The Jordan Peterson Problem
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- After many requests I attempt to address some of the issues surrounding Jordan Peterson from a philosophical standpoint. Fundamentally, too many answers and not enough questions.
And I know the image was faked - part of the joke.
I don’t know anything about this channel, but I want to know about the dc-10 flying under the golden gate
Read the description...
@Goh Modley JUST WEAD DA DESCWIPTION GOSH... lazy idiot
DC-10? That was a propeller plane right? That's like more like a 727.... And yes it can. Done it on FS 2000 many a time.
@@natureowl look it up, it’s a Douglas DC-10, one of the early widebodies. You can tell it apart from a 727 in that the tail engine goes straight through the tail rather than using an S-duct. Also much bigger.
Pure click bait.
Peterson doesn’t think that we’re basically all evil.
He believes good and evil runs through the heart of each human from my understanding.
He’s not saying we are fundamentally evil but rather we all have the potential for evil. Humans are neither good or bad, they’re both.
No he quite clearly says people are worse than we can imagine.. in all 3 of his books....
He even says that if we're good it's because we're cowards
@@spennny1000 You don't seem to understand what he is saying. Go back to school.
@@1flash3571 I know what he should have said lol.....
@@spennny1000 Do you even understand what he said and meant about someone being a coward because we are good as you put it? I don't know exactly what he said, but your comment about good guys being a coward doesn't make sense. There has to be a CONTEXT as to why he said that. I don't think you know what he meant.
This is a weak straw man criticism video. No one listens to JP for the claims you “debunked”. People listen to JP mostly because he points out 3 things,
1. Academics have gone too far in what they claim is a social construct
2. Taking responsibility for your life is a lost art that no pandering politician is willing to speak of (so apparently people were starving for it)
3. Judeo-Christian stories embody beneficial modes of behavior that we don’t fully understand consciously but act out in religious ritual and myths
I love listening to you Wes (and I love listening to JP), I would also love to hear a good criticism video of JP. This was not it.
Jordan Peterson himself takes no responsibility for his own emotional life. Point blank: Depression is created by irrational thinking. Jordan Peterson has suffered severely from depression. His highly irrational thinking created it. I have never once heard him take responsibility for making himself depressed. Our thoughts determine our emotional state. This is a simple human dynamic. Taking responsibility for your own emotional health is foreign to Peterson's world view. And he cannot possibly claim that he himself takes responsibility for his own mental health, as he has had very little, and at such an advanced stage of his career. His approach to Psychology is charlatanism incarnate. Peterson holds Jung in veneration. Jung is a pathetic incompetent whose ideas are pure bunk. Jung almost exceeds Freud in his erroneous postulates. The field of Psychology is riddled with deluded snake oil salesmen/women, and Peterson head the list, himself is an academic who loves to hear himself talk--usually drivel. He denies his own words, intentionally speaking in purple prose language that confuses any possible solution. And he is as arrogant as they come. He has also said, on several occasions, that he advocates physical violence. And that's just the beginning.
@@mickberry164 "Depression is created by irrational thinking" absolute bull shit
@@mickberry164 where did learn that ‘depression is caused by irrational thinking’?
@@mickberry164 CG Jung is a whole new world in psychology. Incredibly engaging and fascinating.
@@mickberry164 If your argument is “don’t listen to JP’s words because he is bad as a person” that’s an ad hominem. I don’t care about his character, I find his ideas interesting food for thought. I am able to separate the two in my mind.
I am not particularly dogmatic about my appreciation of Jordon Peterson. I do disagree with things he says. That being said, it would be nice if someone would mount a worthwhile critique.
Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed this wasn't.
First of all, the point made about, "you being a Nazi," wasn't to suggest that people are bad. It was to illustrate that you have the potential to be bad...and that can be exploited. Peterson has consistently said this and it was disingenuous to leave that part out.
Nitpicking about who would have been a NAZI based on official party membership is a bit laughable. I strongly suspect that there are FAR more people who identify with political parties than are official, on-paper members of said party. If Republicans or Democrats ceased to exist tomorrow, future people could look back on this time and theoretically say there weren't a lot of either.
Second, the IQ literature is terrifying because IQ has been shown to be an indicator of wealth generation. People who lack brain power are far more likely to be poor. Peterson finds it terrifying because he has said multiple times that this is a leading cause of inequality that there is no answer for. Again, you left that out.
I can see legitimate reasons question IQ testing and information derived from scientific endeavor and to criticize when repeatability issues arise. Certainly if the Stanford Prison Experiment can't be replicated then it shouldn't be used evidence. Strike on Peterson for using it, for sure.
However, you really veered into strawmanning territory hard on this one by use of omission.
czcams.com/video/4LqZdkkBDas/video.html
Great vid by Contrapoints maybe give that a go. Imo a pretty fair critique
His Nazi scenario seems to raise the topic of “free will vs determinism” more than good or evil nature. Either way he didn’t ever directly address those in that context if I recall. Anyways JP is not a philosopher by trade, but he is a clinical psychologist (?) so I think he is used to prescribing answers for clients rather ending on the questions which I think WC is getting at.
There are SO many good critiques of him if you look for them.
@@michaelwu7678 The "good critiques" of him tend not to bring him down too much. So people resort to nitpicking.
@@deleted01 they actually bring him down a lot by showing how ill-informed and ideological he is. Well, I guess it's subjective how important you think that is.
Stopped watching when you said "no, I would not have been a Nazi". You have no idea.
That’s why he made it a question. keyword “would”
Maybe you would not have been a Nazi party member, but you would have certainly turned a blind eye to all the atrocities the Nazis were doing. Perhaps that's what Jordan Peterson should have said rather than "you would have been a Nazi".
@@FinalLugiaGuardian I agree !
And you have?
You are getting so stuck on the details you are missing the point.
Peterson's claim isn't that almost everyone would have actively supported Nazi actions. His claim is that there's a good chance if you were placed in that historical situation, you would be one of those people who kept their head down, didn't actively or passively resist what happened, did what you were told by the people in charge, and in that way contributed to a genocidal system. He doesn't say "You would have been a nazi". He says: Don't pretend you would be a hero who would've gone around saving people left and right; the chance is much higher that you would have done nothing and just tried to survive, like most people did back then, but that does mean you would have contributed to the system.
Exactly. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
To add to my initial comment: I do think Peterson also claims that there are more people than we'd like to admit who might first be one of the people who just keep their head down, but will slowly (or rapidly, depending on the person) be tempted to join the Nazis in what they are doing because it allows them to give free reign to monstrous parts of themselves without consequence. (Edit: like in Solzhenitsyn's famous quotes about evil running through the heart of every person) Maybe it's that part of Peterson's claims that people often misunderstand as "You would've probably been a Nazi".
I posted a video link where Jordan Peterson said "You were the Nazi." But it was deleted. Hmmmm
"The lesson of world war 2 is you're the Nazi." -Jordan Peterson
@@cheapshot2842 refer to first comment in thread?
You mean like the passive, unquestioning compliance or shaming demonized compliance of the Wuhan virus experiment? Did Wes, after the data of true (non)lethality of the virus and the virtually useless efficacy of wearing a mask (other than virtue signaling and herd compliance) wear a mask?
I think your second and third points about the military and women in the working place were stronger than the first about the nazis. You deconstructed Peterson's trick quite well. He cherry-picks facts that seem to all lead towards a prescriptive claim but avoids openly stating or explore what that claim is, and then finishes with a natural fallacy. He does this in multiple cases.
You don't like cherry picked facts. Ah you prefer rotten fruit. Be careful when you bend over to pick up the rotten fruit because someone might kick you in the bum. I just thought maybe selective arguments instead of cherry pick might work better. I could be wrong.
The nazis one seems rock solid. What's wrong with it?
Another issue with the Peterson Nazi argument is that the average German citizen almost certainly didn't know the Jews were being executed. They knew they were being rounded up and removed, but that's really it. And what reasonable person would even imagine they were being murdered? The number of people who actually knew what was going on in the concentration camps during the war was probably pretty tiny, relatively speaking.
@jeffwells641 'what reasonable person could imagine they were being murdered' is a much better question than you realize it is
To be fair, he said:
"Most likely to be a nazi "
2nd: according to my older fellow citizens in Austria, he could be right (peterson)
Hello Wes, nice talk as always. One comment though. The point you make "The Nazis invaded Poland to GO GET the Jews living there" is not true. Poland was invaded due to what the Germans at that time called "Lebensraum"(living space). They believed that they needed land to expand on. So that invasion was mainly fueled by this rather than chasing the Jews.
