Jordan Peterson vs Cathy Newman
Discussion
2xChevrons said:
He is a literal small-c conservative, who wants to preserve the world as is with all its inequalities and imperfections. Probably (and I know I'm reaching here, but indulge me) because he fears the alternative will be worse for people like him, even if it's better for lots of other people.
I think you are projecting. It may be true but you have no proof of that assertion an I think he'd rightly mock you for expressing such a view.2xChevrons said:
For someone who is 'fighting against the irrational' he's doesn't strike me as very rational.
Take his view on the Scandinavian situation. It completely fails to consider cultural factors, and despite his claims that the biological nature of this difference has been proven by the scientific literature, a quick search of the academic literature reveals completely different conclusions and ones that are radically different from his claim that 'postmodernists' (ah, his old nemesis!) respond by questioning the scientific method itself. Here, for example, is a section from an article in the Nordic Journal of STEM Education that suggests persistent gender inequality may stem from cultural biases rather than biological differences:
Our results suggest that in Norway, like the United States, women’s voices are underrepresented in the classroom. Thus, we are the first study to suggest that despite a relatively gender equal society, women still face similar academic challenges as women elsewhere in the world. Future research will profit from a thorough examination of whether male students outperform females in other metrics of success at the undergraduate level in Norway, and whether there are lasting consequences. Research may also focus on underlying mechanisms that lead to observed gaps in participation. In the United States, one common explanation is stereotype threat, or the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype associated with one’s social, racial, ethnic, or gender group (6, 39- 41). For example, females tend to underestimate their math ability and overestimate how much ability is required to succeed at higher levels (42). Males, on the other hand, overestimate their math ability to be higher than comparable females’ ability (42). And even subtle priming can reduce females’ math performance in a test-taking environment. When asked to identify their gender before starting the SAT Advanced Calculus test, females score significantly lower than their female peers who are asked to check the gender box after the test (43, 44)
((Ballen et al, "Norway’s gender gap: classroom participation in undergraduate introductory science", Nordic Journal of STEM Education vol. 1, no. 1 (2017): 262-270))
Here's another fairly recent article showing that despite fairly equitable low-level employment, Scandinavian media continue to focus predominantly on men in news coverage, promoting the idea that the public sphere is a male space:
The public sphere in Nordic countries is still more favorable for men, and as such newsroom culture continues to reflect and contribute to a gender imbalance. In other words, the media is not only a mirror; rather, it often seems to enforce male dominance in the public sphere. Both male and female journalists seem to be the carriers of news culture, which tends to magnify male actions. In order to combat this culture, work is not only required at the structural-level, but reporters must additionally accept an individual responsibility. Simply employing the same number of males and females in the newsroom will unfortunately do nothing to improve the gender balance in news content.
((Maria Edström, ""Is There a Nordic Way? A Swedish Perspective on Achievements and Problems With Gender Equality in Newsrooms", Media Studies vol. 2, no. 3-4 (2011): 64-75))
I could go on, but let's just put it out there that when Peterson says 'the scientific literature is clear' on persistent Nordic gender gaps being attributable to biological differences he's either mistaken or lying.
The video I watched had him talking about "hierarchies of competence" and he says that we live in a meritocratic society. He believes these hierarchies are based on competence and that the number one trait that determines success in Western societies is intelligence and the number two trait is hard work. But again, he completely ignores cultural factors that mean not everyone climbs these hierarchies at the same rate, with the same level of progress for each amount of effort, or with the same level of opportunity.He's a fine speaker if you're a white man and think of the world solely in terms of how white men relate to other white men, but as soon as you consider gender or racial dynamics his theorising falls apart. He would have no answer for the studies which show a white man with a criminal record is more likely to get a callback for a job than a black man without one, because that would completely destroy his idea that everyone has the equal opportunity to work their way to the top. Take a subject close to my own heart, orchestras:
We have collected, from orchestral management files and archives, a sample of auditions for eight major orchestras. These records contain the names of all candidates and identify those advanced to the next round, including the ultimate winner of the competition. The data provide a unique means of testing whether discrimination existed in the various rounds of a hiring process and even allow the linkage of individuals across auditions. A strong presumption exists that discrimination has limited the employment of female musicians, especially by the great symphony orchestras. Not only were their numbers extremely low until the 1970’s, but many music directors, ultimately in charge of hiring new musicians, publicly disclosed their belief that female players had lower musical talent.
