Social Jordan Peterson thread, V.4 - "Darwinian truth" and misreading Nietzsche

[Bamboozled]

 

[Mcountry]

I already covered it earlier in the thread. His entire platform of "facts don't care about your feelings" is rendered completely nonsensical given he bases his entire worldview on god and the creation story being real. It's low hanging fruit, you should be able to pick up on it.


Peterson is another pseudoscientific salesman. You can just read what I wrote about him a little while ago here: https://forums.sherdog.com/posts/144172823/:

Responding here...

"He often choses the aggressive and linear dominance part of chimp social relations, which in reality varies from different groups which he fails to mention (1), instead of chosing examples like the Bonobos who have an entirely different social structure. They are much less aggressive, do not readily fight over territory and use sex as a primary conflict resolution (2). They are equally related to humans as chimps on the genetic level. Moving further, there are other primate species like woolly spider monkeys that are entirely egalitarian with no hierarchiel structures (3), and the vast majority of the research shows that more tolerant and socially inclusive primate species do better AND are more intelligent (4)."

Uhm...no. No he most certainly discusses how social structures between chimpanzees is not merely based off of the merit as to whom is the strongest/aggressive.



2:38 to be more specific. Seems reasonable to me.

Anthropologists suggest that the first tribes of humans lived in egalitarian socieites. This is hypothesized to be part of our evolution and what seperates us from most other primates, and many evolutionary scientist further hypothesize that altruism is a necessary evolved trait of humans (5, 6, 7). Looking further towards human societies today, rank fluctuates between groups and cultural norms dictates vastly different social structures. We function as a species and a society within rank, but that's not the entire picture given to us by the scientific literature. It's NOT as black and white as he makes it out to be and either he is unaware of this fact, or he is deliberately misleading his audience.

Now what the hell you are saying here? We function as a species and society with rank. Yup! I agree with this. "But that's not the entire picture". Ok. Want to give me an example as to what else you wish Jordon Peterson would discuss regarding societal rank and social structure that he isn't covering enough to have you not feel that he is painting a "black and white" picture here?

"In regards to neuroscience and biology lets talk about the famous lobster analogy, which no neuroscentist would make. A lobster doesn't even have a centralised nervous system (8). Lobster live at the bottom of the sea, they don't walk upright (in regards to lobster posture), they can regrow limbs, they don't grow old and they eat each other. So what they have serotonin? So does almost every other living thing, including plants. Serotonin in ants also modify their behavior (9), they are also social creatures, is that therefor evidence of the inherent collectivism, as another poster mentioned, and does that show us our natural state is the matriachy? Afterall, they are both anthropods and ants evolved from crustaceans (10). There's so many things wrong with this "analogy", and the fact that Peterson tries to source it as scientifically valid link to human neurophysiology and behavior is disingenuous."

Now this is ridiculous. At least from my understanding. As I understood it, he merely used the example of the lobster to indicate that the idea that human hierarchies exist solely due to patriarchical oppression (as some claim) is ridiculous. People ran with it, and now it's like a trademark for him. It's not far removed from everyone being taken back from his claim that woman shouldn't wear lipstick in the work place. People who are not understanding the CONTEXT of the question and his answers are just looking to be outraged.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/putting-monsterpaint-onjordan-peterson/550859/
"I’m saying it is inevitable that there will be continuities in the way that animals and human beings organize their structures. It’s absolutely inevitable, and there is one-third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that … It’s a long time. You have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that’s similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status—and the higher your status, the better your emotions are regulated. So as your serotonin levels increase you feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion."

The idea in the comparison in lobsters is because Jordon was referring to the evolution of social hierarchy. And lobster would likely be very similar to how we as a species evolved from the ocean to the land. Your neuroscientist is trying to directly compare lobsters to humans as they are now. And not humans as they WERE back then. Probably shouldn't do that. Get the context of what he's saying correct. Then go from there.

