Jordan Peterson is so controversial, why would you mention him in that interview? "Team" Satoshi actually solved fundamental problems and moved the world forward in cryptocurrency and associated underlying technology like blockchains, but Peterson has just stirred people up.
I am also curious about the allusion to Peterson. I am not aware of any huge societal contribution he has made beyond encouraging dueling op-eds. Certainly he has a devoted fan base, but I essentially never hear about him in real life.
I'm not weighing in on how good or bad his ideas are. But I see way more of the blockchain in the world than I do (knowingly) of Peterson.
I have thoroughly consumed a lot of Peterson content. I can vouch that aside from the political controversy, that he has a powerful message for young men: to find the meaning in life through responsibility and sacrifice, to go out there and make something of themselves. I have no idea why that it is "controversial" to be told to strive for something, and I don't see much alternatives other than self-help books. There are much more troubled, aimless people out there than you think, because if you've lived a fairly decent life yourself, you almost never come into contact with the guys that aren't doing so well and are in need of such a message. He's almost filling in as a father figure for young men where self-help did not suffice. The opposing side likes to attempt to character assassinate him by labelling as a right-wing bigot, but have never bothered to really listen to his message while holding the empathy that more unfortunate people DO need a message like that.
The other reply to this comment does a good job of summarizing a lot of the problems Peterson poses. I would also say he has a cultish following, which means he holds a fair amount of influence, which he doesn't always wield responsibly.
I have also consumed a lot of Peterson content, and much of what he says has a lot of value, and not just for young men. He also holds positions I think are indefensible, unscientific, and highly prejudiced. It is important to embrace nuance and subtleties, loving parts of what we dislike and disliking parts of what we love.
There is much truth to what you write. However, the problem occurs when Peterson conflates his politics with his advice for how individuals can improve their lives. As an experienced clinical psychologist with some acquired life wisdom, he seems very well-suited to providing positive, beneficial messages to individuals. His political punditry is not founded on the same sort of genuine expertise.
To me, his controversial argument is the idea that the academy is infested with communists who think you should be thrown in jail for using the wrong pronouns, and that an entire generation of college students is taking women's studies classes wherein they are taught that the problem with the world is that men exist and that they aren't enough like women. And that in these leftist circles you're not allowed to talk about sexism perpetrated by muslim men. And a bunch of other such theories.
Sure, all of that exists in various crappy people in obscure corners of academia. But he makes it out to be widespread, and he makes it out that no dissenting voices are allowed to exist on the left or in academia. Neither of which is true. But more troubling, there's a community of right wing pundits who use Peterson and his theories to justify total vilification of the left and academia in their entirety. The impression you get from Peterson is that no gender studies professor has ever done anything except hate traditional values and the people who love them.
There are people out there making constructive criticisms of overzealous leftists. Peterson seems to be choosing a purely divisive path. You can tell because he never talks to or about anyone on the left with more moderate views. He only engages the center right and the radical left, because fundamentally his goal isn't to reform the left, it's to justify his own rightward shift in his personal politics.
After the events of the past few years, I don't think it's tenable to cast the problems Peterson highlights as occasional and obscure. Look at FIRE's speech code analysis: most universities have administrative restrictions on free inquiry. Look at Heterodox Academy's work on ideological bias: social science is 90% left, with something like 30% (from memory) calling themselves "radical". Look at the current replication crisis, which arises in part from fabrication of ideologically convenient results.
I simply cannot agree with your assertion that Peterson et al are cherry-picking and that academia is fundamentally sound. These pathologies are too common and too widespread not to constitute some kind of systemic issue. I find your arguments unconvincing. Instead, I believe that a correction is long overdue.
Disciplines that reject reason, empiricism, and rigor, that claim all truths are equally valid, and that hold the only valid goal of pedagogy is tearing down power dynamics --- these are indoctrination, not inquiry, and the public should not fund this activity.
