Nintendo Switch
Banned
Original topic has been heavily edited by TC. When the argument is 'updated' or 'changed' based on attitude changes over time it makes the thread difficult to decipher. Please keep the threaded view intact and link updates in the OP. No warning; guidance.
At the suggestion of a friend, I listened to a bunch of Peterson’s stuff over the past week and also read the James DeMore memo. I agree with about 50% of it.
They are both intelligent people for sure and I don’t think either of them are coming from a place of sexism or hatred. But they make a number of questionable claims using inadequate evidence to support the gaps in their belief system.
Most obvious is their explanation of gender differences. Yes there are differences between men and women’s personalities and interests for sure but both guys keep expounding the idea that these all have an overwhelmingly biological basis.
Does the empirical evidence support that men and women have different personalities and make career choices? Yes.
Does the evidence support that this is due to biological factors more so than environmental factors? Absolutely not. The nature vs nurture debate is still in its infancy. Any biologist worth his salt will tell you that.
Does the evidence support that neonates of different genders have different interests? Yes, the neonatal brain has had minimal input from psychosocial factors so of course biological factors would predominate in neonates.
Does the evidence support that this difference in neonatal brains can be extrapolated to make statements about adult brains? Absolutely not, for a variety of reasons (epigenetics, synaptic pruning, environmental enrichment, synaptic modulation’s role in learned behaviors etc). The vast majority of neural synapses die before people reach adulthood and this death is heavily mediated by the psychosocial environment (google “synaptic pruning and environmental enrichment” if curious) .
To further support these claims, they pick animals with a patriarchal organization to claim that these are intrinsic to our DNA.
If they instead looked at Penguins for example, or elephants or any of the numerous other species where both men and women take an active role in raising children, more akin to humans, these so called biological differences largely disappear.
I believe that just as significant a factor in gender differences stem from social conditioning and role modeling. People constantly model themselves after what they see, from their parents, their peers and ever increasingly, the media. Until about two decade ma ago, female role models in men centric roles were few and far between, even in the media.
Ads even today show girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars. The media until recently was inundated with examples of women as home makers and care givers and men as soldiers and scientists. And this feeds into the expectations that parents have for their children as well. Parents unconsciously think of these roles based on their child’s gender and push it on them inadvertently.
This plays a very significant role in gender differences and this is exactly why having more female role models in traditionally male roles and more male role models in traditionally female roles is a good thing. Because only then would people be truly free to pursue what they are intrinsically interested in, and good at, less coarsed by social expectations.
Leisure activities like theater, books, tv, movies, art and parental pressure all emphasize this same women = caretaker, men = aggressive warrior leader stereotype.
Doesn’t that seem like an important factor to take into account? Don’t people in countries like Norway etc fall under the influence of the above issues.
Peterson claims that places like Norway, women self select to female roles and underdeveloped countries have women that perform male tasks more. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is because of biological differences.
An alternate hypothesis is that poor people in underdeveloped countries have less opportunity to be conditioned by theater, books, stories, art, tv and movies where as people in a country like Norway are far more exposed to the theater, books, stories, art, tv and movies because they have a lot more leisure time on their hands. This ample exposure to these stereotypes and lack of role models or examples of peers entering these fields in a place like Norway could easily subconsciously push a young girl away from pursuing a STEM field even if she founds the topic interesting, no?
The goal should be to maximize freedom. No one should be pushed to pursue any field of study, they should be encouraged to do what they want. But to maximize this freedom, it is a very good thing that we have now started to provide more examples and role models of females in male roles in movies, books etc.
However some of Peterson’s biggest fans seem to actively despise this trend, as illustrated by reactions like below. His fans are at times far worse than he is because they discount any nuance he provides and instead uses his statements about averages as a crutch to claim they know what a woman’s role ought to be...
