Author Topic: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4  (Read 5078 times)

Clockwork

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Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« on: January 21, 2018, 01:37:15 AM »
Have a gander at this one dudes and let me know what you think. Gender pay gap, postmodernism and lobsters.


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Jubal

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2018, 10:43:42 AM »
Oh, god, this guy. I've come across Peterson before...

On the GPG, the holes in his logic are that a) he mostly ignores socialisation as an effect upon character traits, b) he generalises according to physical sex to an extent that borders on absurdity, and c) he conflates "having the right character traits to get high pay" with "competence at the job", rather than seeing these as, in game theory terms, two entirely different games. The point should be to make the former reflect the latter as closely as possible, rather than prima facie accepting the latter. Peterson's "classical liberalism" (to use his term) leads him to conceptualise job markets as an entirely impersonal force that creates a true free market - that is to say, supply will rationalise to demand for the good. The trouble is that we know that markets don't work like that and that if you don't regulate them they stop functioning that way.

On trans rights, he's just being a dick - and an inconsistent one. Which is to say, the evidence base for trans people to have legal protection from discrimination is overwhelming if you accept that anyone needs legal protection from discrimination. Personally, I think the evidence in favour of anti-discrimination laws is overwhelming. But if Peterson has a problem with discrimination laws about trans people, he should be campaigning to get rid of *all* anti-discrimination laws everywhere. He cites "free speech" concerns over this - but surely that's the same argument one could make about restricting his right to call his black students n____s in class, say. The fact is, it's just easier for him to punch on trans folk not getting legal protections because their rights are less widely accepted. I'd love to live in a world where people weren't unpleasant enough to each other to have to need anti-discrimination laws, but even hopeless idealists like me have to make concessions to reality.

He also seems to have no idea what "postmodernism" is. Postmodernism is a really annoying philosophy a lot of the time, and as a historian I deal with silly postmodern interpretations of things, but I know marxist-school academics as well (some of whom do really good work), and if you asked a postmodernist and a marxist in a history department what they agreed upon they'd look at you blankly. To give you the basic rundown, the entire point of marxist theory is that it's stadial, or in other words universal. In its simplest form, you have feudal, then capitalistic, then communist modes of production, and it suggest that something like that is a natural order for societal development. Postmodernism is perhaps most fundamentally the rejection of any kind of universalism at all. What academic postmodernism most emphasises is the fluidity and personal nature of identity, and how it's constructed in very specific societal contexts (whereas traditional marxism often rejects ideas of personal identity and only considers class identity to matter; modern marxists perhaps have some postmodernist influences and have dropped a lot of the stadialism of traditional marxist theory, but I've not seen any evidence that the far larger bloc of postmodernists have many marxist influences, and nor would I say that postmodernism is a "dominant" ideology in academic circles, and marxists are genuinely quite rare nowadays).

Also, with the lobsters section, he does the evo behavioural scientist thing of "I saw a lobster do it and I have a couple modern studies of small group behaviour so I'm going to ignore literally any evidence of how entire human societies run" (subtext: because that comes from a humanities department). This pisses me off for obvious reasons. I think this arises from his inability to define and distinguish terms like "hierarchy" (oh look, another humanities area). The fact that social hierarchies tend to vaguely de facto exist isn't something I dispute, but that tells us basically nothing about anything in the real world, since social hierarchies of that sort are essentially transient relationships formed between individual groups of humans; by definition, the sort of hierarchy Peterson is talking about is bounded and capped at a small number of individuals, because it's based on their psychology of personal interaction. They're also still waaaaay more complex than a simple strata-based hierarchy, as anyone who's studied politics ought to be able to appreciate. De jure and constitutionally speaking the depth of, and power balance within, those hierarchies is wildly variable. So his idea that the presence of a simple social pecking order "knocks down" the idea that a) the structure of societal-scale pecking orders and b) the precise dynamics of localised pecking orders are culturally constructed is pretty much horsedung.

I just don't feel like Peterson really understands how some of the things he's critiquing actually work, and he's got these quite generic frameworks that he vaguely retrofits onto specific problems and gets away with it because generally he's slightly better intellectually equipped than the reporters he's facing off against. I've not seen a lot coming from him that I think is a really interesting point, and I guess that's perhaps largely because I'm not his target audience.
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Clockwork

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2018, 02:33:04 PM »
Interesting. Not saying I agree or disagree with either him or you but I think you've misheard or been misled about a couple of his points.


