4 ms·

I know everyone hates tangents, and please excuse the off topic, but crypto-fascist and intellectual lightweight are not a set of attributes I've heard or intui

I know everyone hates tangents, and please excuse the off topic, but crypto-fascist and intellectual lightweight are not a set of attributes I've heard or intuited against Peterson. I'd love to hear more detail if you have some time. Articles, blogs, books, videos all accepted.

non-entity 7y ago
There's the contrapoints video that gets brought up a lot when discussing Peterson, and imo it does better than other sources, but its probably not formal enough / contains too much humor / silliness for the HN audience.
- kleer001 7y ago
  Yea, I took a peak. I can't sit through that (even though I did say "all accepted", My bad. ). It's a pile of pandering palp for a pretty rarefied cheer leading group. If there's valid points they should be available elsewhere in a more palatable and coherent form, no? Nobody's got a proprietary hold on truth. So, taking this moment to do my own searching all I find are character assassinations, and misunderstandings of his background and goals. That's from discussions on /r/askphilosophy to that New York times article to the one on thebaffler and video interviews too, from Cathy Newman to Vice all seem driven to the same goal as those sad and incoherent student protests in 2016. Shrug.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zaaakk 7y ago
    Just watch him in the debate with Zizek. He’s clearly out of his league.
    - kleer001 7y ago
      Sure, they're leaders in different disciplines which seem to overlap in the zeitgeist. I doubt Zizek would be able to match Peterson when discussing practical psychiatry. IMHO, after a brief fascination I've found my enthusiasm for Zizek fading. He seems to know his quotes very well and spits them out like a rapper on speed, but as a career philosopher and author I haven't seen his work leading to positive change in people. Peterson on the other hand has a growing cohort of I regret to say 'followers' who are purportedly cleaning up their acts. IMHO the group (and subsequently the ideology) is the wrong level of analysis to diagnose and then treat our contemporary woes. Groups cannot be addressed simultainously, cannot be held accountable, and most of all are never clearly delineated (what is 'race'?). The individual CAN be held accountable, that's how every law system on Earth is engineered. The individual can be addressed. That's how almost every communication system in the world works (except public PAs, radio, and the like). And most of all individuals are trivial to delineate. An individual human is unlike anything else in the universe except other humans and each has their own unique history.
aspenmayer 7y ago
Background prior to debate[1]: "During an event at the Cambridge Union Society in November 2018, Žižek had called Peterson's work "pseudo-scientific", labeled him as his "enemy" and criticized Peterson's work on the idea of cultural Marxism. Peterson said he could meet "any time, any place" to debate and it was announced on February 28, 2019 that the debate was scheduled for April 19. The two professors before had argued against happiness as something one should pursue. Peterson had said people should seek meaning through personal responsibility and Žižek had said happiness is pointless and delusional."[1] Debate itself[2][3]: "...In a similar fashion, Žižek asked Peterson to name him personal names of "postmodern neo-Marxists" in Western academia and from where he got the statistical numbers because according to him the over-the-top political correctness is opposed to Marxism, on which Peterson did not mention any names, yet statistical percentage of those who declare as Marxists in the academia according to Jonathan Haidt's research and explained replacement of the Marxist idea of class struggle with identity politics by which one group is oppressing the other. Some view this exchange as evidence that cultural Marxism had been invented by Peterson and other members of the intellectual dark web without any evidence of its existence. In the end, they both agreed that happiness is rather a byproduct of life itself." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate#Context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate#Debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWndfzuOc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWndfzuOc4
- kleer001 7y ago
  Okay. That's kind of interesting. From all I've digested of Žižek it seems he quite often bathes in exaggeration for theatrics. So, I wouldn't take "pseudo-scientific" as a flat and sincere statement. Also given that Peterson actually IS a scientist (with a few well sited papers). I tried to watch the talk, but there was so much audience hooting and hollering it was too difficult. But still, I don't see any evidence of Peterson being a "crypto-fascist" or "intellectual lightweight" as a previous user accused. The search continues.

non-entity 7y ago

There's the contrapoints video that gets brought up a lot when discussing Peterson, and imo it does better than other sources, but its probably not formal enough / contains too much humor / silliness for the HN audience.

kleer001 7y ago
Yea, I took a peak. I can't sit through that (even though I did say "all accepted", My bad. ). It's a pile of pandering palp for a pretty rarefied cheer leading group. If there's valid points they should be available elsewhere in a more palatable and coherent form, no? Nobody's got a proprietary hold on truth. So, taking this moment to do my own searching all I find are character assassinations, and misunderstandings of his background and goals. That's from discussions on /r/askphilosophy to that New York times article to the one on thebaffler and video interviews too, from Cathy Newman to Vice all seem driven to the same goal as those sad and incoherent student protests in 2016. Shrug.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zaaakk 7y ago
  Just watch him in the debate with Zizek. He’s clearly out of his league.
  - kleer001 7y ago
    Sure, they're leaders in different disciplines which seem to overlap in the zeitgeist. I doubt Zizek would be able to match Peterson when discussing practical psychiatry. IMHO, after a brief fascination I've found my enthusiasm for Zizek fading. He seems to know his quotes very well and spits them out like a rapper on speed, but as a career philosopher and author I haven't seen his work leading to positive change in people. Peterson on the other hand has a growing cohort of I regret to say 'followers' who are purportedly cleaning up their acts. IMHO the group (and subsequently the ideology) is the wrong level of analysis to diagnose and then treat our contemporary woes. Groups cannot be addressed simultainously, cannot be held accountable, and most of all are never clearly delineated (what is 'race'?). The individual CAN be held accountable, that's how every law system on Earth is engineered. The individual can be addressed. That's how almost every communication system in the world works (except public PAs, radio, and the like). And most of all individuals are trivial to delineate. An individual human is unlike anything else in the universe except other humans and each has their own unique history.

aspenmayer 7y ago

Background prior to debate[1]: "During an event at the Cambridge Union Society in November 2018, Žižek had called Peterson's work "pseudo-scientific", labeled him as his "enemy" and criticized Peterson's work on the idea of cultural Marxism. Peterson said he could meet "any time, any place" to debate and it was announced on February 28, 2019 that the debate was scheduled for April 19. The two professors before had argued against happiness as something one should pursue. Peterson had said people should seek meaning through personal responsibility and Žižek had said happiness is pointless and delusional."[1] Debate itself[2][3]: "...In a similar fashion, Žižek asked Peterson to name him personal names of "postmodern neo-Marxists" in Western academia and from where he got the statistical numbers because according to him the over-the-top political correctness is opposed to Marxism, on which Peterson did not mention any names, yet statistical percentage of those who declare as Marxists in the academia according to Jonathan Haidt's research and explained replacement of the Marxist idea of class struggle with identity politics by which one group is oppressing the other. Some view this exchange as evidence that cultural Marxism had been invented by Peterson and other members of the intellectual dark web without any evidence of its existence. In the end, they both agreed that happiness is rather a byproduct of life itself." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate#Context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BEek_debate#Debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterson%E2%80%93%C5%BDi%C5%BE... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWndfzuOc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWndfzuOc4

kleer001 7y ago
Okay. That's kind of interesting. From all I've digested of Žižek it seems he quite often bathes in exaggeration for theatrics. So, I wouldn't take "pseudo-scientific" as a flat and sincere statement. Also given that Peterson actually IS a scientist (with a few well sited papers). I tried to watch the talk, but there was so much audience hooting and hollering it was too difficult. But still, I don't see any evidence of Peterson being a "crypto-fascist" or "intellectual lightweight" as a previous user accused. The search continues.