Indeed, you are correct on that, which now throws the veracity of Wes's argument into question given his slip on that detail (similar to the treatment he is giving Peterson's assertions). Other posts below also point out a number of other historical inaccuracies that further undermine Wes's knowledge of history.
And the Poles had their own campaign against the Jews.
They actually just wanted a highway in the end that connected the German speaking parts of the land formally Prussian by the end of it. But we couldn't have that.
That's misleading. The "living space" implied a living space for the people that the nazis considered worth of keep living. If you were not from that cloth and were in a place considered a necessary "living space" (like Poland) you would be moved to working camps, ghettos or killed, and the Jews were a special target for that so even if you assume that the theoretical framework used by the nazis did not imply "let's invade Poland to kill Jews", their actions speak louder than any political theory for the integrity of Germany. And saying that the Polish people persecuted Jews is not and excuse for the actions of Nazi german, you can't go on court for a crime and use the excuse that "EveRy bODY does It yOUr ExCeLLence". It still is a crime
Hi, this is not an accurate take of what Lebensraum was. It included the germanisation of neighbouring states and the extermination of jews etc. as an explicit aim in Nazi ideology.
Here is a link for you to see more about it: encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensraum
I think you misrepresent many things. Maybe through misunderstanding. He never said things like, you would be a Nazi. He said it's more likely you would be the a Nazi. Because people always think they would be the one to stand up. No, statistics state you won't. He seems to confuse a psychological argument with a data driven argument.
“No I would not have been a Nazi”
Congratulations, you missed the point. Your wouldn’t have sat and analyzed this subject retrospectively if you were in the midst of 1930s Germany.
huh? he dealt with that with only a small portion of the German public being pro-nazi for example; the issues with what that actually means - to what degree do you have to resist to not be a Nazi - he talked about the mass numbers of Americans in prison.
To even being to empathise and consider what you would do in a situation that is in the past, you have to look retrospectively, with self-reflection... otherwise you are just running from whatever feeling has been created - which it looks like you may have been.
“I don’t tend to do well joining groups” is completely irrelevant and not an answer to the thought experiment.
The exercise is not to decide whether or not you would voluntarily go out of your way to join the Nazi party. It’s what would you do if your life circumstances were forcing you to either join or aid the Nazi party.
Peterson does not claim people are inherently evil, as you say he does. He simply notes how ones environment, more often than not, dictate their actions.
The reason you do not find the low IQ problem terrifying (as Peterson states he does) is bc that isn’t a burden nature placed on your shoulders. If you or your child had this problem you may feel very different. And I in no way wish this on you or anyone else.
I really enjoy your channel and will continue to tune in.
I wouldn't have been a Nazi either
They always wore grey Uniforms
And I prefer Sports Gear with Bright Colours.
Exactly ... Wes Cecil has taken Peterson out of context ... See the book for reference ... Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning
@@jshays007 Why is that almost anyone criticizing Peterson is almost always met with the excuse of being taken out of context?
@@kicksyyarosh5708 lol this checks out
@@jshays007 Ordinary men came to mind for me too. Horrifyingly enlightening.
Very disappointed. There are problems with JP's work but instead of actually addressing them you're doing this strawman thing. Quit being lazy. It's beneath your intellectual capacity.
He doesn't mean 100% of people would become NAZIs - just most, or enough.
The proof of this theory is right in front of you. Critical race Theory now being instituted in American public education is extremely radical yet very few people are standing up against it.
IIRC Peterson doesn't conceptualise things in terms of aggression. He does so in terms of trait assertiveness which is a facet of trait extraversion in the Big 5 personality scale. Furthermore he never makes any ethical claims about whether aggression or assertiveness is desirable or not but only observes it as an emergent property of human nature within the present socioeconomic structure.
Nonetheless thanks for making the video.
The Big 5 is still not entirely scientific so there’s that added factor to Peterson’s arguments that blurs the picture even more.
Appearantly, the hexagon model of personality trait has more validity. But it wasnt as much as a fad…so be it
Nope. Not that we are fundamentally evil in nature but that we constantly underestimate our individual capacity for evil and susceptibility to evil.
A critical distinction required if you are to discuss Peterson since he so heavily influenced by Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Jung.
and because JPB has read an actual history book or two.
@@relaxingsounds1386 Has he? He doesn't understand postmodernism at all. Maybe not his most well read topic.
I don't think you did a good job steelmanning Peterson's arguments enough in your mind before you began your critique. In fact I'd say there was mild strawmanning here and there throughout the video. Or maybe your source were just short excerpts that don't really do justice to Peterson? I don't know.
Regarding the Nazi argument for example, I'm quite sure Peterson is talking about a wishful fantasy of many people that they would be the heroes who hid the Jewish people in their basement at their own risk. Statistically most of us wouldn't be the heroes. As you said most of us would hide away and keep our heads down and just try to survive.
But I don't consider it useless to push this line of thought further and to actually try and imagine what would it take for us to be the perpetrators. In times of peace and abundance this seems unrealistic but if there is a real crisis in the environment, we are capable of unimaginable aggression and hostility. We are even capable of fabricating enemies as an outlet for the negative emotion that builds up in the times of crisis. And so it isn't completely out of the question that anyone of us would take the bait and become a Nazi if there was enough anxiety and hurt built up in his individual life. It's a useful thing to think about because on the personal level such crisis can take many forms; people are not exactly joining Hitler these days but there are many terrible things that people do do often because they are cornered by circumstances in their life. And to think that one can't be cornered enough to do something terrible just shows a lack of imagination.
I would say that (if you listen to enough of him) Peterson actually is doing exactly what you said should be done in the end of the video. He is reflecting, he is posing questions and giving provisional answers. He might be offering his answers with more emphasis and vigour but that's just his personality, his style. That shouldn't be enough to close your mind as a listener so that you are not able to see that he always speaks tentatively, reflects and ponders. Here is what I think is the actual difference between You and Peterson: your personality composition and temperament. You tend to appreciate the good in people, he tends to warn about the bad in people; his style is more serious and heavy, your style is lighter and feel-good. I can't help but see this fundamental difference in personality underneath your whole critique (maybe except for the Nietzsche argument). The unique style of thought of both You and Peterson is appreciated and necessary so I don't want to say that someone is right and someone is wrong here. But I do want to say that this type of critique where you don't steelman the others argument is not really productive. There are interesting ways to critique Peterson's thinking but this wasn't one of them.
But that's the problem with Peterson - he doesn't say what is moderate and slightly obvious. He dramatizes history and indulges in stinging people with phrases like "you would have been a Nazi". You watering it down immediately neuters that statement, but you say that this is "really" what he wanted to say? I think he said it how he wanted to - hence Wes Cecil's criticism.
Yes but would your aversion to being a part of a group (I have the same mindset btw) a feature of your intellectualism afforded to you by a free society…….or is it a feature inherent to your personal nature?
I agree completely
It's fair to say that if you were in Nazi Germany, you wouldn't be you.
I listened to both Peterson and your lectures back when he was a normal person and you were both uploading your work for free, and back then, you were my two favourites, so I can't wait to hear this in full.
lol, Jordan Peterson hasn't changed since 2016, bro
"You can't help them" means you can't raise their IQ or correct other persistent deficits. It doesn't mean you can't invite them to dinner sometimes or help them with some chores.
IQ is Voodoo.
I watched a surprisingly inspirational video recently by a guy who has an IQ of 70 and is working to improve it. And he is finding success, with the video itself being about his finally being able to hold down a job at McDonald's.
Now he's probably never going to reach an IQ of 100, and probably a 90 is unlikely as well. But 80's certainly didn't seem out of reach.
@@jeffwells641 That is inspiring.
Peterson is a hard guy to pin down. I like the way he probes big questions, but he often ends up making arbitrary connections using oversimplified facts. I believe honesty is the best policy, and I just want him to focus more on what he wants instead of pretending to have solutions for the world! In other words, follow his own rules!
I'm a non-joiner too. We should start a club :D
Can I join?
The joiners will rule
There is strength in numbers
Ah! A fellow Marxist.
“In truth, there was only one Christian and he died on the cross.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference-so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
No true Scotsman...
@@ETBrooD perhaps...
But I think you're miss appling the term.
No true scotsman fallacy means after you have made a claim (all birds fly) you are presented with a counterexample (look, a penguin) rather than updating your claim, you instead dismiss the evidence as invalid (well, all _true_ birds fly).
The above quotes don't fit. They are saying "look at the ideals of the man described. Look at our society. Those two things are dissonant."
