Need a plate of generic, insipid platitudes with a giant helping of bad science and misogyny?

  • skyler@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One of my favorite examples of Jordan Peterson stupidity is when he was lecturing about some ancient civilization artwork that showed two serpent creatures creating humanity. He said that because the snakes were drawn in a double helix that this ancient civilization knew about and wanted to represent DNA.

    Snakes coil around one another in a double helix when they mate. The snake creatures in the art were just fucking.

    Source is at 1:15:39 in this vid: https://youtu.be/hSNWkRw53Jo?si=MPWip62wkrMX_bP7

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Stuff like this is why I will never understand people following him. Like, I get it. It’s the bigotry. And when it comes to that, nothing else matters. I understand it on paper.

      But at the same time… why? When he’s constantly wrong, or when they have to constantly lie about the things he says, why keep listening to him? Why are they like this?

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Which is a kind of superpower that makes him hard to criticize. Whenever he commits to a fact or something, that’s easy to disprove, and people do it all the time. But, when he just says something about cultural marxism or whatever, it’s so hard to unpack what he’s actually saying that it’s hard to prove he’s wrong.

            That lets his followers say that he’s so smart that even the leftist intellectuals can’t take him down. Obviously they don’t understand what he’s saying either, but that doesn’t matter. It lets them adore him as some kind of intellectual hero.

            Peterson’s got the act of a public intellectual down pat. He’s never seen without a suit or with a smile, he has a distinguished haircut and a trimmed beard. He shows no sense of humour and uses big sciencey-sounding words.

            That lets him have a symbiotic relationship with incels. He makes money selling them things like books, they get to point to a “public intellectual” who’s on their side.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                But not in an obvious way like say Ben Shapiro. He does it using words that sound plausibly scientificalish.

                I just want someone to say to him “So, they say when you truly understand something, you can break it down so that other people can understand it. So, break down what ‘cultural marxism’ is so that one of these poor young men you worry so much about can understand what you mean”.

                I’m sure he’d try to deflect, try to gallop, try something. But, I would bet that a good interviewer, just keeping him focused on those two words, would show he has no idea what he’s talking about.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                I don’t think so. Not even wrong is for something where you can understand what they’re saying, but what they’re saying is so nonsensical that it’s not even wrong. Peterson instead uses words that seem like they could belong together but that are borrowed from many different fields to end up with something that sounds like it could plausibly mean something if you could unpack the words he’s using, for example, in a debate he said this: “We lose the metaphorical substrate of our ethos.”

                That’s not “not even wrong”, it’s just words that have never been used in that order by anyone else, so they could essentially mean anything. Unless you can get him to explain what he means by those words, you can’t say that he’s wrong. But, he’s using those words to deliberately obfuscate what he’s saying, and if you ask him to explain what it means, he’ll just drive the conversation somewhere else.

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  I can easily deduce from his inability to elaborate, that he has no idea what he means and likes those words together.

      • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        A lot of young boys don’t have positive role models and feel lost. I think that, in many ways, we are transitioning as a society and young boys are trying to figure out what it means to be a man.

        That said, there are better role models than Peterson. He really seems to think that he has expertise in every area he touches on (and he can’t help but touch everywhere).

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t forget the time he wanted to quit benzos to show how masculine he was. His doctors wanted to taper him down so his brain didn’t fry (benzo addiction alters brain chemistry and withdrawal can seriously screw you up or kill you if you stop), but trying to taper off over several years wasn’t manly and powerful. So he flew to Russia and got a few potentially sketchy doctors to put him in a medical coma for a month, and that’s part of why he’s so fucked up now.

      Oh, or the part where his daughter convinced him to only ever eat red meat, and literally nothing else.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Even though facing the road to recovery like a man is manlier than an easy band-aid fix where you go nap-nap for a little bit and wake up crazy, but unaddicted.

    • Blackmist
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      1 year ago

      I can only assume he played a bit too much Assassin’s Creed before coming up with that one.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It did make me raise an eyebrow when Rogan got him to admit he was afraid of the possibility of Heaven being real, due to it also being eternal.

            Bruh, if you really don’t believe in something, why fear it? Do you know how scared I am of the possibility that Jason Vorhees is real? Not at all! I’m also not scared of the idea that Outworld is real and will take over our realm if we lose another tournament…

            So shouldn’t the concept of Heaven be just as powerless to his sense of fear?

            I’m not making a statement or trying to imply anything, I’m not sold on an afterlife of any kind (I think it’s a lovely idea, but, I also think it literally raining chocolate is a lovely idea), I just found that confusing is all.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            1 year ago

            Even if we assume he somehow made it through the hippy era as a PhD holder without trying it, there’s no way no one has hooked him up in the past ten years.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Idk would you want to be near him when he trips? He doesn’t seem like a fun person to do a substance that can cause experiences of religion with.

              • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                As an agnostic atheist that favors materialism, I found it to be very fun and exciting to do pretty massive doses of psychedelics, especially ones that frequently spur thoughts of “higher powers.” 2C-E, in particular is known for bringing about thoughts about the divine, and that was a lot of fun (I just played around on Universe Sandbox while I came up, put on some good music, then laid on the floor in a blanket and thought about the universe for a few hours).

                Dawkins on acid would be a hell of a time

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  God I gotta trip shrooms this weekend, that one time where I saw myself as a squid outside of my body playing with it and being judged by a stream of squids for refusing to “Stop playing with that thing and move on to embrace your truest self, a being beyond physicality, a being that can take any form or shape it wants, something far great than a human being.”

                  Was awesome…

                  God I hate being human. I’d demand to be freed from this flesh prison, but I’m not sure there’s anything to actually let out… That I may actually BE the flesh prison.

                  I feel like I’m in this weird camp of “I Don’t Want To Be An Atheist!”

                  Not because I fear Hell or anything, I just find the concept of a cold purely material universe where no greater force than Entropy exists scarier than any interpretation of Tartarus!

                • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Yeah I just worry he might do what I did and find Gaia. Us earth worshippers are annoying enough without Dawkins among us. Though I’ll acknowledge I already had a foot in the door to pantheism at the time

            • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know why it is necessary to accuse Dawkins of taking a drug he has stated he hadent taken and them make conjectured comments about his sexual life

      • skyler@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s hilarious! I had no idea there was more to this. Thanks for sharing.

        Now I gotta track down Rogan and Peterson talking about Dawkins.

        • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          If you’re a fan of extreme cringe, Jordan Peterson’s podcast episode with Richard Dawkins is the source for all that. But the double helix thing was probably the most entertaining one.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t Richard Dawkins a bigger transphobe than Peterson, having literally compared being trans to wearing blackface?

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Because Dawkins shouldn’t get a prize for being merely “Not as insane as the other bigot!”

            What’s your understanding? Because he literally had humanitarian awards for basically being the biggest piece of shit ever when it came to women and transpeople, especially if they were both!

    • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lobster Peterson: “The way these snakes are drawn in resemblance to the structure of DNA, it is evident that ancient civilizations were familiar with the concept of DNA.”

      Bro, they fucking

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Joke’s on you. The crazy hair guy explained that ancient aliens taught Egyptians how to pyramid dna. Pwned!

      • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        I love the hidden racism in those theories. Ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have been smart enough to build the pyramids! It must’ve been aliens!

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I suppose that’s true for some people.

          I revere Ancient Egyptians and think that the disbelief (not denial, mind you) of their accomplishments relates to the sophistication of their math and architecture skills. Same as my disbelief at Ancient Rome’s ability to build a massive colosseum. How anyone could build anything massively impressive that still stands today before the Enlightenment astonishes me.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I love that channel. It’s one of the best channels I’ve discovered all year. A perfect balance of entertainment with deep dives into current hot topics. It’s like John Oliver but triple the length and even more sarcasm.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        1 year ago

        Cody’s showdy is absolutely one of the best things. Even just on how he decided to do a bit where his outfit got more deranged as the world got more chaotic and I don’t think he’s straightened his tie since the 2010s

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Really? He’s on the “Ancient Super Humans were Super Geniuses!” pack? I expected him to have a higher level of research than fucking Spirit Science, but naw.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hell even if they had ladder double helixes the most reasonable explanation would be a laborer did some psychedelics and either blew a priest’s mind with it or decided to incorporate the thing that blew their mind into some detailed work. It’s not difficult structure to imagine while tripping and ancient people sure did trip from time to time.

      In general, assume ancient people were on drugs before you assume ancient people had knowledge of the complex structures they didn’t have the tools to observe.

      • Seeker of Carcosa
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        1 year ago

        “Depression is a myth; tidy your room. Also, I’ve been clinically depressed for my whole adult life and I shamble from one crisis to another.”

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      And then he had to do physical therapy afterwards for months to recover from the medically induced coma that only Russia allows since the rest of the world doesn’t allow the procedure since it isn’t backed by any science.

      That guy.

  • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I see a lot of people here talking about how unpersuasive his arguments are. So I think this misses the real issue at hand. Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening. If anything it will impower in-group type thinking. It’s much more important that we tackle these problems at their source: combat the emotional abandonment of young men

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It’s a lot like how people wonder how others fall for scam calls and emails when they look and sound so obviously like bullshit, you’re not the target audience if you see through it.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Countless young men do find him persuasive. They feel abandoned by everyone else and there is this man who comes along and convinces them he knows “the way”. Talking about how “unconvincing” his arguments are won’t stop this from happening.

