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It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'. This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text o

It's noteworthy but sadly not surprising[1], that someone like Peterson is listed as an 'intellectual'. This man talks like ChatGPT when asked to clad a text of the most basic ideas, frequently completely missing the point, into sophisticated-sounding language. The other names tell me nothing; but having the former in the list kept me from looking up the latter. [1] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-d...

BryanLegend 3y ago
I'm sure I'll get downvoted here, but I think Peterson is brilliant. His books have absolutely given me insightful ideas that have improved my life and relationships.
- alwyn 3y ago
  12 Rules for Life was mostly good, it definitely helped me with some things. I liked his earlier podcasts on JRE and other shows. However, I couldn't get through Beyond Order at all; I had to drop it fairly early. I think I still like the Peterson from 5-ish years ago. How he currently is, and how he has _mostly_ been for the past 2 years or so does not align with me anymore.
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    Can’t help but feel like something happened to him during the rehab years. It is miraculous he came through, but he seems very different. Might be the fame, aging, the need to build an audience, or the rehab process. Who knows.
- TurkishPoptart 3y ago
  Yes, not to mention his (completely free) lecture series on the Bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn.... an incredibly scholar he is.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- emadabdulrahim 3y ago
  I'm 100% with you on that. I've never heard meaningful or valid criticism of him. It's all lazy hand wavy utterances that indicate all of his critics never listen to him for more than 20 mins.
blueflow 3y ago
95% of times when i hear about Peterson, its someone trying to discredit him. Then i go to Youtube, search for what Peterson said about $topic, and can't find shit that i would even bother about. This stuff is getting creepy. Where is all the dislike coming from?
- dralley 3y ago
  Why do people ever dislike public figures? Why do people dislike Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil or Jake Paul? Peterson is / was a drug addict that gives mediocre-at-best self-help advice, who also goes around whining about wokeness and saying hateful things, while somehow keeping a large audience and grifting them for millions of dollars. As far as public figures go, it's fairly typical for such a person to invite antipathy.
  - JSavageOne 3y ago
    Nothing you just said disputes any of what Peterson has said. The fact that you mention him being a "drug addict" (he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants after his wife got cancer) and then use words like "whining" to try to discredit him without actually addressing or disputing anything he's said shows you just have an axe to grind with no substance.
    - dralley 3y ago
      >he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants That is a very severe understatement. He was so badly addicted to benzos (for years) that he ended up going to Russia to have himself put into a weeks-long medically-induced coma to go cold-turkey, which resulted in brain damage. (He insisted on that course of action, which Western doctors refused to go along with, for obvious reasons). That left him unable to walk or speak properly for months and he still hasn't and probably will never fully recover. Just watch videos of him from a few years ago and compare them to videos from recently. I get that benzos is being studied as a potential treatment for depression, but he was doing massive quantities, and not as part of a pharmaceutical trial.
louwrentius 3y ago
Jordan Peterson is - according to his own admission - what a dumb person thinks an intellectual sounds like.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  I would agree. Peterson has helped me. That being said, Peterson is someone with a few good ideas that encompass a singular limited view of the world. It doesn't help with military maneuvers (or the world political theater at large), or dietary choices, or a host of other topics. It's not necessary for someone to have deep thinking applied to every topic, but that's an assumed, pre-requisite of an intellectual. Someone who is smart and has something valuable to say, primarily because it has been a focus in their lives, have repeatedly been asked to voice opinions. These opinions are inappropriately over-valued in the modern zeitgeist. Asking Peterson about AI is silly. eg I wouldn't ask John Ousterhout, who is looking to formalize a process for creating "great programmers", about how to maximize my tax deductions.
jlos 3y ago
So you would not consider someone who has the following CV an intellectual? - Has published or co-authored over 100+ academic papers in multiple fields - Has h-index of 41, i10-index of 77, with 21,000 citations [0] - Taught at Harvard - Tenured Professor at the largest University in Canada - 20+ year clinical practice - Best selling author with over 5 million copies sold You don't have to like his ideas, but if this doesn't qualify as "intellectual" not sure what else does. [0]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wL1F22UAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wL1F22UAAAAJ
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Isn't this just an appeal to authority?
  - ck425 3y ago
    You have to use some metric to define 'intellectual' and those all seem like reasonable ones to me. I don't see why you'd consider most of those as appeals to authority. Teaching at Harvard and tenured Professor perhaps but the rest are appeals to experience.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Not sure that's a fallacy when the question is "is this guy a particular sort of authority". It's more like a validation of said authority.
  - jmcqk6 3y ago
    No, it's a listing of demonstrated contributions. Saying someone is right because they are a police officer is an appeal to authority. Saying someone is relevant because they have worked and made contributions to a field over the course of many years, and have had those findings integrated with the findings of others is a matter of practical management of complexity.
  - raincole 3y ago
    No. If the parent comment said "because Jorden Peterson has 20 years of experience, his opinion on topic X must be correct" then it's an appeal to authority. They didn't say that. By the way, abusing terms is another sign for fake intellectuals...
JSavageOne 3y ago
Even if you disagree with him Jordan Peterson is absolutely a public intellectual. Anyone who has been so publicly outspoken with such an enormous following and made a dent in the universe is absolutely a public intellectual. Just because you disagree with his views (none of which you've disputed in your vague criticism) doesn't dispute that.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  None of this specifically points to status as an intellectual btw. By your logic, Trump is a public intellectual...
c22 3y ago
Intellectual just means working with ideas. It's not the same as intelligence. We can still call Gochnaur [0] a baseball player even if he wasn't any good at it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gochnaur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gochnaur
bena 3y ago
The article isn't that long, they kind of address your criticism in there. They're lamenting the fact that no matter the person, every person whose ideas they find fascinating becomes less fascinating the longer they consume their content. They blame it on the fact that every subsequent idea is less researched and thought out than the one before because there is simply not enough time for them to have thought it out properly. And it reminds me of something I heard once: 'Your first book/song/album/painting is the result of your entire life up to that point, your next is done in significantly less time.' Basically, until you actually provide a result, you have all the time you want to craft it exactly how you want it. But once you have a following, they will demand more from you and now you have an implied deadline.
- petsfed 3y ago
  This better explains the flaws in Plato's philosophy after the Allegory of the Cave than I've ever seen.
Mouthfeel 3y ago
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BryanLegend 3y ago

