7 thoughts on “Jordan Peterson and Bari Weiss

  1. “The current situation…” What is it? I dont even know.

    I did not have time to get thru it all. Not a big fan of either participant but…nonetheless…

    Couple random observations:

    1. Very surprised there are still Great Books curricula in colleges. To read here I would have thought political appointees were writing mandatory textbooks or something. I went to one of those Great Books colleges back in the day. Good times.

    2. Two stints on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I did not know that.

    3. Too much jaw-jaw.

    4. Systemic means the primary purpose of? No. Hard to get past this part.

    Bottom line – 2 BW podcasts in 2 days is quite enough. And JP is kinda boring I’m sorry guys.

    • “And JP is kinda boring I’m sorry guys.”

      No worries. I agree.

      For any JP fans out there, please tell me why I should pay attention to him. I tried to read the first book, but hucked it after the first two chapters.

      • In my opinion, the most interesting work he has produced was his lectures on Psychology of Personality that he put on YouTube before he became famous.

        In particular, the parts where he goes into the five-factor model are really interesting, both in the sense that the FFM is a useful lense for analyzing human behavior (and how it connects to other traits like intelligence, creativity, political affiliation, criminality, etc.) as well as a meta-level explanation of how to tell whether social scientists are describing something real with their theories.

    • Most people who use ‘systemic’ or ‘systematic’ in politics or social science don’t seem to know what they mean in any case. Mostly it seems like a way to give a sciencey feel to a poorly defined phenomenon.

      • Inso far as you’re right, that it’s a way to give a sciencey feel to a poorly defined phenomenon, it’s foes, e.g. JP, should have no problem making that simple point, in simple terms. Where, if anywhere, do they do that?

  2. The problem with JP podcasts is that you can’t have it on as background and have it make any sense at all. It is hard work to connect his dots, and if you are not connecting them it quickly becomes psycho-babble.

    This brings me to the other problem with JP – every once in a while you get a huge ahah moment, but 5 minutes after you turn it off, you’ve forgotten what it was.

    The bottom line is that I am not quite smart enough to get much value. Brett Weinstein calls this a self-selecting audience.

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