Pornography and the Butterfly Effect
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The second is: what is the effect of production and distribution of porn, on those producing it, consuming it, and third parties? This was a huge issue for feminism in the late 70s and early 80s, with Camille Paglia on the pro side and Andrea Dworkin on the anti side. It has still not been resolved. It's a huge and complex question, and the answer almost certainly depends on the details of the content.
Further down the author specifically mentions the correlation/causality fallacy but there are surely other explanations for this. The rise of cheap entertainment in the form of online gaming or Netflix come readily to mind.
I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
If you are one of those top guys, you have to invent elaborate schemes how to reject a female so that she thinks it was her decision and leaves you alone ("how much nice/beta do I have to go until I start repulsing her?"), or just state/enforce expectations you have with them, maybe being shocked by mind-blowing admission that they would be willing to share you with other women only if you kept them as well.
The problem of this is that it leaves females that are used to one-time attention from a top guy thinking that's their attractiveness level for the rest of their life and anyone marrying them walks straight into hell of "being never enough". So overall for society enforced monogamy might be way better than what we have now, i.e. most females flocking to top guys and using the rest for money, validation or easy life until their attractiveness fades away and they become broken shelves of persons.
But hey, they front-loaded their life, trading exciting time in their prime for desolation of middle-to-older age. Just please don't force men to support them with taxes once they fall through the bottom. Those men didn't study/work hard to trade their prime years for supporting women that didn't give them time of day when they still were interested in them. That's not fair either; no wonder many of those men go for pathetic sex dolls and VR porn, or just leave society completely.
I separated three years ago, divorced recently and met someone a month after deciding to date. I used Bumble. It was easy. She’s beautiful, smart (smarter than me), kind, honest, athletic, hard working, loving and a wonderful mother to her 10 Y.O.
I live well below my means and only after commiting to a relationship did I realize just how poor she thought I was. My advice to you is that any women who would pursue a man for his looks and money isn’t worth your time. If you can’t find what you’re looking for you either need to work on your self or you need to look somewhere else.
Again, I’m not judging but the idea that enforced monogamy is better for society leads me to believe that you’re the problem.
This is good if you believe in egalitarianism, as I do, but it does have consequences. It would seem, though I'm not sure to what extent available data backs this up, that women will tend to couple only with a relatively small percentage of men, and without societal pressure to behave otherwise, are either willing to share them or simply not couple at all.
Unfortunately for them men who aren't in that category, their hormonal drive to mate is significantly stronger, and our culture still ostracizes and humiliates men who are unsuccessful with women. The upshot of which seems to be that there are an increasing number of sexually frustrated young men in society, and they are held in very low regard because of it, which one has to imagine is a very dangerous and destabilizing trend.
That is such as 21th century culture perspective when viewing history. Take any litterateur work of art and reduce all the women in it down to their husband and what you get is nothing like what is described. The classic definition from 19th century when we read about what they viewed as the most respectable upstanding woman of highest degree usually refereed to family attributes such as class, titles, blood line, heritage, honor, grace, and wealth. A husband and his family would add to that equation but social status would still combine the attributes of both families. A woman from a low class that married up was still seen as coming from a low class family, and I see this as a common trope in many old dramas. The common scene is that the new wife joins the other women in that social class and she instantly get put at the bottom of the social status because of her heritage regardless of her husband.
It could still be the egalitarianism event after the second world war when women got equal rights in regard to work, but then the data is not that clear cut. Sweden have had equal work force of both women and men for decades now but the trend of lower marriage rates, increased loneliness, increased disproportional amount of childless men, has not topped off and is still worsening. The question is why it then hasn't stopped when equal amount of both women and men are working and sustaining their own quality of life. Is it just culture moving slow or is it possible that something else is causing the change?
How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
> I see my male friends really struggle and I see my female friends have unlimited options.
I can counter your anecdata with my own...many of the women I know are having great difficulty finding men online because, in their experience, they're very picky. Speaking as a man, I would say I've also become more picky over time, not less. Here we're trading localized experience, but I think that there should be an accountable cause that would explain only men being adversely impacted.