He doesn't ignore socialisation as an effect on character traits, he actively addresses it with his look into Scandinavia and how despite their highest level of equality and such that males are 20:1 of engineers and females are 20:1 of nurses or similar statistic, that a trend towards equality maximises gender differences (taken this from another video of his at a university).


I also disagree that he he's merging the two; he states that the two traits which indicate competence (intelligence and conscientiousness) are the traits which lead to higher paid jobs, backed by his studies (disagree on whether his studies are valid if you like) but he doesn't say competence at an individual job leads to higher pay at that job. Game theory (if I'm using the same LSE version you are) requires that people always maximise outcome and that all players know all the rules; he states that people with a higher agreeableness trait don't, they don't know how to get a 'best' outcome. Again, not saying I agree with him or not (not made up my mind yet) but that I seem to be getting a different message.


He's definitely not inconsistent I really don't think you can apply that to him at all. His stance has always been that legislation should not tell us which language we have to use. This has a very important distinction (one which he's forced to make repeatedly) from language we can't use (racial slurs etc.). One can certainly make a case that trans people need pronouns and he's wrong to wholly dismiss all of them.


I can also tell you where he gets his ideas of postmodernism from, Jaques Derrida, who was a marxist and later a postmodernist. Peterson believes that the link between the two is that marxists were/are in favour of empowering the oppressed working class to rise up against the capitalist class and that Jaques Derrida changed the language but not the sentiment. Instead of economic situation he called it power and instead of working class vs capitalist class he calls them oppressed vs oppressor. - loosely paraphrased from various videos. I believe that he's comparing similarities because he sees them both as authoritarian left *in this instance with regards to activists who are pro-article c16*.


I think it's a little unkind to not give him more credit, the guy is a genius to some degree. His analytical skills a phenomenal (even if you disagree with his ideas that come about from the analytics he does). I have to admit I find him a very captivating speaker but he's speaking on things I have, at the moment, limited experience of and as such I find it difficult to wholly agree or disagree with him.
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Jubal

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2018, 03:30:16 PM »
So on the specific point of C16, the legislation doesn't actually say what language you have to use. There is not a single prescribed word in the legislation. What it does is simply give gender identity the same legal protections as e.g. race, and nothing else, making it a category for discrimination law purposes. Peterson's contention is that this may mean he can't take a student who uses a neopronoun (xe, say) and refer to them (consistently/intentionally) as he or she or whatever he wants. It wouldn't be a criminal offence to do so either, he just might get fired, which if you're being that much of an asshat to your students isn't all that surprising. My view is that, on legal grounds, his claim that this dictates what language he has to use is nonsense. He's under no obligation to refer to the student in question with a pronoun at all if the use of neopronouns offends him that much: sure, it might mean he has to come up with some clunky sentence constructions, but it's perfectly possible for someone of his intellectual capacity. His claim that the law would force him to use certain language doesn't hold water; it may (though it's not wholly clear as it's not been legally tested) force him to not use the wrong pronouns for someone, but it doesn't actually force him to use the right ones.

I'll give him that he's an effective and engaging speaker, I just think that his problem is that he's extremely dismissive of social science and humanities to the point where he generalises and doesn't bother to understand or engage with them properly. Modern postmodernist thinkers have moved a long way since Derrida, just as modern Marxist thinkers are hugely different to Marx in how they discuss their work. To take a 101-class point on this, academic marxism (which is not the same as marxism in the political sense of the term) and postmodernism are not fundamentally political theories, they are theories of how society works, and need to be engaged with on those terms. One could in theory accept large chunks of marxist academia (framing society as class struggle tied to ownership of production relations) whilst being on the right: how you frame society dictates what you think the levers are that you need to pull to change society around, separately to what you think the ideal outcomes should be.

And sure, both postmodernism and marxism have some vague framings involving people having identity, but they don't share a lot beyond that. A lot of my problem with postmodernist takes on things is the opposite of Peterson's - that postmodern theory sometimes take individualism and perception theories to the point of absurdity (the whole "we can never know what really happened, only what people thought about it" school of historical thought). So his portrayal of postmodernism in particular just doesn't stack with most postmodernism as I've seen it expressed in a modern university context. I think his suggestion that the trans activists behind C16 are by definition radical authoritarian-leftists is quite odd as well, since by and large the trans activists I know are skewed hard towards liberal or anarchist more than socialist politics compared to the general population. Generally, cultures that enforce group identity harder do more damage to LGBT folk, who are in turn very well aware of the fact. The desire for trans folk to get basic legal protections and status isn't to promote the idea of "group identity" over liberal individualism, but to lift some of the institutional barriers which exist and allow trans folk to access and express that individualism at all in the first place.

