Cathy Newman and Jordan Petersen on C4 News

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Just on. He was saying that people are different due to ' agreeableness, women being more likely to be so; men less so, hence the gender gap

It's the first time I have ever seen Cathy Newman angry. And he was spluttering a bit, first time for him too, for me, I think.

Watch it on + 1

I agree with some of Petersen's views but he didn't come off at all well here

yippee

Is that directed at me?

Its an honest question...its made me take a quick peek at some of the podcasts as some people seem to feel very strongly that he is worth listening to

I do think there can be merit in someone joining mumsnet when they feel very strongly about a particular subject

And the link that butwho posted about young men seemed interesting

butwho

Sorry just seen your other post

No offence intended...I certainly delurked after feeling very strongly about a subject

And ive been trying to avoid the EU boards recently but gave up when someone said something i though was daft

Did he not attempt to say why men do that and women don't?

That men are hugely susceptible to dominance hierarchies in a way that women simply aren't.

Ah bollocks, are we going to have to start a new thread to discuss sensibly again?

I listened to a couple of lectures - the one on agreeableness linked to above and part 2 of the psychology of the lion king. If nothing else, he is an engaging teacher, far superior to many I have endured. And actually I realised he is a teacher - so I think he engaged with CN as a teacher and just discovered she really wasn't interested in learning anything, whether by agreement or disagreement.

Anyway, he made a by the way sort of comment about liberal / conservative views, in the context of agreeableness and that there are two components - politeness and compassion (maybe not the only 2), and although liberals and conservatives score similarly on agreeableness on average, liberals tend to score high on compassion and low on politeness and conservatives the other way about. So they average out to a similar overall measure on the composite agreeableness trait, but actually it manifests quite differently.

I think it's an insight into how the public discourse plays out - because liberals think that conservatives are evil because they lack compassion, while conservatives disagree but tend to default to greater politeness and therefore don't shout as loudly about their views. Am I way off base?

So liberals think it's fine to announce this person is immoral or even amoral for their views and no further discussion needs to be had. Whilst conservatives want to debate the content but complain about feeling shut down (politely of course!). Oh and deliberately small c lib/con.

What I was struck by was that JP didn't ascribe a value judgment personally to someone's traits - they just are, and you have to deal with what you have and then try to develop the ones that are weak. Whereas CN had already ascribed a value judgment to JP's views and having cast him as a fascist, thought there was no need to engage in the content, just show him as evidently evil.

Sorry, that's long and probably a bit waffly. But for those who are prepared to listen to the details and consider his lines of argument on their merits, I'd be really interested to discuss further.

Yes, but why, @Ruthlessrooster? Why are men more susceptible to dominance hierarchies that women?

Oh thats a relief yipee

I posted a long time ago but have lurked on here ever since

Its been interesting so far

I just watched that 5live interview where he talked about young men / boys. I think the answer might be simply that he can only speak so far as he is a male and there are differences between the sexes that mean he can only go so far in discussing the inner workings of eachothers brains, as he is a man.

It's just a reverse of how we are saying that a man can not become a woman. We know there is a difference, he knows there is a difference.

He's saying a lot about the trans issue, which is how I heard about him - by reading positive posts about him on MN.

What do you think would be his reaction if he read the other threads on here about the disgusting treatment of the labour party of it's female members?

Apparently he has also received violent abusive tweets from TRA's, and there is a youtube clip of what appears to be a violent incident at one of his talks.

This is how I first came to hear about him - from feminist posters on here.

Peterson talking about how the UK papers played it all.

AssassinateB : "Did he not attempt to say why men do that and women don't?"

"That" being "work crazy hours with crazy stress to scrabble to the top of the heap. And yes, he does give his explanation in his lectures and I also gave an explanation earlier in the thread.

In substance it's related to his lobster story. There's a male dominance hierarchy in all social animals. In lobsters (and most animals) it's essentially about size, power and fighting strength. In humans there's a bit of that pure power thing, but since we're complicated cretaures with big brains, the male human dominance hierarchy is multifaceted. You can scrabble to the top of the heap as a political dictator, by force. Or you can be Bill Gates, or a top corporate manager. Or banker. Or lawyer. Or you can be Picasso. Or Mick Jagger. Or Woody Allen. Or Michael Jordan. Or Niels Bohr. Or Pasteur. Or Tolstoy. Or Sartre. And so on. There are lots of human heaps you can scrabble to the top of - if you are very intelligent, very conscientious, possibly creative, very hard working, very single minded, and very willing to sacrifice the rest of your life to scrabbling to the top. Or as near the top as you can manage.

If you get near the top you win status. Like the lobster who wins his fights. And with status comes extra nookie. In animals where it's just a fight, you get extra nookie because you chase off the little guys, and the gals have no choice but to mate with you. In humans, where the gals get a choice of who they're going to mate with gals - on average - go for men who are equal to them in status, or higher. Hence the higher up the status pole you are, the more gals will be interested in you. So if you're a man, the reward for sacrificing your life to scrabble up the pole is extra gals who are interested in you, extra nookie, and so extra descendants.

So why do a small percentage of men spend their lives scrabbling to the top ? Evolution. In the past, human males who scrabbled to the top left more children than men who didn't scrabble to the top. There is no corresponding dynamic for females, because the number of children a woman has is not affected by how many mates she has. Her chances of leaving more descendants are increased not by more mates, but by having a mate with high status - one who can provide her with resources and protect her. Hence evolution wasn't telling her female ancestors to hunt for more mates, it was telling her ancestors to hunt for a mate with status. Or if she's going to have a bit on the side, and mate with a man who isn't going to provide any resources or protection, it's better to mate with a high status male than a low status one. Because your male descendants will then acquire better genes and so will get higher status and pass your genes on through their mating success.

Evolution, of course, does not have to plant its instructions in our conscious minds. Very able men can scrabble to the top just thinking " I wanna be on top" without explicitly calculating the nookie reward. And women have always fancied the top dog without consciously calculating that there's a pay off in terms of protection for them and their children.

btw this is not an idiosyncratic Peterson flight of fancy. It's evolutionary biology 101.

• I throw in Woody Allen and Sartre as illustrations of the fact that if you have high status, you can pull a lot of really good looking birds without being an oil painting. I could have mentioned Henry Kissinger but I didn't want to cause any seizures. .

I made it to the end! Thanks to Les and Yippee and many others for contributing. The challenge that JO provides to people's views is one that many revel in and react with interest and an open minded desire to learn more as some have said here. Even if the hey want to learn more to prove JP's wrong they engage in the discussion.

The pointless name calling of "fascist" and "racist" and "alt-righter" are just showing how poor the foundations of the views of those doing to calling are. As I say to my children, "don't just complain it's unfair tell me why?"

So this is innate biology, inescapable. Hence male dominated hierarchies are inevitable and pointless to try and alter.

Is there evidence of the similarities between lobster brains and human brains, to see where this hierarchy lies? Can it be observed reliably yet on brain scans, or identified in other ways? Or is it not that simple?

These hierarchies will presumably always reassert themselves even if men try to actively avert them as it's a very fundamental aspect of all creatures that share a common ancestor.

I dont think its innate biology

Its very handy for a male dominated hierarchy to claim that though

I had to spell check virtually every word in that post

Dr Peterson was brilliant and made a lot of sense. Cathy Newman was just embarrassing.

Rufus - on what basis do you not think that?

That the biology of animal dominance structures is incorrectly observed?
That the process / causation in in the observed behaviours is incorrectly explained?
That the similarity between the biology in the animal behaviours (lobsters specifically in his example) is not an accurate indicator of human behaviour?
Something else?

If I'm convinced of anything but this farrago, it's that 'I don't think...' is not a valid basis on which to dismiss the argument.

by. not but.

Apparently it's an uncontested tenet of evolutionary biology. So it surely must be something accepted by science generally.

ThisisAStory ; "What I was struck by was that JP didn't ascribe a value judgment personally to someone's traits - they just are, and you have to deal with what you have and then try to develop the ones that are weak."

I touched on this in an earlier contribution. JP's views are that you shouldn't ascribe a value to a person's traits because sometimes one particular position in a trait distribution may be best, but another time another position may be best. Or different traits in different people may be complementary in a co-operative enterprise. (So a fairly agreeable woman may be good at caring for her babies, while she may have a more disagreeable mate who is good at insisting on a good spot in the cave for his family, and/or spearing wild pigs. Moving each of them towards an equalised centre position in the agreeableness-disagreebleness distribution might not improve their children's chances of survival.)

So nowhere in the agreeableness-disagreeable distribution is "weak" per se. It's just that if you happen to be at the very agreeable end, you personally are weak at being disagreeable, and it may be in your interests to practice being disagreeable.

Thanks Lee, yes, I was fishing for a better word than weak - I didn't think it was a deficiency. I couldn't remember how he'd phrased it.

i don't think...' is not a valid basis on which to dismiss the argument

Just as well i wasnt trying to dismiss the argument then.

Though actually thinking about it...i do believe that bigger and stronger usually (not always) means dominance. So thats innate biology isnt it

So would Peterson agree that society as a whole shouldn't place value judgements on traits?

Absolutely. And assertive training is really a key life skill. It's very difficult to practice if you aren't naturally assertive.

and it may be in your interests to practice being disagreeable.

I would say that if there was no reason to fear male violence women would be much more assertive than they are. So maybe it's in men's interests to practice being more agreeable