The new actress was amazing in the movie.Extremely fit (she clearly worked out a lot for this movie compared to whenever that photo was taken), good acting chops and absolutely gorgeous as well. She just had a much more realistic build for a world class athlete than Jolie and people seem to hate her for it. (Guess what people, athletes rarely have lots of body fat/huge breasts).
Two other quick examples (and there were quite a few that I will probably add to this thread later) would be Peterson’s frequent use of biblical statements as if to hold ancient Christianity as being ahead of its time, as if Christianity holds some greater wisdom that surpassed other religions. Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism all predate Christianity by thousands of years and also talked about the roles and responsibilities of individuals, and the suffering of man. Buddhism and the Bhagavat Gita did a far better job exploring these issues than the Bible, as I am sure did many other now extinct ancient religions and cultures.
Also questionable is the complete disregard of any mention of Marlows Hierachy of Needs in shaping people to maturity, groups and society. Civilizations consistently thrive only when they find ways to meet the most basic needs of the most people and push atleast some of them towards self actualization. When atleast a subset of powerful people have most or all their lower needs met and become closer to self actualized/selfless individuals, progress gets a huge jump start. The work being done by the Gates Foundation and by Warren Buffets charitable endeavors are great examples of this.
Peterson is very intelligent and very confident especially now that he is famous. However, these same qualities make him more vulnerable to becoming convinced that he is always right and jumping on anything he reads that seems to support his preexisting view point and neglecting to explore alternative explanations.
And likewise, his intelligence and overconfidence make it easy for people to create a cult like persona around him and believe that everything he says is 100% legit. No One is 100% correct, everyone, even the most intelligent and well read people are wrong fairly often. Intelligent people just happen to right more often than they are wrong.
However, The more confident some one seems, the more likely they are to jump to conclusions without considering alternatives and the more likely they are to be wrong. But their confidence makes it easy to convince others they are right and form a cult like personality around them, because most people will pick confidence over nuance every time.
Update (since this discussion has veered most about the biological differences between men and women):
No one is claiming that biology doesn’t play a role in differences on average between men and women. Brain development happens in stages. Only 1/4 of women get autism, more men get schizophrenia than women.
But biology isn’t everything. Many genetically identical twins don’t all develop the same mental illness. This is why any psychiatrist worth his salt does a “biopsychosocial assessment” on the people they are treating. The pros are well aware that biology matter, but psychological experiences and stressors matter just as much and societal expectations and biases play a big role as well.
For all we know, it is the hypersexualizaion of women and women’s bodies in american, European and Japanese media that accounts for why more women in America, Japan and Europe subconsciously think of themselves as sexual objects and focus far more on things like makeup when compared to women in other parts of the world.
The fact is, we don’t actually know why far more women pursue stem fields in the rest of the world when compared to the US and Europe. Any guess we make as to why these differences exist is just that, a guess. But the fact that women do choose very different courses of study in different countries shows us that culture plays a huge role, not just biology.
There is overwhelming evidence that biology isn’t destiny.
So given this well documented fact, what benefit is there for people to attribute certain jobs, roles or personalities to certain genders. There is no much variation, so many other factors that are as important or more important than biology that categorizing people based on gender (whether its done by the left, or by the right) is silly.
Peterson also engages in the idiocy of using neonatal differences to make claims about the behaviors of adult men and women.
Yes there is evidence of neonatal differences. To extrapolate the findings of that study to make claims about the career choices of adult men and adult women is blatant ignorance.
There are a huge about of differences between neonatal brains and adult brains. And most of those differences in the development of the brain are heavily influenced by the environment and culture.
Just one example, in the height of the synaptic pruning process peaking starting at around age 10, over the span of a few years, the vast majority of all neonatal neurons and neural pathways die off and disappear completely. So even the teen brain is nothing at all like the neonatal brain.
This is just one of the many reasons why using the neonatal brain to make claims about adults is stupid.
The right’s point of view is that the left differs in how in treats men and women, and that is sometimes unfair. They are absolutely correct. But again, the right is also all too eager to focus on a woman’s body and figure than her intelligence, just look at Fox News anchors, or the comments made in right wing forums. Any thread concerning a women is inundated with comments about how attractive she is, much more so than on any left wing forum.