He champions as an absolute free speech and rights advocate, yet he supports and participates in propaganda pieces for Prager University (which do not offer a degree btw). Prager U, created by Jewish fundamentalist and neo-conservative Dennis Prager, vehemently censor evolution theory and LGBT rights. Blasphemy is a deadly sin in the bible, hardly the text you'd want to rely on for free speech. Peterson even wanted to create his own university, and was talking about it last year (13). He is seeming more and more delusional.

- Yes he supports free speech. That was the whole point with the trans pronoun shit imposed by the government.
- Can you be more specific about the Prager university stuff? I'm not aware of what you are referring to.
- As for the "starting his own university stuff." To my understanding Jordon Peterson was having large success uploading his lectures on youtube, and then furthering that by teaching course via youtube. He seems to have correctly made the assumption that people can learn this way and was toying with the idea of an online university. Which is isn't a far step from the many online courses that could have a person come out the other end equally skilled as that of one who attended an actual university. Delusional? Hardly. I think that we are absolutely headed in this direction.

In a follow up, he also posted a blatantly incorrect, and easily debunked, climate change denying video from Prager U on his twitter:

ugh. Ok I watched the video. And there was nothing unreasonable that was stated in the video. It mostly goes over the players as to who thinks what and what possible motivations some of the players may have. But you said it's easily debunked. So debunk it please.

Peterson rose to fame by fighting the "Social Justice Warriors" which he claims are destroying the very fabric of society, yet he, like many of the anti-SJWs, completely overestimate the impact and prevelance of gender pronouns, safe spaces and anti-free speech sentiments on the left. The entire LGBT is about 3,8% of the population, which is far below what most think (14), and trans people are only 0,6% of the population (15). Have you ever met a single person in real life that wanted you to call them another gender? Homosexuals and trans people have always existed, why is it so important? In regards to the "totalitarian neo-marxist postmodernists" college campuses, while it is true that the left generally are more inclined to want restrictions on hateful speech, a survey from the Knightfoundation and Gallup shows that the clear majority of college students, including democrats, prefers an open environment with offensive speech to a prohibted one with with positive speech (16, 17):

oh ffs. I just covered this. It wasn't about the pronoun, it was always about COMPELLED speech by the government. He's stated this many...MANY times. It wasn't about fighting social justice warriors. That's just who took wrongful offense and fucked up his entire issue with COMPELLED SPEECH. So the rest of what you are typing here is rubbish because it's trying to defend a position Jordon never had.

What else... He misrepresented bill C-16 which was already in effect for 5 years in the state the was living in before they started talking about it, he says the bible is archetypes and stories, yet he wont say whether or not he believes jesus rose from the dead, he believes there are no atheist because they would be murderers, he makes presuppositional arguments and claims we cant have morality without the bible, he claims people can only quit smoking because of supernatural experiences, he believes in the supernatural, he claims to hate postmodernism while being the biggest postmodernist around. He waffles and shifts on the topic of religion completely and mixes half truths with pseudoscientific sophistry and lazy philosophy. He's constantly inconsistent in his claims. He calls on science when he needs to, but he cherry picks and misinterpret research, then when he science gets in the way of his argument it means nothing and it's all "metaphorical truths" and "darwinian truths" which he also misinteprets.

Want me to go on? This is just what I can remember without thinking about more of his claims. Dare to say I am taking him out of context.

State? I think you meant province. C-16 was being amended and it was those specific changes that are the point Jordon was protesting it. The way you are wording it is very disingenuous. It was a bill that was to include made up pronouns to the list. Did you read the amendment c 16 was proposing? What it did was allow the individual to make up their pronoun and then you would be forced to use that pronoun when addressing the individual. That's me having control over your speech. Because gender is now not binary and the list of pronouns is theoretically now infinite.

And because of c16 you would be compelled to use that pronoun or face punishment. I think at best Jordon may have overestimated the government's enforcement on misgendering people. But he did get warning letters and eventually (I think) was dismissed by the university because he refused to play along with the bill. So in that sense, Jordon isn't wrong in that it doesn't have to be the government that punishes you. Once something is law, you can be punished for being in the wrong now without the government ever getting involved.

