Jordan Peterson

[inthesomeday]

A favorite meme among leftist internet circles is the Crow as a rebuttal of the lobster, because crow societies are known for horizontal collectivism.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Talking to Manfred about blah blah blah.

Talking to Lexicus about anything is useless because I say so and I'm awesome (despite being incapable of not misrepresenting people I disagree with all the time). Or something.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

By the way, did you know that bees have a monarchical structure with the queen at the head? Unlike lobsters, bees live on the ground and not under the sea. How come Jordan Peterson doesn't talk about bees?

Bees do not have a monarchical structure with the queen at the head. The queen (which apparently used to be called the King, because the misogynistic Aristotle figured that the biggest bee in the hive must be a male ruler) is just a mother, not a ruler or leader in any sense.

Bee hives are basically decentralized anarchist societies, where each worker makes her own decisions based on pheromone cues sent from fellow worker bees. The queens pheromones help suppress the fertility of the workers (although about 1% of workers still do have ovaries capable of producing eggs that develop into drones that could mate with the queen, and rare cases of thelytoky can occur) and discourage workers from building ore chambers for competing queens, but they do not control the hive.

The only male bees are the drones, who serve no purpose other than passing on their genes. They build nothing, gather no food, and have no social status. They are just flying sperm delivery systems, and are themselves haploid like the sperm they produce.

 

[Bootstoots]

Consider this: my nephew's parents are both math teachers, and when he was growing up, they started teaching him counting when he was 2-3, then pushed him to do algebra in first-second grade (7-8 years old in Russia). They enrolled him in the физмат (physics+math) schools, so by the time he graduated he already knew thermodynamics, theory of relativity, and the theoretical underpinnings of calculus. Is it because he is a boy? Is it because he is naturally talented? — neither. He actually never really enjoyed it and was definitely not a Mikhail Lomonosov level genius, but he was trained to do physics and math, and that's what he does in his work now.

Another example: my parents felt that the Soviet Union was going to collapse one day and that English would be the next international language, so when I was 12, they hired an English tutor who forced me to listen to vinyls with English speech and drilled the language into me. This has little to do with my gender or natural capabilities. The reason I am comfortable speaking English nowadays is all because my parents invested in my education early.

If you invest in children and encourage them to do something from an early age, of ******* course they will succeed in it. But when girls are told that "fighting is not girly", "science is not for women" and other stuff, how the hell do you expect these children to grow up and pursue what they want? If a 11-year-old girl wants to do physics, but you push her into homemaking, she can't do much because of parental authority and control.

I feel like this is such basic information that everyone should understand it: children often become what their parents raised to be. And the older people get, the more they resemble their parents in habits and views (generally). So if you raise boys and girls differently, of course you are going to see different results.

Sure, no doubt this matters quite a bit and has some significant effect on gender ratios. Judit Polgar and her sisters are an interesting example in chess - the father raised all three of his daughters with intensive chess instruction from a very young age, with the result that two of them became grandmasters with the other coming close. Judit Polgar is by far the best female chess player ever and reached the top 100 at the age of 12, which was a record for both sexes at the time. But then again, the flip side is that there is only one woman in the top 100 in chess right now, and only three have ever been ranked in the top 100. The level of social conditioning and discrimination in chess specifically would have to be absolutely extreme compared to similar levels of discrimination that have existed in every other field that women have broken into to a greater degree, such as all sciences, and there's no evidence this is the case.

Why is this assumption shaky? If you look at present-day data and try to explain imbalances in terms of nature and not discrimination, then you end up with shaky reasoning yourself. For example, the US has had 45 presidents, 44 of whom are white males. Does that mean that any other ethnic/gender group is simply incapable of leading a nation? But if that's the case, how come all African presidents are black? And what about Asian countries? Or what about women? Women have been queens/empresses/presidents in every major country except the US. How come the US has not had a woman president in 45 tries? (Actually, more, since presidents get re-elected).

I don't like Hillary Clinton, but can you explain to me how Trump is better qualified to be a president, for example? Is she not a war hawk, like every other US male president? Is she not a pro-corporate capitalist, like every other male president? Aren't her policies basically the same as her husband's?

I don't doubt that sexism in all its forms is behind this - whatever the equilibrium ratio is, it's clearly not so skewed for 45-0 to be a plausible outcome. My point is that it's unlikely that, in a hypothetical presidential democratic society with no gender discrimination or conditioning, the number of female presidents would probably still not be 50-50 or statistically indistinguishable from it. There probably is some biological sex effect on political and business leadership.

