Jordan Peterson is back

He wrote recently,

Qualified and expert researchers in such fields are already in great danger of being pushed aside by activists of the proper opinion. The rest of us will pay in the longer run, when we no longer have the will or the capacity to make use of the rare talents that make people highly competent and productive as scientists, technological innovators, engineers or mathematicians. Wake up, STEM denizens: your famous immunity to political concerns will not protect you against what is headed your way fast over the next five or so years.

4 thoughts on “Jordan Peterson is back

  1. “Twitter seems to exist primarily for the purpose of generating mobs — composed primarily of individuals who are hungry for blood and desiring to bask in the joys of reasonably risk-free reputation destruction, revenge and self-righteousness.”

    “Make Personal Destruction Risky Again”. Either that will be done by the state or a counter-mob in “prison gang politics”.

    Let me put it another way: “Fire The Peacetime Ideologies”

    What does it mean to be “serious”?

    Not Krugman’s “very serious people” hollow-seriousness, but actually serious, as in characterizing the rational thinking of mature adults who understand that life often involves making hard choices among highly-values trade-offs, and sometimes one must avoid dogmatic paralysis and compromise or sacrifice an ideal in dire circumstances in the face of clear and present dangers to avoid getting rolled over and annihilated.

    Being ‘serious’ just means being honest. Genuine Conviction instead of Virtue Signalling. Saying “I care a lot about this” and being willing to do what one can to back it up. To add, ” … but I refuse on principle to do what is both feasible and minimally necessary to support it’s continuation,” means you are not being honest, that you don’t really care very much about it, at least, not nearly as much as you care about the other principle more.

    A few years ago I coined the term “perpetuationism” which is merely an extension of the natural law principle of justified self defense. It is imposing a “seriousness” constraint on ideologies that one claims one hopes will survive and thrive in the future. You may have your beliefs, but if your beliefs are suicidal in the context of real threats, you aren’t being serious about anything but preferring surrender and suicide.

    So, for example, it’s clear that unless personal ruination via social media mob will certainly get people in a lot of hot water, the soft SJW reign of terror and speech-chilling intimidation and censorship will continue and expand and intensify until it becomes literally impossible to articular or hear a contrary opinion.

    What I’ve found is that when makes hot water proposals, one is met with little more than criticism from other anti-progressives, “Oh, that’s too distasteful and unprincipled. I can’t support *that*.”

    Those people are not serious. They are the Peacetime Anti-Progressives following their Peacetime Ideologies. Fire them. Quick!

  2. Although I am sure that Tomas Hudlicky is an enormously valuable contributor to progress and that his oppressors are a detriment to human flourishing, case studies, however compelling, tend to understate the nature of the threat to human welfare.

    We have had one member of Congress sic violent mobs against USA citizens based upon the publicly available campaign contributions information provided by the FEC. And just this week we have had a future member of Congress call for citizens to “be reported “ for supporting a particular candidate.

    And Soros’s attorney generals and public prosecutors giving cart blanche to violent mobs to destroy private property and threaten people in their homes while persecuting anyone resisting, seems a much bigger problem. Soros’s Kim Gardner, in St. Louis dismissed charges against all arrested violent rioters but now threatens legal action against homeowners who sought to protect their homes from violent mobs invading private property.

    With such flagrant atrocities and the wholesale corruption of the rule of law across the USA, I find it hard to prioritize sympathy for people who take their bread from the corrupt credentials industry.

    There is no real difference between what Tomas Hudlicky had to say, and what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King had to say in his “I have a dream” speech. Today, King’s thoughts on non-violence are deemed reactionary and the the domain of far-right extremism. But worst of all, the eradication of the foundational pillar institutions of democracy such as equality before the law and the ability to participate in a free, fair , and legitimate electoral process, means that there is no participatory non-violent alternative.

    Just as in Hong Kong, the most important thing any sentient person in the USA can think about now, this July 4th, is how to escape.

    • “There is no real difference between what Tomas Hudlicky had to say, and what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King had to say in his “I have a dream” speech. Today, King’s thoughts on non-violence are deemed reactionary and the the domain of far-right extremism.”

      There is no possibility of a stable political situation without being able to hold the Schelling Point line on a clear ideological distinction and alternative.

      For a generation or so, that line divided “equal outcomes social justice” on the left with “equal opportunity meritocratic fairness” on the right. For the former position, racial and other group-identity-based preferences were mandatory. For the latter, they could never be tolerated as anything but a temporary and extraordinary exception to a general prohibition.

      But now, it is not even possible to articulate the latter position without risking social cancellation. It went from completely mainstream and absolutely respectable to ruinous heresy in no time.

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