@@elrathJohnson I disagree. Both quotes attempt to wash away the sins of Christians by redefining Christianity/Christians and then excluding "impure" Christians from the religion after the fact.
The honest approach would be to accept the sins of Christians and regard them as human failure, in the process admitting that adopting Christianity doesn't guarantee that no evil will be committed.
Good thing Nietzsche came along to set us lost children of God who thought Jesus meant we too could become a child of God born of the holy spirit through him straight. 🤔🙄🤓🥸😅😅😅
I'm was raised in a race-mixing peace church. I have physically harmed racists, fired racists from jobs and also helped destroy the South African racist apartheid government. And I went to Harvard on scholarship. MLK was a REVEREND. Not a "civil rights activist." Christians like me celebrate the burning of racist American cities. So, some of us everyday Christians here are feeling pretty good about dead and buried filthy racist bodies. Let's celebrate the victories!
He absolutely never says “you would’ve been a nazi, so be careful of throwing stones”. He tries to explain that it is worthwhile to see how you would have been a nazi in order to GUARD you from being sucked into such ideologies”. Pretty big freaking difference for the intellectual exercise.
@@fleontrotsky yep apparently no one understands him unless he agrees with him. It's also ironic how Peterson's "fans" are always claiming that people who criticize don't understand Peterson even though Peterson himself doesn't understand the thinkers he's criticising.
@@fleontrotsky are you saying that this isn’t a misunderstanding?
@@shyguy1845 triggered
@@deleted01 what a great rebuttal.
Hes saying both obviously. If you dont guard yourself you will probably follow the evil out of ignorance, and even if you do guard yourself you still might.
It's clear from everything you say in this video that you either haven't actually listened to JBP and want to baselessly disparage him or you're trying to intentionally misrepresent him to gain the approval of others who haven't listened to him and want to baselessly disparage him.
There are too many errors to list but two most egregious:
1) To your first strawman, JBP never says humans are fundamentally bad, if you'd listened to him you'd know one of his favorite lines is that the line between good and evil runs down every human heart and, more importantly, if you're unwilling or unable to recognize your capacity for evil you are far more likely to perpetrate evil.
2) Your insistence that JBP repeats that the problem of the lower end of IQ is "terrifying" as some sort of scaremongering, and more, that he suggests that "those people are worthless" and "government should never spend money on social programs" is when I became unsure whether this video was a satire of other JBP critiques, as they tend to be at this level of coherence with what he actually thinks.
There are legitimate critiques of JBP, but this is a shameful, though humorously, bad faith attempt on par with the quality of the NYT or WaPo.
Clearly. Im sad to say it but i will anyway. Is this what grownup clout chasing looks like? Yike!
Well said my brother.
You
Not
Me
I had high hopes at the beginning of this video when you started with the demonstration of some factual inaccuracies, but the whole thing fell apart when you tried to make the case that Peterson thinks we are all evil.
That is contrary to the central tenet of all his work, which is that everyone has the capacity for both tremendous good and horrible evil and that it is largely our individual work and choices which dictate how that plays out.
You either don’t understand Peterson or haven’t actually delved into his work. I hope you aren’t just doing a cursory glance at a couple of his CZcams clips and then putting his name in the title of your video to generate views.
You are missing the point and are misleading your audience with numbers that are irrelevant to the question.
Peterson uses stereotypical generalizations that contain a little bit of a truth so that people accept his ideas without thinking too much or analyzing his rhetoric like you are doing now. Peterson talks to big audiences who are not very well educated or don’t have the historical facts because they are young and not into history or science at all. That’s his advantage. When he has gone to debate people like Sam Harris or Matt Dillahunty, you can see his lack of real knowledge in some subjects.
In your conclusion towards the 35 minute mark I don't believe he's making definitive claims that most women might prefer motherhood to aggressive competition for c-suites; he often emphasizes the unfolding revolutionary impacts of the birth control pill and affordable tampons on traditional values.
In his university lectures, he often explicitly states that he is speculating based on the best evidence that he has reconciled through studies across multiple fields.
One of the main reasons I like you both is because you both often acknowledge how many variables there are in any given situation and he is very vocal about cautioning against single variable solutions or analysis of major problems.
The reason he has focused on personality theory in his profession seems to be his attempt to reconcile social and religious and cultural forces with biological and environmental forces.
And you mentioned multiple times that he says these things in short videos. I know you realize these are clips that you're probably watching, but maybe you didn't realize how much he has fleshed most of his spoken ideas out in his maps of meaning book. I've read a little bit of it and it's a very thorough book. He makes a lot of claims in it that can't be conclusively confirmed, but he's also trying to map out the fundamental human experience of meaning and values, so he's bound to have to take some leaps of faith as it were, when trying to comprehend such a far reaching subject.
Id really enjoy hearing/reading your criticism of his actual maps of meaning book. I feel like you could contribute a lot of insight to him if you guys were to ever speak.
I don't prefer motherhood
Interesting video.
A couple of thoughts occurred to me.
One: if most people are decent. Could it be that we sometimes run the risk of being too decent to deal with, say, sociopaths?
Two: have the nazi's, unintentionally, in a roundabout way, proven that minorities can be a danger too? They just got the minority wrong. The nazi's, not the jews, were the dangerous minority.
Could it be that we are someitmes too decent to imagine that a small, but ideoligically dedicated and energetic minority can be a threat?
The issue of "minorities" could be reframed to be issues with groups that are very intolerant, from Carl Popper's paradox of intolerence.
Just about every group (in politics etc.) is a minority.
@@kipwonder2233 I'd say it was perfectly clear - that we positively obsess about minority opinions, invent fictitious dangers, then exaggerate them 500x.
Necroing this but I really wonder what the Nazis might have become if Hitler wasn't so incredibly, insanely racist towards the Jews. If you've read what he wrote and said about them, he didn't seem to view them as like, invaders bringing down the country (the way some people see Mexican immigrants, for example), but he seemed to view them as literal cockroaches that spread filth and disease.
What if he simply didn't care about the Jews? How would that have changed the way everything unfolded (besides the obvious 6 million Jews who wouldn't have been killed).
I love your lectures on the philosophers. Regarding men leading more corporations: Wes, you posed the situation as one where “we” can choose what traits to select for in corporate leadership.
You might not have been in the corporate world much. There is an organic nature to how leadership establishes within a group. All other traits being equal, those with a higher level of assertiveness and competitiveness tend to occupy the leadership positions. “We” (I don’t know who the “we” would be) are not in control of this dynamic of homosapien great ape group behavior.
I am not saying that perfect outcomes come out of this dynamic. There are glitches in the human genome. For example I’ve worked closely with two company presidents and seen each be so assertive/competitive that it spills outside the company in a way that customers end up being alienated by their behavior.
Another related observation I’ve personally made - both narcissistic and psychopathic tendencies are seen with high frequency for those who climb well up the ladder. The combination makes for a person who has one face to those who are higher up and a different face to those who are subordinate. So the higher ups are going to have a hard time “selecting for” any set of traits you choose because of the skilled acting that goes on with a high level of motivation the effective ladder climber has no matter what the selection criteria is. They will mold their persona to whatever criterion the higher up (e.g. board of directors) chooses. And near the top of a large corporation the positions are filled with the driven types who are jostling for position to eventually get the big job which has all the money and status they crave.
From what I’ve seen Jordan Petersen is not far off in his analysis of this particular issue. Aggression with the needed company culture veneer describes it well.
I wouldn't have been a Nazi either
because they spoke in German
and me and Wes only talk in Virtue signalling
Peterson doesn't propose an ethical solution for those unable to prosper in society. He doesn't dismiss the problem either. He explicitly, and repeatedly proposes free, open and honest discussion on the topic. Actually, he explicitly states he doesn't know the solution, hence his emphasis on free speech, the original reason for his rise to fame.
Wow. Somebody who actually read or listened to Peterson. I can't believe how blatantly ignorant Wes was in this video.
This is exactly right. Peterson is a social Darwinist, and his proposal is that the totalitarian hierarchy he desires is just and natural (whatever that means), and that those who don’t prosper under this system of strict ideological conformity are innately flawed and can not be helped.
Right, this is why left philosophical traditions are being called postmodern neomarxist plague by those around him, and the Soviet Union is portrayed as an evil empire, with the main reference to it being Solzhenitsyn, who has nothing to do with serious historiography. Come on man.
I agree with his position that you have to be adamant with your arguments, so you always have to hammer them with all might to make sure they stand, but he himself sure fails at it sometimes and does not acknowledge it. How do you battle that?