I'm sure I'll get downvoted here, but I think Peterson is brilliant. His books have absolutely given me insightful ideas that have improved my life and relationships.

alwyn 3y ago
12 Rules for Life was mostly good, it definitely helped me with some things. I liked his earlier podcasts on JRE and other shows. However, I couldn't get through Beyond Order at all; I had to drop it fairly early. I think I still like the Peterson from 5-ish years ago. How he currently is, and how he has _mostly_ been for the past 2 years or so does not align with me anymore.
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  Can’t help but feel like something happened to him during the rehab years. It is miraculous he came through, but he seems very different. Might be the fame, aging, the need to build an audience, or the rehab process. Who knows.
TurkishPoptart 3y ago
Yes, not to mention his (completely free) lecture series on the Bible, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn.... an incredibly scholar he is.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
emadabdulrahim 3y ago
I'm 100% with you on that. I've never heard meaningful or valid criticism of him. It's all lazy hand wavy utterances that indicate all of his critics never listen to him for more than 20 mins.

blueflow 3y ago

95% of times when i hear about Peterson, its someone trying to discredit him. Then i go to Youtube, search for what Peterson said about $topic, and can't find shit that i would even bother about. This stuff is getting creepy. Where is all the dislike coming from?

dralley 3y ago
Why do people ever dislike public figures? Why do people dislike Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil or Jake Paul? Peterson is / was a drug addict that gives mediocre-at-best self-help advice, who also goes around whining about wokeness and saying hateful things, while somehow keeping a large audience and grifting them for millions of dollars. As far as public figures go, it's fairly typical for such a person to invite antipathy.
- JSavageOne 3y ago
  Nothing you just said disputes any of what Peterson has said. The fact that you mention him being a "drug addict" (he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants after his wife got cancer) and then use words like "whining" to try to discredit him without actually addressing or disputing anything he's said shows you just have an axe to grind with no substance.
  - dralley 3y ago
    >he was briefly addicted to anti-depressants That is a very severe understatement. He was so badly addicted to benzos (for years) that he ended up going to Russia to have himself put into a weeks-long medically-induced coma to go cold-turkey, which resulted in brain damage. (He insisted on that course of action, which Western doctors refused to go along with, for obvious reasons). That left him unable to walk or speak properly for months and he still hasn't and probably will never fully recover. Just watch videos of him from a few years ago and compare them to videos from recently. I get that benzos is being studied as a potential treatment for depression, but he was doing massive quantities, and not as part of a pharmaceutical trial.

