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

[NotDavidTennant]

These wages are set by the market. If power companies could find some way to get their power lines mended in the wind and rain by paying their men (because they are men) the same as they pay their women (eg secretaries) they’d do it in minus 20 seconds.

Only if you assume an efficient market in which everyone is a perfectly rational actor.

[nauticant]

Following the discussion on this thread I thought I'd have a better sense of the interview if I watched the entire thing.

That was a really inferior performance by CN. JP had a logical whole that he'd clearly thought deeply about and CN was just sniping from all over the place.

I lost count of the number of times she said "so you're saying...". That was her entire approach, don't engage with the positions presented, convert them into strawpeople and then have a go.

I'd rather pay attention to someone who says some things that really provoke me to think, even if I don't agree with them all, than with someone who is a multi-faceted mirror to reflect what is thought to be correct by liberal-thinking people.

[PanGalaticGargleBlaster]

I'd rather pay attention to someone who says some things that really provoke me to think, even if I don't agree with them all, than with someone who is a multi-faceted mirror to reflect what is thought to be correct by liberal-thinking people.

Careful with that kind of open minded thinking around here!

[bundevac]

"I lost count of the number of times she said "so you're saying..."

36 times. source:

[bigolenerdy]

I lost count of the number of times she said "so you're saying...". That was her entire approach, don't engage with the positions presented, convert them into strawpeople and then have a go.

Yep, in a nutshell. It was frankly embarrassing

[LeeMoore]

NotDavidTennant : “Only if you assume an efficient market in which everyone is a perfectly rational actor”

Not really. Markets don't need to be anything like perfect to be useful. Rational actors do better in the market than irrational ones, consequently prices set on the basis of irrational superstitions present huge opportunities for people who can see through the superstitions. So even a fairly inefficient market will eventually discover market clearing prices. How eventual eventually is depends on information flow of course, But markets contain within them the algorithm to discover useful information. “I think we’ll hold on to our sales if we put the price up 20%” is a testable proposition. The market will tell you if you’re right.

The idea of free markets isn’t that all the actors magically know the right price first up; it’s that the market is an algorithm - if the current price is wrong, the market tells the actors and they have an incentive to adjust.

The main drag on the working of markets is coercion not irrational actors.

*note that “rational” actors doesn’t mean “actors I agree with” – people can rationally have totally different subjective views on the value of the same thing.

[LeeMoore]

ThisIsAStory : "I was more engaging at the social theory / feminism angle that if men and women are different, on average, in what they pursue, why do we still evaluate men as doing 'better' out of that because they earn more money, on average, over a lifetime and not consider that women have done 'better' on other scales. "

Well my answer to that is that there are 7 billion different evaluators on the planet and each of them is perfectly entitled to evaluate their own life (or the lives of other people) however they like. If "society" chooses to try to compute an aggregate view of the best evaluation scheme, in reality that's just the view of the Daily Mail or the BBC or the National Life Evaluation Committee. Who cares what these people think ?

But, reverting to biology and psychology, the question of who is winning in the male dominance hierarchy is slightly different. There are obviously three and a half billion different evaluators (the women) and they might all have completely different views. But in practice they don't. On average - and yes there will be different tastes - more women will give a high evaluation to successful (in the sense of winning competitive things whether that be sports or business or entertainment or arts or war) high status, articulate, healthy, self confident men than other flavours. You could try to change that and try to persuade womankind that men who are kind, sensitive, non aggressive, meek, non dominant etc should get the highest evaluations. And something along those lines has been attempted in a rather lacklustre fashion by some feminists. But it would be hard to claim that it has been very successful. Still the good news for women is that that biology absolutely confirms that women are the unappealable judges on the court that decides who's won the male dominance hierarchy. Men don't get any say in this AT ALL.

[StillPissedOff]

LeeMoore, I may have misunderstood you here: but
"You could try to change that and try to persuade womankind that men who are kind, sensitive, non aggressive, meek, non dominant etc should get the highest evaluations."

So it is women's fault when they befriend men who go on to abuse them? Bollocks to that. The men who choose to abuse are responsible for the abuse they perpetrate.

[LeeMoore]

StillPissedoff ; “So it is women's fault when they befriend men who go on to abuse them? Bollocks to that. The men who choose to abuse are responsible for the abuse they perpetrate.”