I didn't expect to see a comment like this here :(
@@plateoshrimp9685 lol what are you talking about. Peterson doesn’t say this at all.
Are there ACTUALLY documented cases of airline crashes due to highly skilled military pilots being overly aggressive?
Somehow I doubt this.
But there is an interesting dichotomy between agrarian pastoralists and nomadic warlike steppe peoples...
I'm sure Jordan would have a talk with you, would be great to watch/listen to that video.
I guarantee you this will never happen. Peterson will never confront anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about. He agreed to debate Zizek because he bought his persona as a slovenly fool and he got burned. You will never see Peterson engage with any serious challenge to his ideas again.
@@plateoshrimp9685 Zizek, was that even a debate?
No way that’d happen. Peterson only engages people who pull a big audience because he’s mostly interested in spreading his gospel (and conveniently getting rich doing it). He doesn’t enjoy dissent.
Why are you sure that Jordan would have a talk with him? He hasn’t actually debated anyone capable of debating the issues he bases his whole career on, for many years; once he got rich from his grift it became far too financially risky. You’re right the talk with Zizek wasn’t a real debate; it was supposed to be a debate about Marxism and he admitted in his opening that he hadn’t ever read any Marxist theory (his entire contemporary career is essentially bashing Marxism), and that he had reread only one of Marx’s shortest books the night before the debate. It is far too risky for any conservative grifter to debate on the issues they make their lucrative salaries “discussing”, they rely on audiences undereducated in the subjects, and talking with any serious expert would have them exposed immediately. This is the case with Peterson. It true for any of the conservative grifters, they all make a LOT of money and will NOT risk it. Look up the debate records of Jordan Peterson, Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Charley Kirk, it’s always the same, if they’ve ever been dumb enough to try to debate an expert they are instantly exposed as charlatans, pseudo-intellectuals, grifters, scammers and liars. These people are nothing but complete frauds, and if you look into their debate histories, and the debates they spend their careers running from, you should start to get the picture if your at all perceptive. He’s made millions of dollars talking about subjects he has basically no knowledge of to people who have no knowledge of the subjects. It’s EXTREMELY predatory and disingenuous. It is pedaling lies about serious subjects on a mass scale and it genuinely harms society. Anyone who honestly learns enough about these subjects will see that people like Jordan Peterson are completely fraudulent public characters. If you need ANY clarification on this, please ask. And please tell your friends or anyone who has fallen for these frauds ✌️
@@VincentGanshertLol, there is a view, a very distorted one, also a character attacking one. Hmmm, a lot of that has been going around since woke people took over the internet... Good luck with your view. Btw, Zizek agreed with Jordan's views.
My girlfriend told me about this video and said that she had been listening to others of yours. Classic straw man. Ignorance with a decent vocabulary. I referred her to another philosophy speaker of better quality. Do better.
"...and if we look to our right, ladies and gentlemen, we can see the butt-hurt Jordan Peterson fan..."
pretty minor particulars. have to admit that jp is enormously right about so much
U sound like a fan
@@cjhepburn7406 no. like someone who knows the work of peterson and listened to this commentary
Well I listened to this commentary too. Congrats on knowing the works of Jordy P.
@@cjhepburn7406 he sounds like a Stan
@@cjhepburn7406 or he could.just be right.
I thought Peterson was saying, at least in part, that the Germans didn't have horns and pointy tails; they were people, no different from us. There were "Aryans" in Germany and other countries who, at great personal risk, gave aid and protection to the persecuted among them. In a situation like that, heroes are scarce, and most of us probably wouldn't have been one.
Yeah it’s pretty obvious anybody who says they wouldn’t have been a Nazi for sure under ANY circumstance only says that because they see themselves as sheep not as wolves but Jordan Peterson has studied long and hard the shadow aspect of humans and how we are unaware of how evil we truly are like in the Book Ordinary Men. Also being “not part of a group” is a really silly argument because people also would join the Nazi’s out of fear as well so you really have no idea if you would be brave enough to stand up to Nazis especially if they threaten you or your family
This is cringe inducing. You are being intellectually dishonest. "If 30% are X, then 70% are not-X". That's not how it works.
The thing about being Nazi in Nazi Germany to me is that people have both good and evil side and also about having a "free will" to choose it so then living in environment that wants your evil side you will most likely show evil side. Hitler got 37% on election and his popularity and number of members just kept going up. It would help if we look at a different angle. Im pretty sure that Nazis from Germany if they lived in SSSR they wouldve been Communists.
Very disappointed. Dr. Peterson needs a better class of critic.
😢😭
Hes just another Jewish marxist academic who cant accept his self hatred.
After a few minutes of listening to you, I can see why you have 16K views and 31 K subscribers; while Jordan has millions of views and millions of subscribers.
🙌🙌🙌spot on!!
Owned with facts and logic, epic!!!!!
That makes no sense alot of great thinkers(I'm not Implying he's a great thinker btw) never got recognition during thier lifetime. reputation and fame ≠ being right.
As someone else under another take down video of Peterson wrote: By that logic we should all follow the grand philosophy of Mr. PewDiePie.
Peterson explicitly says the government should help the 10 percent of people you accuse him of saying we shouldn't help. He is an economic progressive.
The fact of whether you are a joiner is irrelevant. When your choice is the moral horror of joining versus the physical horror of being gassed in the showers... Well, none of us would know for certain what we would do.
Also, the spirit of his example is not specific to those joining the party. His point is about going along to get along and not be killed. The sophistry in your answer does not serve your argument.
So, wanting to survive makes one a Nazi?
@@pillmuncher67 Wanting to survive is simply human. On one level I think it is immoral to judge someone who commits atrocities in order to survive. I'd say that depending on the moment in one's life that the choice is placed in front of them, it may be that 98% of us would make the choice to simply do as we are told. An 18 year old is much more likely to chose life over death, regardless of what the cost is. If someone has a family or dependents, they're much more likely to justify becoming a monster. A father will do whatever he has to to save his child. Same for a mother.
On another level the Nuremberg trials have established that society itself can be held accountable to some degree. That individuals can be made to pay for the sins of the collective. I mean that's what the post-war trials were about; the idea that humanity would rather inflict more damage on people who are fundamentally victims themselves than to tolerate holocausts on any practical level. Those who were hung were mostly the actual bad guys. But there were a few that were victims themselves - as well as perpetrators. It gets murky real quick.
Being a Nazi is different from being a coward. Being a coward is not a sin. Being a Nazi, especially a jack boot wearing SS officer, is a sin. A sin unlike any other.
I am a believer in forgiveness and a path to the light for everyone. Even Hitler. But I also believe that the price to come back to the light must be paid. And sometimes the world doesn't even give you enough life to pay it - even if you were to live a thousand years.
Over 2 minutes in and all I have heard is the problem of Jordan Peterson. But when I listen to Jordan Peterson after 12 seconds I've heard something poignant and meaningful. No thank you. Learn to at least state something important within the introduction or forget about it. I'm over 2 minutes in and I've heard nothing whatsoever meaningful. Then I look at 37 minutes and 34 seconds and think why should I bother.
People chop up JP's videos, rename them to get views and repost them under their own channel hoping to make some money. Your number crunching is missing the point and Poland is flat in between western Europe and Russia. Who doesn't invade Poland. Your off base all over.the place.
You really started to straw man him on aggression. Embarrassing
I have felt put off by Mr. Peterson because he comes across as wanting to be an Authority who has Answers and as cold, humorless, and aggressive. Whether on the political left or right, these characteristics in a speaker tend to attract believers looking for confirmation of their social conditioning. What we all desperately need instead is the thoughtful, humane, respectful airing of different points of view so that we are challenged to think for ourselves about what we had previously taken for granted.
As someone who has watched a lot of Jordan Peterson and like a lot of his work, I still agree with this. His approach is understandably off putting for a lot of people, the way he hammers his points home in such a serious manner can get overly tiring I find. I find him much more easier to tolerate when he's speaking with someone else who can bring a lighter touch to balance things out, and I think there are quite a few good interviews out there. I've spring-boarded off a lot of his points and have learned a lot from this but I do see how his views could be taken as gospel by a lot of people based on his stern approach, and how that can polarises his audience.
When Peterson is discussing Nazis, it's reasonable to assume when he says that "millions of Jews died in Germany" he's referring to the German Third Reich, which, at the time when it killed millions of Jews, included most of the countries on continental Europe. Your claim that Peterson makes a factual error relies on an uncharitable misreading of what he likely intended to say. I don't have time to watch the remainder of your video right now, but I think considering common rebuttals to your criticisms of him (especially ones this obvious) and then presenting and countering them in your video would go a long way towards persuading your listeners.