I don't see an obvious reason why online dating would make things harder for men but not harder for women and vice versa. I think the broader trend in online dating is that it's harder for unattractive people to find partners, regardless of sexual identity or preference; conversely it seems to be getting progressively easier for attractive people to find partners. People are presented with significantly more options, which makes me hypothesize that they're willing to say no to many people they would otherwise settle for. I don't think that's particularly harder on men than it is on women.
> How can that be? Why would it be empowering for one gender but not the other? What would the underlying reason be to explain that kind of social phenomenon?
Because there are large social differences between how the genders date. Given such differences, a change in how dating is done may favor one gender more than another.
In practice, the most noticeable difference is that men are expected to message women (barring rare exceptions like Bumble). In current online dating, that means women receive a great many messages and can pick between them, while men must send a great many to have a chance at a response.
At least that initial stage of dating has shifted in women's favor in recent years, but as you said, that's not the whole picture and despite all the messages women may have a hard time finding someone they like, depending on what they are looking for.
On dating sites, men rate 50 percent of women as below average (in line with the statistical expectation), while women rate 80 percent of men as below average.
It is a fact that women are pickier than men on average, and that women are less willing to marry down and to settle for less, than men are.
This is why there is gender assymetry in how increased information efficiency in the dating market affects SMV (sexual market value) of men and women.
I think the proper word is: boring
That has nothing to do with anything being discussed here.
This could a contender for reduced sex.
That's probably connected, but unless the topic first and foremost is society's relationship with sex, what the hell are we even talking about?
(edit: I'm not shittalking you, parent poster. You're just responding to an article perpetuating a trend that I noticed bugs me.)
Accordingly, distributors have huge incentives to push for weakening of copyright. The lobbying of middle-man companies like Google, etc., against copyright can be viewed through that lens. Distribution channels like YouTube, etc., are a lot more valuable when they can distribute other peoples’ content for free.
I'm extremely skeptical that it's caused by porn. More men are on Propecia than in the past. Probably more anti-depressants, too. And it seems to me that people have really ratcheted up the anxiety in general, over the last 20 years or so.
That is also a little harsh, but I agree. Most likely they did not have the means to collect data on it rather than the means at which they do so today.
It also could be that it was not considered manly to talk about your feelings 20 years ago...
You also did not access to hundreds of thousands of naked men and woman within seconds with a simple google search 20 years ago, whereas you had to find yourself some "contraband" if you were under 18 ,back then.
Or what they're looking at is diagnoses of erectile dysfunction, which might have some connection to drugs being approved and heavily marketed for it.
I hypothesise oestrogen mimicking chemicals in toiletries, and maybe plastics?, probably have some part in this.
Otherwise there seem to be a lot of pushing of that Montreal company, when the coming of free sex to the net must have been a more decentralized and varied phenomenon.
In particular there is a dynamic between pro and amateur pornographic content that is completely ignored to focus on the “incel” concept I am not sure is even correctly discussed in the article.
Maybe he just bought up the competing free content sites for $362 million. Maybe the production companies made billions in the past when the industry was more profitable, who knows what they make now.
That 5 negatives in a row? Impressive.
(Yes, blatantly tangential).
If you count the "but" as negative then it's 6
This would be an interesting sociological development when (or if?) it happens.
I guess people are not yet ready to tread this path of moneymaking. Seems at least some societal mores are valued/feared/respected.
Don't exactly know what to make of that, but was disappointed with the article because it didn't seem to take gender in consideration at all.
This skirts a taboo that you can barely talk about: that personal preferences in dating are not judged to the same standard, and that movements of empowerment and positivity are clashing with everyone's free will in pursuing -- and especially articulating -- what they do and don't like. Declining to date someone because they're fat is now firmly seen as a bullying tactic, but not dating someone because they're short is perfectly fine. The protocols around communicating preferences to others and getting them accepted by one's peers is a quagmire where social conventions haven't ventured, so everyone lies for self-preservation ("I like you as a friend", "I don't wanna be tied down"), and those left out are left to draw their own conclusions.
This is all terribly unfortunate, but not really new; the incel movement, however, feeds not solely on rejection and obsessing over the base biological reasons thereof, but the implicit entitlement they they'd deserve otherwise.