      There really isn’t a way to stop this from happening, short of a complete shake up of American culture and government. The only reason young men gravitate towards JP is because he is telling them what they want to hear.

      For the first time in American society, young white men with degrees are no longer guaranteed the middle class life they have always been told they deserve. Instead of realizing that that has been the status quo for literally every other person in the country, and that the system is inherently corrupt…

      They are told that they should feel angry, they are told they need to fight to maintain the status quo and domination of power. Jordan Peterson isn’t combating the emotional abandoment of men, he’s stoking it. His only care is to maintain the social norms racial and sexual supremacy.

      Also… I don’t buy that young men have been emotionally abandoned, at least not moreso than any other time in history. Just compared to 30 years ago when I was a kid, men now a days have a plethora of ways to connecting to people, or seeking help.

      • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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        1 year ago

        This is a great take but to be fair there is a degree of infantilization that is occuring to the general populace of the United States that stems from the older generations not stepping away and also failing to either teach younger generations how to work outdated systems or build new ones to satisfy the changing world.

        A huge percentage has been emotionally abandoned and given over to the electronic babysitters for a while now, and with no ability to feel like an adult by progressing vertically in a career choice and or buy property or start a business and combined with social media making people scared of each other and/or unable to take differing opinions a lot of the (40 and younger by now) generations DO just feel like lonely abandoned children.

  • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I used to like him. I fell for the crap. To my 16 year old brain what he said made a lot of sense. He had a handful of good points, and it made me believe the rest of the shit he peddled.

    I see him now, I look back on how I hung onto his words like a lost lamb, and I can only facepalm.

    I realised that the only thing he is good at is marketing, not psychology…

    • Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Being 16 is the best excuse you could have for believing anything that cretin says. You’re good bro.

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        He has some good advice (and some batshit crazy certainly), but not anything stoics weren’t saying 2300 years ago. And he sprinkles on top of that a weird religious-adjacent theories that are perhaps due to his psychedelic use. People seem to confuse that rambling with wisdom, like they usually do with cult leaders.

        Still, I think it’s quite probable that he was a fine psychologist and was completely capable of helping individuals in whatever their struggles were. It’s his moving to a youtube stardom that caused all the problems.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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          1 year ago

          As the maoral-less L. Ron Hubbard would say…
          “You don’t make money selling a book, if you want to be rich, start a religion”

          Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

          Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Peterson is just running a dumb cult of generic (kinda bad for most people) advice that hinges on the shared identity of sad lonely boys.

            Peter Pan in the books is sad as shit, advice to never grow up and never try to be better just makes people more lonely and miserable.

            Isn’t Peterson’s advice exactly the opposite of Peter Pan’s, though?

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Meh, all of the good advice he gives you can get from some other internet guru that isn’t such a grifter.

          “clean your room” and “wash yourself” really aren’t that profound.

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I dare say that we have plenty of men (and some women) who need advice as lowly as that. If Peterson reaches them, it could be a net positive. Too bad there’s a lot crap in his advice as well.

    • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s understandable - back in the day, he had some reasonable points and an academic veneer. If course, what he was saying tended to have a strong bias, and didn’t stand up to scrutiny, but it’s hard to fault a 16 year old looking for guidance for falling for it. Hindsight is 20 20 - particularly when the negative tendencies ratcheted up rapidly over time.

      Since his Russian benzo coma (remember, kids - clean your room and don’t criticise others or systemic issues unless your life is perfect… pay no attention to my crippling addiction as I peddle that advice), things took a hard turn. I honestly think he suffered non-trivial brain damage. He’s far more erratic, bursts into tears at the drop of a hat (while trying to sell “traditional” masculinity, his takes have lost their academic veneer and are self-evidently stupid. There’s a reason he may be stripped of his accreditation.

      TL;DR: Peterson went from being a pseudo-intellectual preacher to a lolcow, and (to me) the benzo coma seems to have been the catalyst for that shift.

      • MediumRareChicken@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t know about the benzo thing. And that was the advice from him I appreciated; the clean your room, etc.

        I didn’t realise he was a walking blackout the entire time.

        And I think his as following grew, so did his ego, and he began to think he knew way more than he actually did.

        Ah well. An oversized ego is as bad as a termite infestation - if you let it grow it’ll eventually make things collapse…

        • constantokra@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Oversized ego is generally a problem with people who take it upon themselves to give advice to society in general. Sometimes you can work around it. The guy has some interesting things to say, and he’s an eloquent look into the rationalization certain people give for the problematic beliefs they already have.

          You just have to learn how to approach these people without thinking they have some special right to think and you don’t, because a little thoughtful examination shows much of what he says for the bs it is. That ability frequently comes with age and self sufficiency, which is probably why ye targets the people he does.