This interview really demonstrates the style of argumentation you see around these topics, just dialed up to 11.

Practitioners of this form of argument intentionally mis-represent the other side to form a strawman argument. This works exceptionally well on Twitter, where someone quote-tweets their adversary, intentionally warping their words with the intention to shame. Some people have called this tactic "dunking on" their opponent.

Those tactics work very poorly in this 1-to-1 format, in part because of the longform nature, but mostly because one can't instantly appeal to an outside audience for likes/retweets.

I don't think that tactic works poorly in that format at all, it's just that this person is incredibly good at defending against it. Very few people could withstand such an interview.

Exactly. This tactic breaks all but maybe a thousand people in the world. I wouldn't have lasted two minutes, I would have just blown up at her and embarrassed myself.

We are very lucky to have Jordan Peterson, one of those very few people, to speak for free speech.

Jordan Peterson might have defended well compared to an average person, but I was still surprised too see him uncomfortable and expending extra energy to answer the questions than what I expected. Those were hard questions, but he would have surely expected those kind of questions before going to the interview. He did not look well prepared, and some of his answers lacked the clarity and punch which we can usually see in his youtube lectures.

How could anyone not expend extra energy when faced with that sort of interview "technique". I thought he handled it very well. How did he not look prepared? Some of here questions were so off the point of what they were discussing it'd be hard not to react aggressively. I think that's what you're seeing, him holding back. I mean, we should organise our society like "the lobsters"?? WTF?

good point.

The interviewer is either extremely confused about her own ideology or being deliberately standoffish by invoking strawman after strawman.

She seems to think certain groups of people are entitled to success they haven't earned, because there is some nefarious and ill-defined force oppressing them.

Peterson handled it well and made some great points about the roles of competence, sacrifice and disagreeableness in work success.

She wasn't confused about anything. She was intentionally misrepresenting what he said.