What?
Where I come from you're allowed to date who you deem to be attractive. Nobody cares if you don't date anyone because they're fat, dumb, small, poor or what not.
While there are activists out there attempting to use the standard social shaming toolkit to influence dating, their tactics won't work. Reproduction is too deep-seated a drive to tamper with that way. And fortunately, defeat here will blunt the entire array of tools.
It's as if an entire generation is hearing this internal monologue: "You mean that if I want you to consider me a 'woke' and good person, I need to have sex with this person I don't consider attractive? To hell with you and your morality then."
As they say, "'No' is a complete sentence." Anyone can decline to date anyone for any reason you like. And it's probably best not to give reasons, especially if it's something intrinsic or hard to change.
Many people lack a peer group capable of giving them effective dating advice. Men who don't have any friends who aren't straight guys of their own age should probably fix that first. And work on opening up emotionally.
Do you have sources to cite on that? Because this honestly sounds like an incel talking point. The idea that it's ok for women to judge and reject men -- for being short, or any other number of male-oriented deficiencies -- but men are not similarly free to reject women based on their appearance. It's bullshit and it doesn't really exist. Anecdotally, I've never once seen someone be judged for not wanting to date someone no matter how shallow the reason. It's just another way in which these men are claiming to be unfairly victimized in the dating world.
These are basic human-type concerns. Which makes the angry, bitter, you-definitely-can't-empathize-with-me rhetoric of many incels even more frustrating.
Have you browsed men's profiles on Tinder? You're comparing 50% of the actual data to your imagination here.
* there was that OKTrends blog article from 5-10 years back that noted women tended to rate 80% of men below average, while men tended to rate women in a normal distribution.
* there's apparently some indication that twice as many women as men manage to reproduce successfully.
* To the extent that books like _A Billion Wicked Thoughts_ reflect credible research, there's notable indications that women often employ a broader set of criteria along with a higher floor and aim for picking mates.
There may be methodological issues that I'm not in a position to evaluate, so I'm sure all of this is subject to review. Also, none of this means you have to make any categorical call about who has a more privileged or difficult life by gender; beyond the good reasons for anyone to be selective when looking for prospective mates, there are some that apply to women in particular. But it does look like there are studied reasons for suspecting that women are more selective and critical about prospective mates than men are.
I respect your experience and it may be that women do have much more power than men in the online dating world - that doesn't mean it's not an extremely skewed representation of the actual social dynamics that happens between humans. This is due to the many cultural biases of the people who make these apps and the audience they're targeting, both of which being typically college-educated urban American millenials.
Not everyone's approach to relationships is like that of a college-educated urban American millenial.
And while I also agree that the sample from Tinder is a very restricted view, and in general I also prefer meeting people directly in the real world. What I found interesting about Tinder is, precisely, that I allowed me to directly see how women outside of my social circles and spaces I frequent present themselves. While I still live in a hipster urban area, I found that so many of these examples of very traditional views about courtship---all this "I am a price" logic I mentioned in the parent post is not so much a sign of power, but I see it as more of a conservative view that puts women in a passive role. It can be frustrating for men, but probably it is also damaging for women, and to me showed, somewhat, that the road to better gender equality and fluid roles is a long one.
No, advertising, either directly to the subject or to other people specifically referencing the subject, a personal characteristic as the reason for declining to date someone has always (well, since the early 1980s, at least, don't really know how it was received before I was in elementary school) been recognized as a means of attacking that person and often a bullying tactic, (doubly so when it is done prospectively.)
Not dating someone itself, for any reason, is not generally, even now, and irrespective of the actual reason.
Is this more Jordan Peterson, “woe is men” shit?
Seriously, if these sovereign individuals can’t forge social relationships with others, especially women, and use that to further their understanding and connection with the real world, then that is their problem, as individuals. It’s not society’s fault that these individuals choose to not engage with society on society’s terms. It’s certainly not women’s fault and very much not their responsibility to fix.
Acknowledging the existence of a problem affecting men?
> ... then that is their problem, as individuals ...