I mean the rest of the tripe here is mostly you being overzealous about a man who's religious having religious beliefs. I'm not religious so I don't really care when religious people talk about religion. I don't typically see religion as a character flaw the way you are making it out to be.

Do I want you to go on? Considering I think most of what you typed here was someone else talking? Yes. Yes I would.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Lag?

 

[Sano]

Responding here...



Uhm...no. No he most certainly discusses how social structures between chimpanzees is not merely based off of the merit as to whom is the strongest/aggressive.



2:38 to be more specific. Seems reasonable to me.



Not what the hell you are saying here? We function as a species and society with rank. Yup! I agree with this. "But that's not the entire picture". Ok. Want to give me an example as to what else you wish Jordon Peterson would discuss regarding societal rank and social structure that he isn't covering enough to have you not feel that he is painting a "black and white" picture here?



Now this is ridiculous. At least from my understanding. As I understood it, he merely used the example of the lobster to indicate that the idea that human hierarchies exist solely due to patriarchical oppression (as some claim) is ridiculous. People ran with it, and now it's like a trademark for him. It's not far removed from everyone being taken back from his claim that woman shouldn't wear lipstick in the work place. People who are not understanding the CONTEXT of the question are just looking to be outraged.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/putting-monsterpaint-onjordan-peterson/550859/
"I’m saying it is inevitable that there will be continuities in the way that animals and human beings organize their structures. It’s absolutely inevitable, and there is one-third of a billion years of evolutionary history behind that … It’s a long time. You have a mechanism in your brain that runs on serotonin that’s similar to the lobster mechanism that tracks your status—and the higher your status, the better your emotions are regulated. So as your serotonin levels increase you feel more positive emotion and less negative emotion."

The idea in the comparison in lobsters is because Jordon was referring to the evolution of social hierarchy. And lobster would likely be very similar to how we as a species evolved from the ocean to the land. Your neuroscientist is trying to directly compare lobsters to humans as they are now. And not humans as they WERE back then. Probably shouldn't do that. Get the context of what he's saying correct. Then go from there.



- Yes he supports free speech. That was the whole point with the trans pronoun shit imposed by the government.
- Can you be more specific about the Prager university stuff? I'm not aware of what you are referring to.
- As for the "starting his own university stuff." To my understanding Jordon Peterson was having large success uploading his lectures on youtube, and then furthering that by teaching course via youtube. He seems to have correctly made the assumption that people can learn this way and was toying with the idea of an online university. Which is isn't a far step from the many online courses that could have a person come out the other end equally skilled as that of one who attended an actual university. Delusional? Hardly. I think that we are absolutely headed in this direction.



ugh. Ok I watched the video. And there was nothing unreasonable that was stated in the video. It mostly goes over the players as to who thinks what and what possible motivations some of the players may have. But you said it's easily debunked. So debunk it please.



oh ffs. I just covered this. It wasn't about the pronoun, it was always about COMPELLED speech by the government. He's stated this many...MANY times. It wasn't about fighting social justice warriors. That's just who took wrongful offense and fucked up his entire issue with COMPELLED SPEECH. So the rest of what you are typing here is rubbish because it's trying to defend a position Jordon never had.




State? I think you meant province. C-16 was being amended and it was those specific changes that are the point Jordon was protesting it. The way you are wording it is very disingenuous. It was a bill that was to include made up pronouns to the list. Did you read the amendment c 16 was proposing? What it did was allow the individual to make up their pronoun and then you would be forced to use that pronoun when addressing the individual. That's me having control over your speech. Because gender is now not binary and the list of pronouns is theoretically now infinite.

And because of c16 you would be compelled to use that pronoun or face punishment. I think at best Jordon may have overestimated the government's enforcement on misgendering people. But he did get warning letters and eventually (I think) was dismissed by the university because he refused to play along with the bill. So in that sense, Jordon isn't wrong in that it doesn't have to be the government that punishes you. Once something is law, you can be punished for being in the wrong now without the government ever getting involved.

