TIL: Today I Learned

[Traitorfish]

I liked that movie. Never read the comics, so what am I missing?

EDIT: Nope, it was the reboot I watched.

The readaptation.

 

[Mouthwash]

The 1995 film page calls it a reboot, but I'd take your word over Wikipedia's.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not just my word...

Spoiler :

 

[Kyriakos]

That Sly movie at least had one cool opening (iirc) scene, with the massive wall and deaths associated with trying to enter.

 

[Ajidica]

TIL Gary Numan is still making music, and it is pretty good.

 

[Tigranes]

Australian government ministers can no longer have sexual relationships with staffers.

 

[Traitorfish]

Is that a news item, or are you issuing a decree?

 

[Tigranes]

I just learned about new developments in Australia. True story.

 

[Hygro]

TIL that Jordan Peterson used to post on Quora and his answers are actually pretty good.

Why do I find people's small talk boring?


13 Answers

Jordan B Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, a TVO essayist, lecturer and ...
Answered Apr 3, 2016 · Author has 92 answers and 3.5m answer views

Because you aren't good at listening and then carefully and attentively broadening the conversation. This may in part be because you are cynical with regards to the beginnings of social interaction. Why should strangers offer you anything of real value or take a risk with you until you have demonstrated your ability to handle simple social tasks competently (say without sarcasm or dismissiveness)? So they start off trading in pennies to check you out. You can be virtually certain, as well, that if you find initial small talk boring then the people who are boring you find you, in turn, awkward, charmless, equally boring and perhaps even a bit narcissistic.
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I've always wanted the words for this, this is amazing.

 

[Farm Boy]

I just started listening to some of what he says instead of reading about anger at him today. If I remember the face right. Not sure I do.

But like you said in the other thread, I wonder how much of this is Google deciding what I think(about).

 

[Hygro]

I just started listening to some of what he says instead of reading about anger at him today. If I remember the face right. Not sure I do.

But like you said in the other thread, I wonder how much of this is Google deciding what I think(about).

Haha yeah, I'm glad I found him before I found the judgments of him. Also glad I found his lectures to students before I found his speeches to conservative orgs, because that would have ruined it for me. He's so clear when he's in his zone, but he's sometimes tripping in the uncanny valley of his own expertise and it's where he can't see the next stage that the current one seems like the wrong path.

 

[Lexicus]

He also is almost totally ignorant of Marxism, post-structuralism, and most of the philosophy and thought that he criticizes all the time. But that is a damn good answer to that question.

 

[Mouthwash]

I just started listening to some of what he says instead of reading about anger at him today. If I remember the face right. Not sure I do.

I don't think there's a lot of anger. A lot of smear pieces, yes, but that's only representative of a certain class of journalist/intellectual.

He also is almost totally ignorant of Marxism, post-structuralism, and most of the philosophy and thought that he criticizes all the time. But that is a damn good answer to that question.

Marxism I can buy, but I don't think he's strawmanning post-structuralism. In fact, he sounds almost charitable towards it. Could you show where you think he falls short?

 

[Lexicus]

Marxism I can buy, but I don't think he's strawmanning post-structuralism. In fact, he sounds almost charitable towards it. Could you show where you think he falls short?

I mean, one of the basic demonstrations of his ignorance is that he refers to "cultural Marxism" when in fact Marxism is one of the structures that poststructuralism was uh...post-ing. Dogmatic Marxism is totally incompatible with post-structuralist thought and indeed you can find dogmatic Marxists denouncing "postmodernism" and "identity politics" in terms very similar to the ones Peterson uses, although they are mounting a defense of working-class revolutionary politics rather than "Western civilization" and "the enlightenment."

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2018/01/23/postmodernism-not-take-place-jordan-petersons-12-rules-life/

This is a good review of Peterson's new book. The book is horrible on all kinds of levels. Ironically, given the fact that you're apparently a fan, his critique of what he calls postmodernism (from the book, it doesn't even appear that he's aware that a thing called 'poststructuralism' exists) basically originated from anti-Semitic conspiracy theories:

The conflation of postmodernism and Marxism may come as some surprise to those who identify as belonging to either side of the equation. Perhaps the best-known theorization of postmodernity, Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, conceives of the period as an object of inquiry to which Marxist analysis may be applied, not a theoretical perspective. Today, it is not uncommon to see condemnations of postmodernism and pleas for a return to Enlightenment rationality in the pages of Jacobin. But Peterson is not the only ideologue to elide the distinction between these usually opposed frameworks. This strange conspiracy theory has increasingly gained traction among the far right, famously appearing in 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manifesto Anders Brevik distributed before he murdered 77 people in Norway.

Its origins were surprisingly deliberate, emerging from a paleoconservative Washington think tank called the Free Congress Foundation. The FCF was founded by Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Heritage Foundation and namer of the so-called Moral Majority movement. Weyrich also created a TV network called National Empowerment Television, a short-lived predecessor to Fox News, which aired a documentary in 1999 called “Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School.” Hosted by a pipe-wielding human bleach stain named William Lind, it presents an account of the origin of what we now call “identity politics.” These came, Lind tells us, from the Institute for Social Research, or the Frankfurt School. There, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and their cronies created a school of thought called “critical theory,” which the FCF gave the name “cultural Marxism.” This frightening idea fused the impertinence of Marx with the indecency of Freud, producing a new threat to Western values far beyond those posed by Copernicus or Darwin. This argument was elevated to the surface of political discourse by Patrick Buchanan, in his 2001 Oswald Spengler rewrite, The Death of the West. As recently as 2017, Buchanan condemned “Postmodern America” in a column defending Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.

Like all the classic conspiracy theories, the antisemitism here is barely concealed. One proponent of the theory, psychologist Kevin MacDonald, has argued that cultural Marxism is an expression of what he calls a “group evolutionary strategy” characteristic of Jewish people. MacDonald acknowledges that not all Jews are radical leftists, but argues that regardless, these movements are “Jewishly motivated.”

Here is the bit from the review most directly relevant to your question, by the way:

Neither Derrida nor Foucault is cited in 12 Rules for Life. Apparently, not only has Peterson never bothered to actually read them, he seems not to have even read their Wikipedia entries. The only relevant citation is of a book called Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, which he customarily recommends at speaking engagements. The author, Stephen Hicks, is Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford University, and an acolyte of Ayn Rand.

The review goes on to address his points in more detail. You should give the whole thing a read.

 

[Hygro]

He also is almost totally ignorant of Marxism, post-structuralism, and most of the philosophy and thought that he criticizes all the time. But that is a damn good answer to that question.

This is what I mean. He's the best in his lane, but he doesn't seem to know when he's ignorant and outside his lane because he doesn't know he hasn't thought it through.... Thinking about something a lot does not mean thinking it through. He goes from expert to CFC poster real fast.

 

[Lexicus]

He goes from expert to CFC poster real fast.

Ouch man

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not seeing how anyone would dare say anything if they didn't read Derrida or Foucault. Which is why both Derrida and Foucault are relegated to garbage; they didn't read themselves first.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't know why everyone hates on post-structuralism, it seems to me to be the logical progression of the Enlightenment tradition of critical inquiry into received wisdom that Peterson & co claim to be defending.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am not hating on it; i am not even aware of it. I just noted that it isn't logical to claim one has to have read (specific) x before presenting anything of note, cause then nothing would be of note due to (obvious) progressions. Re this specific psychiatrist (?), i also don't know him, and personally don't agree with his small-talk comment. Besides, an actual psychiatrist should be aware of different personality traits, and less dismissive or dictating of what is to be done, no? Else he comes across as a tv blowhard, imo.

 

[Lexicus]

I just noted that it isn't logical to claim one has to have read x before presenting anything of note, cause then nothing would be of note due to (obvious) progressions.

Well, that's kind of silly. If you're going to engage in serious critique of an intellectual tradition, you should first have at least engaged with some of the important works in that tradition.

don't agree with his small-talk comment

For some reason, I'm unsurprised