The authoritarian leftism that drove Maoism and Stalinism, and which is more closely derived from traditional marxist theory, is very different to this, in that a) in both cases it was fundamentally a form of nationalism and b) it prescribed undelineated and unified identities, as defined against external groupings. Modern trans activists, who I guess owe somewhat more to postmodern thought, seek essentially rights to self-define identity, and for the state to protect that: authoritarian leftism seeks to construct a singular identity and uses the state to promote that. I don't see how one can hold together an argument that there's any great similarity either in mechanics or in fundamental worldview between those two things.
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Clockwork

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #4 on: January 21, 2018, 06:08:51 PM »
There is both more and less to the C16 thing than just C16 where Peterson is concerned. It's the most talked about thing about him so forgive me if you already know this but I feel like it's crucial context. In one of the Canadian universities (Toronto I think, where he has tenure, not sure) he was giving a speech about whatever, doesn't matter, and during the questions he was asked what he'd do if he was fined for not calling someone by their choice of pronoun, he said he wouldn't pay it and face jail time. He would have been doing something illegal but not criminal, under their laws. Again, not taking a side but he's not wrong that he could face sanctions for not using xe etc.



He's of the mind that his discipline is a social science and he's a big fan of sociology and history, he has a great knowledge of 1900s history especially so I don't think it's fair to say he dismisses social science or humanities :/


Given his usage of the terms I took it for granted he was talking about social structures, I get the impression he doesn't subscribe to political stances because he's all about defining people by what they have, where they are, how successful the are, their personality types and not at all concerned with how people describe themselves or even seemingly peoples potential. I don't think he's wrong and I don't think it's even that extreme of a view but it's not 'nice'. And I don't mean that disparagingly either, being nice is really important.

No idea why I went on a binge watch of his stuff, I feel like I learned something about directness and logic.
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Jubal

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #5 on: January 21, 2018, 06:34:00 PM »
Quote
he could face sanctions for not using xe
No, he couldn't. The thing for which he could face a sanction - and this distinction is important - would be for using he or she or another incorrect pronoun (and doing so in a way deemed to breach equalities law - this is an area where you'd have to be proven to repeatedly and deliberately doing something in a targeted way to get a fine). In other words, contrary to his claims, he's not being legally forced to use certain language. He's legally being told not to say certain things, which has perfectly reasonable legal precedent. If he were to have a student who wanted to use xe pronouns, and referred to that student solely on first-name terms or by not using pronouns at all, the law would have absolutely nothing to say on that matter and could not be invoked. In any case the situation is far-fetched, and I think a court of law would require significant evidence of malicious intent to uphold a complaint of that sort, but de jure his framing of it as the state forcing him to use neopronouns is simply inaccurate, he's at most being told not to use incorrect pronouns (and even then there's a gap between that and the legal standard for proving discrimination).

I think psychology is generally treated as science rather than social science, though I guess it's borderline. You can do experiments in psychology and it is amenable to standard experimental methods, though, which is usually where the sci/socsci line is drawn. Having a good general knowledge of history and being open-minded to what historians actually say about it and how we explain it are very different things. All I'm saying is that from my perspective, as a historian (and not as a postmodernist or a marxist one, either, I don't think I have a particular historical "school" in that sense personally), the critiques he's making of historical theories just don't seem to reflect what the people in my discipline who use those theories are actually doing. It feels like he basically conjures up a version of what modern humanities faculties are like that really doesn't reflect what we're actually doing in them, and then of course easily knocks it down, which is frustrating to watch as a humanities academic.
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Clockwork

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #6 on: January 21, 2018, 08:00:18 PM »
What critiques is he making of historical theories? Do you mean his hatred of Marxism and the like or something else?


And what's his version of modern humanities faculties? I don't think I've seen him talk about either especially.


