Bret Weinstein talks about this a lot if you've listened to anything he's said online.
Peterson, Harris, etc....
- Thread starter prath92
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Bret Weinstein talks about this a lot if you've listened to anything he's said online.
I was told about this and that t was poor overall. The format itself is one I typically criticize - setting things up as if there are only two sides to the debate instead of having a more "round table discussion".
Three of them were mostly grand standing and talking past each other. Fry was the only one who seemed calm and trying to advance a discussion but even his points weren't the most compelling. All four missed the mark IMO.
I've never heard Michael Dyson prior but what I heard here was awful. Dyson was the worst of the bunch. He was grand standing, trying to mix some ghetto slang and Southern Baptist Preacher cadence which came off phony, made a lot of ad hominem and basically is the exact wrong type of person to be debating Peterson about post-modernism. The "journalist" just seemed to be trying to make a bigger name for herself on a platform rather than actually engaging any relevant topic. Peterson was at his angriest and worst form. Fry IMO was simply not compelling though he is easily the best public speaker of all of them.
The type person they need to debate Peterson is not Dyson who just feeds into the lowest common denominator but rather someone like the late Richard Rorty. A brilliant philosophy professor who can break down in normal language exactly what Peterson is getting wrong with his post-modern labels is whats needed to break through this silly "SJW vs anti-PC" debate. Dyson's repeated personal attacks just make things worse.
Rorty would have been insightful enough to know how to move the conversation forward. Dyson is not.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. Dyson is known for his cheesy attempts to almost rap when he's debating people.Peterson is not a serious person. He consistently makes vague comments that are designed to wink to the alt-right and annoy the left and when questioned as to what they mean just waffles because he knows he can't admit to any actual views without limiting his appeal.
Very good piece with lots of good points, particularly this point that partly explains why some of these thinkers have attained their success first in "alternative" mediums:
Fry came across excellently. Peterson got flustered when attacked, and went on tangents that I didn't find helpful to his line of reasoning.
Dyson came across terribly. Appalling debate from him, made a farce of the evening. Goldberg was unconvincing and seemed nervous.
Dyson came across terribly. Appalling debate from him, made a farce of the evening. Goldberg was unconvincing and seemed nervous.
I will respectfully disagree with you.
Whether you agree with him or not, Peterson does have a lot to say. He's been "flavour of the month" for 1-2 years now. And it's not true that he appeals only to white males. His 'following' (for lack of a better descriptor) is diverse. The biggest proponents of his that I know personally are visible minorities. All my white, 'priveleged' friends hate him. For what it is worth (not that it matters in the context of my comment) I agree with him on some topics, disagree on others, and for some topics I have no context to form an opinion one way or another.
To universally dismiss all of Peterson's views, research and experience, and to reduce his 'followers' to a caricatured homogenous group, is ignorant. This type of thinking just further polarizes the 'left' and 'right', pollutes politics, and prevents bridging discourse. Peterson is right to question identity politics. I believe it partially explains why Trump got elected and remains popular amongst a loyal support base - he plays the identity politics game very well. I think the democrats failed because they dismissed (or failed to nurture sufficiently) concerns of disenfranchised white middle America. Trump didn't. I hope the dems can bridge that gap for 2020. But they won't do so by having a "feck them and their views" attitude.
Trouble with both Peterson and Dyson is they are not debaters. They usually bloviate endlessly in generally friendly formats when they aren't adequately challenged. Fry seems a much more competent debater
Yes, good point. Dyson and Peterson are lecturers, which is probably why they take ages to deliver an argument and struggle with rebuttal.
I don't follow. So you're saying Trump won with being good at identity politics while the dems were bad - but it's identity politics that is wrong altogether (which seems to be Petersons message)? How does that make sense.
Except well-off, left-wing Western white males (like yourself?) seem to hate him more than anybody else.
Peterson seems to have a fairly diverse following, and as far as I can tell the ‘white male’ part of his audience doesn’t seem like it can be described as particularly privileged, unless you think that being a white male by definition makes you privileged, as I suspect you do.
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It exists equally on both the left and right, which is why people are taking to Peterson and Harris' talk about criticizing on the merits of the ideas, not from identity. This obviously plays better in non-identity politics groups who aren't fixated on race, gender, sexual orientation etc and takes the debate to a more uniform macro level of evaluating ideas.
Even if Peterson is fairly qualified and an intelligent individual it's still also true that he's made a number of ridiculous/stupid comments that leave him open for ridicule. Don't see anything wrong with that.
