Jordan Peterson is a Dangerous Nutjob

[InbetweenDreams]

About a week ago I watched a video (was one here on GS) which was fine, I didn't have any objections to it and has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. Except the suggested videos that followed. Now, it is probably no surprised that my political views are generally liberal. I don't consider myself far left or "radical" and I'm willing to listen to the otherside, that is as long as they present some coherent thought and don't use all caps.

Anyway, the videos I was suggested were seemingly fine such as "Arguing Over Nothing" which I think demonstrated some good points about how politicians often make vague statements if not completely empty. It's a good watch and I'll stick it here:



Of course after watching that video I started seeing this Jordan Peterson guy pop up. A video about the gender pay gap, campus protests and postmodernism...Which I knew was a bunch of right wing crap and decided I'd watch it anyway.



A lot of what this guy said seemed to make sense. That women are more agreeable and compassionate and that men were less agreeable and less compassionate than men, that men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people. That those facts, based on some studies (which ones I don't know) are the reason why that women make less money than men and went on to explain all this with more data and science. Again, I don't know what studies and how those studies were conducted...but I have a feeling I might be disappointed if I go digging into where Peterson bases his talking points on. We can dive into that later on.

He, in another video speaks about transgender people, about how he was against "C-16" which in a nutshell would have protected gender identity just as sex, religion and so on. Now, I didn't go digging into the nitty gritty about C-16 and I we can dive into that another time. The thing that got me was that he claims that what transgender activists want is the same thing as Maoism. I know a little bit of Chinese History, much thanks to SerpentZA and a couple other content creators. I watch and read up on various topics about China as I think it is bother interesting and relevant. Anyway, you're probably thinking the same thing I was thinking. What the fuck does Maoism have to do with someone being transgender. Well, digging into this it seems that Peterson feels that protecting someone's gender identity is forcing someone to use certain language and that identity politics will lead to "the death of millions" and totalitarianism.

I call bullshit on that and makes me question the rest of his views. I don't know a lot of people who are transgender, but I think the vast majority just want dignity and be able to live their life the way they want. I don't think the majority are trying to force people to say certain things, just to accept who they are. It's not hard to be respectful after all. I think similar rhetoric was used about when same sex marriage was being discussed, that it would ruin marriage and so on. The think giving people protection from discrimination is somehow an attack on heritage and traditions.

It's a bunch of nonsense and it is dangerous. Perhaps he is right about women being more agreeable and that it does contribute to the pay gap between men and women but I can tell you it isn't the full story.

You can read up more on Peterson's views and you can search around yourself. There's several reddit threads about Peterson and other people asked the same question and the discussion always devolves into the same old horse pucky, that transgender people are mentally ill. Which I call bullshit on that too. That's the crowd he caters to. That's why he's on with Dave Rubin and Lowder With Crowder and all those guys, he echos the views of the alt-right.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018...rnets-nest

https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/phi...1-genesis/

https://medium.com/@lindsaypereira/is-jo...4b9af13bc3

At any rate, be cautious when listening to him. If I had advice for myself for a 20 year old me, I would say to be careful about people like this. They're attractive. That's how I was more less brainwashed by the right wing crowd in my 20's. They're good at making word salad and they're good about telling you what to think and what to be outraged. I used to do work for a guy who timed races, put on triathlons and 5k and marathons and so on. He is a very right wing guy and I would ride with him and he always had stuff on like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and all those guys. They spend two hours telling you how the rAdiCal left is destroying the country which is utter nonsense. I tell you those guys are the reason why your parents or your grandparents are so politically opposite from you. Anyway, going on a rant. At some point I began to realize what these guys really are and started thinking on my own. I don't always agree with the left and it is very easy to say stuff oh we can't afford universal healthcare. Let me tell you the US government dropped $3 Trillion, most went to bail out Wall Street, not you, not your mom and pop shop. Anyway, that's all I got for now and sorry I didn't make a deeper dive into what Peterson is selling.

[Chase]

This always makes me laugh:

[InbetweenDreams]

Jesus Christ @Chase that's the video I should have found and shared, does a better job matching up with the title of the thread.

I get the same impression I got when Ben Carson first appeared. Remember how at the very beginning everyone thought oh wow this guy is soooooo smart...and now...not so much.

