> Except what do you call an actual ponzi scheme now?
Yeah, that's the problem with bandying words around without care to their meaning.
This is happening with fascists/ Nazis more often lately in society. I feel that's a bad thing because there are still torch carrying Nazis out there, they're dangerous, and now we don't have a word for them that carries the same weight. It gets watered down when you use it to refer to anyone center or right of center politically.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian, mostly liberal, left of center academic and the press frequently refers to him as fascist. That just doesn't work.
Speaking of bandying words, when Peterson refers to himself as a classical British liberal, he means free market and not progressive. The NYTimes rates him as conservative leaning.
Yeah, no. Peterson is conservative in literally any country in the world. Advocating for traditional gender roles, saying women might not be suited for the workplace, advocating for strict hierarchies and so on is deeply conservative. His belief in genetic predeterninism of societal structures and of thought patterns - masqueraded as Jungian archetypes - is indicative of a worldview just one logical step from the far right. I don't know if any country in the world where he would left of center religion notwithstanding.
I say this as someone who watched at least 150 hours of Peterson and who used to follow much of his views.
> Advocating for traditional gender roles, saying women might not be suited for the workplace, advocating for strict hierarchies and so on is deeply conservative.
Those are strawman arguments. That's not what he advocates at all. He definitely does argue there are fundamental differences between men and women and what the ramifications of those differences are - that's obvious to anyone, even children. We can argue about those ramifications, but not that there are differences. I don't see how you go from there to your argument, logically.
> His belief in genetic predeterninism of societal structures and of thought patterns - masqueraded as Jungian archetypes - is indicative of a worldview just one logical step from the far right.
Again strawnan, he definitely argues it's part of the picture, but not the whole picture. Anyone who takes just one side in the nature vs nuture debate is out to lunch. It's obviously both.
I don't think your characterizations are balanced or correct.
He believes the differences between men and women necessitates different social roles for men and women in the whole of society, and literally gave the example of women in the workplace.
He argued that the structure of DNA is encoded into the human brain. You can say nature vs nurture, but saying that the human brain is literally encoded with what is necessary for scientific discovery is going a step beyond.
Saying that you need an IQ over a certain number to do a job is also wayyyy over anything reasonable.
Nature vs nurture is a core determinant of conservatism. Being far in the scale of nature and hierarchy is only consistent with right-wing ideologies.
> He believes the differences between men and women necessitates different social roles for men and women in the whole of society, and literally gave the example of women in the workplace.
He definitely talks about the differences between men and women. Nowhere does he say women shouldn't be in the workplace. That's an extremely conservative, even radically conservative view. Source?
> He argued that the structure of DNA is encoded into the human brain. You can say nature vs nurture, but saying that the human brain is literally encoded with what is necessary for scientific discovery.
Source? I'm just not sure what to make of it without context. The way you present it, it sounds crazy. But I could also interpret in several non crazy ways.
> Saying that you need an IQ over a certain number to do a job is also wayyyy over anything reasonable.
It's an over generalization. But it's also largely true. You won't be successful as a software engineer, a quant, a mathematician, a physicist, etc with lower than average iq. People in those industries skew way above the average for good reason.
> Nature vs nurture is a core determinant of conservatism. Being far in the scale of nature and hierarchy is only consistent with right-wing ideologies.
That's seems true. It's also interesting because there is an empirical answer to how much is nature vs nurture. Unlike political views which are largely value tradeoffs as opposed to right or wrong - up to a point anyway.
Please don't misquote me. He said that he is not sure that women can coexist in the workplace. Yes, this is very conservative.
He did not limit himself to quants, SotfEng, Physicists, etc..., he cited minimum IQs for jobs in many sectors, for example saying that you can't be a machinist if you have under average IQs.
The figure he quoted for software engineers IIRC was around 118, meaning that 80% of people can't be productive software engineers, which is completely bullshit.
He went as far as to say that people under 80IQ are simply not productive in society, which is what insane.
But more to your point, IQ strongly correlates with academic performance. Actually, the SAT is basically an IQ test. They correspond to academic performance much more strongly than actual job performance in almost every field.