Using the audition data, we find that the screen increases—by 50 percent—the probability that a woman will be advanced from certain preliminary rounds and increases by severalfold the likelihood that a woman will be selected in the final round. By the use of the roster data, the switch to blind auditions can explain 30 percent of the increase in the proportion female among new hires and possibly 25 percent of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras from 1970 to 1996.57 As in research in economics and other fields on double-blind refereeing (see, e.g., Blank, 1991), the impact of a blind procedure is toward impartiality and the costs to the journal (here to the orchestra) are relatively small. We conclude that the adoption of the screen and blind auditions served to help female musicians in their quest for orchestral positions.
((Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians", American Economic Review vol. 90, no. 4 (2000): 715-741))
Anyone who think this problem is limited solely to orchestras is fooling themselves. Peterson, as a psychologist, should know that what matters in establishing these hierarchies isn't competence (nor power, which he claims is what the postmodernist thinks) but perceptions of competence, and white men continue to be perceived as significantly more competent than women or BAME people in virtually every aspect of life and work. The example he gives of wanting the best neurosurgeon to remove your father's brain tumour is flawed because while we may perceive that neurosurgeon to be the best but we will be overlooking the various steps along the way that weeded out (possibly numerous) people who were actually more competent but were perceived to be less so due to cultural biases, from birth through every level of education through every stage of hiring and promotion.
The fundamental problem in Peterson's thinking (which goes for a lot of conservative thought) is the view that the current state of affairs is right simply because it is the current state of affairs. The assumption is that if there were a better way to do things we would have already discovered it. The other fundamental assumption is that we may have already discovered the better way and then moved away from it because of some corruption of modernity (or postmodernity, as Peterson would probably have it). The assumption is never that the better way to do things might lie in the future, undiscovered or untested.
What is the problem with this thinking - besides that it's exactly the kind of ancient-past-focused thought the Enlightenment thinkers that Peterson worships rejected? The problem is that it completely ignores structural inequalities in current systems by assuming that those structures were put in place for some just reason. So, in Peterson's world, Syrians haven't developed an individualistic culture because they don't care about individualism. If they did, they would have developed an individualistic society. Women haven't risen to the top of the business world because they aren't interested in business. If they were, our society would have changed to accommodate them.
This perspective completely ignores the fact that society has always been changing and will always continue to change. 100 years ago people were using the exact same 'rational' reasons to say that women shouldn't have the right to vote: if it was better for society that women could vote, some society would have already tried it and we would see that it was better. 200 years ago conservatives were using the exact same assumptions to say that black people were better off as slaves: if it was better for society that black people be free, some society would have already tried it and we would see that it was better.
He is a literal small-c conservative, who wants to preserve the world as is with all its inequalities and imperfections. Probably (and I know I'm reaching here, but indulge me) because he fears the alternative will be worse for people like him, even if it's better for lots of other people.
Plus, his voice sounds exactly like Kermit the Frog and he got rapped by his university for trying to build a machine to detect postmodernism, both of which I find hilarious. Take your pick of my critiques.
as said, Peterson would not claim there is no sexism at all - as long as there is detectable differences there will be discrimination - but more that the postmodernist victim culture is ascribing discrimination as being the sole cause of pay disparity, which is a massive and very damaging lie.Take his view on the Scandinavian situation. It completely fails to consider cultural factors, and despite his claims that the biological nature of this difference has been proven by the scientific literature, a quick search of the academic literature reveals completely different conclusions and ones that are radically different from his claim that 'postmodernists' (ah, his old nemesis!) respond by questioning the scientific method itself. Here, for example, is a section from an article in the Nordic Journal of STEM Education that suggests persistent gender inequality may stem from cultural biases rather than biological differences:
Our results suggest that in Norway, like the United States, women’s voices are underrepresented in the classroom. Thus, we are the first study to suggest that despite a relatively gender equal society, women still face similar academic challenges as women elsewhere in the world. Future research will profit from a thorough examination of whether male students outperform females in other metrics of success at the undergraduate level in Norway, and whether there are lasting consequences. Research may also focus on underlying mechanisms that lead to observed gaps in participation. In the United States, one common explanation is stereotype threat, or the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype associated with one’s social, racial, ethnic, or gender group (6, 39- 41). For example, females tend to underestimate their math ability and overestimate how much ability is required to succeed at higher levels (42). Males, on the other hand, overestimate their math ability to be higher than comparable females’ ability (42). And even subtle priming can reduce females’ math performance in a test-taking environment. When asked to identify their gender before starting the SAT Advanced Calculus test, females score significantly lower than their female peers who are asked to check the gender box after the test (43, 44)
((Ballen et al, "Norway’s gender gap: classroom participation in undergraduate introductory science", Nordic Journal of STEM Education vol. 1, no. 1 (2017): 262-270))
Here's another fairly recent article showing that despite fairly equitable low-level employment, Scandinavian media continue to focus predominantly on men in news coverage, promoting the idea that the public sphere is a male space:
The public sphere in Nordic countries is still more favorable for men, and as such newsroom culture continues to reflect and contribute to a gender imbalance. In other words, the media is not only a mirror; rather, it often seems to enforce male dominance in the public sphere. Both male and female journalists seem to be the carriers of news culture, which tends to magnify male actions. In order to combat this culture, work is not only required at the structural-level, but reporters must additionally accept an individual responsibility. Simply employing the same number of males and females in the newsroom will unfortunately do nothing to improve the gender balance in news content.