---

Here's another gem...

[kindy64]

The pay gap is pretty much a myth, and if you don't know that, you're in a bubble...

Roughly equal work gets roughly equal pay.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstma...cc27ff46fa

What about the bigger picture? There are many media reports of a gender gap, often claiming that women are paid only about 80% of what men are paid. But that number is comparing the total amount of salary paid to men and to women in this country. It does not take into account such crucial factors as profession, qualifications, type of employer, seniority, hours worked or many other things that go into deciding compensation. When these basic factors are taken into account, the gender pay gap vastly decreases. For example, PayScale issued a report entitled: “The State of Gender Pay Gap 2019” based on a survey of 1.8 million wage earners. It reported that “women still make only $0.79 for every dollar men make in 2019.” But the controlled pay gap, “the amount that a woman earns for every dollar that a comparable man earns,” was a small fraction of that. When comparing two people in the same profession, with the same seniority, working the same number of hours, and so forth, women earn $0.98 for every dollar that a man earns.

************

Jordan Peterson is against being forced by law to alter his language.

Are you for the government being able to compel you to speak in a certain way?



EQUALITY OF OUTCOME CAN NOT BE GUARANTEED

[InbetweenDreams]

The pay gap is pretty much a myth, and if you don't know that, you're in a bubble...

Roughly equal work gets roughly equal pay.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstma...cc27ff46fa

..You did click the link to Payscale, right?

I also never said Peterson was wrong on the issue of the gender pay gap or his reasons why such exists. There are differences in interests between men and women, afterall you don't see many IT professionals who are women, or car mechanics...just as you don't often find male nurses, those I two things are reasonable generalizations that do happen to be true. I think his assessment is reasonable to a point. But you can't argue that women are not at a disadvantage, but I'll let you think about why that might be....

Here's the data for both controlled and uncontrolled data...

Our research shows that the uncontrolled gender pay gap, which takes the ratio of the median earnings of women to men without controlling for various compensable factors, has only decreased by $0.07 since 2015. In 2020, women make only $0.81 for every dollar a man makes.

The controlled gender pay gap, which controls for job title, years of experience, industry, location and other compensable factors, has also decreased, but only by $0.01 since 2015. Women in the controlled group make $0.98 for every $1 a man makes.

https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap

So yay?! Women who are in the same field same everything make almost the same as men. Except I don't recall any men being terminated as a result of becoming pregnant. I have seen this sort of stuff at happen with a previous employer. So I don't think even their uncontrolled data is taking account for all things. You don't see too many guys, single, with a baby to take care of. I would presume you have been around a baby or a newborn at some point in your life? So, I should hope you are for women being able to take paid maternity leave? And I should also hope you're against this sort of discrimination in the workplace.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018...ation.html

Just so we're clear on how they put all this together, or at least what they've put here...

Uncontrolled Gender Pay Gap: Median pay for men and women are examined separately, and the difference in the median is reported as the uncontrolled gender pay gap. Variables such as years of experience and education are not controlled for. This provides a picture of the differences in wages earned by men and women in an absolute sense.

Controlled Gender Pay Gap:This is the amount that a woman earns for every dollar that a comparable man earns. That is, this is the pay difference that exists between the genders after we control for all measured compensable factors. If the controlled pay gap is $0.97, then a woman would earn 97 cents for every dollar that a man with the same employment characteristics.

https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay...ethodology

Jordan Peterson is against being forced by law to alter his language.

Are you for the government being able to compel you to speak in a certain way?

I'm not watching any more of his videos and probably heard what he had to say. Let's look at C-16, since this is what it is all about....

Not going to pull up anything fancy, just Wikipedia...

The bill is intended to protect individuals from discrimination within the sphere of federal jurisdiction and from being the targets of hate propaganda, as a consequence of their gender identity or their gender expression. The bill adds "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the list of characteristics of identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda in the Criminal Code. It also adds that evidence that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on a person's gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance for a court to consider when imposing a criminal sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Act_to_...minal_Code

I'm not going to pretend to know Canadian laws or what civil liberties they have as they compare to the US, but they are definitely different. I suppose you don't think it is necessary to have laws against hate speech? What about civil rights? I mean it is pretty obvious those of us in the LGBTQ community are quite often discriminated against and why so many people have to stay in the closet. Perhaps you're living in a bubble?

