Comment by Bodell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bodell | Hacker News Reader

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Jordan Peterson is a great example of the failing of Psychology in the academic world. I'll list some quotes by him below and you can decided weather or not he should be listened to, or if he is simply selling right wing propaganda on Youtube.

"If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology."

"the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence." [referring to men being placed higher than women in society]

""Peterson says that "disciplines like women's studies should be defunded", advising freshman students to avoid subjects like sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies, and racial studies, as well as other fields of study that he believes are corrupted by "post-modern neo-Marxists".""

He also has a bible series on YouTube that asserts that god created the appropriate hierarchy of man, and that it should not be tampered with. We should mold society on the archetype of the book of Genesis. Which in my humble opinion is simply Calvinism in the extreme.

Most of this can be found on YouTube or his Wikipedia page.

This is not to say everything he says is wrong, that would be silly. But I believe it should be approached with a heavy dose of skepticism.

>Most of this can be found on YouTube or his Wikipedia page.

Not a Peterson acolyte, a Jungian, or even right wing for that matter, but I'm a political philosophy junkie so I have some familiarity with Peterson's claims, mostly from watching debates and listening to arguments. And I will say this, your random out of context quoting, and hiding behind "check his Wikipedia page and YouTube yourself" is the same sophistry you're accusing him of. To give just one example, the claims around Western Civilization you bring up imply neo fascism, while they are in defense of Enlightenment ideals. Forget Peterson, there has been a debate between idealists and materialists about the value of Enlightenment ideals since the horrors of WWII (Frankfurt School being prominent critics), and a defense in the 90s by Idealists and classical liberals (The End of History) and an attacks by Postmodernists since the 70s (Foucault et. al).

Today there still is that debate, because the Postmodernist epistemology dominates and both other dominant alternatives, let's call them free market Western liberals and Marxists, don't agree. For you to summarize the debate Peterson weighs in on as a Western superiority is straight up manipulation on your part. You hide behind the manipulation by telling readers to go to his Wikipedia page and YouTube videos as if you've just cited something.

I do not believe I mentioned a single thing that you are talking about in your comment. I'm not entirely sure what you are talking about in your comment. You seem to have quite the bone to pick with postmodernism, something I left completely left unaddressed about Peterson.

I only implied that saying men will become fascists if they are feminized is ludicrous. Does "postmodernism" mean feminizing men? And I suggest that the idea of men having rightfully taken their god given place higher up the hierarchy of society, is Calvinistic, by definition this is true. Is this what you think is "western superiority"? because I don't think I've ever said those two words together in my life. I also don't think I quoted out of context. Though it seems you feel the context reaches as far back as the enlightenment, in this way I have not given a history of the world before judging Peterson's arguments as something that should be met with skepticism.

I really do mean to go check it out for yourself. All the quotes I grabbed were from the Wikipedia page, I have not hidden anything. I've seen very little of what Peterson has to say, but all of it strikes me as very crackpot like. If I were a professor and publishing psychology papers I do agree my "citations" would not be up to snuff. But I am not either of those things and was not attempting to cite him in that manner. I think there should be more proof to the legitimacy of Peterson being a scientist rather than my HN comment needing more proof that he is not.

We're not going to debate the ins and outs of whether his views or crazy or correct, not least because I don't agree with many of them, but also because I'm not interested in playing devil's advocate.

I just think it's not fair to quote - anyone - out of context, referencing a Wikipedia collection of a few quotations, and finger that as proof of insane or bad or incorrect views. Your explanation of his views is about as long or longer than the quotes you're referring to. These are extremely nuanced, complex issues, and to summarize with outrageous highlights (feminizing men, which you've brought up) is sophistry.

Peterson can be completely wrong, a bad intellectual, whatever you want to call him, but the correct thing is to understand the ideas that you disagree with without relying on an authority (The New Yorker, among others, which were quoted a few times in your Wikipedia article references) before calling them out, because they're not being portrayed accurately.

You have accused me of saying many things thus far that I have emphatically not said. Which I would point out is worse than not providing "full context". I specifically stated that it would be silly to think everything Peterson said was false. I made almost no explanation of his views that were my own words other than accusing a portion of it to be Calvinistic thinking. If you think there are finer points in believing in hierarchical superiority amongst genders because of "Genesis" feel free to let me know as I must be too unsophisticated to recognize the nuance.

In fact I have not much of a clue as to anything of the things your referring too and lack the imagination to see a context larger than what those quotes establish. I have watched a bit of his videos, they are full of outrageous and unsubstantiated claims, often self defeating, and because of that, to your point, are hard to summarize. There seems to be beliefs that Peterson holds that are dear to you in some way, and I'm sure a great many of them have merit. Feel free to debate Marx, Foucault, WWII, etc. but if you claim the pecking order is the way it should be due to "nature" and "god" expect some kick back. Such as I would have expected a person, who believes those quotes to not be reflective of Peterson's views, would have said exactly what they believe them to have meant instead. Did he not imply that feminism leads to fascism, does he in a more complex way than I can see supporting gender equality? What are these enlightenment ideas that I missed? Not sarcasm, here, I really do not know what you mean.

I'm sorry if quoting the New Yorker, Wikipedia or the man himself is sub-par to your standards. If you have some better sources I'd be glad to hear you out.

Your conclusion ("the failing of Psychology in the academic world") is not supported by your evidence.

You have demonstrated that there is one prominent psychologist who holds some fairly-obviously terrible and inaccurate beliefs, and is willing to trumpet them to anyone who will listen.

This is no more an indictment of the field of psychology than the occasional right-wing "climate scientist" Fox News brings out to "prove" that climate change is not real is an indictment of the field of climate science.

Many scientific fields likely have a handful of far-right kooks who would be happy to rack up YouTube views promulgating alt-right talking points dressed up in the trappings of science. That says very little about the state of their fields, and a great deal about the state of our nation. And YouTube.

I'm sorry. I was very murky with my wording. I was not trying to say that the field of Psychology had failed or was a failure. What I meant to say was that, our current state of academia has in this instance demonstrated "a" failure. That failure to me is highlighted by the comment I responded to when it was implied that Peterson's view was more "bonafide" because it was from a "real" psychologist. By all academic standards the commenter would be correct. Peterson is not only a Psychologists but also a professor, A widely published and cited one at that. One who has been afforded debates at collages with Sam Harris and Zizek. This to me is a failure of the academic world to distinguish between leaders of the field of psychology and crackpot YouTube personalities. By credentials alone he is both and this is unnerving to me.

That said, of course, I do not believe that it speaks to psychology as a whole. But again I poorly worded that sentence and take responsibility for the misunderstanding. I would only add that I think, and I may very well be wrong, that if a physicist were to parrot "free-energy/perpetual-motion" to anyone that would listen, that person would be promptly removed from teaching at any legitimate university. That is not to say physics is better than psychology, if anything it implies that it is easier than the still very important soft sciences.

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