Of course this equilibrium ratio is unmeasurable, because no such society exists. I just think it's faulty to assume that everything would go to 50-50 if it weren't for sexism in all its forms.

Boots, this isn't even an assumption. There is absolutely, as a matter of established fact, "a large amount of social conditioning or outright discrimination/harassment" that works against women in basically every area of society.

I don't doubt that this is the case. The assumption I'm talking about is that the gender ratio in all fields would be at or near 50-50, were it not for social conditioning, discrimination, and harassment. It could very well be that, even if we somehow eliminated all such barriers, physics would only go to, say, 70-30 M-F, because men simply are more likely to be interested in physics irrespective of social conditions. It's not that the barriers women face aren't very real and worth eliminating or reducing as much as possible.

Literally yes. You can’t even add like Joan of Arc without being accused of snubbing Napoleon.

Joan of Arc was not the political leader of France. If she had been, she would have been a much better choice. But most of the other female leaders are worth including.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Bee hives are basically decentralized anarchist societies, where each worker makes her own decisions based on pheromone cues sent from fellow worker bees.

Bees other than the queen also move through a succession of roles in the course of their lifetime:

Bee researchers had already observed that honeybees, including Africanized Apis mellifera, better known as “killer” bees, divide tasks by age. As workers get older, their roles change from nursing and cleaning the hive to guarding and foraging.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't doubt that this is the case. The assumption I'm talking about is that the gender ratio in all fields would be at or near 50-50, were it not for social conditioning, discrimination, and harassment. It could very well be that, even if we somehow eliminated all such barriers, physics would only go to, say, 70-30 M-F, because men simply are more likely to be interested in physics irrespective of social conditions. It's not that the barriers women face aren't very real and worth eliminating or reducing as much as possible.

50-50 is what I would expect if we went fully eusocial and severed the biological link between people with vaginas and uteruses and stuff and reproduction. I think it would be far closer to 50-50 than to 70-30 under conditions you describe.

 

[metalhead]

Peterson is kind of squirrelly when you try to pin him to a specific position on this sort of thing, but he heavily implies he supports the "that's the way it is because nature" side, while suggesting that women should try to compensate by being less agreeable in negotiations and the like.

Overall, though, his thinking on feminism is not at all advanced - I don't know what he would do if you tried to point to studies showing that less agreeable women are treated worse than equally disagreeable men. I also don't know what efforts at gender equality he would support and which he wouldn't.

Ultimately, I think, the solution is just the pragmatic one of trying to remove barriers as much as possible and then finding out whether each field remains with a heavily slanted gender ratio or not. That's kind of what is happening already, slowly and imperfectly.

The problem is that removing those barriers is made explicitly more difficult by "public intellectuals" running around claiming that society is merely ordered according to natural gender differences and that removing barriers is only causing unnecessary strife and disadvantaging men.

My understanding from admittedly limited exposure to Peterson is that he tries to be "squirrely" about things so that he can embolden the right while claiming that isn't what he's doing.

 

[inthesomeday]

Joan of Arc was not the political leader of France. If she had been, she would have been a much better choice. But most of the other female leaders are worth including.

Mahatma Gandhi has led India in every single iteration of Civilization yet. Attila the Hun was only very arguably a political leader of a nomadic war confederation. Hiawatha may well have not existed, and Gilgamesh certainly didn’t. Even if he did, he was more of a warrior than a king. Depending on your definition of “political leader” many further male leaders may disqualify here as well.

 

[Bootstoots]

50-50 is what I would expect if we went fully eusocial and severed the biological link between people with vaginas and uteruses and stuff and reproduction. I think it would be far closer to 50-50 than to 70-30 under conditions you describe.

The problem is that removing those barriers is made explicitly more difficult by "public intellectuals" running around claiming that society is merely ordered according to natural gender differences and that removing barriers is only causing unnecessary strife and disadvantaging men.

My understanding from admittedly limited exposure to Peterson is that he tries to be "squirrely" about things so that he can embolden the right while claiming that isn't what he's doing.

It could actually be that, while the argument I've posted is probably right to some unquantifiable degree, taking it as valid and promoting it is a bad idea because it simply entrenches discriminatory practices in the real world. And, of course, it gives people the impression you're really in favor of gender inequality or think that things should remain the way they are now, because people who bring that up usually are doing just that. Which, I agree, is probably what Peterson is doing.

