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Jordan Peterson - The "Intellectual" We Deserve
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A system having existed for a long time and still being present in the latest step of evolution just means the system has worked in that period. That something similar exists in current day humans, and it works, and how to use it, is explained in the link you didn't read. The link that says that good posture is not only good for your back, but for your mind.
It just means it has worked for that period of time. Populations with that characteristic haven't been eradicated from the earth in those whatever millions years it has been around.
Not necessarily. We still have tail bones but it doesn't mean that it still works. Or the muscles in the ear. Or that muscle in the wrist that some people have that has no purpose in humans but is a vestigial trait leftover from when we diverged from tree dwelling primates. There are so many things we still have that don't work.
Just because we have something doesn't mean it works nor is it the most desirable.
First off, why is a psychological 'researcher' using topics he has absolutely zero expertise on in order to make his arguement?
We should listen to his ramblings on lobsters when he isn't an evolutionary biologist or a marine biologist, and has done nothing on that subject? Or even about human evolutionary development? He has no evidence, research or support for anyone with the expertise.
What next? We start taking his stock advice because he makes an absurd reference to trading?
We should listen to his ramblings on lobsters when he isn't an evolutionary biologist or a marine biologist, and has done nothing on that subject? Or even about human evolutionary development? He has no evidence, research or support for anyone with the expertise.
What next? We start taking his stock advice because he makes an absurd reference to trading?
Always get a full nights rest. Look to the ancient trilobite and you will see that after it rested, it was full of energy and ready to tackle the world head on! If you don't the post modernists will kill everyone.
We have a status tracking system and it works. JP just tells you how to use it to make your life better.
The thing is, what does it say to us that that system has been there in one way or another for 300+ million years?
If it was being used then and it is used now, it must be because it is of some evolutionary use, mustn't it?
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So why does Peterson talk about lobsters and hierarchies so much? Is it just because he thought that the whole hierarchy thing was an interesting factoid kind of like how I know that the original voice of Bugs Bunny hated carrots? Something that's interesting, but has literally no use outside of it being possibly fun to mention at cocktail parties? Or was he trying to make some broader, societal/cultural point perhaps...?
That it's been around for that long. That's it.
Not necessarily, no. Even if it is, it doesn't mean it is desirable.
Curiously, monogamy is rare in animals yet Peterson talks about how marriage should be between a man and a woman. Why isn't he telling us that we should have multiple partners like most other animals?
evolution is not teleological and nothing has an inherent purpose behind it
natural selection is simply a greedy optimization process that selects for "surviving" and "reproducing" that has been running for a very, very long time
there are lots of behaviors exhibited in basic animals that we do not find desirable - this is because as humans we have other priorities not limited to just "surviving" and "reproducing" - and the fact that animals have acted that way for a long time does not mean that the behavior is desirable or leads to a positive outcome
for example, you know how animals deal with the carrying capacity of land where they have no or few predators? they go wild until the environment can no longer sustain them all, and then they starve
we can see that this is a bad long term strategy AND that humans can fall into that trap too
brush your teeth thoroughly every morning and evening
failure to keep your teeth white will lead to disdain from your peers and dull your mental capabilities to the point of becoming a relativist
failure to keep your teeth white will lead to disdain from your peers and dull your mental capabilities to the point of becoming a relativist
You're literally posting a blog post to say that your assetion is scientific?
Am I getting this right?
If you want to make a point that body language's impact on behavior in humans is a scientific consensus, maybe share peer reviewed articles over blog posts that Milanda found interesting?
Milanda said:
And that shows he's a really bad teacher because it only lead to one thing, why the fuck is he using lobster to make a point that could be made with literally any vertebrate?
It diminishes his point and makes it looks like he's bad at biology on top of being bad at philosophy.
That's the thing though, the lobster sysetm is in no way similar to the human one, we do not share the same structure in nearly all ways (they have no fucking spine for god's sake) and there is literally no proof that the lobster behavior has remained identical for the last 300million years either.
You may not be aware of this but lobsters may have changed in the last 300million of years or so.
There's no such thing as "evolutionary use" in the way you're talking about, any biologist could tell you that. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how natural selection works.
I dunno about lobsters. I don't hear him talk about them that much. His idea of the "dominance heirarchy" is an abstraction of the human tendency to admire those above them and seek status and competence. It is the logical extrapolation of "if I was the best I could possibly be in all things, what would I be and what would I be capable of?" For abrahamic religions the answer is God, who is capable of creation, gives justice and guidance, etc. And then for Christianity specifically, that includes Jesus, son of God, who is a continuation of that thesis by being capable of miraculous acts, who embodies perfect love and forgiveness, and who can even escape death. This also explains why the tripartite God is necessary. If Jesus and God were separate, it wouldn't be a "single entity" at the top.