You should listen to the rest of the explanation because it is clear Peterson is misusing numbers (whether intentionally or not) to extrapolate these odd positions which when examined under just some scrutiny seem to not stand on the merits of the initial claims
When Jordon Peterson became popular on CZcams I started watching his videos, I became very excited about his “lectures”, then after 3 hours in I realized he was re-hashing the BIBLE in his own words, spewing fancy words and expressions to bait people into his old Bible World. The man is preaching religion through his fancy wording. The man is a facade, a business man. I don’t know how many noticed that. To me his very dangerous, smells like a cult. He has nothing to offer. His popular because everything he spews confirms with Christians and Christians love that, he dose all this subliminal. He constantly says ; paraphrasing “its not what you think, it’s something else”, but it is the same old thing in a new fancy box.
As I already wrote under another take down video of Peterson:
Peterson is a quack who misleads young impressionable men. He sells them false self-assuredness and religion in the guise of deep philosophical wisdom that he misrepresents or just made up to feed on their insecurities. In them, he has an army of defenders on the interwebs that try to drown out all criticism against him. And the more people criticize him, the more these young men feel they belong to an elite club of wise men who see through the veil of fashionable wokeness into the real world of eternal manliness. Think Fight Club. IOW: He's a cult leader
Your sloppy in your argumentation. I cant even start with all the things you got wrong. Not even mentioning your willfull interpretations of Jordan Petersons stances.
I actually have listened to a LOT of Jordan Peterson's stuff and Wes did a pretty good job with the arguments he raised against JP.
You know, you're falling prey to precisely the same bias you accuse JBP of having.
Some of your points are valid, but you make sweeping generalizations, and employ assumptions about outcomes ( selecting for non aggressive pilots will decrease incidents, selecting for female traits in business will actually work in terms of the competitive landscape, etc)
So I understand your concerns for his misstatements. I concur. I don't concur with your synthesis.
I feel like wes just makes his assertions with a question mark at the end, which is simultaneously more honest in his lack of knowledge and dishonest in his biases toward a certain type of knowledge
@@robsan5410 certain type of knowledge? Not sure what you mean, unless you want to make an ontological argument about something?
In my case, I'm speaking to his assumptions. He is assuming, without evidence, that aggressive pilots are, on average, more dangerous pilots. Until I see a controlled study on this, I won't concur.
The same is true for female pilots...and also the assumption that female pilots will be less aggressive pilots. We don't know that either.
So my concern is in his axiomatic approach to non knowledge. He assumes he knows something about things no one knows anything about.
@@timothyblazer1749
I just meant that he has a pretty obvious liberal academia bias and he uses a general "measured skepticism" rhetorical style while subtley promoting his perspective.
Nothing terribly wrong with that.
I think that you're right that he makes some pretty big assumptions there, but assumptions are necessary in the pursuit of knowledge in my opinion.
Im not sure if studies would even help in those cases as there are so many extraneous factors.
I think it's a great idea to tackle popular topics precisely for the views and popularity it can bring! This channel deserves it!
As for popularity a lot of It is western white male chauvanism 👎🏽🕳️
@@AudioPervert1 If that passes as apt commentary then i pass for a moose!
This topic needs to be tackled because it greatly harms society.
That's what one might call "selling out" lol. It's a history of philosophy channel not a shit click reaction channel.
I really enjoy the lectures given by Wes Cecil in general: they are informative, witty, and much can be taken from them. However, I feel the characterization of Jordan Peterson in this lecture, while some points may be made, largely missed the point of what Peterson is trying to do. I feel that Cecil has missed the nuances of Peterson’s arguments in certain places and credits him with certain philosophical ideas or agendas that are not actually present in Peterson’s work if you listen to it carefully.
The Wes Cecil Problem: uncharitable
Wes, I appreciate your evaluation of Jordan's ideas. I believe that nobody is above criticism, not even Jordan. Your first criticism is welcomed. I think those statistics about Nazis must be well analyzed. The ethical question of silence of big majority on the atrocities of the cruel, noisy minority is an important one to discuss.
Your second criticism isn't right though. He is always trying to raise the question of human nature and the Russouian and Hobsian views as two extremes. Statistics shows that it's the mix of the two.
If statistics say so, well well...
@@JB-ru4fr do you speak English ?
First off, statistics doesn't give an opinion. You gather that and formulate from the data.
Secondaly, I laugh at the notion that statistics is all that it takes to figure out the mythical nature of humans.
And thirdly, Hobbes did not say people were inherently bad. He said that people were pushed to do wrong because of fear and anxiety that the next man might be his killer. We are not wolves in sheep's skin, we are sheep's in wolves skin.
If your argument is that JP’s belief that humans can be evil is wrong then you need to study Chimp behavior in the wild. Chimps are extremely vivacious animals within and between their tribes. Yes, they are primarily cooperative within their tribe but make no mistake. They become violent when necessary towards each other and other chimps too.
As our civilization has placed a thicker facade of complexity over this reality, we forget that we are of the same cloth and our violent tendencies have been programmed into our head genetically over millions of years while culture is holding the facade only over the past few thousand years. JP’s positions are valid, even if the Stanford experiment was not repeated successfully,
It's really funny how people can watch JP's videos - with the plan of making a video about him - and misinterpret his words in so obvious ways.
All you need to do is to watch the original full lecture video where the snippet came from and get the context.
He's a bit of a story teller, presenting the material in an entertaining way for his students. He emphasizes certain things. Do you believe the point was recounting the precise number of Jews living in Germany at that point in time, or was he maybe trying to make a general point about something else?
You'll hardly find a lecturer who isn't being a bit polemic or colorful or whatever here and there. (At least none you'd want to listen to.)
However, if you already are biased when you approach someone, you'll treat every casual remark, every small slip, as a sign of dishonesty. (And I think this is dishonest.)
JP's point is not that humans are inherently bad. His point is that being a hero is really hard, if it's not in a movie, and if you're actually gonna stand up for what's right, there might be all sorts of dark impulses in you of which you don't know yet, that by no means are limited to actual active malice.
The 'ducking', the 'looking the other way', then rationalizing it, like 'what can I do anyway? Probably they did something to deserve it...', that's all part of it.
He's saying that from relatively peaceful times like ours it is relatively easy to 'speak out against evil', because what's the consequences? A few likes and hearts on Facebook?
If you *really* were living in Nazi Germany, in Maoist China or whatever, it's just not obvious if you *really* would act heroically. The very least you can't just assume it haughtily.
'You likely would have been a Nazi' can't be interpreted as 'careful consideration of all available data suggests that ...'
I mean, come on, that should be obvious. Are you a human being or a bot?
Then the next example where you get all hung up about that he thinks it's 'terrifying', that society has no plan in place for what to do with people with low intelligence...
You're fearmongering here, claiming he is saying this to fearmonger, shutting down thinking. That's pure fiction.
Have you ever looked at the actual world? Have you ever turned on Fox News? Do you think, there WILL be any plan to create a support system in the USA that leaves no one behind?
Really? Nope, right? The last decades of neolib, neocon etc. suggest that this will just go on, everyone 'being responsible for themselves', while the easy jobs die out.
You'd need to be REALLY ignorant - or evil - to not find this terrifying or at least understand why someone might think it is.
Also, he is NOT saying that 'nothing can be done' - he's saying that everything he knows about IQ research suggests that nothing can be done TO RAISE INTELLIGENCE!
Quite convenient, how you left out this crucial part, making him look like a monster.
If you had listened around honestly for a while, you'd have figured out that he's WORRIED about this, because so many people being left out will destabilize society and eventually harm everyone.
What do you believe he wanted to suggest? That they're be put into camps?
You might have better said it then, because otherwise you might just instill fear in our hearts towards JP.
The hypocrisy is just unbelievable.
Then you make the claim that he promotes selection for aggression with jobs, so effectively men yadayada...
Only that he isn't doing that. In a million places he's saying that the main factor is COMPETENCE. Foremost intelligence and conscientiousness predict success in life.
However, in all sorts of hierarchies there's a tendency towards corruption, and power games are being played, and in such a setting, disagreeable (instead of aggressive) will more likely come out on top, especially the very top.
He does not say that this is the way to do things. Mostly this is a counter argument to the oversimplification of 'the system is rigged against women' - of which you seem to be fond of.
He is also not promoting not to ever socially intervene, he's saying that many interventions aren't well thought out and end up making things worse instead of better, so you need to be really, really careful.