louwrentius 3y ago

Jordan Peterson is - according to his own admission - what a dumb person thinks an intellectual sounds like.

Supermancho 3y ago
I would agree. Peterson has helped me. That being said, Peterson is someone with a few good ideas that encompass a singular limited view of the world. It doesn't help with military maneuvers (or the world political theater at large), or dietary choices, or a host of other topics. It's not necessary for someone to have deep thinking applied to every topic, but that's an assumed, pre-requisite of an intellectual. Someone who is smart and has something valuable to say, primarily because it has been a focus in their lives, have repeatedly been asked to voice opinions. These opinions are inappropriately over-valued in the modern zeitgeist. Asking Peterson about AI is silly. eg I wouldn't ask John Ousterhout, who is looking to formalize a process for creating "great programmers", about how to maximize my tax deductions.

jlos 3y ago

So you would not consider someone who has the following CV an intellectual? - Has published or co-authored over 100+ academic papers in multiple fields - Has h-index of 41, i10-index of 77, with 21,000 citations [0] - Taught at Harvard - Tenured Professor at the largest University in Canada - 20+ year clinical practice - Best selling author with over 5 million copies sold You don't have to like his ideas, but if this doesn't qualify as "intellectual" not sure what else does. [0]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wL1F22UAAAAJ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wL1F22UAAAAJ

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Isn't this just an appeal to authority?
- ck425 3y ago
  You have to use some metric to define 'intellectual' and those all seem like reasonable ones to me. I don't see why you'd consider most of those as appeals to authority. Teaching at Harvard and tenured Professor perhaps but the rest are appeals to experience.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Not sure that's a fallacy when the question is "is this guy a particular sort of authority". It's more like a validation of said authority.
- jmcqk6 3y ago
  No, it's a listing of demonstrated contributions. Saying someone is right because they are a police officer is an appeal to authority. Saying someone is relevant because they have worked and made contributions to a field over the course of many years, and have had those findings integrated with the findings of others is a matter of practical management of complexity.
- raincole 3y ago
  No. If the parent comment said "because Jorden Peterson has 20 years of experience, his opinion on topic X must be correct" then it's an appeal to authority. They didn't say that. By the way, abusing terms is another sign for fake intellectuals...

JSavageOne 3y ago

Even if you disagree with him Jordan Peterson is absolutely a public intellectual. Anyone who has been so publicly outspoken with such an enormous following and made a dent in the universe is absolutely a public intellectual. Just because you disagree with his views (none of which you've disputed in your vague criticism) doesn't dispute that.

Obscurity4340 3y ago
None of this specifically points to status as an intellectual btw. By your logic, Trump is a public intellectual...

c22 3y ago

Intellectual just means working with ideas. It's not the same as intelligence. We can still call Gochnaur [0] a baseball player even if he wasn't any good at it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gochnaur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gochnaur

bena 3y ago

The article isn't that long, they kind of address your criticism in there. They're lamenting the fact that no matter the person, every person whose ideas they find fascinating becomes less fascinating the longer they consume their content. They blame it on the fact that every subsequent idea is less researched and thought out than the one before because there is simply not enough time for them to have thought it out properly. And it reminds me of something I heard once: 'Your first book/song/album/painting is the result of your entire life up to that point, your next is done in significantly less time.' Basically, until you actually provide a result, you have all the time you want to craft it exactly how you want it. But once you have a following, they will demand more from you and now you have an implied deadline.

petsfed 3y ago
This better explains the flaws in Plato's philosophy after the Allegory of the Cave than I've ever seen.

Mouthfeel 3y ago

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