I agree, but the society needs to acknowledge that it actually IS a genuine problem for these men. We can then encourage the development and adoption of technological solutions, such as sexual VR and sexbots. It might not be the ideal solution for these men, but at least it's a solution (and it puts no responsibility on women to do anything).
I don't think anything that has come out of the MRA/Petersonian fringe is helping though.
There certainly is problems with men/masculinity in society, it's both sad and tragic, as illustrated by the tragic suicide of Scott Hutchison a couple of weeks back. I'm convinced that all these people who think they're sticking up for men are only making things worse though.
The answer doesn't lie in blaming female empowerment.
What do you mean?
I wont say its entirely society's fault, but we cant just ignore the problem. As that leads to Brexit, Trump,etc.
I would argue that there are profound differences too between institutional racism and male sexual resentment.
Of course, institutional racism is several orders of magnitude more severe.
(Update: wow, I get downvoted for this. Nice!)
A call for individual impetus or responsibility to fix system issues isn't necessarily wrong, but it's usually futile.
Consider: some set of features that identify an individual, over time, begin to predict a worse or less ideal state. Is the cause and solution most likely to be a collective individual moral failure, requiring a collective individual improvement? It's possible. But is it likely?
Or perhaps a better question, is this proposed solution likely to improve the state of the world to one we all like? "Be better, it's not our responsibility to fix your issues." If this is repeated enough does the trend reverse? Or if it doesn't reverse, do we simply not care? If we don't think this will reverse the trend, and if we do care, then this seems like a poor strategy.
You don't have to care or not care about any individual, and you don't have to take any individuals belief or claim at face value. That's the difference between trying to divide up lines and attribute moral defect to society or individual, and trying to map out a complex system at understand solutions that aren't about assigning blame or worth, but rather improving society for all.
Still, an ability to have empathy for those who suffer, whether they are part of your side of the culture war or not, is (only in my opinion) a beautiful trait.
I agree and this has made me rethink my comment and the angle I took.
The suicide of famous artists such as Chris Cornell and Scott Hutchison - particularly Hutchison - has really shocked me and made me think more widely about what it means to live happily as a man these days. I think we need more people thinking about it positively. And more people need to embrace and encourage civility as you've done.
It's so easy to fling rocks in the culture wars, and satisfying too, but in a junk food way.
As you say, there's a bigger picture.
Thank you.
I like the war and peace reference too ;)
IMHO, much worse is the prohibition of prostitution. In my country, pornography can be found for free on internet but prostitution has recently been completely banned.
That puts a young man who watches pornography but has, for one reason or an other, absolutely no idea how to get laid, in a very difficult position. I can totally understand how that would make him angry.
what world do you live on? Declining to date someone and bullying them are very obviously different things.
It's how you wrap it with elegance and allure: just that your preference is to date e.g. petite females. Don't mention fat etc. at all. Or just simply state the person is not your type and walk away. They are pretty aware what they are doing, including taking photos from "slim angle" and trying to sell you "sub-prime CDS as class A-shares", and then just play usual shame game to force you to cater to them. Ignore it; it's like a bad business decision, be strong, enforce what you like and not what they would like you to - you can tell them once they can e.g. run 100m sprint in 13s, then you can date, as sporty ladies make you excited etc. And you even give them a S.M.A.R.T. goal; not that it matters as they will be stuffing themselves with whatever sugar they find, but at least you don't make a political mistake of aligning with the signature of fat shaming.
"Select 'OK' to continue using our products, otherwise, you will not be able to access our sites and apps."
Looks like I'm not reading this then.
Ad tech has taken full carte blanche for long enough. If you actually dig into GDPR you find that it's quite reasonable, far better than the cookie law and other earlier iterations that fundamentally misunderstood technology.
The idea that people have to be protected from themselves and their choices is at the heart of GDPR. It prevents people from making the correct choice of not using services you disagree with and keeps those services profiting and ever more centralized.
But digging even deeper, there's this delusion that your usage patterns of someone elses' property are yours and to me it seems crazy. You wouldn't say that physical grocery stores cannot keep track of who enters their premises and what they bought (or how long their phone SSID was in range of $x aisle). Or that they should be fined, and have those fined backed up with government violence, if someone demanded the grocer delete the data.