Peterson does argue from a broadly center-right perspective, and I think it is valid to say that he's disingenuous with his arguments when he argues this sort of thing. That is a point that Contrapoints makes as well. I really would like to see someone confront him about this during a civilized discussion and get him to actually state his real position.

Mahatma Gandhi has led India in every single iteration of Civilization yet. Attila the Hun was only very arguably a political leader of a nomadic war confederation. Hiawatha may well have not existed, and Gilgamesh certainly didn’t. Even if he did, he was more of a warrior than a king. Depending on your definition of “political leader” many further male leaders may disqualify here as well.

I always thought Gandhi was a not-great choice for that reason too. That said, though, he led the opposition to British rule and played a pivotal role in Indian independence. Still, I'd have picked either Nehru or, if we wanted to maximize the number of strong female leaders, Indira Gandhi. The mythological rulers are a problem too. Still, I think it's pretty clear that Joan of Arc was not really a leader of France in the way that most other Civ rulers were (IRL or otherwise).

 

[Lexicus]

I always thought Gandhi was a not-great choice for that reason too. That said, though, he led the opposition to British rule and played a pivotal role in Indian independence. Still, I'd have picked either Nehru or, if we wanted to maximize the number of strong female leaders, Indira Gandhi. The mythological rulers are a problem too. Still, I think it's pretty clear that Joan of Arc was not really a leader of France in the way that most other Civ rulers were (IRL or otherwise).

I'd have picked Asoka, no question.

 

[inthesomeday]

No love for Chandragupta or Chandragupta Maurya?

 

[Lexicus]

I mean yeah but Asoka's moar better

 

[Kyriakos]

What is the crab parallel meme based on? Territorialism? Slow-movement (metaphorically)?

 

[inthesomeday]

A vague “natural hierarchy”

 

[Lexicus]

He claims that lobsters exhibit a dominance-hierarchy and that they have the same kinds of receptors in their brains that acknowledge status (I'm not exactly clear on this point) as humans do, so therefore hierarchies are natural. But hierarchies are no more "natural" than egalitarian or horizontal organization, so what's the point of claiming that hierarchy is "natural"? All sorts of things are "natural." Picking your nose is natural, but that doesn't mean you should do it at the dinner table or that other people won't get grossed out about it.

 

[Kyriakos]

He claims that lobsters exhibit a dominance-hierarchy and that they have the same kinds of receptors in their brains that acknowledge status (I'm not exactly clear on this point) as humans do, so therefore hierarchies are natural. But hierarchies are no more "natural" than egalitarian or horizontal organization, so what's the point of claiming that hierarchy is "natural"? All sorts of things are "natural." Picking your nose is natural, but that doesn't mean you should do it at the dinner table or that other people won't get grossed out about it.

Well, if that is his claim, indeed it is very poor.

 

[Lexicus]

We shouldn't let the fact that Jordan Peterson likes them obscure the fact that lobsters are badass, though. C'mon lobsty....

 

[inthesomeday]

He claims that lobsters exhibit a dominance-hierarchy and that they have the same kinds of receptors in their brains that acknowledge status (I'm not exactly clear on this point) as humans do, so therefore hierarchies are natural. But hierarchies are no more "natural" than egalitarian or horizontal organization, so what's the point of claiming that hierarchy is "natural"? All sorts of things are "natural." Picking your nose is natural, but that doesn't mean you should do it at the dinner table or that other people won't get grossed out about it.

Alternatively nothing is natural.

(Although the hundreds of thousands of years of almost definitely non-hierarchical social organization says something to me)

 

[Yeekim]

He claims that lobsters exhibit a dominance-hierarchy and that they have the same kinds of receptors in their brains that acknowledge status (I'm not exactly clear on this point) as humans do, so therefore hierarchies are natural. But hierarchies are no more "natural" than egalitarian or horizontal organization, so what's the point of claiming that hierarchy is "natural"? All sorts of things are "natural." Picking your nose is natural, but that doesn't mean you should do it at the dinner table or that other people won't get grossed out about it.

Obviously, there are many for whom "it's natural" means "therefore, we shouldn't attempt to change it".

What it actually means, imho, is "now that we understand it a bit better, we've improved our chances to successfully change it, should we so wish".

 

[Lexicus]

Obviously, there are many for whom "it's natural" means "therefore, we shouldn't attempt to change it".

What it actually means, imho, is "now that we understand it a bit better, we've improved our chances to successfully change it, should we so wish".

If so, this is a first, because before you literally everyone who told me "hierarchy is natural" actually meant either "hierarchy is desirable" or "there's no changing it, so we're stuck with it."