Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noelwelsh | Hacker News Reader

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Just random stuff from Twitter, because I'm not going to waste my time on his books.

"You should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it."

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/17168812447500333...

Or you could just be a decent person. It's not that hard.

"The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence."

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/17150743954154250...

Counterexamples: Trump, Elon Musk's tenure at Twitter, Boris Johnson. Clearly the current system is not purely a meritocracy. This is also a completely vague statement, so plenty of room for weasling. What exactly does "predicated on competence" mean? I once read that someone fairly famous wrote "Be precise In Your Speech". Oh yeah, that was Peterson.

Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.

https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/17136892453603086...

Misogynistic crap. Women are not some undifferentiated glob. Some women don't even have any sexual interest in men!

Also retweeting climate change denial etc.

Anybody can pick a few random quotes out of context and dispute them. Keep in mind I'm not actually defending Peterson's views (I agree with some, disagree with others), I'm defending his status as a public intellectual.

My experience and history shows that women definitely tend to be more attracted to men who are competent and powerful. There is nothing misogynist about that statement. That statement does not imply that all women are the same, it's a description of a pattern that has a semblance of truth.

Is his status as a public intellectual immutable or irrevokable, ever? Or does his Ph.D + tenure position ahelter him from deserved pushback on his nonsense and grifting in perpetuity?

When he starts talking stupid, am I to defer to his "public intellectual" status and not only turn off my brain and logic and common sense and/or suspend judgment forever or would that still be ok and would you respond well to an invitation to join me in doing so?

Edit: how many stupid things or over how long a period of uninterrupted time does it take for you to at least reexamine your views? Like this advocacy is as illogical as it is manipulatively and fiercely incorrect on a factual and qualitative basis jointly :/

Wouda been a good time to throw in an a priori maybe

1. I'm responding to

"Nothing you just said disputes any of what Peterson has said. ... try[ing] to discredit him without actually addressing or disputing anything he's said shows you just have an axe to grind with no substance."

Nothing there about his status as a public intellectual.

2. "Anybody can pick a few random quotes out of context and dispute them." These are tweets he sent on Twitter, not replies to other people. There is no more context. There is a high density of this crap on his twitter feed. At the time I looked, the quoted tweets were in position 4, 8, and 17 on his feed. I could have disputed more of them but those were the easiest to address.

3. There is a difference in between "women definitely tend to be more attracted" and "Women deeply want". If Peterson meant the former he should take his own advice and be more precise in his choice of words. Similarly if I've misinterpreted his other tweets, that's on him for not providing more context. He's not new to this game. (And this is, apparently, one of his rhetorical tactics. There is link in another comment to "bait and switch".)

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