Yet services like Facebook will have a shadow profile for you from data built up through abusing access to other peoples' systems.
In a world where objective journalism doesn’t pay, does every site become Vice?
The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
"Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."
No one is attacking you and there is no need to defend.
Maybe just because I am from the south and old enough to remember older relatives using the word spade in an overtly racist way (“Dennis Rodman is as black as a spade,” and such), but I don’t think the etymology is particularly academic.
Anyways, sorry for the off topic tangent.
While you are correct that this was (and is) rare in a news rather than opinion piece, this does not at all pretend to be a news rather than an opinion piece.
It's overtly framed as a review, which is a class of opinion piece, and is written with first person references and other structural features typical of opinion pieces.
> The New York Times does profiles on White Supremacists that have more respectful tones than this.
The New York Times has been widely criticized for normalizing white supremacy for those profiles, but in any case, that's an overtly different class of article.
Who proposed that?
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-peters...
also
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/incel-meaning-explained
Which isn't to say that the way we dealt with this in the past, which was keeping women out of the work force and making them dependent on men for survival and status, is something we should go back to, just that there are consequences we'll have to recognize and deal with somehow.
The "incel" community frequently calls for the state to provide partners to incels. They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
Then, some portion of those incels believe that men should be able to expect that their sexual partners do not have any other partners, so suddenly this turns into believing that the state should provide incels a monogamous, long-term partner, essentially a wife.
When Peterson calls on males to improve themselves, a substantial portion of his audience hears this as an exhortation to stop bitching and moaning, get off their asses... and then learn seduction techniques, push for political changes that would guarantee them a mate, or other steps that might be considered coercive or antisocial. Regardless of Peterson’s own position, never underestimate the ability of his statements to be interpreted in various fashions due to the seething anger of some of his listeners.
Do you have any evidence for this? Or is this just your imagination?
Dunno, seems like what we can label as "incels" (outside tiny violent group that pushed this term to mainstream) could now easily represent 50% of single male population. That's pretty bad for society. Look at Japan what is happening there. Or into China where planned male overpopulation is causing massive problems in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (stealing women) and they don't do the usual way of curbing excess males by the means of war, like practiced in the Middle East.
Also what are you objecting to here? Prostitution in general? Having it subsidized by the state?
This argument:
> They point to how in the Netherlands, the disabled have access to sex worker services, subsidized by the state. They claim that their inability to find sexual partners is comparable to a disability, and therefore the state should help.
This is not absurd. In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, anyone can buy the services of a sex worker. I don't know if it's true that the state subsidizes it for disabled people. If they do I imagine the idea is that having sex is an right and if you can't get it on your own (by either for free or by paying it) the state should supply it. Extending it to incels is not a huge leap.
Reading charitably, I think you mean "being aware of the possible connection". The connection with marriage still seems speculative.
Or to make sure they are sad and not intrinsically happy alone?:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902
;-)
Are academics advocating wholesale monogamy? That’s usually the field of organized religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhEG69ZGwUI
In regards to academics - he taught at Harvard and University of Toronto for decades, has written books and released hundreds of hours of lectures for free.
Peterson, OTOH, seems to be a common modern conservative blend of elements from classical liberalism and classic conservatism with modern scientific-sounding rationalization for the classically conservative elements.
> My motivated critics couldn’t contain their joyful glee this week at discovering my hypothetical support for a Handmaid’s Tale-type patriarchal social structure
> “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.
Basically...traditional (voluntary) marriage.
You know, the millenia-old religious/societal contact "to love, honor, cherish and protect him/her, forsaking all others and holding only unto him/her"
Faced with the decision to interpret Peterson's phrase as dsytopian lobster-like social structure, or pedestrian traditional marriage, the author and others assumed the less plausible interpretation.
[1] https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
If you think I'm making this up or being hyperbolic, watch his 100s of hours worth of lectures on YouTube. Even if you think this is utterly ridiculous, there are millions of people who will follow this man to their deaths.
Personally, seeing the guy talk makes me feel sleepy.
He’s not right wing himself though, he’s a classical liberal with libertarian leanings. I think of him more like Bill Maher without the comedy.