I mean the rest of the tripe here is mostly you being overzealous about a man who's religious having religious beliefs. I'm not religious so I don't really care when religious people talk about religion. I don't typically see religion as a character flaw the way you are making it out to be.

Do I want you to go on? Considering I think most of what you typed here was someone else talking? Yes. Yes I would.

Why would I even bother responding to this? You use the fact that I use statistics and studies to back up my claims as a derogative because it's "someone elses" while you handwave the entire thing with your opinion, without a single piece of counter-evidence. That is what sourcing and fact checking is you dunce. I mean seriously. Give me one good reason to engage in this lazy rebuttal of yours.

You literally did nothing but repeat the talking points already addressed.

 

[Mcountry]

Why would I even bother responding to this? You use the fact that I use statistics and studies to back up my claims as a derogative because it's "someone elses" while you handwave the entire thing with your opinion, without a single piece of counter-evidence. That is what sourcing and fact checking is you dunce. I mean seriously. Give me one good reason to engage in this lazy rebuttal of yours.

You literally did nothing but repeat the talking points already addressed.

I'm actually accusing you of copy/pasting someone else who wrote most of that tripe. (made evident with the numbers embedded in your post.) And as is the case with many JP detractors, whomever you were quoting as your own got the entire premise of what JP was talking about wrong. And as such their responses are useless...for the most part.

For the record, JP isn't perfect. And I don't agree with him on everything. But he seems genuine in that he wants to help people and he is careful in how he responds when asked a question. That's not to say that he's never gotten pissed off and given an emotional response back, or that he he's never over thought a question and cornered himself in circular logic.

He has.

And when he does he reflects on his answers and tries to come up with something better.

Seems human to me.

 

[Sano]

I'm actually accusing you of copy/pasting someone else who wrote most of that tripe. (made evident with the numbers embedded in your post.) And as is the case with many JP detractors, whomever you were quoting as your own got the entire premise of what JP was talking about wrong. And as such their responses are useless...for the most part.

For the record, JP isn't perfect. And I don't agree with him on everything. But he seems genuine in that he wants to help people and he is careful in how he responds when asked a question. That's not to say that he's never gotten pissed off and given an emotional response back, or that he he's never over thought a question and cornered himself in circular logic.

He has.

And when he does he reflects on his answers and tries to come up with something better.

Seems human to me.

I researched it myself, found the literature and linked the sources to make it completely transparent. That's how you find out if someone is actually full of it or not. It took me over a week to read it all, and put it all together. Seeing as you haven't refuted any of the points nor even bothered to check the sources, there's no need to respond.

 

[Mcountry]

I researched it myself, found the literature and linked the sources to make it completely transparent. That's how you find out if someone is actually full of it or not. It took me over a week to read it all, and put it all together. Seeing as you haven't refuted any of the points nor even bothered to check the sources, there's no need to respond.

Lol id look for a way out too if i spent a week “researching” only to still get the point of what JP was saying about lobsters wrong...

 

[Thurisaz]

I'm quite amused that someone still thinks the charlatan has anything sensible to say.

He is perhaps the most reliable source of hilarious brainfarts today.

 

[Arkain2K]

Holy shit, rational feminists still exists!

Good to see an actual discussion after so many shrieking harpies.

 

[Reactionary Corporatist]

The recent attempts to discredit guys like Petersen and Shapiro have been disgusting if entirely predictable.

You can't mention these guys anymore without someone loudly sighing and trying to lecture you on how they're 'dog whistling' to nazis or incels or whatever the newest buzzword is on any given day.

Lol @ trying to conflate criticisms of Shapiro and Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a world class intellect with thousands of citations of his published papers, who produces dense lectures on psychology and philosophy, and who's own philosophy is built on a rich and deep foundation established by the likes of Jung and dostoyevsky.