> no dissenting voices are allowed to exist on the left or in academia
Academia really does apply extreme social and political pressure to unorthodox thinkers. Look at the campaign against Rachel Fulton Brown.
> use Peterson and his theories to justify
It's become common lately to argue that we shouldn't acknowledge certain facts because unscrupulous people might use them to justify something bad. This position is not tenable. The truth always gets out, and when it does, those suppressing it lose all of their influence and credibility. It's far better to acknowledge facts and work with them.
None of what you've said looks like evidence to me. I see arguments and anecotes.
The fact that unscrupulous people lean on Peterson to villify the left is not my concern. My concern is that Peterson seems to engage exclusively with those people, and he himself doesn't appear to see any variance amongst people in the various groups he targets (leftists, academics, feminists, antifa, etc).
I don't find those arguments persuasive. I do want people to be able to discuss controversial things. But I just don't believe in grand conspiracies behind the scenes. Just because there are lots of liberals in social science doesn't mean academia is some unfair conspiracy overall. Let me give a couple of examples that I think run into your examples, one in physics, one in business.
A ton of modern physics theoretical research is basically math that doesn't lead to verifiable results, and this leads to very valid questions about wasting our time. I think an argument can be made that physics in this area, in a sense rejects empiricism, because people's entire careers are going to be research that can't be verified. Of course people strongly want verifiable claims. I understand that not all of physics is that way. Would you ban this area for public funding? Probably not, but I think it fits in your description.
I'd venture that business colleges have a lot more conservatives than liberals and it's probably hard to be a far leftist in business (like a practicing communist!). Just to continue on business, I think a lot research about the effectiveness of different management strategies is not well supported by research, it's more anecdotal - the research about the genius of Jack Welch, well we didn't know about all that unaccounted for financial management that lead to GE being removed from the DOW. That's not to say there there is not good scholarship, in business, I think there is.
I do strongly support verifiable research, but some areas are hard to directly verify, especially dealing with humans and society, leading to hard to evaluate results. Writings about literature, analyzing texts in different ways, well that's all pretty subjective.
I find the obsession with gender studies particularly funny coming from a psychology professor. Given his fav topics he could be a men's studies professor for all I'm concerned.
“The law recognizes that everyone has the right to self-identify their gender and that “misgendering” is a form of discrimination.”
“Refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity, or purposely misgendering, will likely be discrimination when it takes place in a social area covered by the Code, including employment, housing and services like education.”
I think you've mostly got it. AFAIK, other academics and such in Peterson's field(s) find his work mostly mediocre to laughable, so my best guess is that the person in question falls into the "avid fan" camp.
Cowen wouldn't be funding someone like Peterson for their academic credentials. Vitalik Buterin wasn't a heavy weight in academia when Peter Thiel took a chance on him.
I had to do a double-take. Satoshi and Peterson in the same sentence? One is famous for kickstarting decentralised currencies/markets/etc., and the other is famous for... Lobsters? Pronouns? [Saying that women shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup at work?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrSrZpX5l8). Very strange that Cowen seems to think they're somehow comparable. [Unrelated](https://i.redd.it/w412971qqf011.png).
I would like to hear what strikes people as so controversial about Peterson? He and Satoshi are poor examples for article. But besides that I cannot understand how he is controversial when he appears to say not very much, though something part of the population in parts wants and needs to hear. I just don't understand why interviewers take shots at him or why YouTubers make obnoxious video clips from his videos.
He argued against women having the right to be addressed by a gender inclusive pronoun in the 80s fell off the map and is now doing the same thing with minority and trans-people. Currently he is touted as a champion of freespeech while he is actively sueing a public university for defamation (millions).
His followers have absorbed some pretty terrible ideas from him. This was a comment about the recent decriminalization of homosexuality in India: https://i.imgur.com/W80VytS.png
Doesn’t defamation specifically require false statements represented at truths? I’m not sure free speech is meant to allow for that as well (negative truths, represented as truths, are fine though)