Of course men who abuse women are responsible for their abuse. I suspect you’re picking up on my use of “aggressive.” Aggressive doesn’t have to mean physically aggressive – so for example Cathy Newman was aggressive in the interview. But even when we’re talking about physical aggression, there’ s a difference between male-male aggression and male-female aggression. The former has to do with competition in the male dominance hierarchy. The latter doesn’t. No woman wants a man to be aggressive towards her.

Of course there are male physical abusers up and down the social spectrum, but at the lower end of the social spectrum, the males who are at the top of the male dominance hierarchy aren’t likely to be there because of their knowledge of securities law, their skill at cinematography or their ability to do mental arithmetic on the fly during a business negotiation. In poorer areas, the dominant males are much more likely to be dominant because they are physically aggressive, willing to take risks and unwilling to take and s**t from anyone. These dominant males are much less likely to be discriminating in limiting their physical aggression to male-male.

Higher up the social spectrum, there will certainly be abusers of women, but the line between dominant male and physically aggressive male will be weaker, simply because higher up there are so many other possible routes to success than physical aggression and recklessness.

But that’s not quite the end of it. Apart from natural physical aggressiveness, another cause of male physical aggression is sexual jealousy – and that applies all the way up the spectrum. It’s also a cause of female physical aggression. And in fact in relationships female on male violence is considerably more frequent than male on female violence. The critical difference is that males being stronger do – when they lose control – far more damage to the woman, than the woman can do to the man.

[Vicxy]

Haha just watched this and CN is absolutely hilarious really

Having failed spectacularly to get him to slip up, she is reduced to trying to make him out to be a lunatic with

Let me get this straight, you are saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters.

Which yet again fails and instead just makes her look ridiculous

[Lucydogz]

The Guardian had a review of his book yesterday
here
Which is everything you'd expect from a Guardian review.
Numerous below the line comments posted under the line, the vast majority of which were critical of the review. Comments were closed at 264, which seems pretty low to me, and one of the few anti-Peterson comments chosen as the pick to be highlighted at the top.

[LeeMoore]

Thanks for that, Lucy.

One of the Guardian commentators made me laugh :

the whole interview:
JP - some mornings I like to start with coffee and toast.
CN - so you're saying men are better than women?

[Lucydogz]

Yes, I enjoyed that! But didn't you find it depressing how predictable the review was?

[LeeMoore]

No, not too depressing. The Graun is the Graun and there's a lot of nonsense in there. But I find it a lot less annoying than say the Washington Post. The WP is relentlessly conventional, the Graun has a bit more lunatic vim to it. And in accordance with Peterson's advice I do believe in glancing at what they say from time to time, just in case they know something I don't. And in this case they did :

"Jordan Peterson....built a Native American longhouse on the upper floor of his Toronto home, and [has] been inducted into the coastal Pacific Kwakwaka’wakw tribe"

I did not know that.

[WhollyFather]

Newman was her usual cocky, aggressive self and intended, with her penetrating insights and unanswerable arguments, to expose Peterson as the misogynist dinosaur she had decided he was but instead she got well and truly owned. Douglas Murray in the Spectator wrote an excellent critique of the interview (also contains a link to the interview itself).

Peterson is not only 100% correct in everything he says, his views on masculinity, feminism, gender etc. are rapidly becoming mainstream.

The times they are a-changing.

[whiskyowl]

Jordan Peterson is widely viewed as a disgrace to the profession in academia. The best description I've read of him is that he's the "stupid man's smart person". There are intellectuals on the right who are pushing limits and doing interesting work - Nick Land, for instance - but he isn't one of them. And this thread is full of trolls.

[PatriarchyPersonified]

Whiskyowl

He is viewed as a "disgrace" by a very narrow self-selecting group of academics.

Have you watched the interview? What issues do you take with his points?

[AssassinatedBeauty]

I find the absolute glee in a female interviewer making a fool of herself, and the absolute glee that views like Petersen's are apparently becoming more mainstream to be thoroughly off putting.

[PatriarchyPersonified]

Assassinated

Everybody likes to see someone who thinks they're a smart arse get verbally destroyed now and again.

The interviewers sex is kind of irrelevant. She came into the interview with a list of condescending and dismissive talking points and was made to look a fool.

What particular issue do you take with Jordan Peterson's points and the fact they are gaining widespread traction? Can you counter any of his points?

Your story earlier that you were sacked for acting like a man sounds interesting. What did you mean by that?