The lefts point of view is that society overall differs in how it treats men and women, and pigeon holes women into certain roles, and that is unfair. Many of these expectations and stereotypes that society puts into women are often disadvantages to women and may discourage women from making the lifestyle choices that they want to make. They are absolutely correct as well.
Only when we acknowledge that both these things exists, and also accept that individual factors matter far more than biological differences, can we move past using stereotypes that disadvantage any person based on their gender.
Are men shown walking around in their underwear as often as women in Scandinavian television and billboards etc? Or is the sexualization of women in Scandinavian countries by the media far higher than it is in other parts of the world.
In many parts of the world, far fewer women shave, or wear makeup.
That disgusts most western men, the idea of women walking around unshaven, where as a guy that doesn’t shave is considered normal. This is a perfect example of how society and culture conditions us. It is normal and expected in the West that women invest far more time and work into their appearance than men. Many parts of the world do not have this expectation for women.
So again, to claim that both genders are more equal in the West is faulty. In many ways they are more equal, but when it comes to sexualization of women’s bodies they are actually far worse. And these expectations feed into behavior as well.
Every society has pros and cons. Sexual freedom is a very very good thing.
But hypersexualization of one gender over the other by the media, has negative effects to. Pointing out this fact doesn’t mean that I am defending the worst aspects of handpicked countries.
Feeling that each and every single aspect of the West is superior to each and every single aspect of the rest of the world is narcissistic idiocy.
There are many many things that the West got right, but the hyper sexualization of women is not one of them.
If women in the West are expected to spend an hour each day on their appearance, then of course they would be more predisposed to wanting their apperance to be seen and noted. This may well tilt them toward more social jobs. Again this is just a guess. But most of Peterson’s interpretations of studies are the same, guesses.
Society and people are far too complicated for us to be able to point to a couple of studies and say they answer the nature vs nurture debate. Anyone that confidently claims to have the answer is full of shit. And this is precisely where Peterson goes wrong.
They are both intelligent people for sure and I don’t think either of them are coming from a place of sexism or hatred. But they make a number of questionable claims using inadequate evidence to support the gaps in their belief system.
Most obvious is their explanation of gender differences. Yes there are differences between men and women’s personalities and interests for sure but both guys keep expounding the idea that these all have an overwhelmingly biological basis.
Does the empirical evidence support that men and women have different personalities and make career choices? Yes.
Does the evidence support that this is due to biological factors more so than environmental factors? Absolutely not. The nature vs nurture debate is still in its infancy. Any biologist worth his salt will tell you that.
Does the evidence support that neonates of different genders have different interests? Yes, the neonatal brain has had minimal input from psychosocial factors so of course biological factors would predominate in neonates.
Does the evidence support that this difference in neonatal brains can be extrapolated to make statements about adult brains? Absolutely not, for a variety of reasons (epigenetics, synaptic pruning, environmental enrichment, synaptic modulation’s role in learned behaviors etc). The vast majority of neural synapses die before people reach adulthood and this death is heavily mediated by the psychosocial environment (google “synaptic pruning and environmental enrichment” if curious) .
To further support these claims, they pick animals with a patriarchal organization to claim that these are intrinsic to our DNA.
If they instead looked at Penguins for example, or elephants or any of the numerous other species where both men and women take an active role in raising children, more akin to humans, these so called biological differences largely disappear.
I believe that just as significant a factor in gender differences stem from social conditioning and role modeling. People constantly model themselves after what they see, from their parents, their peers and ever increasingly, the media. Until about two decade ma ago, female role models in men centric roles were few and far between, even in the media.
Ads even today show girls playing with dolls and boys playing with cars. The media until recently was inundated with examples of women as home makers and care givers and men as soldiers and scientists. And this feeds into the expectations that parents have for their children as well. Parents unconsciously think of these roles based on their child’s gender and push it on them inadvertently.