You see variations of this like, for instance, in Buddhism. Buddha does not serve the same logical function of God (he is not involved in creation, cannot change reality, etc.) but he does serve the same function as "the highest possible thing you could imagine", a perfectly self-actualized individual. So this heirarchy thing serves two purposes: first to explain psychologically why singular "perfect" beings occur in many beliefs and also to make the claim that ethical development is directional (and I think the latter is a good claim; it's been borne out in research on moral psychology by people like Jonathan Haidt).
The status tracking system is built inside your brain. There is not much you can do about that in your lifespan. If you consider feeling less anxious and looking competent desirable, you should use it in the manner indicated in the article I linked before. The same manner jordan indicates in the first chapter of 12 rules for life.
Humans are doing that right now. Using the planet as if its resources were unlimited. If we don't change that, billions will die.
As I said before, feeling less anxious and looking competent in the eyes of others is something desirable you can obtain by interacting with your status tracking system. Do you consider the status tracking system itself undesirable?
That further proves his point. If lobster evolved independently to have an status tracking system is because it must really be useful to survive.
You should probably cite some neuropsychology if you're going to make claims about the existence of circuitry that serves specific function in the human brain.
No, it proves that having it is not detrimental to survival for human and lobster biological niches.
Unless you can prove that this trait is the reason the human niche thrived over all other factors you do not have a point.
And that is if you can even prove that the nervous system between lobsters and humans are similar at all.
And no, serotonin working on both is not a proof.
Peterson repeatedly has said the human and lobster lines diverged about 350 million years ago, when it's actually ~700 million years ago. He gets basic stuff completely wrong.
Well he sure as shit didn't study lobsters.
It's not the same system.
Here's P Z Meyers, an actual evolutionary biologist, tearing this nonsense to pieces:
I've linked this video 3 times in this thread, maybe you'll be the first Peterson apologist to watch it.
Polyamory is built into our brains and yet Peterson keeps advocating for the traditional definition of marriage.
You keep coming back to body language and everyone here agrees with it without having to know a useless factoid about lobsters. If the point is to say that a straight back and puffed out chest makes you look and feel better Peterson could have chosen numerous other animals that are closer related to us than lobsters who do not have a social structure in the wild. Any of the primates, big cats, birds, so many but he chooses an invertebrate.
raterpillar, your vid is not 3hrs long so it's clearly too small to be of any interest to anyone following Peterson.
You're just jealous because we have the pain threshold to listen to cranks for untold hours!
Oh don't worry I share the same failing : I follow politics in 2 countries after all, I'm a glutton for punishment.
"status" naturally arises from the fact that we can perceive differences between corporeal forms or events and that we ascribe value - that alone will lead to different corporeal forms being valued differently
this does not mean that the idea of a "status" is inherently good or inherently bad - for example, it is a necessary enforcement mechanism of the social contract that we be able to point to harmful behavior and say "low status!" instead of having to always use force
but then we run into the problem of the fact that the idea of what "low status behavior" encompasses is something humans invented from inside their limited vantage point, and may in fact be neutral or desirable behavior
this is compounded by the fact that humans have lots of motivations beyond "surviving" and "reproducing" that society values preserving over maximizing "surviving" or "reproducing" a little more, and the fact that we theoretically understand the concept of preferring short-term choices that aren't maximal leading to long-term gain that far exceeds those short-term choices
presenting the "status hierarchy" as immutable and a natural consequence is misleading - the concept of status may always exist, but the values we ascribe to bind a particular status to an object or action is almost entirely subjective
for some, who the status hierarchy does not select against and who fit the roles prescribed by a society, it is good advice to say "hey, put your chin up, practice self-care like cleaning your room, and fake it til you make it", because the source of their suffering is mostly internal to themselves
for those who the status heirarchy selects against for stupid reasons that are an artifact from long ago, that advice will only help them a little bit, and they will always suffer until they take some form of mitigating action - which could be a simple as "leave a toxic environment" - because the source of their suffering is external to themselves
David Ricardo Again, no. You have a fundamental misconception of how evolutionary biology and natural selection works. We're talking about basic 101 stuff here.
Moreover, even if Peterson (and yourself) understood the actual biology behind it, it wouldn't justify any kind of philosophical reasoning, as that would be a textbook naturalistic fallacy.
Moreover, even if Peterson (and yourself) understood the actual biology behind it, it wouldn't justify any kind of philosophical reasoning, as that would be a textbook naturalistic fallacy.
