I first noticed him (approvingly) when he stood up against the Canadian government's attempts to force the use of gender-neutral pronouns when talking to trans people, and - despite being a miserable old lefty - I find a lot of what he says quite interesting. Many interviewers (such as Cathy Newman) and critics have let themselves down by deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting what he says and believes on various subjects. Predictably, that led to a load of his dim white male alt-right followers bigging him up as 'destroying', 'owning' or 'schooling' some 'left-wing' interviewers/academics/feminists on YouTube clips, when all he was doing was having a discussion with them.
He's certainly against Marxists and the left-wing domination of many university governing and student bodies, but is he actually very far to the right in everything he says? The fact that he has been taken up as a hero and spokesman for the right by a lot of the aforesaid dim white males certainly hasn't hurt his book or lecture ticket sales.
Showed Newman up for what she is .
JP: I like the countryside
CN: So what your saying is we should nuke the city’s ?
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He also preaches a gospel of masculinity at a time when there is a crisis of masculinity in culture
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*
What is she? I'm curious.
Who are the dim white males / alt right people are you talking about?
Work it out for yourself
I’m not here to spoon feed you
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I first noticed him (approvingly) when he stood up against the Canadian government's attempts to force the use of gender-neutral pronouns when talking to trans people, and - despite being a miserable old lefty - I find a lot of what he says quite interesting. Many interviewers (such as Cathy Newman) and critics have let themselves down by deliberately misunderstanding or misrepresenting what he says and believes on various subjects. Predictably, that led to a load of his dim white male alt-right followers bigging him up as 'destroying', 'owning' or 'schooling' some 'left-wing' interviewers/academics/feminists on YouTube clips, when all he was doing was having a discussion with them.
He's certainly against Marxists and the left-wing domination of many university governing and student bodies, but is he actually very far to the right in everything he says? The fact that he has been taken up as a hero and spokesman for the right by a lot of the aforesaid dim white males certainly hasn't hurt his book or lecture ticket sales.
Lefties are petrified of Jordan. He speaks in facts that they can’t handle.
Interesting, do you some examples I can take a look at?
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.
Interesting, do you some examples I can take a look at?
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.
Youtube PZ myers lobsters.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.
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.