[LeeMoore]

Whiskyowl : “Jordan Peterson is widely viewed as a disgrace to the profession in academia. The best description I've read of him is that he's the "stupid man's smart person". There are intellectuals on the right who are pushing limits and doing interesting work - Nick Land, for instance - but he isn't one of them.”

This is an echo of one of the funnier things coming out of the otherwise disturbing Wilfrid Laurier case. The one where a graduate student and teaching assistant (Lindsay Shepherd) showed her class a clip of a TV discussion, one of the participants in which was Peterson. And as a result the teaching assistant was dragged into a disciplinary hearing and berated for allowing the tender ears of her class to be exposed to the words of Satan (aka Peterson.) Unfortunately for the really nasty bullying tribunal members, she taped the tribunal. And when it came out, everyone could hear the bullying and hectoring for themselves. The piece de resistance was that - she broke down and cried at the bullying, and was promptly accused by people defending the bullies, of using “white woman tears” to oppress the (non white) professor who had been berating her !

Anyway that’s the background. One of the dafter points that the bullying Professors made was that Peterson wasn’t a real academic and had no standing in the academic community. Some cruel person then looked up the number of citations of academic papers published by (a) Peterson and (b) the two professors accusing him of being an academic nobody. The answers were (a) 8,928 and (b) 161 :)

[AssassinatedBeauty]

Of course her sex is relevant. The utter delight in her getting ripped apart wouldn't exist otherwise.

"What particular issue do you take with Jordan Peterson's points and the fact they are gaining widespread traction? Can you counter any of his points? "

The issue I have is the use of his views by anti-women and anti-feminist types who want to use his scientific credibility to support discriminating against women. I'm sure I can't counter any of his points to your satisfaction, after all, what could I possibly know about anything?

[LeeMoore]

PP : "The interviewers sex is kind of irrelevant."

Wrong wrong wrong. The sex of the participants is not merely relevant but it's the ONLY thing that's relevant. That is precisely the point Peterson is making. The strength of your arguments is not relevant. The facts are not relevant. Your individual strengths and faults are not relevant. The only thing that matters is which group you belong to. if you belong to an oppressing group, you are an oppressor. Period. If you belong to an oppressed group, you are oppressed. Period.

AssassinatedBeauty couldn't have put Peterson's point more perfectly if (s)he had been trying.

[EamonnWright]

Of course her sex is relevant. The utter delight in her getting ripped apart wouldn't exist otherwise

This is where it all falls down. Men get the piss ripped out of them all the time. Mostly by other men. I know this because I live in the real world and see it with my own eyes.

What you want is for this interviewer to be given a free pass because she is a woman. It was a car crash of an interview.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

No I don't. Don't put words into my mouth. I couldn't care less if Newman did a good or bad job. I don't care that she (specifically) did a bad job of this interview, it's a shame that this man's ideas weren't more thoroughly explored. The interview was essentially a waste of time.

@LeeMoore how does each group get given its role? Is that innate, as per the lobster?

[LeeMoore]

EamonnWright : “Men get the piss ripped out of them all the time. Mostly by other men. I know this because I live in the real world and see it with my own eyes.”

Sure, and women rip the piss out of other women, and out of men. Humans are good at this sort of thing, regardless of sex. But I disagree that Peterson was ripping piss in this case. He walked into an ambush interview – probably knowing in advance that it might be hostile – but he knew how to deal with it. And he did it by being polite, careful with his words and good humoured. And by being far better informed about his subject than she was (as you'd expect since they were discussing his book.)

“What you want is for this interviewer to be given a free pass because she is a woman. It was a car crash of an interview.”

I think car crash overstates it. She tried the traditional BBC-style hectoring assault, as if she was interviewing a politician, and it didn’t work. So her ambush failed and Peterson came out looking rather calm and reasonable. But it was obvious – to me (and I've never seen her before) – that she’s pretty smart and articulate so that she’ll likely learn from the experience and become a better interviewer as a result.

Now there will no doubt be some who think that’s very patronising – little woman learns useful lesson from male Professor. But who cares what such people think ? I bet Peterson thinks he’s learned something from the interview. Some of his answers were very good and spot on – eg the stuff about men needing to grow up. But although his answers on gender equality were way better than her questions, he could certainly have been clearer and more precise. So since he believes in learning from experience, next time he gets an ambush interview he’ll do better still.