As an American I can’t wrap my head around the Canadian acceptance of criminal penalties to compel speech, based on the evolving views of an extrajudicial tribunal.
It’s terrifying to have that power in the hands of the far right or far left.
I think he’s too utilitarian on family and marriage, but his position is intellectually defensible. For example, he’s pro gay marriage but believes research saying children have better outcomes with exposure to both sides of the (traditionally gender-based) parental roles. He doesn’t claim to know a solution to the latter, or even that one needs to be be found. Only that it should be researched and discussed.
It’s not hard to take that kind of view and spin it to something abhorrent if you take away the nuance and context.
That's actually not the case (just see what kind of questions he gets from his actual audiences to see for yourself). Though on a surface level some of the alt-right likes him because he pisses off SJWs. But they're mistaken to think he's any kind of ally. He's spent much of his career opposing their views and sees both the alt-right and extreme left as big problems.
The idea that he's alt-right is really nonsense. He taught for decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. As he says himself, you can go and look through his hundreds of hours of lectures and try to find where he's promoted anything alt-right. It's quite the opposite.
It's largely a false narrative driven by the extreme left, who are trying to dismiss and ruin him because he's critical of what they're doing.
This also happened with the progressive professor Bret Weinstein - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM
They tried/are trying to destroy him. It's a real problem.
Most people on the left don't think that JBP is a nazi, or alt-right, or whatever is the inverse of the "postmodern neomarxist" boogeyman. People on the left are critical of JBP because of his blatant misreadings of Marx, Deleuze, Foucault, his confusion about Bill C-16, etc. His overly broad equivocation of postmodern critiques of power and Marxian class theory is the basis of his incredibly nasty attacks on these so-called "postmodern neomarxist feminists" yet he has published no real thesis.
He can't even be said to be critical of leftist ideologies because he never puts forward any real arguments, and all he does is signal that the left are evil.
And I'm saying all of this as a leftist who has supported Bret Weinstein from the beginning. I accept the postmodern feminist criticism of identity politics and agree that SJWs and their constant search for categories is harmful to the left. I would love for Peterson to put forward an actual, rigorous criticism of leftist ideology, but frankly he doesn't seem to have one.
I think he'd do much better if he wrote more books and had a really good editor.
Every time I've seen an article about Peterson -- which, to be fair, has been all of three times so I'm not particularly well read -- it's saying he's done something or said something horrible. When I dig up what he actually said to get the context -- something that no article has ever done -- I'm usually left with a different interpretation or still being unsure what he was trying to say. When I look for Peterson's own explanations, they make sense to me and they're still consistent with what he originally said. Now, I don't agree with, well, hardly any of his points, but they're typically consistent even though the media consistently says they're not.
It strikes me more along the lines of how once James Damore, the guy who wrote the Google memo, was labelled anti-left and anti-feminist, it was just accepted that everything he said was immediately wrong and his entire argument was assumed to be the least favorable position. Nobody tried to actually read his memo and address those arguments. It could be interpreted as anti-left and anti-feminist there for it must be anti-left and anti-feminist and that engineer must be ceaselessly attacked for not toeing the cultural line even if he had good points.
It's like someone just gets labelled as an enemy and then it's red vs blue, left vs right, up vs down, and everybody has to be hardline anti-center lest you be labelled with that scarlet letter R or D. It's so intellectually dishonest. It's exactly what we used to blame Fox News and the religious right for doing! As someone who has been liberal and left their whole life, this recent behavior of mistaking character assassination and vitriolic reprisal for criticism has been one of the most disappointing and frustrating changes I've seen.
You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here. I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken. I have pretty moderate political beliefs and I don't really see how they pertain to a conversation about a guy that writes self-help books.
Forgive me if I suspect this is essentially an admission that you've only engaged with Peterson on a drive-by level.
Of the top of my head, were you already familiar with things like:
* Who Jakk Panksepp is, or have any outline of points from his work on affective neuroscience? (say, for example, the observation that if you deprive young rats of rough and tumble play they get hyperactive and their prefrontal cortexes don't develop very well and that can be treated with psychomotor stimulants)
* Anything about the narrative in the Enûma Eliš/Babylonian creation myth, or possible relevant interpretations for present day people?