((Maria Edström, ""Is There a Nordic Way? A Swedish Perspective on Achievements and Problems With Gender Equality in Newsrooms", Media Studies vol. 2, no. 3-4 (2011): 64-75))
I could go on, but let's just put it out there that when Peterson says 'the scientific literature is clear' on persistent Nordic gender gaps being attributable to biological differences he's either mistaken or lying.
The video I watched had him talking about "hierarchies of competence" and he says that we live in a meritocratic society. He believes these hierarchies are based on competence and that the number one trait that determines success in Western societies is intelligence and the number two trait is hard work. But again, he completely ignores cultural factors that mean not everyone climbs these hierarchies at the same rate, with the same level of progress for each amount of effort, or with the same level of opportunity.He's a fine speaker if you're a white man and think of the world solely in terms of how white men relate to other white men, but as soon as you consider gender or racial dynamics his theorising falls apart. He would have no answer for the studies which show a white man with a criminal record is more likely to get a callback for a job than a black man without one, because that would completely destroy his idea that everyone has the equal opportunity to work their way to the top. Take a subject close to my own heart, orchestras:
We have collected, from orchestral management files and archives, a sample of auditions for eight major orchestras. These records contain the names of all candidates and identify those advanced to the next round, including the ultimate winner of the competition. The data provide a unique means of testing whether discrimination existed in the various rounds of a hiring process and even allow the linkage of individuals across auditions. A strong presumption exists that discrimination has limited the employment of female musicians, especially by the great symphony orchestras. Not only were their numbers extremely low until the 1970’s, but many music directors, ultimately in charge of hiring new musicians, publicly disclosed their belief that female players had lower musical talent.
Using the audition data, we find that the screen increases—by 50 percent—the probability that a woman will be advanced from certain preliminary rounds and increases by severalfold the likelihood that a woman will be selected in the final round. By the use of the roster data, the switch to blind auditions can explain 30 percent of the increase in the proportion female among new hires and possibly 25 percent of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras from 1970 to 1996.57 As in research in economics and other fields on double-blind refereeing (see, e.g., Blank, 1991), the impact of a blind procedure is toward impartiality and the costs to the journal (here to the orchestra) are relatively small. We conclude that the adoption of the screen and blind auditions served to help female musicians in their quest for orchestral positions.
((Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians", American Economic Review vol. 90, no. 4 (2000): 715-741))
Anyone who think this problem is limited solely to orchestras is fooling themselves. Peterson, as a psychologist, should know that what matters in establishing these hierarchies isn't competence (nor power, which he claims is what the postmodernist thinks) but perceptions of competence, and white men continue to be perceived as significantly more competent than women or BAME people in virtually every aspect of life and work. The example he gives of wanting the best neurosurgeon to remove your father's brain tumour is flawed because while we may perceive that neurosurgeon to be the best but we will be overlooking the various steps along the way that weeded out (possibly numerous) people who were actually more competent but were perceived to be less so due to cultural biases, from birth through every level of education through every stage of hiring and promotion.
The fundamental problem in Peterson's thinking (which goes for a lot of conservative thought) is the view that the current state of affairs is right simply because it is the current state of affairs. The assumption is that if there were a better way to do things we would have already discovered it. The other fundamental assumption is that we may have already discovered the better way and then moved away from it because of some corruption of modernity (or postmodernity, as Peterson would probably have it). The assumption is never that the better way to do things might lie in the future, undiscovered or untested.
What is the problem with this thinking - besides that it's exactly the kind of ancient-past-focused thought the Enlightenment thinkers that Peterson worships rejected? The problem is that it completely ignores structural inequalities in current systems by assuming that those structures were put in place for some just reason. So, in Peterson's world, Syrians haven't developed an individualistic culture because they don't care about individualism. If they did, they would have developed an individualistic society. Women haven't risen to the top of the business world because they aren't interested in business. If they were, our society would have changed to accommodate them.
This perspective completely ignores the fact that society has always been changing and will always continue to change. 100 years ago people were using the exact same 'rational' reasons to say that women shouldn't have the right to vote: if it was better for society that women could vote, some society would have already tried it and we would see that it was better. 200 years ago conservatives were using the exact same assumptions to say that black people were better off as slaves: if it was better for society that black people be free, some society would have already tried it and we would see that it was better.