Then you have Shapiro... A far right wing sjw extreme partisan hack who has published zero academic papers, who comes from the rich philosophical tradition of... Ayn Rand? Maybe? His only real talent is destroying dumb naive college kids on camera (really hard to do, just an amazing skill). Hes an identitarian that constantly goes on and on about Zionism and Israel, and always plays on identity politics.

You cannot possibly act like these two men come from the same arena of thought - they don't. And you can't act like their criticism comes from the same place - it doesn't.

 

[ObamaPhoneLady]

Lol @ trying to conflate criticisms of Shapiro and Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a world class intellect with thousands of citations of his published papers, who produces dense lectures on psychology and philosophy, and who's own philosophy is built on a rich and deep foundation established by the likes of Jung and dostoyevsky.

Then you have Shapiro... A far right wing sjw extreme partisan hack who has published zero academic papers, who comes from the rich philosophical tradition of... Ayn Rand? Maybe? His only real talent is destroying dumb naive college kids on camera (really hard to do, just an amazing skill). Hes an identitarian that constantly goes on and on about Zionism and Israel, and always plays on identity politics.

You cannot possibly act like these two men come from the same arena of thought - they don't. And you can't act like their criticism comes from the same place - it doesn't.

It does. People who criticize JP on here claim he is just another right wing crank.

 

[ShadowRun]

Lol @ trying to conflate criticisms of Shapiro and Peterson.

Jordan Peterson is a world class intellect with thousands of citations of his published papers, who produces dense lectures on psychology and philosophy, and who's own philosophy is built on a rich and deep foundation established by the likes of Jung and dostoyevsky.

Then you have Shapiro... A far right wing sjw extreme partisan hack who has published zero academic papers, who comes from the rich philosophical tradition of... Ayn Rand? Maybe? His only real talent is destroying dumb naive college kids on camera (really hard to do, just an amazing skill). Hes an identitarian that constantly goes on and on about Zionism and Israel, and always plays on identity politics.

You cannot possibly act like these two men come from the same arena of thought - they don't. And you can't act like their criticism comes from the same place - it doesn't.

I don’t think you know Shapiro at all lol you sure you mean Ben Shapiro the conservative/ libertarian who didn’t vote for Trump and has been publishing news articles since he was like 17 and not close to far right wing

 

[Reactionary Corporatist]

It does. People who criticize JP on here claim he is just another right wing crank.

People giving those criticisms are acting in bad faith. Someone will have to explain how being pro universal healthcare and pro wealth distribution is a right wing crank.

 

[Reactionary Corporatist]

I don’t think you know Shapiro at all lol you sure you mean Ben Shapiro the conservative/ libertarian who didn’t vote for Trump and has been publishing news articles since he was like 17

I am very familiar with Shapiro. He hasn't published a single peer reviewed paper ever. He's not an academic in that way.

Shapiro is an identitarian and plays up identity politics constantly. He's also an extreme right winger who is so far to the right that when put in front of a European conservative he thinks the European conservative is an extreme liberal. He legit thinks putting women in prison for abortion is A OK and "not barbaric".

Shapiro is a complete fucking retard that convinces people he's really smart because he took to debate speed reading as a way of life after high school. So because he speaks really fast and can make 18 year olds look dumb, people think he's some genius. He's not.

 

[Koro_11]

I'm quite amused that someone still thinks the charlatan has anything sensible to say.

He is perhaps the most reliable source of hilarious brainfarts today.

Of course you don’t have any intelligent argument against any of his, you called him a name so we should all just take your word for it cause you just came across as very well informed and educated.

 

[franklinstower]

I participated in the last thread a bit and was going to follow up some more, but instead tried to get the pulse of the types of criticism Peterson was often getting around here. Some of t was, to say the least, disappointing. Much of the criticism I was seeing was about on par with that we saw in the 2016 election – a bunch of partisan hacks not thinking in what could be called an even remotely critical fashion and instead chanting “lock her up!” and fixating on individual things said “But, but… Basket of deplorables!” It was, frankly, stupid and reveals a lot about the petty and shallow people who feel the need to tear this guy down. What many of you came in and fixated on was bad, and you should feel bad for having done so, especially to the lengths you did it. Go get out and experience sunshine and come back when you have something meaningful to say you basement dwelling troglodytes.