* Questions of epistemology considering whether faculties of reason or attention are more valuable, and what the difference might be?
* Some neuroscientists/psychologists don't map the left and right brain to "logical" or "creative" but more as "explored territory" and "unexplored territory"?
* Anything about biological mechanisms that might underlying different systems for incentive/future rewards vs consumptive rewards?
* Much about Piaget's life or stages of cognitive development?
That's nothing like an exhaustive list of things I was introduced to following his lectures.
I don't have any desire to defend all of Peterson's statements, there's enough he's said that I disagree with. In some cases, I believe he's misrepresented things that I already do have some understanding of and so I certainly don't think he can be trusted without reservation. Perhaps he has even misrepresented some of the things I've mentioned above. There is plenty of room for criticism of him. And a good chunk of his oeuvre is synthesizing the works of others, so maybe the charges of unoriginality stick too.
But you'd have to be part of a considerably better educated crowd that's much smarter than I am to believe that the contents of that oeuvre are simply self-evident and empty.
> He just phrases it incomprehensibly and vaguely because he's trying to make a living selling books and giving self-help talks
Perceiving people's inner motivations is hard, and unless you're better at it than you are at accurately summarizing their work, there's no reason to believe your summary is particularly good. I think anyone who's actually payed attention to Peterson would say that whether or not he enjoys the money that's come with his attention, he is also on some kind of mission and is potentially more helpful or dangerous than someone who merely wants to augment their standard of living or financial power.
> You are apparently upset that everything turns into a team sport with the left on one side and conservatives on another. Well, you're the one doing that here.
You know, one of the things that Peterson said in his lectures that I'd suppose everybody might know is that when you argue with someone, one of the first things they're likely to do is try and turn the argument around on you. Perhaps it's inevitable. But did the parent really turn it into a team sports game? Seems to me they were criticizing a team they identified with.
> I was basing my opinion of him on his own words, written and spoken... a guy that writes self-help books.
The problem I'm having here is probably the same one the person you're responding to is having -- you're claiming to have engaged with his words, but the picture you're reflecting is very different than the one others who have engaged with his work have.
Is it possible they've engaged it on a level that you haven't?
Even if you think Peterson is trouble (and he is, in some ways) is it possible you can be more effective at responding to the trouble he presents if you have engaged at a deeper level?
"I'm not right wing, or conservative!" from the man who says "Abortion is clearly wrong"
If you actually gave people answers, their quest for meaning would be complete and they wont come back next week. You lose engagement.
I don’t know the exact context for the original statement, but the linked explanation video[1], which is only three minutes long, is very straightforward and exhaustive, and not at all vague as you claim.
Mostly it just irks me, as I have seen many people I respect given this treatment, but it has always been by the intellectually dishonest, including in fact in cult literature, with which I unfortunately have some personal experience.
The fact that this is now the new norm in mainstream press is very concerning.
Then it would seem Peterson is doing poorly at being a cult leader. :/
"On the New York Times and 'Enforced Monogamy'" https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
Normally I think the Times is pretty solid, but they led with this distorted claim equating enforced monogamy with female slavery (irresponsibly, I think) and seem unable to rationally parse what Peterson is saying because of his infamy for being on the “wrong” side of the pronoun debate.
It’s a symptom of the age that no one wants to do the work of thinking through what people say and it’s exactly this looseness and lack of critical assessment that, ironically, permits demagogues to say and do outrageous things.
https://jordanbpeterson.com/media/on-the-new-york-times-and-...
Monogamous relationships remove 2 people from the dating marked, non-monogamous ones remove none.
Committed polygamy does so asymmetrically with regard to gender, particularly, a committed polygynous relationship removes more women from the pool than men, and thus can be seen (from a numbers-game perspective) as disadvantaging not-yet-attached men more than monogamous commitments.
That's the one I'm talking about. I'm living it for 10 years now and know many living it too.
The public awareness doesn't seem to be high in that case, but I have the impression most monogamy-proponents simply leave it out because it falsifies their points entirely.
Related: "NoFap"
Whether porn consumption is fine in moderation is a subject of fair debate. Unfortunately, the science on this is not sufficiently clear.