Ricardo isn't being smart but JP's appeal to evolution comes from a misreading of American pragmatists. ...maybe? I'm out of my wheelhouse. But my understanding of them is entirely different from his.
Useful to survive =/= the reason the human niche thrived over all other factors. I am really tired of your strawmen. You keep like that, Im just gonna stop answering to your messages.
In what way is the trait you've isolated useful to survive?
You've shown that isn't detrimental to survival but so is our ability to wiggle our hears and you don't see anyone arguing that it is a useful trait for human survival, do you?
And stop calling everything you don't understand strawmen, it's tiring.
How is it useful to survive? We have many traits that still work but aren't useful for survival like the tail bone or the extra muscle in your wrist if you have one.
There's a follow-up video that goes into more depth for the people who just need to be whacked with the point over and over:
David Ricardo there's really no reason to swallow this bullshit. Stop humiliating yourself.
It's longer! You have higher chance of a Peterson's fan watching it!
e: holy hell it's pretty scathing.
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Jordan Peterson doesn't really believe in climate change btw
How does the tail bone or extra muscle in your wrist affect your life?
The status tracking system affects how you feel, how you behave, how others perceive you, how they behave around you... Do you think that if the status tracking system was worse than not having it, we would still have it?
i answered this on this page, the question is posing a false dilemma between "having the current status hierarchy" and "not having a status hierarchy" when there is the third option of "change the valuations underlying some flawed aspects of the status hierarchy and decouple it from survival needs" is also available, and also the answer is YES, that is something humans would definitely do
here's an essay about incentives, i'm gonna tag team it out for this post
You heard it, guys. David Ricardo thinks slavery is a-okay.
He said we should think about what kind of planet we want to leave to our descendents. He also said that in the 60s ocean resources were believed to be inexhaustible but now we know that's not the case.
I don't know what he thinks about the climate change, but it seems undeniable to me. Do you have a quote?
Too many Cathy Newmans in this post.
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Yeah but we shouldn't actually campaign to save it until we've finished cleaning our bedrooms.
For Peterson's claim on climate change,
reddit did a nice collection of tweets from the guy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpete..._change_a_collection/?st=jfliijc7&sh=f6515ade
Now unless lobster guy managed to post on twitter from the 60's...
reddit did a nice collection of tweets from the guy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpete..._change_a_collection/?st=jfliijc7&sh=f6515ade
Now unless lobster guy managed to post on twitter from the 60's...
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/542009013144408064
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/541997165695234048
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/540155016930000896
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/486349974804774912
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/485821302557528064
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/485807558666371075
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/485805993968676864
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/465888140658364416
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/442148887302656000
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/442141841794691072
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/231152713977704448
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/870510815295569920
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/783024867981549569
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/449677616396529665
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/224103250440359937
I edited the 60s thing. I wanted to say that in the 60s ocean resources were believed to be inexhaustible, not that Peterson believed that in the 60s.
That doesn't change that the guy is a full blown climate change denier and that's neither a new thing for him or something he discarded.
e: on top of that you will never see anyone publicly saying "fuck the planet, let's destroy it before our children can enjoy it" too.
Peterson attempts to step in to other fields of studies and largely get laughed at by the experts. You ever wonder why?
Using the term "global warming" to speak about climate change shows he isn't lying when he says he is not a climate change expert.
I do think climate change is a very serious issue, so I disagree with him.
It's the cultural Marxists.
I'm not even really joking. That conspiracy allows reactionaries to insulate themselves from any expert opinion because it is all tainted by the commie/SJW/liberal/marxist cabal.
That thread of anti-intellectualism is central to this style of alt-right friendly discourse. Which makes claims for Peterson's "intellectualism" by his acolytes so laughable.
Again, in case you missed them.
He's a full blown climate change denier, it's not a silly disagreement over warming/cooling or whatever.
Well sometimes I fall on my ass and my tail bone hurts. I'm just pointing out that we still have things in our body that have existed for millions of years and that doesn't meant that they are important.
Do you think that because lobsters have a dominance hierarchy and we have a dominance hierarchy that we both share a common ancestor that had a dominance hierarchy?
Well Peterson was torn a new one with that. I know a couple of people here have read and loved the book and they are being swindled by this guy.
Peterson learned a little factoid, thought it was mind blowing because he doesn't understand evolution, and has been spreading misinformation. But that's his MO apparently.
If they affected your behaviour in such a major way as the status tracking system does and were still in our body after millions of years, that would mean they are important.
Second question: Not necessarily but I wouldn't discard it.
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