Seriously, this is all not hard to figure out. You need to try harder. You're just strawmanning the guy into oblivion, like you've seen other people do.
I would not agree that the military selects for aggressiveness. I was a Marine. They more select for agreeableness. Really. And that makes if you think about. I think Peterson is wrong to characterize women as more agreeable than men, and about many other of his characterizations of men and women.
I was seriously hoping for an honest critique of Peterson and then he totally misinterprets the first question. If intended or not I don’t know but this does not look like an honest critique. So very disappointing.
"not a joiner of things" wow
I can see where your perspective may come from, but its an illusion.
You cannot make the distinction you would not have been, your personality is made up of your life experiences. taking who you are now and inserting your personality from now to then. Is not in the slightest a good argument that you would not have been. That's to say if Hitler was born in the US he still would have become a Nazi, somehow.
By saying you would not have, is to say you couldn't have due to deterministic rules of how your brain would manifest itself to think as you do now as you are to say you wouldn't.
This is a paradox.
Couldn't say for sure. but the point is, all people are capable of selfish and cooperative goals. This ranging from eating everything for yourself, to murder in the name of, to giving your only food to someone else.
Strange comments.
What is your source for saying so few died in the holocaust?
The Stanford Prison Experiment was not about showing that given the opportunity regular college students would become sadistic prison guards. The experiment was about showing that if you manipulate human interactions to take away the things we do naturally, like empathy, you can turn perfectly nice college students into sadistic prison guards in a relatively short period of time. The point isn't whether people are inherently good or bad but rather that people are both good and bad and that society can bring either the best or the worst in people. Jordan Peterson makes this point constantly, which you seem to have missed. He uses this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, all the time:
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
They were never nice college students. The experiment just brought out their sadistic side that they hide in public. Some weren't into it as much as others either, but some people are bad and will do bad shit to people given just a little power. Some aren't bad but get pressured by others easily. Not all Nazis hated Jews, but still went along with it.
@@ebogar42 you'll have to provide some kind of citation for me to take that as an argument. I've read the book that Zimbardo wrote about the experiment and I don't remember there being any indication about what you're saying. But this was a few years ago so I might be wrong.
@@SorinSilaghi Probably not, but why is his opinion right again? It's just his observation based on his opinion of what he thinks people are before they do the experiment. He thinks they are good. I disagree. I think they just hid that shit. People aren't good and never were to me based on how I've viewed people over the years. People are fake. They hide it all the damn time. Just because they act good in public doesn't mean they wouldn't fuck you up, bully you, or talk shit if they got some power. Our entire country is raised on hitting on someone when you don't get your way, but you think they all came in there back in those days never touched in their life, or ever learned any of that violent behavior from their parents or friends? You all need to wake up. Most people aren't good people and will stab you in the back to get ahead in life.
@@ebogar42 I agree that everything is fake in your country, I got the same impression when I visited years ago. I live in Romania.
The book is called the Lucifer Effect and goes into great detail about how the experiment was run. The candidates were split randomly between guards and prisoners and, from what I can remember, they weren't told exactly what was going to happen. There is valid criticism directed at the experiment but in my opinion it doesn't invalidate it as a demonstration of how things can go wrong.
I think your opinion is cynical and I don't think there is anything I can say to change it. That's OK, for all I know it could be totally justified. But regardless if people are inherently good or bad, cynicism doesn't lead anywhere good in the long run.
Wrong. Read the book written by the guy who did the actual experiment. What the experiment showed is that putting untrained people with no support in high responsibility positions leads to psychological overload. It says nothing about our inner nature.
The problem we run into when we wonder if we OURSELVES would have been Nazi party members is to think of OURSELF as not OURSELF. WE wouldn't be OURSELVES if we were in the time of the Nazi party, because WE do not exist in that period. WE can not comprehend such a thing, since WE can not comprehend not being OURSELF as WE ARE. We are who we are, and to imagine ourselves any other way would cause conceptual conflicts. Instead, you have to imagine people in general. This way you can approach the thought experiment in a completely unbiased manner, and not run into conceptual conflicts of another nature either. Mainly YOU being YOU, and YOU not being able to completely comprehend an experience outside of YOUR OWN experience, especially an experience rooted in another period coming out of another period headed into another period, all of which YOU have never experienced. You MUST divorce YOURSELF from the equation! YOU are rooted in THIS period; which is incomparable to that period in time.
I think that the "INTELLIGENCE" in "I".Q. is misleading. Intuitive types; which I am, score the highest on these "tests", and who do you think makes these " tests", Intuitives. It is more like a "how much do you think like me" test or a "how does intuition factor into your conscious and subconscious functions" test. The I.Q. test used to be, mainly, in WORDED format, and WORDS have a subjective meaning to them. Meaning, a word or words can be interpreted differently. Introverted Intuitives, like me, found more than one valid way to answer the questions, so they changed to PICTURES, and all of a sudden Extroverted Intuitives started scoring the highest since Extroverted Intuition deals with the "objective" and not the "subjective". PICTURES/SHAPES don't have a "subjective" element to them, since they are "objective". The point is, it's a test for Intuition/patterns and not Intelligence. Intelligence can manifest in many ways and be focused on many different forms of information, ie. Kinesthetic, Emotional, Sensory, Intuitive, Subjective, Objective, etc...
10% have low I.Q. and don't contribute but in Mr. Petersons' own words only about 5-10% do almost 100% of the contributing, in this manner.
New series on British philosophers sounds good! Can't wait. (Love to hear your thoughts on Alan Watts, but I bet it will be on the likes of John Stewart Mill, etc) 😉🙃👍🏻
Hopefully Hume will be covered, even if he is Scottish.
Scots are getting their own county. So
He's not a philosopher; he's a psychologist. He wasn't making a philosophical point; he was getting his students to eat their shadow.
When a philosophy professor is able to become internationally influential and use his ideas to save thousands of men from suicide, and can these things better than jbp has, then i will credit his critique
Keep it up. But maybe swap your certainty for some curiosity. You say lots of words that don’t do anything. Try to be more precise with your language. And keep it up.
Even Joe Rogan caught him out on his equality of outcome nonsense concerning incels.
Aggressive people select themselves, it’s not part of any design of the system. If you are more aggressive you are more likely to put forward your ideas and apply for higher positions, taking up responsibility etc.. if you wanted to artificially select for less aggressive people or take decisions communally the more aggressive would still influence power more unless you spend a good share of resources in suffocating control
That's not really true though. Living with people, needing to at least pretend to co-operate has selected (in a social sense, not a literially evolutionary sense) for more agreeable, co-operative people. A minority of people who act 'aggressively' can't actually benefit from that behaviour without most people being agreeable and co-operative. To be successful you have to be at least agreeable enough that people still like you and are willing to work with you. Co-operation up to a point is just rational self interest. People are very clearly less agressive and more co-operative than they used to be.
@@saltzmanweniger yeah, you’re right too but I think that using “ aggressive “ as a definition is the problem, because it’s not exactly like that. You might need “ that feature “ to just say a kind word to a friend sometimes, I don’t think that Peterson calls it that but I call it “ the balls “. Some people just have them, you know, that’s why they get paid more and not all men have them ( and of course not all women )
It's very scary how fascism is gathering support again in the western world via people like Jordan Peterson his analysis of the work of the Frankfort school and his deliberate falsification of the history of Marx and the Soviet Union are very worrying I believe this was why 200 of his fellow progresses signed a petition to have him removed from his job nothing to do with gender pronouns but about encouraging students to thing in a very conservative way leading to a right wing world view very dangerous behaviour at any time but with the rise of the extreme right in USA and Europe at the moment his behaviour is despicable and irrisponsible in the extreme
@@johnmilligan6605 I don’t see anything wrong with being right wing OR left wing but claims of falsification of what went wrong in the Soviet Union smell like you might be somewhat extreme or a denier. Stalin was every bit as nasty and murderous as Hitler and he managed to kill more people even. Also, what does that have to do with my comment? Why are you replying here?
@Faus It's not about your personal morals and how they feel. It's about looking at the differences between Stalin and Hitler. History is done no justice when you only view it through the eyes of the moralist.
Despite having some (severe as well as not-so-severe) disageements with you, what I really do value is the way you constantly seem to basically be saying "IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE" which is something I've been screaming for much of my life.
That being said, it is important to remember the following as well:
You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
- C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Bro, you really are saying you can't be a Nazi off of what basis? You aren't a conformist? Aight bud, solid argument
The thing that bugs me about this is the constant use of "we", "system", and "organise". So you say it would be better to have a system that doesn't select for aggression. Ok, maybe, so how do we get there? Such a system is not happening spontaneously, so it needs to created by somebody. So wouldn't those somebody's need to pursue those changes with what could be described as aggression, even forcefulness? So, the new system would just be the same as the last, with the forceful and aggressive in charge. Isn't this what kept happening with communist regimes? The fundamental idea, justice for the workers, was good and charitable, but the revolutions required to make the changes just empowered tyrants. And they could then claim to be operating out of righteousness, not just self-interest, so were worse that what came before.
There are such things as cooperation and mutual aid, you know?
Not sure you contextualized what he said wholly appropriately, but even so some good points were in here.
He absolutely is. Jordan peterson just talks out of his ass with a bunch of jargon. He deserves a more brutal comprehensive takedown than this.
Funny....it seems that you did not get it. It was a pretty flat. Was it an ad hominen critique?
Wes Cecil: _I'm not going to nitpick_
Wes Cecil: _[Nitpicks]_
Nope. They are key factors that together are used to extrapolate. Critique each & the whole ‘begging the question’ fallacy is exposed & falls to pieces.
Thanks for the video. I don't agree with the first point -- Jordan isn't saying that everyone is secretly a nazi with only the thin veneer of society to prevent them. He is interested in why ideologies lead people to commit the horrible acts that they do. If we say that most people were not nazis, only a few bad apples, we limit explanation to just that, rather than really asking what it was that led 'good' people to do those things (which btw the only way we will understand it and therefore the only way we can prevent it happening again).
Peterson says we are both Rousseau and Hobbes, he does not think everyone is evil. He says that we can't really understand how people (including ourselves) behave in times of desperation or crisis (incl during the war) because most of us spend all of our lives living in security. We look at people around us and think that this is how people behave when this is really only how people behave in a safe culture. By saying that it was the nazis that committed horrible acts in the war, we are falling into the language and thought which led to those acts in the first place -- group thinking. To Jordan, what the nazis did tells us how humans act, not how nazis act. Watch his Maps of Meaning lectures for more info, I think they are fascinating (he talks most about what I have just mentioned in the Harvard ones, start of first lecture)
Nice thumbnail. The rest, is a pretty weak critique.
Would you care to explain what you think are the weakness?
Petersons theory on occupational choices differing between the genders is much more involved, I think your critique is an oversimplification.
I don’t think your description of Peterson’s view on evil within human nature is accurate. You represent him as espousing a view of human nature as fundamentally evil, but he consistently indicates otherwise. If you just listen to the most controversial sound bites you might not be exposed to the more nuanced aspects of his work but he definitely doesn’t believe that humans are fundamentally evil. He does say that humans have the innate capacity for evil, which would be foolish to deny.
Regarding the IQ argument, this is another misrepresentation born of a clear unfamiliarity with his broader work. The reason the low IQ/low aptitude question is so disturbing to him is specifically because he sees it as an ethical question that our culture is inadequately handling. In our current structure, these people are without a clear path to success. I honestly can’t see how you’re arriving at the conclusion that he doesn’t think these people should be helped unless you’re just not particularly familiar with his work.
I think it’s the part where Peterson says “You can’t help them”. That’s where the conclusion that Peterson thinks you can’t help them comes from.
Additionally, Peterson often uses claims of detailed nuance to defend an implied statement.
For example, he often makes detailed points of social hierarchies manifesting beyond our society- even into the animal kingdom (this is where the lobster meme comes from). An interesting discussion on where hierarchies arise from.
Except, he brings it up in discussions of politics. Politics have a critical element of being about what a society should do. By making his lobster argument, he is using the naturalist fallacy to skip over the is/ought gap.
If pressed (infamously asked, "so you think we should form our society off of lobsters?" [Wording not exact]) he uses his subtle and detailed discussion of hierarchies arising as a dodge- he can deny ever making certain implications because he truthfully never said that.
But, as I said before, the political context demands the question, "what does this discussion of animal hierarchies have to do with what we should do?"
and
"How does this discussion of natural hierarchies map onto the conversation of how we should organize society?"
It is a pity there is a need for “you are misinterpreting his broader work”. But I guess that follows from the kind of all over the place expositions of Peterson’s work.
@@elrathJohnson because his point is that much of the social tension we are experiencing is the byproduct of ignoring fundamental aspects of reality and human nature. His point about hierarchy is that it is an immutable aspect of our nature and that nothing we can do will ever resolve it, in other words inequality is a fact of life and it is naive to a dangerous degree to pretend otherwise.
@@plateoshrimp9685 I'm sure, when Peterson said "you can't help them", he meant "you CAN help them". Yes, yes. I'm sure. As the internet certified genius that Peterson is, that is what he must have meant, not what he said.
Nietzsche as a tragic prophet and occupying the same dialectic as say, Dostoyevsky, is an important idea.
The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.
If Plato weren't there for you to anchor yourself against, then how much of your 'scathing critique' would even exist?
It's a little odd to me that of all the malevolent things that happen on this rock that you would have such a bone to pick with this guy of all people...everyone is ignorant in so many things, and it seems that calling him out on these certain facts does not address the majority of his appeal to folks
Just stop reading the comments right now. Save yourself
I would say that the "Jordan Peterson Problem" is more about the evolutionary necessity of religion as an embodied ethical framework. Something about when people think they have jettisoned religion, they may have just invented a new one that they don't yet understand as such...
This is one of my favorites topics to hear him speak on.
Nonsense, there is no evolutionary necessity of religion as an embodied ethical framework. If you think there is, show us the evidence for that claim.
@@sunflare8798 hmmm, It's not a scientific claim. It's a teleological concept around how we organize ourselves, and use language and protocol to serve our goals or at least perceived goals. Related would be something like this quote from De Maistre... “Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”
@@deprogramr Too bad as the most important philosophers, from Kant and Hume to Spinoza and Nietzsche all rejected a teleological order of the world.
And even what you said has nothing to do with religion but simply with the organizing of our daily activities.
Peterson will be remembered as one of the lowest points in our current cultural enviroment.
@@sunflare8798 sounds like you worship science like it’s a religion. Maybe you should check yourself before criticizing others?
I’m 5 minutes in and can tell you missed Peterson’s point..please reframe and slander as he has actually meant and been successful in helping many people.hope your day is going well..
It is amazing how many Jordan apologists storm any video that disagrees….
Sorry if I offend, but over the past year around a dozen social commentators I follow have discussed Mr. Peterson’s seeming need to stir things up. Almost always there are way more comments than there would normally be with most outraged anyone would question Jordan’s stance. That is weird because I wouldn’t normally expect any crossover of followers at all…. To quote Mr. Peterson “statistically that’s just strange”. Of course it is anyone’s right to look for people commenting on their heroes, nothing wrong with that at all…
1. Lets use the % of the male population that sworn an oath to serve Hitler and then carried arms for him rather than vote counts. The number of NAZI party membership was limited by the NAZI party keeping its self prestigious not by peoples unwillingness to kill. I'm a bit disturbed by your minimization of the holocausts. Peterson says people will kill their neighbors and you reply most of those people killed don't count their Polish.
2. Lets replace the claim that the U.S. Army dose not test for I.Q. with, "for political and PR reasons the Army dose not publicly discuses it's knowledge of the IQs of its members." The Army's claims that it test for aptitude rather than IQ has a lot more to do with not wanting average people to be reminded that they aren't going to win the promotion tournament and avoiding paying royalties to owners of I.Q. tests. But the the larger point is Peterson never said that you can't or shouldn't build sheltered workshops for 10% of the population with
You've hit the nail on the head; I do noticed JP tends to interpret statistics on social conditions in an absolutely Darwinian sense as if thoroughly immune to human interventions. This seems a strange response even if the statistics are completely correct. In a sense he's like Pangloss in Candide.
I wish more people pointed this out. Me having been a Peterson fan to now very critical of him, I fail to see why so many still defend Peterson. Are they just a lot of new young fans or something?
@@MiguelThinks Yes, I think they've mostly been exposed to him via The Joe Rogan Experience. (At least initially).
What else would you expect from a cognitive psychologist, with zero knowledge of hypnotherapuetic techniques?
He's not exactly Milton Erickson.
First 5 minutes and thumbnail. You lost your chance.
This is first criticism of Peterson I've heard that actually makes sense.
He is probably much smarter then you. And he has probably helped many more folks then you. But I guess you have to find something to get people to listen to you. JP name will get them in..