My point was that Trump capitalized on identity politics and that partially explains his victory. The democrats didn't address the individual concerns of the disaffected middle class in America (and doing so by pitting identifiable groups against one another is not the way that concerns should be addressed, imo). It could be argued that Brexit is also a result of an identity political campaign by "Leave", but it's something I would have to give more thought to. In my opinion, Trump winning was a bad thing because he is a polarizing character who often reduces topics to a zero sum game. The 'right' has historically used identity politics to drive agendas that have been suboptimal for humanity, to put it mildly.
I agree. Sometimes he comes across as deliberately contentious, even if that's not necessarily his goal. Silly.
But I'm not just talking about the tone he adopts or the way he presents his arguments - I'm referring to his actual views. Someone who advocates for personal freedoms and then simultaneously talks about enforced marriages should rightfully be ridiculed for both being a hypocrite and presenting such a ridiculous notion. He's probably not an unintelligent person - clearly he does have academic credentials, but on a lot of views he's merely presenting his own opinion in stuff that's unrelated to his field, and in that regard it's perfectly fine to view him as a bit of a fraud.
Fair. I haven't read or heard his views on enforced marriages. Sounds daft. But he usually presents a well reasoned argument, even if I disagree. There's always more to it than a sound bite.
What about when he said women who wear makeup are hypocrites for not wanting to be sexually harassed?
The enforced monogamy thing keeps getting repeatedly misinterpreted. As someone on reddit recently put it....."enforced monogamy” does not mean government-enforced monogamy. “Enforced monogamy” means socially-promoted, culturally-inculcated monogamy, as opposed to genetic monogamy – evolutionarily-dictated monogamy, which does exist in some species (but does not exist in humans). This distinction has been present in anthropological and scientific literature for decades.”
Usually is. That's why I've stopped taking twitter seriously.
If he said that then I would very much disagree with him.
I've noticed that Peterson in particular, is repeatedly smeared and misinterpreted (deliberately or not), so the best way to get to the bottom of it is to actually watch and evaluate his presentation on the merits, as opposed to be spoon fed random things by his critics.
Even then it's still contradictory and fairly hypocritical - someone who repeatedly bangs on about individualism arguing that society should try to culturally impose an ideal upon its citizens for the supposed good of wider society. Is that not the sort of thing he'd typically argue against? Or is it somehow different when it benefits a certain group of people?
That was just one example. He's got plenty of dodgy statements and comments that people are right to ridicule him for. Like the time he tried to get into an argument with a Chomsky quotes account on Twitter.
Couldn't agree more. I have noticed the same.
An easy way to not get "smeared" by people pointing out the stupidity of things you've said would be to stop saying stupid things.
Or I suppose you could do this.
A real marketplace of ideas we've got going here
Or I suppose you could do this.
A real marketplace of ideas we've got going here
He's evoking this it as a historical/anthropological reality in human social systems that have been successful. In essence, he is arguing that the opposite of polygamy has been very good thing for us. There's no nexus between that and free speech.
Its likely down to the fact that he has become popular very quickly and his views are generally contradictory to the identity politics culture that has become the orthodoxy of the present. The feverish hen pecking to find a contradictory statement from him is just a testament that some are concerned that his ideas are challenging the existing power structure that privileges identity over agency.
Irrespective of that he's still arguing that wider society should impose a moral/social idea upon its citizens for their own good. I'd say that runs counter to the sort of individualism he typically espouses.
But, anyway, the wider idea that he's somehow smeared all the time strikes me as a bit silly - he's got a myriad of daft and stupid comments for a supposed intellectual, and people regularly point out those daft and stupid comments and highlight some of the areas in which his ideas fall short or are exposed as being nonsense.
As has been pointed out he's also very good at obfuscating - he'll lightly suggest something, and then when people call him out on it he'll say he's been misinterpreted and that's not really what he meant, meaning he can't really be held to account for anything he thinks, even when it's clear what his view is.
There's nothing wrong with advocating for something that has already worked in our favor for much of our history. He's simply popularizing a scientifically accepted norm.
I'm not saying there is. I'm saying it's hypocritical according to his own viewpoint though. If he's so far personal and individual freedoms, why's he saying society should be morally trying to encourage its citizens to go in a certain direction?
There is no linkage between the two. You can advocate for a societal norm and still advocate for free speech. He isn't advocating for any law that promotes one and impinges on the other.
scientifically accepted norms like, uh, ancient paintings secretly being being people seeing DNA on mushrooms trips, far out, man
He's not just advocating for that norm though - he's saying it should be strongly encouraged by the government to the point where the individual is expected/strongly encouraged to take up a certain norm even if it's not what they desire. Sounds fairly anti-individualist.