want.

He makes a solid case on some topics and makes some interesting point on them when he addresses topics in his areas of expertise.

However, he strays too far from his areas of expertise and has nothing relevant to say on those topics that he didn't learn from googling for a few hours to do research on them. More pointedly, he makes the same logical fallacies in his arguments that he accuses other people of making.

[quote]His explanation why there is more men in STEM fields is completely correct. I always forget that people deny such basic facts to defend their worldview. Men and women are interested in different things at different rates... I mean can anyone really try to deny it?

The fact that men and women do not display the same interest in STEM does NOT mean there isn't a huge bias against women, that women aren't discouraged from entering those fields, or that they are treated fairly when they do. What this argument fails to recognize is that if there were a systematic bias against women that discouraged them from pursuing studies in that area (by men AND other women), they would, of course, have less interest in those fields.

Second, even if it were true that women have an inherently lower interest in those fields and enter in dramatically smaller numbers, it still would not mean that women are not discouraged from entering, that there isn't bias, or that there isn't systematic discrimination against those few women who do enter.

[quote]He makes a solid case on some topics and makes some interesting point on them when he addresses topics in his areas of expertise.

Yep - his specialty is Jungian psychology, and I was introduced to him through his lectures on myths and archetypes. This stuff fascinates me, but I also like seeing grand narratives disassembled and examined for their purpose, and for the intent of those who create or use them to enforce societal roles. But I guess that makes me a dangerous post-modern neo-marxist in JP’s eyes.