I want to start this next thread up on a bit of a less superficial note and actually go after some of the guy’s ideas in a way that isn’t depressingly facile. Now, I can’t speak to much of what Peterson does – I’m no psychologist, and have only distant knowledge of pragmatism and Jung – but I can speak to some of his points with some authority. It’s on this note that I want to talk about his notion of Darwinian truth as to what truth is in general. I’ll say it bluntly – I think he starts from an incorrect reading (I stand to be corrected on this) of Nietzsche and his expansion upon it serves to obfuscate a discussion of truth more than add to it. This leads to two criticisms – one general one about obfuscation, and a second one about misreading Nietzsche.

Anyway, both stem from material in this podcast.



In this podcast Peterson did with Sam Harris he opens up drawing a distinction between what he sees as Sam’s conception of truth – a fairly common notion of there being an objective truth without any sort of consensus or perspectival involvement, which Peterson dubs as “Newtonian truth” (Sam rephrases this as scientific realism, I believe) – and Peterson’s own Darwinian truth. What is Darwinian truth? Well, it’s a notion which is driven by a model of natural selection and a model of truth influenced or inspired by the American pragmatists. The way he presents their conception (around 29:00) is “The truth of a statement or process can only be adjudicated with regards to its efficiency in attaining its aims”. What we should immediately take from this is that truth, on this type of model, isn’t something that simply exists in a vacuum, but a proposition to be judged based on a framework of ends. He goes on to say “Truths are always bounded because we’re ignorant” (don’t’ know precise timestamp but it’ll be around 29:00) and it gives a bit of an inkling as to his motivation behind this pragmatic model. I believe he’s pointing to a fairly robust tradition which argues the ultimate unknowability of the objective, and there is something to it – but that discussion is a bit beyond the scope of this conversation.

Peterson’s approach to this type of model, as far as I can tell, is to ask “What’s the most fundamental end of an organism like a human being?” and then locate truth within the framework of the most fundamental telos of the human. All other truth claims would be subordinate to the truth claims of this most teleologically relevant framework. This is where Darwin comes in, because he sees the human being as operating within a Darwinian landscape of natural selection. In his words, the great problem – the end – is for the animal “to keep up with a multidimensionally transforming landscape.” This is a fundamental impossibility, over a long enough time frame, so the solution – which is the organism which is put through the Darwinian ringer of natural selection – is a “very bad and partial” one. This leads to a phrase Peterson uses a lot – of something being “true enough” – meaning that things are true to an extent only insofar as the fundamental telos of the being can be temporarily met.

The advantage of this model, as far as I can tell, is that it allows for us to clearly say “Our end is X, and we have a clear framework to say what is true or not based on how successfully we attain X.” This is an advantage over “Newtonian truth” insofar as the truth the Newtonian variant reveals is, ultimately, always in question (Harris gets this – “We never come into contact with naked truth… All we have is our conversation” (somewhere between 30 and 45). That hasn’t lead Sam to throw the baby out with the bathwater and move to some merger of a subjectivist model with some biological realism thrown in like Peterson is adopting though – but that’s beside the point of the criticism.

The main criticism I have of Peterson here isn’t his model of truth – there is something to be said for teleologically oriented models of truth rather than objectivist models, since our access to the objective world is flawed and it leaves us in a credible position to nihilistically throw up our hands and declare truth an impossibility, until our relationship with objective truth is mediated by teleological ends. My criticism of Peterson is one related to the term he uses, and where he gets that term from.

My more general criticism of his approach to this is that he presents this truth as somehow exclusionary to Newtonian truth. It would be easy enough to say “Yep, Newtonian truth is great, but we can’t reliably access this truth – so while we can theorize about it and attempt to approximate it, here is this Darwinian model for making truth claims which actually provides us with a clear model for making truth claims, and its truth is based on the universalizability of the problem/corresponding teleological end it is contending with.” There – two models of truth, one which is absolute but can only be approximated, and one which provides clear and functional truth claims based on teleological ends derived from a fairly universal biological problem of survivability, and he and Sam go out for beers. Instead of doing that, Peterson insists on pursuing this as if the two models are exclusionary. He is aware of “Newtonian truth” and formulates Darwinian truth in relation to it, and I am critical of the way he approaches this discussion. If someone could perhaps explain why he doesn’t seem to frame his discussion in terms of the two being not mutually exclusive – IE, there are different types of truth, operating in different ways, which can lead to effective truth claims. Bret Weinstein even tries to bridge this gap with his explanations of metaphorical truths (ballpark of Peterson’s Darwinian truth) on multiple instances where he talks with Peterson, but Peterson just doesn’t seem to be able to take the leap and say “Yep, both are types of truth which can exist together.”

My second criticism is specific to his sources and an attribution. At one point he says he’s drawing this notion of truth from a Nietzschean position. Specifically, he says he’s dealing with “Something that was basically expressed by Nietzsche, and it’s a definition of truth. If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” (timestamp pending – I forgot to record it). I think he is misreading his source, though I’d be open to consider citations other than what I’m about to provide since Nietzsche does tend to bounce around a lot. Nietzsche, to my knowledge, doesn’t put forth a notion of truth where “truth serves life” unless you adopt the idea of “Truth serves life – and it’s not truth.” To quote Nietzsche,

“Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (WTP, 493)

He goes on to say:

“The most strongly believed a prior ‘truths’ are for me – provisional assumptions; e.g., the law of causality, a very well acquired habit of belief, so much a part of us that not to believe in it would destroy the race. But are they for that reason truths? What a conclusion! As if the preservation of man were a proof of truth.”

This whole section, “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism” from The Will to Power is worth a read and its message is quite clear – that truth isn’t true because it preserves life, but rather that truth is in fact an error and the real value behind what we think of as truth isn’t that it is true, but that it preserves life. Let me restate – for Nietzsche, truth is a special, life preserving, type of error and not necessarily true at all. He’s attacking the relationship of what we categorize as truth to what is actually true – and arguably the concept of truth, period.

Peterson’s take on this – and again, I’d love to see where he’s getting this from in Nietzschean philosophy, as I don’t study it that closely any more – I that truth is true in virtue of its life preserving ability. He attributes this to a Nietzschean axiom but I think Nietzsche is arguing something quite different – that what we think of as “true” preserving life in no way proves it true, and rather shows that truth is a type of error. So, I consider this a fundamental misreading of Nietzsche, even after he directly attributes the basis of his position to Nietzsche.

To be generous, he does say it’s an idea he’s playing around on, and maybe his position is based on a partial denial of Nietzsche’s position, paired with a partial acceptance – but where he says “If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” I think he’s just getting it wrong.

That’s enough time spent for now.


@Lead
New
Counting this as the v3 of Jordan Peterson threads. Please make a v4
v1 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/u...-and-the-black-liberation-collective.3358077/
v2 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/the-jordan-peterson-thread-v2.3497273/
v3 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/criticism-of-jordan-peterson-thread-v3.3765781/page-31

delete

 

[Thurisaz]

Of course you don’t have any intelligent argument against any of his, you called him a name so we should all just take your word for it cause you just came across as very well informed and educated.

"If confirmed, Kavanaugh should step down."

"I did not sleep for 25 days."

"Falsehoods have consequences. That's what makes them false.

He's full of shit.

 

[Koro_11]

"If confirmed, Kavanaugh should step down."

"I did not sleep for 25 days."

"Falsehoods have consequences. That's what makes them false.

He's full of shit.

