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[Politics] Jordan Peterson
- Thread starter dingodan
- Start date
seagulls4ever
New member
- Oct 2, 2003
- 4,338
I've seen a bit of him. He often says things like "the evidence clearly shows" (without giving specifics) a, b or c - and his supporters lap it up because they don't know any better and assume he knows what he's taking about - but when you go a bit deeper and look into what he has actually said, his evidence is often debatable, misinterpreted or outright wrong. I can see his appeal to certain groups, but I think I'd class him as a slightly more reasonable and a more well read version of Lauren Southern. He's got some interesting points to make, but he's not this super-intellectual who somehow 'schools everyone' that he's made out to be.
Brightonfan1983
Tiny member
Brightonfan1983
Tiny member
Is there? Or is that what he is asserting? I agree with you on the stripping back of what he says though - from what I've read of his stuff (not a huge amount admittedly) there doesn't seem to be anything different from the self-help/self-empowering gurus of the 80s who tell people what they want to hear.
*ducks*
Bladders
Twats everywhere
Work it out for yourself
I’m not here to spoon feed you
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Bladders
Twats everywhere
Same lazy generalisation of something that doesn’t exist
Bit like all Muslims are terrorists .
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Brightonfan1983
Tiny member
Not sure what I've said that's riled you. What is she?
You *are* here to explain your comments though, if they're not making sense.
You *are* here to explain your comments though, if they're not making sense.
OMG. I would go down on bended knee with my arms raised in exultation if this applied to my employers (one of the UK's 'top 5' unis). We are run by 'performance management' culture overseen by 'impactful researchers' (over-funded psychopaths).
Good thread. Interesting subject. Saw the original interview. He was lightly mocking a lazy journalist. But it was too easy for him and I think he's a bit of a passive agressive sneery bully. A Reese Mogg type.
Regarding 'the gender pay gap', my own union rants about this. But it does not factor in the gender grade gap. There are far more older highly paid professors that are male, the product of female 'drop out' (which is a problem) and this skews the average. But my union is overrun by fools. How to destroy a legitimate grievance in a nanosecond....the real problem was the pressure on women during child rearing BUT there is no pressure now - it is illegal and there are loads of programmes to bring research active women up to speed after maternity leave. This will trickle through to the headline stats in the next 15 years, and my guess is that women will overtake men in academia.
How I hate wilful innumeracy.
sjamesb3466
Well-known member
General sweeping statement backed up with little to no evidence, I am guessing you have attended one of his seminars?
The lobster/human hierarchy extrapolation.
Twice.
dingodan
New member
- Feb 16, 2011
- 10,080
- Thread starter
- #36
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong here.
He said that there is a popular idea that hierarchies in human societies are a social construct. He then went on to point out that we diverged from lobsters in evolutionary history, and that lobsters, like us, have hierarchies and have a built in nervous system mechanism which runs on Serotonin (like us) for dealing with those hierarchies. His suggestion being that this serves to demonstrate that the existence of hierarchies in human societies is not a social construct. Because lobsters living thousands of years ago weren't exposed to human societies and can't have been influenced to form hierarchies by it. (Not to mention, they are lobsters...)
That seems pretty sound logic, and it certainly doesn't seem to qualify as "[his evidence being] debatable, misinterpreted or outright wrong." unless you meant something else? (You'll need to elaborate)
Let me know if I misunderstood what you meant though, and if there are any other, perhaps better, examples you can think of.
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seagulls4ever
New member
- Oct 2, 2003
- 4,338
He's a bit of a jack of all trades and master of none, displaying superficial knowledge in many different areas, which has been criticised by actual experts in those areas.
The examples are numerous. You can probably find lots with a bit of Googling.
Here's a very basic criticism based on this video starting around the 15 min mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmH7JUeVQb8&feature=youtu.be&t=900
He says you can't stop smoking without any sort of supernatural intervention / mystical experience.
"There aren't really any, any reliable chemical means for inducing smoking cessation."
Ok, so first we are ignoring any sort of psychological interventions, or a combination of psychological and pharmacological interventions (for which there is some evidence), and going straight to pharmacological interventions it seems (also ignoring just giving up on your own but presumably we are talking about addicted individuals here who by definition can't give up).
"You can give bupropion, but it doesn't work very well".
This drug helps about 1 in 5 people give up smoking (based on placebo controlled studies). Interpret that as you wish, but it's already clear you can stop smoking without some supernatural/mystical intervention through the use of this drug.
We're also ignoring other pharmacological interventions but let's leave that to the side.
"If you give people magic mushrooms, psilocybin, and they have a mystical experience, they have about an 85 percent chance of smoking cessation."
Ok, now we are talking about another pharmacological intervention. But he says it's not evidence for psilocybin doing the job, it's the combination of psilocybin and the mystical experience, because it doesn't work if you don't have the mystical experience.
I don't know what specific evidence he's talking about, but it's possibly this article here, which is the closest match I could find: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4342293/
I've only skimmed the article, but it's an interesting read so I'll go back to it and find out more later.
He said you only need one dose, but the article says subjects had 2 or 3 doses. That's not really hugely important in the context of things.
Usually you need quite a bit of evidence to make such strong claims. Multiple placebo controlled studies and and then a meta-analysis after many years of data from different researchers.
The problems with this study are that there are only 15 subjects and it's open-label (not placebo controlled), with no control group. 80% (12/15) displayed smoking cessation after 6 months. 60% had what they classed as a 'complete' mystical experience, and cessation was correlated with level of mystical experience. At long-term follow up (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641975/) 60% were smoking abstinent.
Cognitive behavioural therapy was used as well.
"It doesn't work if you don't have the experience."
Well, there might be a correlation based on a small data set, but not everyone was classed as having a complete mystical experience.
Then there's some talk about how this is evidence for supernatural experiences in helping people to stop smoking, which I won't go into.
"The psilocybin doesn't directly have an impact on the smoking behaviour, it has to elicit what's described subjectively as a mystical experience, and you can get physiological indicators of that mystical experience"
I didn't see anything about physiological indicators in this study, but perhaps I need to look further into the literature. The study used questionnaires.
"You might say that's not enough to prove that it's a mystical experience, but you know, you're conscious, and I accept that, it's like you accept all sorts of things without being able to demonstrate their validity with every possible objective criteria"
Ok, but science goes to great lengths to try to be objective.
"It depends on how you define supernatural."
Ok.
Perhaps it's about having a profound experience? For example, in one study 71% of people give up smoking after a heart attack (usually also requiring nicotine replacement therapy). Although I suspect here it's more the fear of having another heart attack.
So you can see that there are some truths to what he says, but he never gives the full picture. Instead of letting science provide the conclusions, he goes in with his own conclusions, and tries to fit the science around that. He regularly talks in absolutes when it's often a lot more nuanced than that. He likes a bit of pseudoscience thrown in as well. It's all very superficial.
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Why did he choose the lobster though? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...econsider-the-lobster/?utm_term=.ba218cdddfb5
Youtube PZ myers lobsters.
dingodan
New member
- Feb 16, 2011
- 10,080
- Thread starter
- #40
He never actually say you cannot stop smoking without a mystical experience (although he said "not really", which I accept is quite close to saying that), when he elaborated he said there "aren't really any reliable chemical means" of doing so, which I think is pretty on point.
I had a quick look at the study, there are other studies into this and plenty of articles, so it's quite possible he was taking into account more data than that of the study you linked to, but even that study statistically significantly correlates cessation not simply with the use of Psilocybin but the level of self reported mystical experience, that's important. It explains why he would say "it's not evidence for mushrooms doing the job", because these results suggest that the cessation was not the direct result of a pharmacological intervention, but rather an indirect result of pharmacological intervention and a direct result of mystical experience induced by it.
Which is what he basically says here: ""The psilocybin doesn't directly have an impact on the smoking behaviour, it has to elicit what's described subjectively as a mystical experience, and you can get physiological indicators of that mystical experience".
Also when goes on to say that you can get physiological indicators of a mystical experience, he doesn't mean in relation to this study, he means in general. If you measure physiological response (for example galvanic skin response) during a self reported mystical experience you can observe statistically significant changes in physiology during those experiences. This is quite well known, and I'm not (and I'm sure he's not) saying that this proves anything supernatural, it just proves that an experience is being had, it can (and will) be entirely subjective, the point is that you can measure it and verify whether an experience is being had, or not. So for the purposes of studies into this you can pin down the experience with more than just self reporting measures (although as you say, the study you linked to seems to rely on self reporting measures and doesn't verify any physiological change).
On the "There's no need to prove it was a mystical experience" point, my interpretation of what he is saying is more like this: Whether it was or wasn't something real (really supernatural) is irrelevant, the fact that it is subjectively experienced is sufficient, since we aren't trying to prove the existence of the supernatural, we are trying to prove the effectiveness of a subjective mystical experience. At least that is my interpretation of that part. - Infact having listened a little further he goes on to explain that this is what he was saying.
When you say "Perhaps it's about having a profound experience?", I think that sums up what he is talking about, just a particular kind of profound experience, but it's the having of the experience, he certainly isn't saying, for example, that God or something supernatural intervenes to help a smoker quit. He is a clinical psychologist, so the core of his explanations for most things you would expect to be human psychology, and from what I have heard from him that seems to be the case.
But things become complicated when you incorporate, for example, a consideration of human psychology with a consideration of theology or mysticism for example. Because when you look at the relationship between these things it becomes impossible to untangle and seperate them in ways which are satisfactory (expecially to an objectivist). Look at the work of Carl Jung for example, if someone came accross some of the works of Jung for the first time they could easily be forgiven for assuming he was a priest or a mystic rather than a scientist, his area of interest was never really the mystical though, it was the Human Being, it's just difficult (or perhaps impossible) to deal with those things seperately.
By the way thanks for posting that discussion, I haven't seen it and it looks really interesting, I'll definately give it a watch.
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