This plays a very significant role in gender differences and this is exactly why having more female role models in traditionally male roles and more male role models in traditionally female roles is a good thing. Because only then would people be truly free to pursue what they are intrinsically interested in, and good at, less coarsed by social expectations.
Leisure activities like theater, books, tv, movies, art and parental pressure all emphasize this same women = caretaker, men = aggressive warrior leader stereotype.
Doesn’t that seem like an important factor to take into account? Don’t people in countries like Norway etc fall under the influence of the above issues.
Peterson claims that places like Norway, women self select to female roles and underdeveloped countries have women that perform male tasks more. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is because of biological differences.
An alternate hypothesis is that poor people in underdeveloped countries have less opportunity to be conditioned by theater, books, stories, art, tv and movies where as people in a country like Norway are far more exposed to the theater, books, stories, art, tv and movies because they have a lot more leisure time on their hands. This ample exposure to these stereotypes and lack of role models or examples of peers entering these fields in a place like Norway could easily subconsciously push a young girl away from pursuing a STEM field even if she founds the topic interesting, no?
The goal should be to maximize freedom. No one should be pushed to pursue any field of study, they should be encouraged to do what they want. But to maximize this freedom, it is a very good thing that we have now started to provide more examples and role models of females in male roles in movies, books etc.
However some of Peterson’s biggest fans seem to actively despise this trend, as illustrated by reactions like below. His fans are at times far worse than he is because they discount any nuance he provides and instead uses his statements about averages as a crutch to claim they know what a woman’s role ought to be...
from this
to this.
It's the cuckening of America, I tell you!
The new actress was amazing in the movie.Extremely fit (she clearly worked out a lot for this movie compared to whenever that photo was taken), good acting chops and absolutely gorgeous as well. She just had a much more realistic build for a world class athlete than Jolie and people seem to hate her for it. (Guess what people, athletes rarely have lots of body fat/huge breasts).
Two other quick examples (and there were quite a few that I will probably add to this thread later) would be Peterson’s frequent use of biblical statements as if to hold ancient Christianity as being ahead of its time, as if Christianity holds some greater wisdom that surpassed other religions. Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism all predate Christianity by thousands of years and also talked about the roles and responsibilities of individuals, and the suffering of man. Buddhism and the Bhagavat Gita did a far better job exploring these issues than the Bible, as I am sure did many other now extinct ancient religions and cultures.
Also questionable is the complete disregard of any mention of Marlows Hierachy of Needs in shaping people to maturity, groups and society. Civilizations consistently thrive only when they find ways to meet the most basic needs of the most people and push atleast some of them towards self actualization. When atleast a subset of powerful people have most or all their lower needs met and become closer to self actualized/selfless individuals, progress gets a huge jump start. The work being done by the Gates Foundation and by Warren Buffets charitable endeavors are great examples of this.
Peterson is very intelligent and very confident especially now that he is famous. However, these same qualities make him more vulnerable to becoming convinced that he is always right and jumping on anything he reads that seems to support his preexisting view point and neglecting to explore alternative explanations.
And likewise, his intelligence and overconfidence make it easy for people to create a cult like persona around him and believe that everything he says is 100% legit. No One is 100% correct, everyone, even the most intelligent and well read people are wrong fairly often. Intelligent people just happen to right more often than they are wrong.
However, The more confident some one seems, the more likely they are to jump to conclusions without considering alternatives and the more likely they are to be wrong. But their confidence makes it easy to convince others they are right and form a cult like personality around them, because most people will pick confidence over nuance every time.
Update (since this discussion has veered most about the biological differences between men and women):
No one is claiming that biology doesn’t play a role in differences on average between men and women. Brain development happens in stages. Only 1/4 of women get autism, more men get schizophrenia than women.