Extremophiles (Snottite) will be quite happy in sulfuric acid
Alcohol creates concrete bad outcomes when for instance driving. I think there is a lot less people watching porn while driving than driving under influence. Alcohol makes you prone to some kinds of cancers, porn not much. Watching porn is at least order of magnitude safer than drinking alcohol. There is no way you can use sulfuric acid injections as comparison for porn watching.
The point being: it’s unclear as to whether porn consumption is harmful in moderation and therefore problematic to suggest that it’s “fine”.
In which case, the word “everything” is entirely the wrong word, is it not? I think we can agree that “many things” would be a substantially better fit here.
Again, I feel you’re missing the point. It’s not about the semantics of the statement; it’s about porn viewing. Again, it’s unclear whether porn viewing in moderation is “fine”, by some variable definition of “fine”, which is why his first statement is problematic. It’s not because of any particular word or any particular other comparison you or I may contrive.
I would venture that unlimited availability of high quality sexual stimulation leads many to delay pursuing (with all the associated pain and challenge) real relationship. Especially for those who it is more difficult to find a mate.
Read up on countless discussions about how abstaining from getting sexual gratification from porn leads one to become more motivated to go out on dates, look for a partner, be more confident in approaching women etc etc.
Also, if you look into the "no fap" discussions, many report feeling a strong drive to be more productive in other areas of their life. See a powerful drive to go to the gym and workout, have a healthier lifestyle, easier ability to focus for long periods of time on intense work etc.
I think the people here dismissing the point of view that porn can be very harmful to so many are simply selfish, they are defending their own habits, and they are not considering the full context of what "no fap" and abstaining from porn completely can have an immensely beneficial effect on many people.
“Moderate use of porn” doesn’t have to mean hardcore pornography. Playboy and erotic novels are probably not equivalent to Anal Whores 3.
Similarly, I’ve also heard the argument that high-speed internet pornography and “tube” sites in particular are the problem, because of how they present to the user a never-ending stream of novelty, and not necessarily because of the particular type of content.
If that’s the case then obviously the argument about moderation would have its merits.
It's possible to become addicted to much softer varieties of porn, but the potential ramifications of that addiction may be less severe (or they might be problematic in another sense, like financially).
For example an extension that tracks your porn viewing habits and limits video recommendations.
IOW “if X is in moderation, X is fine” is logically consistent with “some things cannot be in moderation”.
Also, the main problem here, and it is a problem with other highly addictive behaviors like drug use, is that simply sticking with a so called "moderate" amount is nearly impossible. It is the whole point of things being addicting, becoming habituated to them, seeing diminishing satisfaction to previous amounts etc etc (for some people at least.. and I would guess this number is quite large).
Watch the video I linked above and see if it resonates with your own experience. Many long term porn users find themselves seeking out more extreme content over time, as well as an increasing quantity of porn viewed over time.
And what about the opportunity cost? What choices and behaviors are given up in the process of receiving sexual satisfaction from porn? Many data sources show a delay in marriage and declining quantity of sexual relationships or volume of sex for young people. Would anyone argue that this might also come with psychological costs in the long term?
You have to be careful about what people you associate yourself with and also with the subcultures and thought-forms you submerge yourself in.
You should be more careful about that.
Do you think you’ll catch wrongthink by even accidentally interacting with people that have different political views than your own?
I don’t have a dog in this fight but this just struck me as such small-minded thing to say…
No Fap is self-evidently apolitical. Though it’s true it is “pseudoscientific,” but really that should be obvious—it was started around a meme.
There’s also Porn Free[1] which evolved independently alongside the website Your Brain On Porn[2], that is very much evidence-based.
The modern view of degenerate behavior where unlimited sexual partners with no commitment is somehow seen as "empowering" is viewed by many as terrible advice, especially to women. The long term consequence is unhappiness and regret when people age out of the primary dating pool, having wasted their prime years either either engaging in casual sexual relationships or heavy porn use.
Young men would do themselves a service to actually look into these movements themselves, and things like "No fap" and discover the benefits, instead of listening to porn users who recoil at anyone criticizing their addiction and lifestyle choices.