Now, where things go off the rails for me concerning Peterson is this notion that what they (transgender activists) want is the same as Maoism and that millions will die as a result. So, either I fail to see his comparison valid and he's a nut job or there's some special language or interpretation of the law (C-16) Canada passed that I am unaware of that makes his argument valid. I don't see how referring to a transgender person as the gender they identify with an infringement on your freedom of speech, unless not being able to be prejudiced towards transgender people is what you're considering infringement. The fact that people, right wingers specifically, seem to have a problem with transgender people, or the LGBTQ community at large, is why governments have to pass laws to protect and extend civil liberties.

Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, criticized the bill, saying that it would compel speech. Peterson argued that the law would classify the failure to use preferred pronouns of transgender people as hate speech. According to legal experts, including law professors Brenda Cossman of the University of Toronto and Kyle Kirkup of the University of Ottawa, not using preferred pronouns would not meet legal standards for hate speech

So...yeah, Peterson is full of shit and is catering to the alt-right. If he wants to teach psychology that's fine but he can take his political agenda and shove up right up his ass if you want my opinion.

[TigerLover]

I disagree with the title of your post, Peterson is dangerous precisely because he's not a nutjob. The foundation of his work is solid. He points out obvious targets like the wage gap and mixes in basic truisms like "people need to take on personal responsibility". Hell most people who've heard of him only know these parts and think he's a rational intelligent guy who happens to critque "the left". 

On that rational foundation he then goes on to build this enormous twisted tower of subtle racism, paranoia, trans-phobia and political tribalism. It's honestly as ingenious as it is utterly vile.

[InbetweenDreams]

Oh I'm not trying to imply he's an idiot @TigerLover, he definitely knows what he's doing and smart enough not to own belonging to the alt-right. I'd say he's very aware of what he's doing...

He did almost kill himself from benzos... I do have some sympathy for him on that end of it, benzos are awful drugs to get hooked on and they can really fuck you up for a looooong time too.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epgb3...dependence

I say he's a nut job in the sense that he's intelligent enough to know better.

[Chase]

So, it's hard to believe, but that Burger King video is a parody, and it's saying something how much of a Poe's Law it is.

I once binged watch Jordan Peterson (JP) videos. He does have some interesting insights and interpretations of religion and fairy tales, but that doesn't make him right on everything, and when he's wrong, he's REALLY wrong.

Some rather questionable insights from his holiness:

Disney's Frozen is propaganda to teach girls they can be happy without a man. I'm not even going to explain why that's wrong. If you think that's true, then you are TFG - Too Far Gone.

All atheists, including the hardcore new atheists like Richard Dawkins, secretly believe in God because they aren't serial killers. Yep, JP actually believes every atheist who isn't a murderer and rapist is secretly a God believer.

JP, like most self help gurus, might be good for people who need to be told to take control of their life, but JP takes that on steroids and directs it at American politics in spite of the fact that he's Canadian. He constantly says "the left" will lead to Bolshevik communism, which when preached in the USA, is downright hypocritical, since most American left wingers just want the healthcare system of his own native Canada. Is Canada a communist wasteland? Because I don't think so.

Somewhere out there in JP's vast YouTube diary, he recalls a story of him working in some rough neck job like an oil rig or something. He says a man who worked there got teased for always eating out of a lunch box, and he didn't understand "the game" and it led his coworkers bullying him by throwing rocks at his helmet. To JP, this is that man's fault for not understand JP's own understanding of the game of life. As soon as I saw that video, I instantly thought to myself that JP really is a psycho. He's a hypocrite too, since you know if someone were to throw a rock at him and say it's his fault for not understanding "the game," he'd seek legal action.

I can see JP's side to that story. There have been times where I was surrounded by pure toxic people and my only way to survive was to fight fire with fire. But a toxic world isn't a world most people want to live in, and we know from history we can make it a less toxic place if we really want to, something JP says we should be grateful for, yet seems to imply we've reached our apex. That is the main reason why I am not a conservative, for the world can always be better, and the system we have now is not worth conserving.