Knowing this, is the observation that fields which require high grades to get into have higher IQs as descriptive as it seems on the first take? Not really.
How about the fact that IQ is actually very variable on the individual level across time?
That's not to say that anyone can become one of those occupations. I don't think everyone can become a good programmer. But I know enough high-IQ people that could never grok how to program clean code to know as much. Perhaps the third factor is correlated to IQ in some way, I don't know. But it's really stupid to say someone of average intelligence can't become a good programmer or even a good physicist.
> Please don't misquote me. He said that he is not sure that women can coexist in the workplace. Yes, this is very conservative.
I quoted you exactly, but I misinterpreted what you're saying. I do recall him saying something to that effect. That basically there are dynamics between men and women that make it difficult for them to cohabit in the workplace. Keep in mind that expressing uncertainty is not the same as saying women shouldn't cohabit in the workplace, or that they can't cohabit in the workplace, or even that they can't perform more or less equally with men in the workplace. Personally I think he's making a bigger issue out of that than what it really is.
> The figure he quoted for software engineers IIRC was around 118, meaning that 80% of people can't be productive software engineers, which is completely bullshit.
You can be a software engineer with a lower IQ, but I might not hire you or want to work with you. There's not some magic number, and IQ is also just a flawed proxy for intelligence - which is just one of the real underlying prerequisites. In this job market you can definitely find work, but you likely won't be at Netflix or Google.
> He went as far as to say that people under 80IQ are simply not productive in society, which is what insane.
If that's what he said, obviously it's wrong. They're not likely to be as productive a member of society as people with an IQ of 100, generally speaking. That also seems pretty self-obvious. Without sources, I'm taking you at your word with all your recollections here, and they're out of context. It could just have been exaggerating for effect.
> But more to your point, IQ strongly correlates with academic performance. Actually, the SAT is basically an IQ test. They correspond to academic performance much more strongly than actual job performance in almost every field.
Yes, it's just a proxy for intelligence, and it's flawed.
> Knowing this, is the observation that fields which require high grades to get into have higher IQs as descriptive as it seems on the first take? Not really.
Makes sense.
> How about the fact that IQ is actually very variable on the individual level across time?
Like any test, you can improve your score with practice and preparation. But often that's also making you smarter - intelligence is not fixed at birth. There's some part genetic potential, some part epigenetic adaptions to your environment, and some part learning. You can definitely set the goal of becoming more intelligent. Even if I do that, I'll never match Einstein, no matter how hard I try. But I can rise closer to the limit of my genetic/environmental potential.
> But it's really stupid to say someone of average intelligence can't become a good programmer or even a good physicist.
I don't think it's stupid at all. I think it's quite unlikely an average person would be good in those fields. Let's say we define good as one standard deviation above the mean (if it were just the mean, then we would use the term average, not good.) And if someone does pull it off against the odds, they may well have done so by becoming more intelligent.
Went looking for the press labeling Jordan Peterson a fascist. I found this article, associating him with intellectual foundations of fascism but not outright calling him one. This is the article Peterson flipped out about on Twitter, saying he would "slap" the author.
There was Lindsay Shepherd who was reprimanded by her supervisor for playing a clip of Peterson in class: as akin to “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler”. That's not the press though.
Usually, the word they use is alt-right. You might have more luck with that on Google.
Please dude, Peterson is a conservative and is in no way left of center except that he claims that so he can argue with other right wingers as the “liberal” of the group.
That said, there are a lot of fascists in the mainstream right now. And the number of swastikas (of a non-religious nature) is the highest its been since about 1945...
Yeah, that's the problem with bandying words around without care to their meaning.
This is happening with fascists/ Nazis more often lately in society. I feel that's a bad thing because there are still torch carrying Nazis out there, they're dangerous, and now we don't have a word for them that carries the same weight. It gets watered down when you use it to refer to anyone center or right of center politically.
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian, mostly liberal, left of center academic and the press frequently refers to him as fascist. That just doesn't work.