I don't expect everyone to love Jordan Peterson, but how badly he is maligned by so many people really disappoints me. His maps of meaning lectures on youtube were hugely inspiring (and entertaining), and part of the reason I married my girlfriend and had our daughter. I attended one of his conversation/debates with Sam Harris in Vancouver and that was a lot of fun as well.

Youtube has been recommending a lot of Jordan Peterson to me lately.

I know there are people who hate on him for basically misinterpretations of things he has said regarding transgender issues.

But then on top of that, there are right wing people that hate him equally much and think he's basically a nonsense-spouting sycophant.

I guess listening to the things he has to say, I think they are on par with the more useful things I ever heard from a professor at university.

Anyway, he seems to be someone people love to hate.

The dude is really hard to understand. He says a lot of stuff that just seems like vague unactionable self-help advice.

So I err on the side of caution by assuming he isn't worth listening to. He also reeks of certainty, like I'm wrong just for asking what the fuck he's trying to tell me because it's so obvious... to him.

The clip that OP linked to is a 9 minute segment of a semester long, graduate level psychology class. It shouldn't be surprising that it is hard to follow without some additional context.

He often uses false dichotomies to advocate his views, for example, the left is against freedom and liberty, you have to decide if you are for the Gulag Archipelago society or a capitalistic society etc; as if they were the only two possible options.

I can possibly sift through YouTube to get to the videos where he claims these things, but it will not be the most palatable of chores.

Having just gone through and looked up a bunch of articles criticizing Jordan Peterson (Most of them seem to be written by Matt McManus, so I guess he's trying to make some sort of name for himself by association), it seems to me that basically the people who like Peterson like him for his life advice and the people that don't like him don't like him because of his political and philosophical views.

I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.

Also I guess I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became. I think being catapulted to fame like that is bound to mess up pretty well everyone and probably also muddy their message quite a bit.

I mean, at its core none of the things Peterson has to say are really all that revolutionary, they are pretty basic life advice. "Take responsibility for your life", etc.

Obviously there is an unmet need for that basic life advice because people (particularly young men) ate it up.

One article complained about him relaying a story of getting a kid to eat. My only conclusion is the person that was complaining doesn't have kids, because his story was extremely relatable, and I'd guess basically universal among parents.

Anyway, yes if you try putting Jordan Peterson up on a pedestal, he'll probably fall off it. If you view him as someone that maybe could give some good advice while you'd otherwise just be killing time anyway, I guess I think he holds up to that metric pretty well.

> I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.

No, he has a long established pattern of attracting a crowd by talking about basic self-help and then sneak in politically charged ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... , "people are lobsters", and plenty of sexism.

> I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became.

You can't pick and choose the context: a person is responsible for they say in public.

Besides, even as a university professor a person is responsible for speaking honestly.

> being catapulted to fame ... muddy their message quite a bit.

No, he was playing the same tricks since the beginning. There are a lot of old videos on youtube.

I agree with what you are saying, but there is a huge gap between a pedestal and the advocacy of evidently false and polarizing dichotomies -- Gulag or conservative capitalism, pick one; terrorists attack us because they hate our freedom etc, etc.

Given the yard stick / metric you are measuring him with there would be teeming millions who would qualify -- anyone who is capable of a half decent parenting. In the kind of life advice he offers, Peterson feels quite unremarkable.

I live in the US and not that interested in US politics, so no dog in the fight -- just an fly on the wall observation.

Listen to his interview on Sam Harris' podcast. The whole thing is nonsense.

Also the same guy who bashes established disorders like ADHD publicly and the whole field of psychiatry(calling them engineers) saying the disorder has deep psychological roots, while himself taking anti-depressants to treat his depression isn't someone worth listening to for anything substantial. This dude thinks a disorder like ADHD is just bad conscientiousness that can be fixed by reading his 12 step book.

Perhaps for some the placebo effect is enough, and Peterson becomes their savior with devotees.

I don't know, I've listened to some of his stuff and what doesn't come across as simplistic platitudes has baked in assumptions that seem unnecessary, like defining truth to be an evolutionarily useful principle.

That he inspires people doesn't surprise me, the religion of my youth did the same and was more hokum than Peterson's mythological substrate mappings.

But it's still a good idea to clean your room.

If you add all the dog whistles he's even worse than that.

He's good at manipulating the crowds - the amount of downvotes that you are getting say a lot.

Odd. I'm at a positive vote count. Did I say something controversial?

The whole threads critical of him are now flagged and grayed out...

yep, group think is as strong here as anywhere on reddit or facebook

Yes, this.