He is a literal small-c conservative, who wants to preserve the world as is with all its inequalities and imperfections. Probably (and I know I'm reaching here, but indulge me) because he fears the alternative will be worse for people like him, even if it's better for lots of other people.
Plus, his voice sounds exactly like Kermit the Frog and he got rapped by his university for trying to build a machine to detect postmodernism, both of which I find hilarious. Take your pick of my critiques.
You make a good point about the subject of blind auditions in orchestras resulting in more women being employed - but as you state this is something that was being addressed generations ago. I daresay there are areas where wrongful assumptions about gender abilities are still being made, but a "equality of outcome"/ denying differences exist will not facilitate this, as it requires an understanding not an imposition.
2xChevrons said:
For someone who is 'fighting against the irrational' he's doesn't strike me as very rational.
Take his view on the Scandinavian situation. It completely fails to consider cultural factors,
But isn't what you fine as "culture" merely a combination and result of all the factors in the multi-varied analysis that Peterson mentioned when he spoke about this?Take his view on the Scandinavian situation. It completely fails to consider cultural factors,
Surely culture is something that forms naturally as a result of all these factors, the same as the outcome?
Halb said:
JP is on the DP. 
He was on Radio 2's Chris Evan's Breakfast Show earlier this week. Evans - so dim that he struggles even to spell 'intellectual' - trying to engage with JP and his fundamental lack of a sense of humour, gave way to the palpable sensation of two clumsy, blindfolded people charged with finding the exit in an unfamiliar room.
Johnnytheboy said:
He was on Start the Week on R4 on Monday, I only tuned in ~2/3 way through but he seems to have been getting an oddly easy ride.
On the radio, divorced from his appearance, I just see Kermit the Frog.
Following 'the incident', there are probably few journos willing to take the risk of challenging him.On the radio, divorced from his appearance, I just see Kermit the Frog.
V8mate said:
Johnnytheboy said:
He was on Start the Week on R4 on Monday, I only tuned in ~2/3 way through but he seems to have been getting an oddly easy ride.
On the radio, divorced from his appearance, I just see Kermit the Frog.
Following 'the incident', there are probably few journos willing to take the risk of challenging him.On the radio, divorced from his appearance, I just see Kermit the Frog.
Peterson has made good points on a few subjects; and has been way off on others - but he shows another side when debating religion. He’s a hack in some respects. As soon as God comes into it, he takes on a different demeanour, almost like he knows that his brand of logic above all; is diluted by his own stance on god and religion.
He’s been ripped to pieces on this subject in the past, but one of the more pleansant debates can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/FmH7JUeVQb8
He’s been ripped to pieces on this subject in the past, but one of the more pleansant debates can be seen here:
https://youtu.be/FmH7JUeVQb8
Yeah I tried to read his book and couldn't figure out if he was an Athiest who was trying to dance around the subject for fear of limiting his employability in Christian circles, or a Christian who was trying to avoid shooting his credibility to pieces. In the end I couldn't finish the book, found it rather disappointing in fact.
glazbagun said:
Yeah I tried to read his book and couldn't figure out if he was an Athiest who was trying to dance around the subject for fear of limiting his employability in Christian circles, or a Christian who was trying to avoid shooting his credibility to pieces. In the end I couldn't finish the book, found it rather disappointing in fact.
It’s most certainly the latter. He’s actually a very religious man and struggles to debate his faith in any real way. The above debate against Dillahunty is a good one as there’s at least some back and forth. Yes, I’ve heard that his book is rubbish. Fans of him are fans of anything he does or says, it seems. I'm not sure he's autistic, but he'd make for an intense dinner guest certainly 
I think he's understandably very careful about what he says about his personal beliefs, you see the world we're living in and so does he. The examination of the metaphorical in religion[s] rather than its authoritarian or literal interpretation is somewhere most people can gather, intellectually, I would have thought - at least as a starting point to see what is relevant today; 'God is dead' etc...
While mindful of not disappearing completely down the rabbit hole, I've got 'Maps of Meaning' and Iain McGilchrist's 'The Master and His Emissary' cued up; the winter nights will fly by I'm sure...
I think he's understandably very careful about what he says about his personal beliefs, you see the world we're living in and so does he. The examination of the metaphorical in religion[s] rather than its authoritarian or literal interpretation is somewhere most people can gather, intellectually, I would have thought - at least as a starting point to see what is relevant today; 'God is dead' etc...
While mindful of not disappearing completely down the rabbit hole, I've got 'Maps of Meaning' and Iain McGilchrist's 'The Master and His Emissary' cued up; the winter nights will fly by I'm sure...
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