But biology isn’t everything. Many genetically identical twins don’t all develop the same mental illness. This is why any psychiatrist worth his salt does a “biopsychosocial assessment” on the people they are treating. The pros are well aware that biology matter, but psychological experiences and stressors matter just as much and societal expectations and biases play a big role as well.
For all we know, it is the hypersexualizaion of women and women’s bodies in american, European and Japanese media that accounts for why more women in America, Japan and Europe subconsciously think of themselves as sexual objects and focus far more on things like makeup when compared to women in other parts of the world.
The fact is, we don’t actually know why far more women pursue stem fields in the rest of the world when compared to the US and Europe. Any guess we make as to why these differences exist is just that, a guess. But the fact that women do choose very different courses of study in different countries shows us that culture plays a huge role, not just biology.
There is overwhelming evidence that biology isn’t destiny.
So given this well documented fact, what benefit is there for people to attribute certain jobs, roles or personalities to certain genders. There is no much variation, so many other factors that are as important or more important than biology that categorizing people based on gender (whether its done by the left, or by the right) is silly.
Peterson also engages in the idiocy of using neonatal differences to make claims about the behaviors of adult men and women.
Yes there is evidence of neonatal differences. To extrapolate the findings of that study to make claims about the career choices of adult men and adult women is blatant ignorance.
There are a huge about of differences between neonatal brains and adult brains. And most of those differences in the development of the brain are heavily influenced by the environment and culture.
Just one example, in the height of the synaptic pruning process peaking starting at around age 10, over the span of a few years, the vast majority of all neonatal neurons and neural pathways die off and disappear completely. So even the teen brain is nothing at all like the neonatal brain.
This is just one of the many reasons why using the neonatal brain to make claims about adults is stupid.
The right’s point of view is that the left differs in how in treats men and women, and that is sometimes unfair. They are absolutely correct. But again, the right is also all too eager to focus on a woman’s body and figure than her intelligence, just look at Fox News anchors, or the comments made in right wing forums. Any thread concerning a women is inundated with comments about how attractive she is, much more so than on any left wing forum.
The lefts point of view is that society overall differs in how it treats men and women, and pigeon holes women into certain roles, and that is unfair. Many of these expectations and stereotypes that society puts into women are often disadvantages to women and may discourage women from making the lifestyle choices that they want to make. They are absolutely correct as well.
Only when we acknowledge that both these things exists, and also accept that individual factors matter far more than biological differences, can we move past using stereotypes that disadvantage any person based on their gender.
Are men shown walking around in their underwear as often as women in Scandinavian television and billboards etc? Or is the sexualization of women in Scandinavian countries by the media far higher than it is in other parts of the world.
In many parts of the world, far fewer women shave, or wear makeup.
That disgusts most western men, the idea of women walking around unshaven, where as a guy that doesn’t shave is considered normal. This is a perfect example of how society and culture conditions us. It is normal and expected in the West that women invest far more time and work into their appearance than men. Many parts of the world do not have this expectation for women.
So again, to claim that both genders are more equal in the West is faulty. In many ways they are more equal, but when it comes to sexualization of women’s bodies they are actually far worse. And these expectations feed into behavior as well.
Every society has pros and cons. Sexual freedom is a very very good thing.
But hypersexualization of one gender over the other by the media, has negative effects to. Pointing out this fact doesn’t mean that I am defending the worst aspects of handpicked countries.
Feeling that each and every single aspect of the West is superior to each and every single aspect of the rest of the world is narcissistic idiocy.
There are many many things that the West got right, but the hyper sexualization of women is not one of them.
If women in the West are expected to spend an hour each day on their appearance, then of course they would be more predisposed to wanting their apperance to be seen and noted. This may well tilt them toward more social jobs. Again this is just a guess. But most of Peterson’s interpretations of studies are the same, guesses.
Society and people are far too complicated for us to be able to point to a couple of studies and say they answer the nature vs nurture debate. Anyone that confidently claims to have the answer is full of shit. And this is precisely where Peterson goes wrong.
Last edited: