Jordan Peterson
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Trudeau unveils new campaign slogan: "I Got Jordan Peterson to Leave"
OTTAWA — After disgraced professor and beef enthusiast Jordan Peterson announced yesterday that he had moved to Florida due to the Canadian government’s allegedly woke fascist policies, Justin Trudeau immediately issued a statement saying that his 2025 election campaign slogan will be “I Got...
www.thebeaverton.com
HeavyNeuralPayload
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This, more than anything else so far, makes me want a 'shrug' emoji. I'm flying my "moderate" flag here, but I like Trudeau about as much as I like Peterson. And I like them both well enough.View attachment 96312Trudeau unveils new campaign slogan: "I Got Jordan Peterson to Leave"
OTTAWA — After disgraced professor and beef enthusiast Jordan Peterson announced yesterday that he had moved to Florida due to the Canadian government’s allegedly woke fascist policies, Justin Trudeau immediately issued a statement saying that his 2025 election campaign slogan will be “I Got...
QuickTwist
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Peterson is a pragmatist before he is anything else. Once you understand that about him, everything else makes sense and clicks into place.
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So based on the reasoning presented in the video I posted, JP is artfully malevolent.
So Noted,
Ian
QuickTwist
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I don't think that is a deduction you can really make. I think holding to a pragmatic view of truth skews pretty much everything about the outlook of the person. That can make them look malevolent, or whatever, because their baseline is so different from the vast majority of people (who hold to the correspondence view of Truth as the default people are born with).
Is he manipulative? That is a question I have thought a lot about, and I don't really have an answer to that question as of yet. Peterson is an immensely complicated individual. Nailing him down to exactly one thing is very difficult. So far, I know he is a pragmatist. I even asked an expert on Peterson if I was right that Peterson holds to the pragmatic view of Truth, and he said I was right about that. When everything is looked at as whether it "works" or not, it's not difficult to see how a person like that would lack a kind of innate compassion for people.
But, I also think Peterson is an INTJ, strong on the Ni and Te. He's just a very extreme individual. He's really smart, too. He knows people very, very well and can manipulate people if he wants to, but I am not convinced (yet) that he is doing that.
He's a flawed individual, like everyone. But is he more evil than others? IDK yet.
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QuickTwist
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Uh... no offense, but this guy tends to assume an awful lot with his logic of Peterson. He goes into some red herring about how religion and science are different, which, no duh. But that was not Peterson's point AT ALL. I am not a fan of this guy... He seems to be trying to assume what Peterson is saying rather than just going based on what he explicitly says. I'm about 15 minutes into this, and I don't think I can watch any more. He says he is being "logical" or whatever, but he is not following Peterson's argument on how you can't do science without God. For example, this is how I understand Peterson's argument...
P1. Truth exists (properly basic belief)
P2. Truth is understandable (properly basic belief)
P3. The material world is comprehensible to the human intellect [1, 2]
P4. There is such a thing as "good" (properly basic belief)
P5. Understanding the Truth is good [2, 4]
P6. Understanding the material world is beneficial [3, 5]
P7. These are not scientific claims [6]
P8. These are metaphysical claims [7]
P9. You have to assume there are metaphysical claims to do science [8]
[Hidden Premise] P10. Metaphysical claims are religious claims [9]
P11. Science is predicated on religious axioms [10]
P12. Science is a religious practice [11]
P13. Religion studies God (properly basic belief)
P14. Without religion, science dies [12]
C. With the death of God, science dies [13, 14]
However, if we consider that Peterson does not explain premise 10, then that COULD be viewed as manipulative. I am not convinced it is, though.
I also found it laughable when he said religion was unfalsifiable. Religion is 100% falsifiable because religion makes claims. For example, if someone were to show me proof of Jesus' bones, I would have to stop being a Christian.
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Your approach is exactly what he is talking about in this video, in terms of the epistemological bouncer. Hence my recommendation you watch it, after you made comment without having done so.
But of course you don’t need to do anything. At the same time, if you present argument against things not present, others will also make choices.
Regardless, his presentation was something to consider. Thinking it necessary to reject, or that my wish was for anyone to accept is on you.
To that end, have a nice day.
Cheers,
Ian
John K
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I thought it was really quite funny. JPs position is, in a way, the mirror image of what Richard Dawkins does when talking about religion - he's another one aiming at confirmation bias, but on the atheist side. It's hilarious that I know hardly any committed Christians who believe in the sort of god that Dawkins doesn't. I do wish guys who are very expert in their own field would not start to deliver profound claims outside their field and make idiots of themselves. Mind you, the presenter of the video is also at risk of appealing to confirmation bias among those folks who have JP antibodies - there's definitely a hint of glee in his tone.