No. Peterson is not much smarter. He's a quack who misleads young impressionable men. He sells them false self-assuredness and religion in the guise of deep philosophical wisdom that he misrepresents or has just made up to feed on their insecurities. In them, he has an army of defenders on the interwebs that try to drown out all criticism against him. And the more people criticize him, the more these young men feel they belong to an elite club of wise men who see through the veil of fashionable wokeness into the real world of eternal manliness. Think Fight Club. IOW: He's a cult leader.
I'll love to hear your lectures on Hume, Locke, Hobbs...
Re the “you would have been a Nazi” question. You’re response (paraphrased): “No, because I’m not a “joiner” of things!”. Well, that’s easy to say sitting in the safety of Modern day America. I’d venture to say it would have been a different story if you had to make that decision in Nazi era Germany when the consequence of being a “ non-joiner” of things could have very well meant life or death or success or failure professionally. Similar to many classic painters (ie Leonardo da Vinci ) who claimed to be Christian. We don’t know for sure if they were…we only know for sure what would have happened to them if they openly claimed they were not.
There were plenty of people who never joined the Nazi party, or who maybe paid lip service to it. Richard J Evans says - there was coercion, but many people just outwardly conformed and kept to themselves.
Doesn't mean to say they resisted or anything, just refuse to believe. More difficult after 1933 though I guess because you had then the question of being exposed to Nazi propaganda for much of your life..
Dear Wes Cecil. Your post is akin to one of a cucumber trying to criticize a gardener. Sorry, but I’ll have to respond as a physicist with more than 25 years of military and “other” experience in objective thinking, detachment from personal confirmation bias, real-life experience in sociology, human behavior and psychology.
- It is clearly evident that due your dislike of Dr. Peterson as result of some social or emotional (interesting what it is) conflict, you decide to try to discredit him professionally. Otherwise you'll have to reconcile the conflict between your perception of yourself and your REAL self. Transparent.
- Instead of looking in the mirror, and asking yourself why you’re so disingenuous and lack courage to challenge your beliefs, you decide to resort to rudimentary demagogy and a phony attempt to try to criticize him on professional level. And, of all Dr. Peterson’s lectures you picked a topic that you clearly don’t have the faintest idea about.
- Your erroneous misrepresentation of Dr. Peterson’s lecture is at least naïve (and maybe even disingenuous). It demonstrates your confirmation bias, lack of knowledge in psychology and a general scientific ignorance. Not to mention misquoting, using straw man arguments and (intentional or unintentional) ignorance of history, logic, statistics and misuse of scientific argumentation. There’s so many errors about your post. Here are just a few points:
1. Your claim that you KNOW yourself is utterly naïve and arrogant (Dunning-Kruger?). It's a result lack of life experience. You remind me of Dr. Ruth Westheimer talking about sex…
In my professional and military life I have seen "real good" people committing atrocities, just because everybody around them did.
It’s been observed time and again in labs and in real life (Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, USSR, N. Korea, China, WWII, Vietnam, Lebanon... ) that humans ALWAYS behave as humans. The fear of been ostracized always wins over “moral values”. ALWAYS.
2. Dr. Peterson’s (correct and many times proven) claim that VAST majority of people, except a negligible minority, would act as Nazis (NOT BE A NAZI, as you misquoted to make your confirmation biased erroneous claim) under appropriate circumstances.
3. You intentionally are trying to "refute" Dr. Peterson's proposition by deflecting to statistics, a topic that you apparently either are not familiar with or are intentionally trying to mislead the audience. Statistically, Jewish population of pre WWII Germany was concentrated in large metropolitan cities like Berlin, where their relative percentage of middle-class exceeded “negligible” numbers. Luckily the Nazi party documented everything, so, if you are interested, do some real research. I am not sure how good is your German. Did you ever speak to older Germans in Berlin or Bonn or München about their experiences in WWII?
- Got courage? Challenge your beliefs and learn something -
Over and out.
Lol, you’re not a physicist
Lots of bull in this argument
I agree with most of what you're said, but the pressures of being ostracized do not ALWAYS win. You sound intelligent enough to bring to mind many examples, rare as they may be.
@@Thomas_Geist sycophants
@@VinnieMTG2024 State one. "Lot's" is not an argument my itself.
Very interesting what kind of people are drawn here to comment. Fanboys are peculiar.
Yes, funny how so many are drawn to cultural icons and defend them as if they themselves have been attacked.
Same with sports teams.
Jordan Peterson: “You would have been a Nazi!”
Jordan Peterson fan: “What does he mean ‘would have been’?”
I strongly dislike Jordan Peterson, I think he is very histrionic and generally agreed with most what was said here. However, I thought you're analysis of the selection for agression was very shallow. Agression doesn't mean just to punch someone - it means to choose a direction and follow it (the etimology of the word is quite obvious in this respect). It should be self explanatory why leadership positions select for agression and why it has been so in the vast majority of cases for as far back as we can tell. So yea, very poor argument - in the sense that it doesn't detail at all what agression means and that's really the core of the issue.
As someone who studies economics, I find his idea of the Pareto function explaining income inequality (beyond the gender divide) as innate extremely naive. It's just part of his cynical conservatism, 'Sure the world is tough bucko but that's just how it has to be'
I'm no Marxist, but like many conservatives he makes a bogeyman out of Marxism and builds up a largely imagined Frankenstein's monster of post modernism and cultural Marxists for us to fear to obscure his own very shallow analysis of the political economy.
Watch the Russian movie Chekist
In what way is it extremely naive?
@@purplemonkeydishwasher9818 Because though he did acknowledge it is a problem, from the way he described it implied the extreme inequality is somehow a 'natural' consequence of free markets which align along the Pareto distribution thus he took a fatalistic point of view, which roughly came across as inequality = bad but socialism = worse.
Of course some of the wealth inequality is derived from differences in merit as it should be, but the classical economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, Mill etc all differentiated between earned and unearned income aka economic rent or monopoly rent. That is income derived from monopolistic privileges mostly in land but now also including intellectual property. And empirically it is not hard to show how the majority of wealth inequality today is made via this unearned income, not merit.
When we have a free market more along the lines of what Smith et al envisioned, then we can look at how problematic inequality is.
Peterson claims to be a reader of Tolstoy, perhaps he should try his last and censored book , 'Resurrection', by that time Tolstoy was a fervent supporter of Georgism which advocated the taxation of unearned rent even more than Smith and Ricardo.
@@schumanhuman I don't think that Peterson would disagree with you. He hasn't claimed that income inequality is entirely the consequence of merit based interaction with market systems. In fact, he often points to the example of the board game "Monopoly" in his lectures to show how money/property eventually accumulates into the hands of just one player even in a game based almost purely on chance. His point is that these sorts of phenomenon will occur regardless of what market/product you're talking about. Any critique of hierarchies that points to the disparity in outcome as evidence of unfairness doesn't account for the fundamental fact that this is simply how trading games play out over time. Peterson's point when talking about the Pareto distribution in this context is usually followed by the point that redistribution and regulation that is aimed at keeping systems fair is used to soften the blows that naturally result from market interactions (i.e. providing a safety net).
I would be careful in basing your critique of Peterson on this video. Despite it supposedly being a deep dive, Wes gets a surprising amount of Peterson's points wrong.
@@purplemonkeydishwasher9818 'he often points to the example of the board game "Monopoly" in his lectures to show how money/property eventually accumulates into the hands of just one player even in a game based almost purely on chance.'
Does he mention that the game of monopoly was originally called 'The landlords game' which showed how inequality could be avoided by taxing land rents? The game had two sets of rules to display the difference between the two systems of real free markets and the crony privilege we have today.
www.therichest.com/rich-powerful/monopoly-game-inspiration/
'His point is that these sorts of phenomenon will occur regardless of what market/product you're talking about. '
Well no, that's the fatalism I'm talking about, capital goods can compete due to elasticity of both demand and supply. Monopoly power usually occurs through privilege and cronyism.
Land is not capital, it is both fixed in aggregate supply and location ie you cannot ship cheap land from Alabama to New York.
'Buy land they aren't making any more of it.' is a phrase often attributed to Mark Twain.
Hence goods have generally got a lot cheaper and/or better due to competition driving productivity, which is what free markets do well, but land had only got more expensive as it absorbs the productivity gains.
Thank You Professor, I do enjoy listening to Jordan Peterson, but take him much less seriously nowadays. Him and his cronies like Gad Saad totally turned me back on to Postmodern deconstruction since they made fun so much. I like studying talmud and talmud is constantly deconstructing. Loving you and Derida