Dr Jordan Peterson

yep, we've already talked about it a bit here http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threa...-–-an-interview-with-dr-jordan-peterson.3540/

Here's his recent debate with Sam Harris.

I listened through the first hour and 36 minutes but I'm sorry, that's as far as my masochism will take me. I lost respect for Jordan, and gained respect for Sam, in that debate, even though all Sam was doing was (in my view) advocating for some sort of sanity. Jordan's conception of truth as "entailing goodnesss" does, as Sam rightly pointed out, make it "very difficult to talk about ordinary truth claims". I think it's interesting (in the armchair rather than the practical sense) to submit Jordan's view of truth to self-reflectivity. How would it answer the question, "Is this conception of truth true?"? We would have to say that it is true if it leads to good outcomes, and false if it leads to bad outcomes, but how could this be a meaningful (as opposed to postmodern) and workable theory of truth? How would we even judge what a good outcome is (and here I recur to Sam's asking as to when the cheque will be cashed)? Anyhow, I'm not sure how helpful all of that is, I just wanted to emphasise that I'm very on board with Sam here and very "skeptical" of Jordan. Thanks (I think!) for posting, @LetsEat.
 
I listened through the first hour and 36 minutes but I'm sorry, that's as far as my masochism will take me. I lost respect for Jordan, and gained respect for Sam, in that debate, even though all Sam was doing was (in my view) advocating for some sort of sanity. Jordan's conception of truth as "entailing goodnesss" does, as Sam rightly pointed out, make it "very difficult to talk about ordinary truth claims". I think it's interesting (in the armchair rather than the practical sense) to submit Jordan's view of truth to self-reflectivity. How would it answer the question, "Is this conception of truth true?"? We would have to say that it is true if it leads to good outcomes, and false if it leads to bad outcomes, but how could this be a meaningful (as opposed to postmodern) and workable theory of truth? How would we even judge what a good outcome is (and here I recur to Sam's asking as to when the cheque will be cashed)? Anyhow, I'm not sure how helpful all of that is, I just wanted to emphasise that I'm very on board with Sam here and very "skeptical" of Jordan. Thanks (I think!) for posting, @LetsEat.

I intend to listen to the debate and give a critique, but in the mean time maybe you would better enjoy some of his classroom lectures although they might be a bit basic to you if you're really into philosophy. As an armchair philosopher, I've been listening to them and discovered that the things I feel like I've discovered on my own are exactly the same things others have discovered and Jordan has a good (if you like ramblings) way of fluidly stringing all these ideas together.



 
Oh, he's incredibly eloquent, yes. Not sure I have the patience for online lectures but I might watch them - thanks for the vids!

Ugh! You made it further than I did in the Sam Harris debate! That was painful to listen to.

You can't argue about primitive notions without going in circles. Sam was correct according to his definition of truth which was pragmatic and Jordan correct according to his definition of truth which was not pragmatic.

The only "problem" with Sam's definition of truth is that it ignores ambiguity and meaning/symbol grounding. Jordan's idea of truth is that facts are tools. An axe chops down a tree. A saw does a better job. A fact enables action whereas a modification or addition of nuance of that fact might enable a better action.

For example, Sam's hypothetical situation where one must know the exact number of hairs on one's body and face extermination if there are an even number ...sounds simple, but if someone's life is at stake they will play with the ambiguity around the definitions of "hair" and "on the body" ... perhaps someone else's hair has floated through the air and landed on the body... it's a "hair on the body" so doesn't it count too? What about subdermal hairs that haven't emerged yet, do those count? What about hairs in the nose? Is that on the body or in the body? Does hair on the body exclude the head? Because usually "body hair" is meant to exclude head hair. What if I shaved my whole body, does the stubble count? How long must a stuble hair be to count?

So there's endless ambiguity in language and that's the problem with absolute truth is you can never fully exclude ambiguity without explaining the entire universe. That's why legal systems start out simple and then expand almost exponentially as those trickster lawyer types play with the ambiguity while the structural conservatives try to plug an endless supply of loop holes with more and more words.
 
Last edited:
So there's endless ambiguity in language and that's the problem with absolute truth is you can never fully exclude ambiguity without explaining the entire universe. That's why legal systems start out simple and then expand almost exponentially as those trickster lawyer types play with the ambiguity while the structural conservatives try to plug an endless supply of loop holes with more and more words.

Nightwish band described it wonderously and poetically in their genius song "Riddler", from the "Oceanborn" album (best song lyrics ever, in my opinion):

 
Ugh! You made it further than I did in the Sam Harris debate! That was painful to listen to.

You can't argue about primitive notions without going in circles. Sam was correct according to his definition of truth which was pragmatic and Jordan correct according to his definition of truth which was not pragmatic.

The only "problem" with Sam's definition of truth is that it ignores ambiguity and meaning/symbol grounding. Jordan's idea of truth is that facts are tools. An axe chops down a tree. A saw does a better job. A fact enables action whereas a modification or addition of nuance of that fact might enable a better action.