I can see what JP is trying to do, but I'm afraid it doesn't make sense to me. There are different sorts of truth, and maybe like was said in the video they should be given different names to prevent confusion - it's like the word 'love' which has very many meanings. For example truth in maths has no simple tie to religious belief - either 7 + 2 = 10 or it doesn't; either the angles of a triangle on a flat surface add to 180 degrees or they don't. This is so whether you are a Christian, an atheist, a Hindoo, or a little green man from Betelgeuse. I think truth in science is actually a much trickier concept to grasp than it is in religious matters, or maths for that matter - it's strange to consider how much value we get out of science in terms of engineering success when all our scientific theories are actually false. They don't agree with each other and are only valid within their own subsets of the universe - they create incredibly precise models of reality, but only within those subsets. Those models are not the real thing and are only accepted because they provide superb engineering and because they predict places to look to further our knowledge at the edges of their validity. Religion is not like this - as was said, the truths there are revealed, either through scripture or through direct experience, and are not provisional, though our understanding of them may very well be.
Where I think science and religion do come together is at the edges of knowledge. They both appeal to metaphysics at that point, and there is maybe a strange parallel in conceptualisation between (e.g.) god as creator, and an equally transcendent, inaccessible multiverse hypothesis.
Where JP may well get some traction, and what wasn't discussed either in his talk or in the analysis of it, is that science does behave like a religion in terms of how lay folks relate to it. Take climate change - how many people believe in it and how much of this belief has led to major political change? Yet how many folks could explain what the problem is in comprehensive terms, how the problem is caused, what are the range of possible outcomes with probabilities, and what can be done to tackle it without sacrificing loads of folks in the transition. We rely completely on a handful of scientists to bring this sort of information in digestible form to ordinary folks. These guys are like the priests of a religion, and the people are like their faithful followers who believe in them and the truth of what they say. Of course there aren't the same social parallels and dynamics as there are between an ordinary religious minister and their congregation, but nonetheless it looks similar in many ways to a religion to me. And in these laymen's terms, the scientific truths can become inviolate religious truths, very like those of normal religions. You only have to look at the very intense emotional reactions from the followers if any such truths are attacked when it comes to these highly charged areas of science.
The thing that I think could have killed science is materialism and logical positivism - which thankfully seems to have faded a lot since people have come to understand quantum mechanics better, and have struggled with the hard questions of conscious awareness. These two I think have drawn science closer again to religious thinking in a good sort of way.
I always groan when anyone brings out Galileo's fate. He's not a good example because the guy was a huge genius, but of the narcissistic, mouthy-arse variety. The church of those days had all sorts of political problems shifting it's viewpoint and tried to give him honorable ways forward, but he was too proud to accept them. I suspect he put his own cause back by some decades as a result - it would have been better if he'd accepted the compromises offered, as far as I understand it. It's a pity he wasn't as good at politics as he was at science.
Peterson is one banana peel slip away from becomiing full dark INFJ like Hitler and Osama bin Laden.
Not quite, but I have always felt that I sensed a malice in him and a latent potential for fanaticism. His endorsement of Christianity is likely for social and political reasons rather than religious, something we' re seeing increasingly in recent years. I'm less concerned about his agenda than by the number of people who choose not to see it. But I do agree with a lot of his basic points on how to live.
Agree that he's INTJ.
John K
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He can be a brilliant debater, and that rankles among folks who lose in a battle of ill thought through axiomatic dogma in the face of clinically precise logic backed up by fact. But he seems to have moved away from that approach more recently. He fires his thinking out of an excessively emotionally charged gun, and the emotions sound unstable and desperate below the surface - to the extent that he often seems a bit unbalanced to me. Perhaps he’s drained himself too much with his pressure cooker style?
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I agree that Peterson is only "using" Christianity. I don't think he is a full Christian himself again, because he is a pragmatist. Some of the apologists seem to think he is actually a Christian. But I don't think he is because he can't just come out and say, "I am a Christian," and that always rubbed me the wrong way.
I started reading his book, "Maps of Meaning," and it was pretty complex stuff. Can't really remember what was in that book exactly, but it was super deep, like reading Jung.
One last thing, but when you see him doing public speaking, it's really something how structured and orderly it all is. It's like the people to watch him talk are hand-picked, and the chair organization is just very square and such.
There are essentially two distinct kinds of Chriatianity. One is the puruit of authenticity via life-long introspection via dialogue with one's soul. This, to me, iswhat Jesus referenced countless ways, paticularly in works not highjacked by Paul. Peterson camps with thet external projecting faith. It is the abandonment of any pursuit of perfectionism, or even continuous improvement. Their view is peopele are weak and disgusting sinners, but doing evil is get out of jail free if you hurry up and pray to be saved. Essentially,it is depravity justification.