His lectures I've seen have been anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-sjw, anti-postmodernist and cites research done into animal behaviour, how hierarchies are stable, that equal outcome is undesirable in a civilised country but equal opportunity and fairness is eminently desirable and a lot of stuff tied to religion, music, humanism etc.
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Jubal

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #7 on: January 21, 2018, 10:43:39 PM »
Both Marxism and Postmodernism - the former of which I think he merges the political and academic forms of in his work rather, and the latter of which I think he tends to overestimate the use of and kinda misrepresent in its approach. I have criticisms of both those theories, but I don't think Peterson's criticisms of them are based on accurate representations of what they are in a modern academic context. I'm partly ref'ing stuff from when I first came across him, which was a while back and I probably can't dig it out easily, sorry - he's definitely made comments along the lines that he'd dissuade students from taking e.g. English because he thinks those faculties are just generally too infested by postmodernist thought.

Anyway, I don't think I've got a lot more to say on this one, and I'm kinda tired. I feel like I've said my piece here, anyway.
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Clockwork

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #8 on: January 21, 2018, 11:35:28 PM »
Yeah no problem, thanks for your input Jub, I really appreciate it :) I know I pushed a little but I kinda really want to know both sides of what he's talking about because yes, he is a pedagogue as far as I can tell but also seems to say some smart things. I can't tell if his thing is a cult or sense, I guess I have to make up my own mind in the end but I wanted a rebuttal, so thank you :)
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Pentagathus

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #9 on: January 22, 2018, 11:22:33 PM »
This is not a proper reply, will probably do one later when I am feeling awake and alive, but just wanted to post this because otherwise I'd forget.
Peterson talks about what he believes post modernism and marxism are at around 1:28 in this super long podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G59zsjM2UI
That's all for now folks.
Edit:
Ok I've watched a fairly absurd quantity of his lectures, interviews and podcast appearances by now. Quite enjoying the viewing, he's an engaging speaker and much of what he debates or teaches is fascinating. His focus on the archetypal stories I find especially intriguing, actually makes me want to read the bible  :P  Also the clinical/behavioural psychology is good for me since I certainly would like to change aspects of my character. His basic life philosophy does seem somewhat attractive I have to admit, and I would imagine this is a huge part of the appeal for young men with no religious faith or other guiding philosophy.
In terms of his political stances, a fair amount of what he says does resonate with me. I find it very hard to identify with the political left nowadays, largely (but not solely) because I feel that a) the extreme left tends to hold more weight than it should within left wing groups and that b) a lot of fairly far lefties seem to resent or even hate the wealthy, which Peterson believes is their main driving motivation rather than sympathy for the less wealthy. A strong example of b) might be the proposal among some labour members to implement a "maximum wage" policy in their manifesto, which does not have any evident benefit for anyone and would in fact lower income tax revenue (although perhaps the money saved from high executive wages may theoretically be payed out to lower earning employees but I really do feel the economic damage of such a policy would outweigh any potential benefit).
His discussions of the polarisation of society on the podcast I linked before certainly raises points I worry about, I do feel that absurd far-left activists are partly propelling the rise of "the alt right" and pushing a lot of people towards the right (hello there Mr President Trump). And on the face of it, that definitely seems like a situation that could easily become a positive feedback loop if it's not handled correctly.
I definitely agree with him that equality of opportunity is to be striven for rather than equality of outcomes, although equality of outcomes is of course much easier to measure and at first glance at least it would appear that one would be a good marker of the other (not necessarily the case though). I have never previously been too bothered by the few small discrimination of majority groups in order to try and promote equality of outcomes (e.g the fact that public money (at least I think it's public money) is offered exclusively to women in STEM fields for research scholarships and suchlike) despite feeling they are ideologically wrong (sexism isn't good yo) but I do worry a bit whether that too may promote resentment and further the political polarisation. As to the effect of society/culture on gender differences in personality I would say it doesn't matter at all as long as it works for people. I mean who cares whether there are more females in nursing or fewer in engineering? As long as they have the chance to choose the fields they want then it really shouldn't matter. And as long as culture isn't negatively affecting their personality (e.g increasing neurosis, decreasing assertiveness) then it also shouldn't matter. And I think culture/society does negatively affect many of our personalities in this way (both for men and women) but from what I can tell Peterson's points in regards to this is that a) we  should "revivify" our culture rather than seek to destroy and entirely replace it and b) that culture is much much more complex than simply an oppressive structure and so deliberately forcing it to change even with good intentions is rather dangerous as the actual consequences are very difficult to predict. His work surely seems to be aimed at helping people to change themselves in order that they can change the world around them rather than trying to persuade people to force change upon society (this is very badly phrased but this post is getting crazy long so deal with it).


As to the C16 thing I do have to disagree with him, although tbf it's not like I've actually read the bill myself. From a bit of searching it seems to me that he has misunderstood the bill, it certainly doesn't seem like he's being deliberately trans phobic.


In terms of the interview with Cathy Newman, well it certainly helped sell his book. Cathy's position was pretty absurd and her debating method was absolutely embarrassing, but I guess it's ok now because apparently she's received loads of online abuse so it still proves that "white men will go to disturbing lengths when they feel they're losing power" or however that independent headline so eloquently put it. Would like to see a second interview with a real discussion (as would Peterson for sure). Would also like to see a discussion with someone who actually knows the science behind the "opposing side" as it were.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2018, 08:25:05 PM by Pentagathus »

Pentagathus

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #10 on: January 25, 2018, 09:08:46 PM »
*bumb because I edited my post most mightily*

Clockwork

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2018, 06:43:51 PM »
I like and approve this message, was generally my thoughts on him as well.


Overall I think I agree with him on most things and yeah the bible stuff he does is *fascinating*.


I do however think that because a lot of what he says is logically complicated and requires almost by definition a combination of abstractions and rational analytic thinking, that his message can be misinterpreted by people especially if they fall into the trap he's trying to prevent of liking or hating him too much.
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Jubal

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #12 on: January 26, 2018, 11:48:50 PM »
I think that the idea that an "absurdist left" is fuelling the far right is too simplistic, because it ignores the role of the media as a mediator of that relationship. The actual "absurdist left" is really pretty tiny, depending on how you measure it (of course according to some people I'm probably part of it...). I think that basically a lot of this stuff gets amplified and bounced around until it's taken out of all proportion - it's more like the 1950s red scares than an actual serious political issue, there's this idea and rhetoric that's built up around the "loony left" and I just don't see the evidence for it being much of an actual thing in most cases, I think it's an analytically unhelpful idea that combines aspects of several very different movements with a few massively over-amplified fringe activists in each and then amplifies it all in a bundle and then implies that this is somehow a massive mainstream. I dunno.

As to equality - I agree equality of opportunity is key, but IMO the best indications we have are that the two are pretty correlated, which makes logical sense to begin with; people with richer parents have more opportunities, right throughout life. They're likely to go to better schools, get more help with schoolwork, have to spend less time helping with family stuff, they'll be more cushioned at university, better able to make connections and better conditioned to make use of social capital, and then later on they're likely to be able to get yet more financial help by way of inheritance, since most Western countries keep inheritance taxes extremely low compared to other forms of tax. To approach equality of opportunity, either you need radical tax reform to decrease wealth inequality (which I would advocate), or you need to keep all children in the same controlled conditions and cut them off from their parents (which I wouldn't advocate, hopefully unsurprisingly).

As to diversity in workplaces - generally, my understanding is that studies show that more diverse groups in most situations tend to work better and make better decisions, so I suspect there actually are some "inherent" benefits to diversity, though I agree that in any individual case people should do whatever they want. I'm very sceptical about the idea that a lot of our current societal divisions are in any way hard-wired though, simply on the grounds that humans have had lots of functioning societies with very different class/race/gender/sexuality ideas and balances to our own throughout history, and so my suspicion is that in a lot of cases people get put off doing things more because they don't think X is "for someone like them", even if they'd actually be good at it and enjoy it, which is where the arguments around pushing for diversity come from - I think quota-style measures can easily be overdone, but I see and have some sympathy with the logic behind them.

I agree that Newman didn't do a great job as an interviewer - I think to be fair that it's extremely hard to interview someone like him unless you're a lot more philosophically minded than the average news interviewer; being good at interviewing politicians and being good at picking apart logical arguments are, alas, somewhat different skills. :/
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Pentagathus

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #13 on: January 27, 2018, 05:57:11 PM »

Disclaimer: I just read through this post and realised it's a bit of a mess to read but I'm tired and I can't be arsed to edit it now, hopefully you'll get my points.

Well she shouldn't interview politicians in that way either, deliberately misconstruing someone's argument to make them sound more extreme than they are is simply dishonest and not at all persuasive to anyone watching. It's rather ironic that she accuses him of being divisive when her entire interview technique seems to be aimed at dividing between her side and the interviewee and putting the other side down. In fairness, politicians are often pretty dishonest themselves in interviews so it may actually be the case that she's just not used to interviewing someone who actually believes what they say.
With regards to the prevalence of left wing views I would agree that the actual crazies are overly represented by the media, but I'm also pretty sure I've heard Peterson mention this too. I'd also say that most of the televised media (in the UK at least) has a strong left-wing bias, whilst newspapers seem to be pretty polarised with a mostly right-wing bias, and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much in between. However the kind of attitude seen by Newman in this interview seems pretty common among left-wing activists, I think pretty most folk with a strong ideology are more interested in "proving" themselves right than testing if they are right. I feel like Peterson does over-exaggerate the dangers of today's far left though. I certainly hope he does.
You're talking about equality between income groups now, quite different from the identity politics which Peterson was talking about. He did discuss it quite a bit in that podcast though, from what I can tell he's generally of the opinion that measures to reduce poverty/the effect of poverty are good (although as he pointed out so does pretty much everyone in the world) but was opposed to minimum income on the basis that he believes people need responsibility in order to find meaning in their lives and a mincome makes it much easier for people to avoid taking on responsibilities (this is idea around responsibility is a huge part of his life advice for young men in general btw). He did agree that at a certain level material inequality is inherently bad for the whole of society, but he also made the claim that inequality was a driver of economic growth, the idea being that necessity is a very strong motivator for driving industrious efforts. Which also makes sense. Plus there is the finding that the vast majorities of wealthy families lose their wealth within two or three generations (70% by the 2nd generation, 90% by the third), which somewhat supports this idea (although I believe this is talking about extreme wealth, I haven't been able to find the study itself easily and I cba anymore.) He's also mentioned that second generation immigrants tend to be more successful than the native population, which he thinks is due to this necessity factor. Tbh I'm not sure what his views are on taxation, but at a guess I would say he's probably not in favour of any kind of radical reform (and personally I am really not sure, the idea of mincome is quite appealing to me, especially considering the shrinking value of lower-skilled labour due to technological advances which I don't expect to slow down anytime soon).


Regarding diversity does indeed seem to be a fair amount of evidence to that extent (although I do wonder whether it may be partly the case that more successful companies attract greater diversity rather than the other way around), and there's nothing to stop business from trying to achieve diverse boards but you would think that perhaps simply having potential leadership-employees perform tasks with the team they'd be working with would surely be the best way to test how well they work within said team? Having diversity targets or quotas just seems like an incredibly lazy, unfair and probably un-productive answer.
As to societal divisions being "hardwired" I think there is an incredibly strong case for there being a significant biological impact of gender on some character traits. The fact that (as far as I'm aware) most recorded societies throughout history and around the world have been patriarchal (or at least certainly not matriarchal) is a pretty strong indicator of this, you definitely couldn't just put it down to chance, although the common argument is that it's driven by physical differences (but I don't really buy this, its not as if the largest most aggressive men are always in power). I've also never actually heard someone say they don't feel like a certain career choice is for them due to their gender, and I don't know where the evidence for this claim actually comes from. I have known plenty of women who wouldn't want to try judo or other fighting sports because they consider them too masculine, but then to be fair I've also tried to coach a lot of women who were (initially at least) armadillo at judo because they lacked an aggressive instinct (some men too, but they were a lot rarer) so there may well be some biological truth to that (there's good evidence that testosterone is linked to aggression and that both men and women who are high up in careers or sports have higher than average levels of it.)
I don't certainly feel like we should encourage gender division as a society, but I'm also not sure how much pressure we should be putting on men and women to reject it. For example I have a hell of a lot of hobbies and interests that are considered masculine, I'm certainly not going to change that in order to make myself less divisive and I wouldn't try to pressure women into taking them up either (I often do encourage them too, they are after all very worthwhile imo.) And I'm not claiming that anyone is going that extreme by the way, and I do feel that strong gender roles are not generally good for the well-being of individuals.
But regardless of how reliant the gender-differences in personality traits are on society you have to admit they are there, and you have to take them into account when trying to determine whether an effect is caused by prejudicial discrimination (not sure that makes sense, but what I mean is that a woman choosing to raise her family rather than focus on her career due to the influence of gender norms upon her personality is incredibly different to a woman being forced to raise her family rather than focus on her career, or even from a woman feeling pressured/coerced into this choice by society.)


I definitely would like to see someone in his field challenge him on the whole "Scandinavia shows the extent of inherent biological differences in genders" thing though. I mean to start with, Scandinavia isn't a country. Maybe I'll email him about it or something.


Clockwork - I'm never going to be able to watch the Lion King the same way again  ;D  (why don't we have a laughing smiley btw?)

Pentagathus

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Re: Jordan Peterson debate channel 4
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2018, 09:15:54 PM »