For example, Sam's hypothetical situation where one must know the exact number of hairs on one's body and face extermination if there are an even number ...sounds simple, but if someone's life is at stake they will play with the ambiguity around the definitions of "hair" and "on the body" ... perhaps someone else's hair has floated through the air and landed on the body... it's a "hair on the body" so doesn't it count too? What about subdermal hairs that haven't emerged yet, do those count? What about hairs in the nose? Is that on the body or in the body? Does hair on the body exclude the head? Because usually "body hair" is meant to exclude head hair. What if I shaved my whole body, does the stubble count? How long must a stuble hair be to count?

So there's endless ambiguity in language and that's the problem with absolute truth is you can never fully exclude ambiguity without explaining the entire universe. That's why legal systems start out simple and then expand almost exponentially as those trickster lawyer types play with the ambiguity while the structural conservatives try to plug an endless supply of loop holes with more and more words.


Great explanation.
 
The "us" (the PC crowd) vs. "them" (the "cisgender" straight/men/white people) mentality. They (quite arbitrarily) defined which groups they felt represent the current elite/threat and have thus far employed a lot of social tactics (mob pressure seems like a favorite) to outlive and phase them out of society.

"We are the future" appears to be their general idea, the "retrograde" groups will disappear in their utopian fantasies... They feel "selected" in the most literal sense.
I think that's a useful lens to view this through, but I still understand the Marxism thing: everything is reduced to the power struggle between capitalist and proletariat, even things like literature. With the SJWs, it simply got shifted to oppressor/oppressed. And with money, it can be insignificant in their hierarchy: a wealthy lesbian ranks higher than a poor conservative, white male. Period. Maybe even a poor, progressive, white male. This would be even more so in the case of a biological black female who's transgender. Even if she's very wealthy, identity politics ranks her/him at pretty much the top of the hierarchy. And in so far as everything else being of secondary importance, we see that one's ability to do a certain job is ranked far below whether one is politically correct or not. A well qualified physics teacher will, I wager, always lose out to a much less qualified one if he's known to not be of the correct ideology, even if he's simply too silent in ways that the SJW finds conspicuous.
 
I think that's a useful lens to view this through, but I still understand the Marxism thing: everything is reduced to the power struggle between capitalist and proletariat, even things like literature. With the SJWs, it simply got shifted to oppressor/oppressed. And with money, it can be insignificant in their hierarchy: a wealthy lesbian ranks higher than a poor conservative, white male. Period. Maybe even a poor, progressive, white male. This would be even more so in the case of a biological black female who's transgender. Even if she's very wealthy, identity politics ranks her/him at pretty much the top of the hierarchy. And in so far as everything else being of secondary importance, we see that one's ability to do a certain job is ranked far below whether one is politically correct or not. A well qualified physics teacher will, I wager, always lose out to a much less qualified one if he's known to not be of the correct ideology, even if he's simply too silent in ways that the SJW finds conspicuous.

" A well qualified physics teacher will, I wager, always lose out to a much less qualified one if he's known to not be of the correct ideology, even if he's simply too silent in ways that the SJW finds conspicuous."

Interesting!
I read that during the french revolution if one was in the public marketplace and not openly supporting which ever phase of the revolution was in vogue enthusiastically enough you might lose your head quite literally.
 
With the SJWs, it simply got shifted to oppressor/oppressed.

They were forced to switch to Cultural Marxism because early 20th century increases in living standards for Workers pretty much eliminated the 19th century peasant grievances Economic Marxism was based upon.

Communism still serves the same purpose today for which Oligarchs developed it back then, to replace free men with dumbed-down worker-bots and establish the Caste System outlined in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Sargon's concise explination of the absurd Oppressor / Oppressed stack kids are taught today is the best I've seen...

 
Interesting!
I read that during the french revolution if one was in the public marketplace and not openly supporting which ever phase of the revolution was in vogue enthusiastically enough you might lose your head quite literally.
The awful truth is that while we may laugh at such an excess, we seem to be approaching that sort of anarchy for real.

David
 
That video is excellent, but rather too long - at least for one sitting!

Do you ever wonder if the PC/SJW/whatever movement is fundamentally not of our world, and is what has brought about the destruction of countless civilisations before ours?

Not because it is decadent - though I suppose in some ways it is - but because it feels like it could ultimately stifle rational debate completely.

David
 
Last edited:
Do you ever wonder if the PC/SJW/whatever movement is fundamentally not of our world

Scientific Socialism a.k.a. Communism is predicated on the belief that Man can become a god (apotheosis), and thus has no need for fatherly advice from any other god.

This idea was first proposed by the Nachash to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

In my opinion, the 200 million innocent human beings slaughtered by Communism in the 20th tends to contradict that assertion.
 
Somehow, after starting really well, Jordan Peterson seemed to become ever more strident in his interview with Joe Rogan, until I turned him off. He seemed to know so much about human psychology, you would think he had designed us!

David
 
Back
Top