So from a guy who's got thousands or hours of content all over the internet, these are the 3 outrageous things you can come up with to discredit him?

 

[JonesBones]

I think that life not being truth is one of Nietzsche's better ideas. William James wrote well on this too. Darwinism leads to so much lazy thinking. Darwinizing of the gaps as Nagel calls it. It is a difficult discussion about Nietzsche because he was against things that negated life, but that is in a different context than life being truth. The lack of danger would negate life for example. The lack of suffering would negate life. The lack of death would negate life. Basically, Nietzsche would absolutely despise what Harris preaches. The lack of suffering would stunt humanity. Freeze it. Kill it. All creators are HARD as he said. Nature is hard. Just because something makes life endurable does not make it true.

“Life no argument. - We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live - by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument. The conditions of life might include error.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

We talk, it is true, when we are darwinizing, as if the mere body that owns the brain had interests; we speak about the utilities of its various organs and how they help or hinder the body's survival; and we treat the survival as [p.141] if it were an absolute end, existing as such in the physical world, a sort of actual should-be, presiding over the animal and judging his reactions, quite apart from the presence of any commenting intelligence outside. We forget that in the absence of some such superadded commenting intelligence (whether it be that of the animal itself, or only ours or Mr. Darwin's), the reactions cannot be properly talked of as 'useful' or 'hurtful' at all. Considered merely physically, all that can be said of them is that if they occur in a certain way survival will as a matter of fact prove to be their incidental consequence. The organs themselves, and all the rest of the physical world, will, however, all the time be quite indifferent to this consequence, and would quite as cheerfully, the circumstances changed, compass the animal's destruction. In a word, survival can enter into a purely physiological discussion only as an hypothesis made by an onlooker about the future. But the moment you bring a consciousness into the midst, survival ceases to be a mere hypothesis. No longer is it, "if survival is to occur, then so and so must brain and other organs work." It has now become an imperative decree: "Survival shall occur, and therefore organs must so work!" Real ends appear for the first time now upon the world's stage. The conception of consciousness as a purely cognitive form of being, which is the pet way of regarding it in many idealistic-modern as well as ancient schools, is thoroughly anti-psychological, as the remainder of this book will show. Every actually existing consciousness seems to itself at any rate to be a fighter for ends, of which many, but for its presence, would not be ends at all. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to these ends, discerning which facts further them and which do not.

The phenomena of 'vicarious function' which we studied in Chapter II seems to form another bit of circumstantial evidence. A machine in working order acts fatally in one way. Our consciousness calls this the right way. Take out a valve, throw a wheel out of gear or bend a pivot, and it becomes a different machine, acting just as fatally in another way which we call the wrong way. But the machine itself knows nothing of wrong or right: matter has no ideals to pursue. A locomotive will carry its train [p.143] through an open drawbridge as cheerfully as to any other destination.

-William James, The Automaton-Theory

 

[JonesBones]

The gift is that he has an enormous innate drive to voice his displeasures with the society, because he can see everything that frustrates and depresses him so clearly, while the "common man" does not.

He would most likely not be an academic, a known public figure and a fairly wealthy man, if he did not possess this drive.

Most of us are merely satisfied with giving our 2 cents on a forum like this. He has gone through the effort of attaining a scholarship, improving his rhetoric, becoming a professor and a "public intellectual", operating from a position of authority, all in an effort to be more capable of illustrating his points of contention with the current society, to influence others who may subconsciously acknowledge these same faults.

You have to be atleast a little crazy to put yourself through such an ordeal.

But as crazy as he may seem, he has nothing on his two "father figures" in Dostoevsky or Nietzsche, who by all accounts, were completely unhinged and hyper-sensitive to everything around them. And it is their "madness" that drove them to great heights in the realm of philosophy and writing.

I fuckin love this passage by Dostoevsky. I am like that too. lol. People blowing their noses. lol. Shit like that. Just the presence and noise of others. As Dos said, I can learn to hate the best of men just by being around them for one day.

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov