Jordan Peterson & Bret Weinstein on Fascism and Far Right

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jrjones9933
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16 Sep 2017, 11:18 pm

I didn't watch any more today, because a discussion with a couple of friends which we had expected to last 3 hours or so ended up going 7 hours. Interestingly, a lot of the material from this had relevance to the issues we discussed, which loosely gathered up ways of facilitating people organizing, political theory and game theory, the theory of game design and a few other random topics.

Fundamentally, though, we all want to make the world a better place and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. We also all like pertinent criticism and dislike easy outrage. One person has someone whom they know well who actually pulls the SJW/snowflake business on a regular basis, lashing out at people who use the wrong pronoun of the month. However, it also sounds like this individual has much bigger problems of their own creation which will limit their effectiveness.


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techstepgenr8tion
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17 Sep 2017, 5:02 am

I think it can be challenging for people to stay consistent in the current environment with as much information as is out there and how our own minds tend to manage and prioritize our own observations from day to day. That's part of why I really love it when people are able to erect that additional buffer between people and ideas - which allows the idea to get discussed on its own merits notwithstanding the vice of one, several, or even many of its proponents which may have no direct causal link to the idea itself and can cause inquiry to fall prey to tribalism, guilt by association, etc..

All that said I know I'm not perfect and I owe anyone a debt of gratitude who knows more on something than I do who feels that I was sloppy on one particular point or another. I suppose the benefit is as many of us as possible grooming and picking bugs off each other's logic.


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techstepgenr8tion
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17 Sep 2017, 4:09 pm

One thing I will - constructively - criticize Jordan Peterson on is something he said which was in a video snippet of I think him talking about MGTOW, marriage, etc..

He seemed to suggest that the optimal situation for people to be in was marriage, he suggested that men should be doing everything they can to go out there and meet available women, and that to the guys who can't find women - that in and of itself needs to be a pause for thought as they reflect on their own character and try to figure out what about them is wrong and needs to be fixed.

My rebuttal, or at least to the part of it that I have personal insight into - what sends women running for the hills is very complicated and it has a lot to do with all kinds of things that have little to do with 'grade f provider' assessments or that the guy failed the hypergame scan. Just sheer other-ness, not being readable, or even more terrifying - unreadable and highly intelligent, causes them to run for the hills because said guy could be a) a great person who could even add greatly to their horizons if they spent time and got to know him b) a psychopath c) a human bomb. B and C are a big enough risk to where unless she knows that guy through friends she'd never risk the possibility of A without social proof from sources whose measurements she trusts. Being that the dating game will almost always be between people who don't know each other (otherwise friend-zoning is almost immediate and almost always permanent) that puts social outliers - above the curve, below the curve, or to the left or right of the curve, in a place where they can't interact with most people so accordingly they're almost sunk at the outset and if they do find someone it's usually something that there's little better name for than a miracle.

There seems to also be a growing body of science suggesting that men's capacities are much more widely distributed which means that the central tendency with women will establish the center, ie. the high point of the normal distribution curve, as the zone that's intelligible and rateable.

Knowing that I think I can at least throw off the weight of the allegation that I 'need to get right with Sophia' or that my singlehood is a moral indictment. I know that my personality in a lot of respects has to be out past 1 1/2 to 2 standard deviations from the mean and while there might be some great ideas out here there are also prices one pays for being out here (whether male or female). Similarly I think it's just as ridiculous for anyone to tell a highly intelligent or creative woman who can't find a partner that she relates to that she needs to get right with Christ, Dionysus, or whatever archetypal father figure you'd extend out in that direction. While there are plenty of people operating on bent and broken heuristic models of how to handle the opposite, or same sex (depending on their preference), there is a solution perhaps there for them in terms of overturning bad models. If you're in the outlying group - no solution. You pretty much have to accept what you have and that your light it just too far out from the center for anyone to take a rowboat out to your cognitive/ontological island unless there is someone else, right out where you are, hiding behind a fog bank momentarily that lifts long enough for you to see one another.


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jrjones9933
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17 Sep 2017, 4:41 pm

I find myself in a similar position, although I had made a teenager's principled stand against conventional pair bonding, and I have stood by it since I've seen nothing to change my mind. So, girlfriends who wanted that and came to take me at my word have given up.

Now, the world has caught up to me. I may find a structure where I can feel comfortable, and people consider my philosophy and even my age an asset. Who knows?


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jrjones9933
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17 Sep 2017, 9:50 pm

I finished the video, and enjoyed it tremendously overall. I vented all my objections earlier. Indeed, BW got JP to agree to some very insightful criticism of the right late in the discussion.

I feel so impressed that starting it again seems pretty likely. Way to go, Joe. Also, tech! Thanks!


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techstepgenr8tion
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17 Sep 2017, 10:37 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
I feel so impressed that starting it again seems pretty likely. Way to go, Joe. Also, tech! Thanks!

I'll keep my eye out for more of this kind of thing. I find Jonathan Haidt to be of a similar caliber on the same topics, Steven Pinker as well albeit in a more narrow focus. Mark Blyth is also good for squaring up the economic issues and how those interface with the rise in populism.


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techstepgenr8tion
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18 Sep 2017, 12:13 am

Here's something interesting, Brett's brother Eric on Rubin Report talking about media and culture implications:


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18 Sep 2017, 12:34 am

In the US, the "far right" are libertarians, who want freedom. Like, Senator Rand Paul.

"Far left" is fascism, and socialism. These people want to control you, control your money.



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18 Sep 2017, 2:26 am

America cannot move forward until people stop attributing right & left to everything. The world and its people are far more complex & nuanced to be put into 1 of 2 boxes.



jrjones9933
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18 Sep 2017, 11:51 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Here's something interesting, Brett's brother Eric on Rubin Report talking about media and culture implications:



I had only recently heard of the Rubin Report, and had never seen it before. I find Rubin a little annoying, after only ten minutes. This happens with interviewers, and it probably relates to why I liked the original video in this thread so much. Joe kept out of the way, and just let them talk until he needed to ask them to stop and clarify, or to get to a topic the professors had been wisely avoiding, which Joe wisely wanted to make them confront anyway.

Interviewers seem to feel the need to give their questions pizzazz. I get it, love the pizzazz, but I probably have a lower tolerance for it when the topics get this serious and fundamental. I may try the interview with Bret first, and then come back to Eric. He's got a wry presentation style that I do find appealing, but I kept wanting Bret to have more speaking time in the first video, so I have an existing interest in hearing him talk at greater length about his insights.



I have gotten about 45 minutes in at this point, and I don't find Rubin's style an issue. They have so far spent more time on the story and backstory of Evergreen than on Bret's research. I have enjoyed how he ties it in, where appropriate. Naturally, his life's work informs his personal perspective. It seems intricately connected to his perspective on this issue.

The main point I got from the first ten minutes of the interview with Eric was his perspective on the issue of administrative bloating in academia. It looks more dire than mine, and also looks pretty plausible. :-(


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18 Sep 2017, 1:13 pm

traven wrote:


The inane mutterings of a dull average intellect.



jrjones9933
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18 Sep 2017, 2:25 pm

I've gotten a little farther along in the analysis of the Evergreen story, and it looks like I correctly have held the administration responsible for letting things get so out of hand. It tells a cautionary tale, which I hope other University presidents have noted. The Evergreen Inoculation, or something.


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jrjones9933
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18 Sep 2017, 8:03 pm

JP and BW discussing UBI struck me as very interesting and too brief.


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techstepgenr8tion
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18 Sep 2017, 8:19 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
JP and BW discussing UBI struck me as very interesting and too brief.

For better or worse it may be difficult for people to have fruitful conversation on that - much further than they have - without waiting until the results of the Oakland test pilot and those occurring, I think in Finland come back. I watched the Intelligence Squared debate and it looks like people were not in favor of it - by a landslide. Accordingly I doubt it'll progress that much farther without clear positive impact in the social science results.


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18 Sep 2017, 10:21 pm

It may simply be the next least bad idea.


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techstepgenr8tion
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18 Sep 2017, 10:26 pm

We're in a pretty awful state of cultural decadence, and I mean self-medicating nihilism with whatever we can legally, or artfully, get our hands on and the rent-seeking behavior at the top is quite epic. Almost anything we do, if taken by itself, will be a band-aid on something that really needs several dozen stitches.


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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin