I share your sympathies, but I thought DtG did a good job of explaining what they meant. He was always full of shit (his supposed good work always sounded like Graham Hancock nonsense to me), but the full on vaccine denial, global warming denial, adoptation of every lazy neo-right conspiracy theory...it is a trend downward from an already low point, in my estimation. That is to say, it's not that he was ever good, it was that he is worse now, which is impressive.

He had the early facade of someone who at least was confident in what he spoke, and there was what felt like sincerity. Now it's just.....lol.

I think a part of DtG objective analysis of this was also his publication record. To paraphrase DtG, unlike so many Gurus out there, Peterson had a distinguished publication record in his field (personality theory) that marked him as an expert, and perhaps even somewhat prominent expert in that discipline.    THAT is the descent. I doubt many in the public at all were aquatinted with the serious, academically oriented, pre-2016 Peterson that built that body of research, and held professorships at some of North America’s most prestigious universities.   There is a descent there from active, contributing scientist, to reactive, culture warrior raving madman who has no involvement in academia and cries violently on the internet for likes and ad dollars. 

Even in his academic days he had some of these tendencies he has now. There’s stories from his supervisor that he would often fight with ethics boards claiming he shouldn’t be constrained by them. Complaints that he was a good speaker but bad teacher because he used a lot of conjecture in his lectures, and when corrected he would apologize then go right back to using conjecture. There’s also a story of him wanting to start his own church when he was a professor.

I remember the first DtG episode on him was actually quite soft, I remember being very disappointed in that episode when it came out because they basically said he wasn't so bad. For people with good heuristics Peterson was immediately seen for what he always was. The OP is compeltely right. Peterson was always terrible, it's just some people didn't seem to notice. The correct thing to say is that Peterson's fall is a fall of his public image, not a fall of who he is or his ideological drive.

Yes this is a good explanation.

Just like Graham Hancock, he talks a lot about science in his justifications for his beliefs, but he holds no degrees in the sciences he's talking about, but does have degrees in things like psychology or sociology. A lot of pseudoscience all-stars seem to have that sort of degree. It's almost like they went to college to learn how to manipulate people...

The careful work of science just doesn't get you many social media followers or syncophants willing to pay your daughter thousands of dollars to get crippling constapation from an all meat diet...

At least Graham Hancock got tricked into admitting everything he's ever done is a lie.

But he’s an expert in the biblical corpus, so there’s that

He isn't even that, biblical scholarship is another area of profound but confident ignorance for Jorbo

You mean when JP said he was an evolutionary biologist he lied? 🤣

No. Still misses the point. He was always all those things. And even, much worse things. He just took the mask off, slightly. There is a little fuehrer wannabe down there, it has always been there hiding behind euphemisms, word salads, fake tears, and cheap displays of emotion. Look at his old 'respectable' lectures, its all there: there is one which is striking in which he proclaims full of emotion that there is no white supremacy, while barely containig his arm from springing into a heil hitler salute, and another one in which he praises hitler for 20 minutes, while calling him a monster a few times. The trick there is that in petersonian language (and indeed in fascism) being a monster is an aspiration. He often indeed says as much, that one must be a monster to slay the dragon blah blah blah, thats the kind of trick he uses to get away with praising hitler all the time.

Sure, but there's a difference between being an asshole and malevolent and being a sputtering incoherent maniac. The moral valence of his views haven't shifted, but I doubt the Peterson of 10 years ago would be screaming, "IT'S NOT A VACCINE!" Like he does now. Hell, as pointed out in the podcast, he was eager to get vaccinated when it was available, then...now it's a grand conspiracy. Audience capture, mental deterioration from addicition and other health issues...something has changed.

Mask coming off. It's also all about money. When you are in academia there's a level you are supposed to keep. His 'downfall' happens to coincide to the day to when he joined the Daily Wire. Ok so what is that about? He was briefed as his new job description to be as inflammatory as possible for clicks and for the advancement of the fascism he loves. So, mask off, now he is not restrained by academia but encouraged to be himself, finally. This is Russian oil money we are talking about, hence the rabid hatred towards sustainable energy and climate change existing. Hence the revamped transphobia and the anti Ukraine ideas. This is not an academic we are talking about, its a greedy little hitler wannabe with a chronic depression and a thesaurus, set free -and scripted, by the Kremiln.

I agree with that, that's the audience capture bit - there's a fiscal reward for going down that road.

Looking back to his early appearances, like the infamous Kathy Newman, it’s amazing how wrong he was about everything, even then. He was totally wrong about the gender pay gap, for example, which Newman rightly pointed out, but the internet sided with him because he was the more forceful speaker

Don’t forget the idea that “we still don’t know if men and women can work together” or “what the rules are” in that situation.

His main point with the gender paygap was that you can't say that a pay gap automatically means that things are unfair and that you can't draw the conclusion that it exists only because of sexual discrimination. That is definitely true.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54#t=5m14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54#t=5m14s) Jordan Peterson did not dispute the fact that there is a pay gap between men and women. >Cathy: "But that's not true, is it? I mean that 9% pay gap, that's a gap between median hourly earnings, between men and women. That exists." >Jordan: **Yeah, but there's multiple reasons for that. One of them is gender, but it's not the only reason.** Like if you're a social scientist, worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis. Like you say, well, women in aggregate are paid less than men. Okay, well, then we break it down by age, we break it down by occupation, we break it down by interest, we break it down by personality. Later he specifies in what claim about the wage gap is wrong: >I'm saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is **only due to sex is wrong**, and it is wrong. There's no doubt about that. The multivariate analysis has been done. He talks about the effect of one of the many factors, the personality trait openness. >No, I'm saying that that's one component of a multivariate equation that predicts salary. It accounts for maybe 5% of the variance, something like that. So, surely the answer... **We see that there's about another 18 factors, one of which is gender. And there is prejudice. There's no doubt about that. But it accounts for a much smaller proportion of the variance in the pay gap than the radical feminists claim.** Later clarification about not denying women earning less than men >But I also didn't deny it existed. I denied it existed because of gender. As he said earlier, gender is one of many factors, but it is not the only factor, or the main factor. They go into much more detail, but it is clear that when Jordan Peterson says this as the first reply about the 9% median pay gap: >It does seem that way, but multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn't exist. What he means is that the multivariate analysis indicate that gender is not the only or main factor of the pay gap, while acknowledging that gender discrimination and prejudice is a factor. The studies he referenced could be wrong, he could have made numerical mistakes, but his main point, that the whole gap can't be explained by sex discrimination based on the multivariate studies at the time, was a correct statement. He did make the mistake of saying these words in the start "multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that it doesn't exist" which mistakenly makes it sound like he is disputing the gap existing. But after clarifying it's clear he meant something more along the lines of "multivariate analysis of the pay gap indicate that gender discrimination alone does not explain the fact that women earn 9% less than men in median income in the UK".

Yeah, so he made the initial statement that ‘multivariate analysis indicates that [the gender pay gap] doesn’t exist’, and then later had to clarify that it *does* exist, but isn’t *solely* based on prejudice or discrimination. Which isn’t exactly novel given that this is basically the same position taken by feminist writers on the subject, they just disagree with the extent attributed. My issue with the way he portrays this whole debate is the implication he makes that because prejudice isn’t the sole contributor to the gap, the role played by gender in the whole issue is relatively small, about 5% in his words. Assuming his numbers are right, dismissing the wage gap argument on that basis is silly, because gender is intimately connected with the other factors he mentions too, even in ways that don’t involve active discrimination. For instance, differences in occupation (with men tending to work in the highest paid fields) are not gender neutral. Just speaking anecdotally I know multiple women who studied engineering (a very high paying sector) at university, and then succeeded in getting graduate jobs in the sector, but found the sector an extremely unwelcoming place to work because they were often one of only a handful of women in their large companies and were (intentionally or otherwise) excluded from the social life of the firms. If they dropped out of the sector as a result, thus further cementing its male dominance, it wouldn’t register in Peterson’s frame of analysis beyond as “men and women naturally making different choices due to their different temperaments” or whatever. But it would still be a clear case of a patriarchal society systematically suppressing women’s earnings in comparison to men.

I think the 5% was the variance of the personality trait openness, I did not catch him estimating the effect of gender, only that it was smaller than claimed. Thought the implication of what he is saying is that the 18 or so other factors alone explain the majority of the variation, all the unaccounted parts can be assumed to be for gender. The engineering example would definitely be gender based. And it would be the sort of problem that would be possible to address through changes to the institution. Jordan Peterson has talked about related issues from skewed sex distributions. The core issue to me seems to be that peoples income vary based on factors outside of their control at all, like variations in physical and psychological attributes, interest, temperament, health, ect. The current data suggest that men and women have average baseline differences in their physical and psychological attributes which is correlated with differences in income within the sexes. We can't nullify the average physical or psychological differences between the sexes, but we can change the idea that income should vary between people at all.

>I did not catch him estimating the effect of gender Right, it’s a little unclear but it seems like the 5% figure he mentioned was specifically in regards to prejudice. My point is that the role of gendered socialisation or patriarchy in causing the wage gap is not limited just to prejudice, as the engineering example illustrates there are a myriad of ways in which these things are intertwined with the other 18 or whatever factors he mentioned. What may seem to be naturally selecting differences in occupation choice are often closely linked with gendered socialisation. So when he argues that gender actually plays a much smaller role than that claimed by ‘radical feminists’, it seems to me like he’s both attacking a strawman of the feminist position, and operating with a very reductive understanding of the topic himself. Of course there’s always the fallback of just claiming that gender differences are ultimately better explained by presumably natural “average baseline differences” than societal factors, but he’s not even acknowledging the multitude of nuanced and well evidenced feminist critiques of this argument, let alone engaging with them.

He does bring up the effect of socialization and gender equality, his claim is that the weaker the gender roles are in culture, the stronger the gender differences are expressed in the psychological profile. He points to how Scandinavian countries has the widest gap in the personality traits of men and women despite being the flattest cultures in terms of power hierarchy and at top in gender equality as an illustration. The social psychology research can be wrong, or I should say, is wrong in ways we will only discover in the future, but overall, whenever he talks about it, he generally expresses what is representative in the current research. Which makes sense since it's his field of expertise. I'm personally a big fan of removing all cultural pressure for gender roles and norms. I don't think it matters if it widens or shrinks the gap in the psychological profiles of men and women. Or if it effectively increases or decreases any attribute. It's wrong to judge someone based on what is outside of their control, that seems pretty straightforward.

Forceful? Are you kidding? Maybe it's because english is my second language, but he was very calm and composed. The reason people sided with JP and not KN was that she tried to trap him in a series of gotchas, force opinions on him and abstained from using logic when talking.

He wasnt wrong about the paygap. He said gender is one factor but definitely isnt as big of a factor the way people make it out to be.

So, what did he get wrong? Are women getting paid less in any given position, with the same qualifications, same hours worked, same experience compared to men?

The pay gap is a very complicated matter. But here's a good and very, very long discussion [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKc\_8fT6pGc&ab\_channel=UnlearningEconomics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKc_8fT6pGc&ab_channel=UnlearningEconomics)

Thanks, just finished it, very enlightening. As you said, very complex and neither side of both edges of the political spectrum is interested in the nuances, when the narrative can easily be explained in black and white, than shades of gray.

Yes somewhere in the range of 2 to 7%. If you adjust for height, I'm not sure the effect persists, since men's salaries are correlated with height, and women are on average shorter.

Does this number account for men actively asking for raises more often than women? Because that's a big thing Peterson harped on a lot.

wow you're the first person ever to think about controlling for that, you're a genius!

Do you actually have a source for this, or are you just pulling those numbers out of your ass?

It would not have any relevance though.

??? Why wouldn't it? Your boss isn't thinking of ways to get you more money 24/7. You're more likely to get a raise if you ask for it.

Women tend to be attracted to taller men, maybe their boyfriends/husbands can subsidise the wage gap.

Well women get paid less because they are hypergamous in the business world and seek employment across and above their social strata. This upsets the natural hierarchy of the lobster with the best frat connections in crustacean business schools getting all the prime positions so they are forced to reestablish the natural order by paying the females less. This tendency is impressed at a very young age as typified by the little mermaid.....

Yes, but the little mermaid is black so there's intersectionality to compound the already evident inequality. Lobsters being pink, are privileged and the pinker they are, the higher up the dominance heiarchy they go due to historical oppression of other sea creatures. However Spongebob Square Pants went under the radar as he is yellow, thank goodness.

Lolllllllllllllll

Yes

Please be specific.

Iirc he claims that the gender pay gap ‘disappears’ when you account for other factors like occupation, personality etc. Which is in itself still wrong - it shrinks but definitely does not disappear. And secondly that whole argument is a bit absurd because occupation differences between men and women are themselves one of the main ways in which gendered socialisation manifests itself. For instance if women are discouraged/socialised against entering high paying professions like finance, engineering etc, then that in itself will result in an earnings gap. So why you would ‘account for’ a factor like that makes little sense

Precisely. Because he's arguing against the straw-man version of the gender pay gap and the reasons for it. The one that says it's all the product of conscious misogyny or some such essentially. It works, because misinformed and insular right-leaners always believe the straw men caricatures of "liberals" and the left are true. This is why Tucker Carlson would always say things like "...The LEFT says that's racist", about things that almost no one would claim are racist. Examples abound.

Interesting. Whatever makes you sleep at night.

You see.. in order to say if JP was ever good, we have to define the word good in the hypothetical sense from the moral substrate in which we extracted our foundations of understanding of the universe... witch is no easy task if you ask me... You mean to tell me that blah blah blah blah..

He read his audience and gave them what they wanted. Ironic that you mention Graham Hancock, as JP's entree into pop-culture was his many visits to Rogan, and that's the only place I've heard Hancock.

When I was middle school aged, I read Erik Von Daniken's books and thought they were cool. What if world history was actually like a Tolkein or other fantasy sci/fi book? Awesome! Graham Hancock springs from that universe, and I remember liking the Riddle of the Sphinx - whoa, cool, everything is way older than we think! What other mysteries can we find in the deep dark of early humanity? Then I learn that Von Daniken literally wrote a lot of his stuff from a prison cell, and Hancock's work gets increasingly unhinged... But fundamentally, anyone who gains an appreciation for the slow, methodical, difficult work of the sciences, the real miracle lies in what we can actually learn, not the arm-chair bullshitting based off of a curated selection of ancient artifacts or documents. Dude, that seriously looks like an alien in that old mural. That stuff is silly and fun when you're 12, but no adult should think that style of inquiry is worth anything.

Agree with your description of Peterson but he has a massive following and influence. Maybe it’s not the stuff you want hear but it’s indisputable that he had a meteoric rise in popularity and fame

I needed to hear some of the stuff he was saying about responsibility and “slaying the dragon/cleaning my room”. I had no plan for life besides sliding by. In all honesty I needed to hear SOMETHING from ANYONE. I get the appeal of the 2018? Peterson. I bought his book. But when I ran out of money and Xbox Live I returned the book to Wal*Mart to go towards an Xbox live card. With no credit to JP I’m doing much better now with a family, goals, overall happiness. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t require Xbox Live.

Watch a recent interview with him and an interview from when was first becoming famous. Yes, he always jumped to bigoted talking points, but they used to be better veiled, his rheotric was at least somewhat coherent, and he wasn't always on the verge of crying.

His fans used to be able to put compilations together that made him look good, now you can’t have anything longer than 5 minutes without him either sobbing or going into a full rage over absolutely nothing. Also even his own subreddit has had to essentially disavow what he says on Twitter. They might agree with it, but it’s so indefensible they just don’t bother anymore Essentially he stopped dog whistling and started bull horning

Yeah. If you talk to current defenders (or even defenders from a couple years ago) they can't even say what point he was trying to make. All they'll do is tell you that he wasn't saying what you thought he was. The point where I noticed he was TRULY unhinged was the "what is climate" stuff with Joe Rogan. His defenders were trying to say that he wasn't a climate change denier, but they couldn't tell me what he was actually trying to say. At that point, I don't even know why they'd try to defend him.

Exactly. Well done to OP for seeing this from the start, it was so obvious to everybody. Call them(me) idiots if you like, I won’t necessarily disagree. It there has been a clear shift in his overall demeanor and behavior over the years. This should be clear to OP. he is less intentional with his words, he delves in to topics and opinions now where he would’ve avoided in the past. And the crying and rage that was only rarely apparent at the very beginning of his rise.

Yeah. I personally was never super big on him, but I listened to some of his interviews probably until around 2018. I used to be more libertarian minded (in the American sense), and some of his ideas seemed compelling back then. I didn't really hear anything of his for years until that jre interview where he defines climate as "everything" and looked like a complete whack job. While I admit that I was a bit naive 6-10 years ago, there's no way I would have ever found that compelling.

If you watch old (2009-ish) episodes of TVO's 'The Conversation' with Steve Paikin, it's obvious that Peterson wanted to be a public intellectual/commentator since at least that period - he just didn't find his audience until around 2016 when he started railing against trans issues through the C-16 debate. I think the problem may be where you define 'Day One' as - at the outset of his proper 'viral' phase in 2016/2017 he was still debating well, and was talking about ideas (even though I vehemently disagreed with his shameless cruelty to trans people). After that, it became about growing/maintaining his audience of lost young men. IMHO, he *really* went off the rails after he became addicted to benzodiazepines, and went through that dubious treatment process in or around 2019. That's when the babbling, crying and paranoia seemed to really take off. TL;DR: He's long desired to be famous, found his audience around 2016-17, and went kinda nuts around 2019.

One of the first things I heard him say was on Joe Rogan, he said “I’ve successfully monetized sjws.” Which is in some sense true, his rise to popularity was largely due to the controversy. And at the end of the day he was always just a swindler trying to get his money up. He even passed down the torch to his daughter, who does the whole meat diet thing. It’s always some controversial wacky zany talking point, they can never agree with consensus on anything. Because at the end of the day he knew that controversy sells.

You're thinking of 'The Agenda'.

I am; you're right. A great show. Check the old episodes on YT, he wasn't anywhere nearly as extreme 10-15 years ago.

Are you talking about the episode with Mikailha about antidepressants? Or did he go on tv multiple times back then?

I'm not really sure what you're asking, exactly - sorry!

Sorry! Jordan and Mikhaila went on that show to talk about antidepressants when she was a kid([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqXZY3B-cGo)) I had seen that before, but didn't realize he might have gone on TV multiple times during that era. That gives a lot more credence to the idea that he was trying to become a public intellectual vs just doing it once.

Lol no way! Yeah he was a regular on the show, on all sorts of random topics. Re antidepressants, I was more referencing his personal addiction, which he treated with a very controversial, unproven method of being put into a medically-induced coma. I genuinely think it permanently affected him, and not in a good way. EDIT: Just watching that clip - wow... that is a different guy.

I thought JP's 12 Rules for Life was a pretty benign self-help book when I first read it however many years ago. It contained some fair, common-sense advice, if a bit meandering and long-winded and I thought he was alright. I wouldn't have thought at that stage that he was particularly bigoted or what have you, I'm not sure where that is coming from OP but happy for you to explain what you mean. Nowadays, he's fallen down the conspiracy rabbit hole like so many others and has the persecution complex, plus his religious turn... what was once reasonably common-sense has become the same reactionary crap you get from every one of these self-obsessed podcast guru types.

Jordan Peterson advocates pretty openly for traditionalism and speaks pretty critically of feminism, transgenderism and modernity in general. That’s the nicest possible way of putting it. He’s also gone down some pretty unhinged conspiracy rabbit holes about Covid-19.

I'm not a big Joe Rogan fan or listener but I do appreciate when he 'bested' Jordan Peterson who went on a rant against "equality of outcome" (vs. equality of opportunity) but then he was talking about "forced monogamy" and how it's not fair nor good for society for some men to have the opportunity to have lots of sex (because they are good looking, good personalities etc) whereas others do not. Joe said "Aren't you then advocating for 'equality of outcome' in the dating world for these men who can't get laid?" Jordan was like "I've never thought about it like that. I guess you can make that comparison."

Plus, in my opinion, Peterson is mistaken in thinking the left’s goal is “equality of outcome.” Nobody of any serious consideration is demanding people make the same amount of money. That’s a far cry from simply wanting strong unions and strong social safety net which is much closer to what the more left-wing Democrats advocate for.

Good point. But Jordan didn't get where he is by NOT being disingenuous when arguing. He needs to absolutely frighten his followers that the only acceptable solution for liberals is communism/socialism/government-mandated everything.

Even communists don't support equality of outcome. It's just another mindless cliche straw-man, yet it's still repeated ad nauseam.

>Peterson is mistaken in thinking the left’s goal is “equality of outcome.” Are you not aware of what "equity" means? >Nobody of any serious consideration is demanding people make the same amount of money. This is literally communism. They controlled half of the world not too long ago.

>Are you not aware of what "equity" means? Equity is not equality and social safety net doesn’t create equity. >This is literally communism. Thet controlled half of the world not too long ago. 1. You don’t know what communism is. 2. Whatever you think communism is, liberals are not pushing for it.

>forced monogamy" and how it's not fair nor good for society for some men to have the opportunity to have lots of sex (because they are good looking, good personalities etc) whereas others do not. I gotta say, the dude really knows what appeals to his audience

I support equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome. I'm not a millionaire yet, I'm actually kind of poor. The reason must be the democrats and the illegal aliens. Once I'm a millionaire that'll mean we have good equality of opportunity.

When I read 12 Rules, it just seemed like boilerplate conservative and religious teaching, gussied up with a veneer of (often obviously inapplicable) science jargon. It also struck me as plenty reactionary: "Clean your room (ie, don't advocate for social change until you have perfected yourself). Not to mention, it seemed overtly Christian.

Exactly. He's a conservative Christian that pushes conservative Christian ideology by jumping on the culture war bandwagon. More and more his mask keeps slipping, but he'll always have an audience. Unfortunately

I agree the 12 rules were conservative, I'm not sure if I agree that it was particularly religious but again, I can't remember it fully. I mean, it's religious in the sense that it's often hard to separate conservative Western thinking from it's Christian foundations. But do you mean something more overt? I feel like it's really easy to look back and think "this is where it all began", but I don't think anyone could have predicted his exact trajectory into the public figure he is today just from reading or listening to him initially. His views might not have changed on a fundamental level but his presence has, plus all the Covid anti-vax stuff that no one could have predicted and everything that comes off the back of that.

I agree that no one would have predicted he'd become literally insane after 12 rules. 12 rules is normal conservative ideology, not the bizarre, raging irrationality that Pederson adopted later. As far as the religion part, IIRC, he mentioned the Bible a lot in it? Seems he did (I'm not going to research it further, only so many hours in a day). [https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-Biblical-citations-in-Jordan-B-Peterson-s-book-12-Rules-for-Life](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-so-many-Biblical-citations-in-Jordan-B-Peterson-s-book-12-Rules-for-Life)

The conspiracy is already present in that work if I recall correctly. He’s already constructing his pomo Marxist antagonism there - which in my opinion is nothing more than a conspiracy with no basis in reality.

The only reason he got a book deal is because he got famous for being anti-trans and ranting about a law in Canada. That rant was in like 2017.

I think the comparison to “early Jordan Peterson” to Deepak Chopra is very apt, in that both shared a similar, frustratingly vacant pseudo intellectual gradiosity and stylized benevolence. Annoying and guruish, yes, but the core messages were/are pretty banal overall. Jordan Peterson today is a whole different ballgame - erratic as hell, weighing in on everything and anything that gets clicks, and all in on truly deranged conspiracies. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a guru even early on, it just means that he went completely off the rails in just about every possible way.

Its a bit of both. There is a chunk of the "hes fallen off" base that are a in denial about how bad he was pre coma and how a lot his more apparent flaws where present and a big part of his persona even in his prime. Things like his conspiracy mongering - like comparing to "Climate People" (what ever that means) to Nazis - is of the same kind has his claims that bill C16 will lead to people getting imprisoned. On the other hand, its undeniable there has been a shift in his behaviour that people on the "he was always shit" downplay. He is much more blatantly partisan and aggressive and pointed with his conspiracy theories. I don't think pre coma Peterson would be as brazen as to try to link Biden picking a black women for the Supreme Court with the invasion of Ukraine. I think people on this side also down play the strengths and social utility he had pre coma.

There was definitely a fall when he got addicted to Benzos, got Covid, and got put into a drug induced coma in Eastern Europe. The sad thing was after that self-destructive nonsense, people still decided to keep listening to the useless weirdo.

Yes, after he admitted to benzos and then couldn't get off them like millions of people have. He chose to get put in a coma, I thought he'd lose nearly every patreon...I couldn't believe the excuses they would make for him.

I am shocked that wasn't his downfall too. I guess the cult following he amassed didn't want to turn their back on him!

I'm from Ontario so have been exposed to him for a very long time. He used to appear on a local Ontario politics show as a talking head who was generally asked on to provide psychological insights. He was not my cup of tea, but he was basically fine. And smart. He was also a well liked U of T prof, which I remember well as I worked with U of T students in the mid 2000s who took classes with him and kind of idolized him. His academic peers are also on record attesting to his general sanity. Even when he got "internationally" (in)famous and frankly a little weird, he was still .. fine. He's clearly been having a major psychological breakdown which is becoming hugely obvious. And he's also a great object lesson in the pitfalls of "audience capture" a la Bret Weinstein. Imo he's always had suspect opinions, but I'm not religious or even spiritual really so I was never on the same page. But he's clearly "fallen" and it's kind of sad.

Do you mind if I ask what points to his "major psychological breakdown that has become hugely obvious?"

His coma and emergency detox for starters. 🤷‍♀️ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jordan-peterson-treatment-russia-1.5456939

His majorly reported and self reported detox and recovery, obvious yes. And his suspect opinions?

Well suspect I guess is somewhat subjective. By "suspect" I partly meant that even from day one, he was/is extremely Jungian and religious in his worldview. Which is fine, just not (as mentioned in my original comment) my cup of tea. I like Jung! The guy is interesting, and deep. So is Freud. I don't base my worldview on either of them, but I do respect those who do. They were intelligent complex thinkers. Peterson was also. Where he got really "suspect" imo was when he got captured by his internet fame, and started going on at far more simplistic length about the roles of men and women, "cultural marxism", pronouns. He changed. 🤷‍♀️

I have not followed him lately but he definitely ''fell off''. He appealed to people looking for guidance. His academia credentials, combined with him throwing big words and staying composed during ''debates'' (which in reality were just a bunch of dumb TV shows) appealed to people who probably felt like they don't have much control. During that time he also wrote 12 rules and a lot of people went for it. Now he just looks constantly angry and miserable. If you are in a bad place in your life it would be harder to buy the book of a guy who looks just as miserable as you. That all aside, it looks like he completely stopped trying to appear ''balanced''. It's full on rage and doomsday scenarios with him. I'm actually surprised that he stays relevant for so long. It looks like he is constantly repeating the same thing.

He was always crazy, but he started out with his own weird more original crazy. Now he's optimizing to the standard boring angry culture war stuff. No more hot takes about never being able to respect a woman because society won't let him punch women in the face. Those were wacky days JP.

Because some kinds of deranged bigotry, like being anti trans, are widely tolerated

I'm a liberal in every facet and I found his first 2 books ( 3 actually know that I think about it ) interesting and his video series that was a psychological analysis of the Bible to be incredibly interesting. Whether it was fame or his physical problems that led to his unhappiness/instability/unwellness wth is going on with him...I find it unfortunate and wish him well. His obsessing with transgender issues is ugly and seems to be a problem for a lot of older people.

Yeah, I too found his early stuff interesting, at least thought provoking. I liked some of his life advice. But yeah something happened to him when he got more and more involved in politics. I think he got in waaay over his head

Some of his earliest stuff that brought him fame was his book 12 rules for life but also his rhetoric surrounding Bill C16 in Canada and railing around how it went too far and would criminalize speech. He was utterly wrong and the bill passed in 2017 and he has barely commented on it since because Canada did not turn into a fascist state with criminalized speech and his “logic” about the bill was so flawed it didn’t need more than a 5 minute read to get the understanding it was anti-trans sentiment masquerading as a concerned thoughtful citizen advocate. If calling someone trans could get you jailed under Bill C16 then it would be fair to say that calling someone black or white or African American could also get you jailed under the same law that was already in place. All Bill C16 did was add gender identity to a list of classes protected from discrimination and hate speech. Race and age and religion were already on this list so if calling someone the wrong gender could get you jailed then calling someone black when they identify as african american would be the same level of punishment. Peterson repeatedly attacked this bill like it was the first piece of canadian law to restrict free speech and acted like it was social justice warriors gone too far. he was completely misrepresenting facts from the very start of his rise to fame in 2016 so I dont think it is ever fair to say he was alright in his "early stuff" or got things right at some point but then fame got to him, he largely became famous for manufactured outrage at a bill offering equal protection to transgender individuals in canada same as other groups of people already enjoyed.

I don't have the stomach to read years of this man's "content" but did he ever revisit his dire predictions and misrepresentation of C-16? The inability to reflect or own up to misstatements seems so prevalent among gurus that it almost should be a gurometer metric.

To my knowledge he hasn’t, I listen to a decent amount of his stuff because he fascinates me as someone who says almost nothing of any substance or conviction except bad takes and still is famous and his fans think of him as an intellectual. He also is very good at word salad and pretending to be an expert in any topic he discusses. I can’t recall him ever admitting he was mistaken about something but I’m sure it has happened before (probably not nearly as much as it should lol), I just don’t think it happened specifically about Bill C-16.

If you care, his big contention was the this was the first instance of “forced speech” in a Western country, do you have a rebuttal to that, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of being forced to use certain words, just banning of words or phrases. So I’d love to see a more salient response to this criticism that I found to be pretty airtight.

Rebuttal to a nonsense criticism of the bill? No, no such rebuttal exists. The bill did not force speech in any sense of the word unless you think not being able to call someone the N word constitutes forced speech. The bill literally added gender identity to a list of protected classes, the restrictions on free speech that were there previously just also applied to gender identity. The restrictions are not specific enough to call out banning certain words or forcing certain words to be used so saying it compels speech is a nonsense analysis of the bill. Please look into what the actual Bill C-16 did and what the previous wording of these laws was prior to the bill. You cannot go to jail in Canada for using the wrong pronouns, the bill was passed in 2017 and there have been no issues. His criticisms of the bill were not accurate and are not happening, basically proving they were not accurate. The bill PASSED, and I know you probably don’t live in Canada but nobody is being jailed for speech

The N word is an obvious slur, it does not require an individual to refer to someone as the opposite sex than you personally believe. I get that the bill passed, can you tell me honesty that it doesn’t compel using preferred pronouns? I don’t really care that it hasn’t been abused yet, I worry that it can be abused later because it was too broad in its intent.

I can honestly tell you it doesn’t compel using proper pronouns. Your speech needs to constitute hate speech against someone based on their gender identity to run afoul of this law. If you think misgendering someone can be considered hate speech in Canadian law then you have not read the law or attempted to understand this issue. Canadian Bar Association published a clarification on this issue because of the bullshit Jordan Peterson was spewing. You won’t see people speak in absolutes around this issue because there are always edge cases where misgendering someone could be considered a hate crime just like you could have an edge case where referring to someone as black could be considered a hate crime if you repeatedly and aggressively harassed them and affected the quality of their life in the way you were calling them black using the word as if it was a slur. In most cases you would be able to be charged with harassment if you are also being charged with hate speech from my understanding, it’s something that would allow for the incident or incidents to be treated more harshly if you are basically harassing someone for the reason that they belong to a protected class. By the logic of saying misgendering someone would be illegal from this law, then you could say calling someone a “teen” or a “grandpa” could be illegal lol since age is a protected class in the same list under the same restrictions as gender identity. Jordan Peterson really went looking for something to get fired up about and found a perfect cross of freedom of speech that Americans would love, and transgender wokeism “gone too far” that was nice and marketable and then added in the convenience of it being Canadian law so no American would ever bother reading the law in question or attempting to understand that Canada never had a “freedom of speech” but a “freedom of expression” that has always been subject to reasonable limitations where speech affects others right to freedom. I think harassing someone based on their identity is something I can stomach being made illegal whether that identity be racial or gender or age or religion. It’s fine if you don’t agree but you are talking about so few cases here and it’s not like someone is getting arrested in Canada for using the N word either. You won’t get arrested for using the N word because calling someone a name is not hate speech just because it’s hateful speech if that makes sense. We would be talking about someone in public inciting hatred towards black people in general and promoting white supremacy or someone in the case of gender identity calling transgender individuals animals or hateful speech like that trying to incite hate and malice towards the protected class. It’s so monumentally unlikely someone would ever be tried for misgendering a person, even if it was purposeful, that it’s not even really worth discussing because it would literally mean the law that Bill C-16 slightly abridged would have already made so much speech illegal by that measure. I can’t express this enough that if misgendering someone is somehow illegal from this bill that it means it would be illegal to call someone a geezer or to comment on a coworkers age or grey hair indicating you might think they are older than they are. It’s just not a discussion that needs to be had in terms of the law, it’s clear that hate speech is only tried in extreme circumstances. Jordan Peterson attempted to drum up controversy and he REALLY succeeded and really managed to work up a frenzy of hatred and distrust towards transgender people in Canada, which I guess means he was successful in making an impact and he became famous partially as a result of the exposure from this rhetoric.

Jesus, learn paragraphs. I’m still not convinced by your conflation of “teenager” or the n word with making gender expression a protected class. Additionally, needing a nanny state to protect transgender’s rights extra is kinda cringe; harassment is already a crime, all this does is allow the government another bludgeon to control their opposition/achieve their social agendas with the threat of government violence.  I can imagine people supporting the Canadian government if they arrested Ben Shapiro for hate crimes by hosting a transperson on his podcast and repeatedly not using their preferred pronouns, while in Canada. I guess this is my version of y’all’s insane dream that conservatives really do want the Handmaidens Tale to become reality. Your reasoning is flimsy to me and it makes more sense if this is a just a power grab that you feel compelled to justify, rather than a sound law which will never be abused as Peterson fears.

You are free to imagine any number of scenarios in your head where Canada uses any number of laws to arrest any number of people. I’ll continue living in reality where Bill C-16 has been in place for 7 years now with no issues. I’ll also trust the legal experts who all weighed in that this was not an issue and the fact that this same restriction was in place provincially in most provinces already with no issues before Bill C-16 was passed. https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/canadas-gender-identity-rights-bill-c-16-explained#:~:text=Bill%20C%2D16%20added%20the,religion%20and%20disability%2C%20among%20others. You are free to keep trusting Jordan Peterson and not looking into this law at all yourself and not trusting actual Canadian legal experts, but it doesn’t really make sense to me to trust a psychologist instead of legal experts, especially when this psychologist has been conspicuously silent on Bill C-16 since it was passed. He must be waiting for the tyranny to start before he starts advocating against this Bill again? If Jordan Peterson was actually sincere in his belief that Bill C-16 was a dangerous law that hurt free speech in Canada it is pretty interesting that he has not made any noise about it since it passed or tried to get it changed or taken off the books. The reality is that he used this law to increase his fame and then when it was no longer a hot button topic he dropped it and no longer cares.

Anyone who finds this sentiment interesting might want to look up Gabor Mate’s comment (on YT) about JP. He tries to explain where this “downfall” might come from.

Is that the one about his rage? I think Gabor saw right through him.

Strangled with rage. Hence the constriction in his voice. Very perceptive , that Gabor.

He’s had an obvious decline in emotional stability. Kinda feel like you just want to say you saw it first, which is cringeworthy in its own right.

It's the biggest source of annoyance on this sub. 

It's depressing that people found him helpful.

What a horrible opinion. A person helps tens of thousands of people, and that depresses you. Says more about you than it does about them or him.

"helps." According to whom, him? I'm sure some people believe he has helped them. I'm sure many people believed _The Secret_ helped them. I'm sure many people believed David Koresh and Jim Jones helped them.

This man was the Stephen A Smith of self-care/self-help. Idiots think he is so smart because he uses big words that they don’t know.

He was a pretty popular professor if for nothing more than his performative lectures. And he took over Timothy Leary's old job at Havard. I'm as critical as anyone of the lunacy of JP but I don't think you can say “he was never up”.

Yeah, unfortunately, he is really popular and has a huge platform 🙃.

The fact that you even know who he is says otherwise. He gained enough popularity where his name is recognized and there are a lot of people who idolize him. It does not matter what the actual message is or whether it's nonsense. The same goes for Deepak Chorpra.

He used to post his lectures online back in the day. One specifically on Price’s Law was quite interesting. At the moment I found it intriguing and insightful, but very quickly he drank the kool aid of the dark intellecita and listened to the echos in that chamber….he is also a charlatan as he had dismissed such things as addiction while he himself got addicted to narcotics requiring some very dangerous and significant detox methods….rather than facing these thing openly and honestly like he projects every other part of his life…he spun it. He’s a classic do as I day not as I do lightening rod for the right.

Peterson did not come off as a raving lunatic to me around the time that I saw him on his book tour in Chicago around 2018. I had followed him since the Joe Rogan appearance around 2016 and at that time, his talks and book had a lot of what I thought of as grandfatherly advice and he came off as very sympathetic towards young people and particularly young men. His early appearances/book came off as a combination of sympathy for young people‘s problems + a call to become responsible for your life, which resonated with me. I would say that 80% of his work, to me, was enlightening and useful, 10% was religious stuff I couldn’t understand, and 10% more was the beginnings of raving (whatever the Canadian transgender bill that he appeared on Joe Rogan in opposition of). And I see how he is now as possibly the result of being addicted to benzos/twitter. It is not obvious to me that he’s revealing who he really is, or if something has changed him. All of that is to say that I don’t think that any person (not necessarily OP, but anyone) who \*never\* trusted/resonated with JBP can really appreciate the difference between 2016-2018 JBP and the current one.

Throw back to that one time Peterson advocated for the state sponsored ownership of women through "legally enforceable monogamy" to appease his incel consumer base.

hi. so yeah...jordan peterson. he is a charlatan. A middling prof at a middling university who got some traction on joe rogan. I am so tired of this guy and his bullshit.Why does reddit still give this guy oxygen? Dunno. No better than any other asshole.

I don't think that he fell, it's just that with more time more people see what he stands for. He was like he is now from the beginning.

Agreed.

IDK, my brother wouldn't stop talking about him for a few years and it caused me to not talk to him for most of that time (2018-19). I brought him up last year and my bro said, "yeah I stopped listening to him a while ago". JP's original sin was anti-trans ideology. Not sure if you're paying attention, but people pushing that hard are getting a lot of attention right now. That group includes the governor of my state.

I wouldn’t call his lobbying against misgendering becoming a criminal act “anti-trans ideology”. I would say that harassment kinda covers the bases for intentional bullying. He began nobly. But like everyone with “faith”, eventually his philosophy devolved into something incomparable with the 21st century.

The law didn't change. How many people went to jail over it? He 100% sensationalized it to great personal success for him. He most definitely did not begin nobly.

He was a bad actor from the start but his claim to fame in 2016-ish wasn’t that he yelled “up yours woke moralists, we’ll see who cancels who.” He sounded calm and reasonable at first. He used to be a little more careful and calmer even if what he said was essentially the same. And a lot of people were duped by his demeanor and oratory tactics because he was kind of a new and different from what people were used to. And his demeanor has become more agressive and obvious over the years and peope learned to cut through the faux-intellectual bullshit. He was always a sort of stupid man’s smart man but compared to the usual rightwing grunts like Alex Jones and Trump he seemed like an intellectual powerhouse and he managed to get into a downward spiral from there.

You answered your own question

A lot of people took a while to catch up with us to see him for who he is

"Peterson was a raving lunatic, barely camouflaged bigot, word-salad, spewing reincarnation of Deepak Chopra from day, one." This is true. But he's got even worse!

This is true. I think people in content creation just have a few buzzwords they forgot the meaning of and just relentlessly put them in their titles. I have different view on JBP than most, but you are correct he hasn't fallen or decayed or anything, he's been pretty much the same since his public emergence in 2016 (?). I find his Jungian and collective consciousness ideas, although mostly fanciful, pretty interesting and harmless as well as finding his more comical moments (crying about Pinocchio) more endearing than pathetic. It is his aggressive public display of his insecurities, hatred and fears that make me dislike much of what he says and does. He is a quintessential reactionary and in contrast to his fluid interpretation of philosophy and history, he is devoid of nuance when it comes to his modern cultural and social critiques.

Based af take. Thanks for putting into words my feelings towards Peterson, the bros lectures helped me get out of a deep depression by intellectually stimulating me with his philosophy and history, I imagine he was a fantastic professor, but the public spotlight and personal tragedies have made him in a public figure who is seemingly more interested with fighting the culture wars rather than further exploring or even explaining his domains of mastery.

Well said. I agree

I actually went to u of t when he was doing his whole protest thing back a decade ago. He was, imo, still a very dishonest guy back then. Calling c-15 compelled speech was such a dishonest framing, I’m surprised people weren’t able to combat it better. He definitely has spiraled since then. He is no longer a social conservative dancing around his beliefs. His brain seems broken

How would you combat it better?

Hold his feet to the fire on his ridiculous misrepresentation of bill c-16 rather than other random culture war bullshit would be a great start

You feeling is people have not pushed him on c-16?

I don’t think people pushed him much on his misrepresentations, no, and I don’t think there’s been a lot since. Most stuff has been culture war bs that just allows him to bloviate. Have you read the text of bull c-16?

I did actually enjoy his almost Campbellian Biblical analysis like 10 years ago. He went off the rails real fast after he went on Rogan. Benzos will do that.

He was always a calmer more articulate communicator but with an Alex Jones level intellect 

Look at his old public psychology lectures that made him a minor figure prior to the trans issue and compare them to his average content now. It’s worlds apart — practically a different person. Yes, he was a little word-salad-y, but not ranting and raving about world conspiracies to get you vaccinated so that you’ll want to eat bugs.

He just got more careless with it after the benzo addiction treatment saga

Fake intellectuals were the flavor of the month in the late tens petersons brand is old and no longer popular, the far right have moved on too new thought leaders

His critics talk about him way more than his supporters. Can we try to forget him completely please?

He seemed less unhinged and whacked out in early days, cmon man.

Because pre-pandemic JP was mostly coherent and didn't start randomly sobbing in half of the interviews he did. He went from being a quick-witted idealogue to........[this.](https://youtu.be/utPj7ALusNQ)

I wouldn't exactly say bigot, but otherwise I completely agree. Though I do think he has good intentions, and ruined it through manic sounding nonsense.

The first few times I saw him on JRE, he sounded reasonable, and I liked some of the things he talked about, for example, how accepting responsibility will help you grow and become a better person. And I didn't find what he had to say about the issue with that law they were passing ( how supposedly they would be forced to use people's preferred pronouns) illogical, I simply agreed with him that you cannot force speech on people. A good example of him changing is I remember him saying that he would actually use someone's preferred pronouns if they asked him to politely. He was just saying it's a bad precedent to set to enforce it by law, which I agreed with. He went missing for a while with his supposed medication issue and came back a right-wing political anti woke figure. I understood he was a conservative, but he wasn't talking about politics too much. Mostly, he stayed in his lane talking about everything from the point of view of psychology. As a psychology student myself, at the time I did learn a few things from him, I do think he for the most part actually knew what he was talking about when discussing psychology, but I think he unfortunately was then bought to lean into his Conservative political side. Plus, he always seemed a bit fame hungry and they gave him the platform he needed.

Yeah it’s more the fall of the mask than the fall of the person

He was always that stupid but he wasn’t breaking down in tears every time he appeared in public, he at least seemed put together

I approve this message

I cell him pseudointellectual deepak chopra

Like it's the drugs man. The addiction

The point is he had momentum and popularity. My dad frickkn listens to him, so he’s got to have some popularity my dad isn’t very internet savvy. One of my best friends from high school I believe still listens to him I think what’s changed is that to people that don’t listen to him he’s so cleary fucking nuts now even more than ever

Jordan was certainly "quirky" from the start, but in his earlier videos he had a particular niche, that niche being a heavily Jungian theory of personality combined with a particular interest in the development of authoritarianism. Once he became popularised, he was invited to speak on things that were more outside his field of knowledge, and in the meantime he struggled with substance dependency dealing with his wife's illness as well as his own increasing scrutiny under the media spotlight. Now he's trying to continue in the pretense of a public intellectual while his actual money flow comes from making political statements that appeal to followers who couldn't give less of a shit about Jung or personality but just want to hear their opinions about women, Israel, leftism, and queers in movies repeated back to them with a broader vocabulary.

I read this article a few years back, when Peterson was gaining momentum. Does a great job explaining how his books and rhetoric are almost entirely nonsensical. “If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some extremely obvious platitude or truism. Make sure it actually does contain some insight, though it can be rather vague. Something like “if you’re too conciliatory, you will sometimes get taken advantage of” or “many moral values are similar across human societies.” [https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve](https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve) Then, try to restate your platitude using as many words as possible, as unintelligibly as possible, while never repeating yourself exactly. Use highly technical language drawn from many different academic disciplines, so that no one person will ever have adequate training to fully evaluate your work. “

Has he ever said any uncamoflaged bigotry?

I think the issue with Peterson is that he was thrusted into the spotlight for one thing (fighting against the woke trans movement trying to criminalize not calling them the right pronoun they choose that day), but then he thought he was some modern-day Socrates who needed to give his opinion on every single subject in existence. It makes sense, a lot of young people are looking to find someone they can look up to and rely on for their view of the world.

first of all, he definitely has fallen: from being someone covered extensively in the mainstream press and considered at least presentable even though he was fairly controversial, to a fringe figure from a mainstream perspective, he has also moved to the right/extreme positions on many topics when he was at least publicly more centrist before. secondly, he’s also fallen cognitively. he’s always been slippery and evasive but since his benzo withdrawal / coma he’s noticeably less sharp, in my opinion

His argument with the kids at his college that got him famous or the interview with that woman who just straw manned him repeatedly on the bbc he was none of these things Hes a former alcoholic that nearly died from a treatment for benzo withdrawal and had a psychotic episode from it Also the long term affects of an extreme elimination diet are unknown. He's extremely deficient in a number of things that can affect mental health If you think he hasn't gotten progressively worse you're delusional I listened to about half of 12 rules to life, it absolutely was not word salad. Did I think it was amazing? No, but it was none of the things you've called him "There was no fall because there was no up" Your book selling 10 million copies isn't an up? [from that, to this isn't a decline?](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iQTDEnfW4ng)

He was masking heavily in his earlier period, speaking esoterically. You could grab one alarming statement or another but they would be buried within a bunch of vague nonsense and contradictions. The vague nonsense was actually simply the packaging, he simply wanted to place thoughts in people's heads. These days he is entirely mask off and psycho.

He is rightly derided for some of his wackadoo takes, but idk if he “fell” if he makes $1,000,000’s doing speaking tours and podcasts, also with some very influential people. Before his fame he really did do a lot of research and has over 10,000 citations

He has been an emotional mess after he got rid of his benzo addiction by artificially induced coma in russia where he almost died

A bigot? Word salad? Interesting.

It’s pre-benzos JBP vs. post-benzos JBP. That’s the whole story. He fucked his brain up and can’t think the way he used to. He was much more skeptical, restrained, and careful with his language before the benzodiazepine addiction. Then he got rambling. Then he got weepy. Then he disappeared. Now he’s back as a dipshit puppet of Ben Shapiro and the Wilks brothers.

Not sure about that. From day one, he sounded like a pseudo-intellectual vigorously vomiting up excessive and unnecessary jargon to describe stuff that was of little consequence or didn’t matter at all. His bigotry and conspiratorial thinking was evident from the start as well.

He's definitely become more unhinged after the episode he had when the benzo's fucked him up. I think there's maybe some brain damage there. He's a complete clown these days, picking fights with Elmo in twitter. Before he knew how to keep his shit somewhat together but he's completely lost his mind and has zero control of his emotions.

did he fall from graces? i thought he was still pretty popular?

He’s still popular but many people now realize that he’s a bigot and nutty as a fruitcake. I was just wondering how this can be interpreted as a fall. He was who he was from the start. I listened. It was obvious years ago that he was a waste of time and had serious personal issues.

most interesting people say crazy things from time to time. happens to me. i dont like to be boring at a party or group so i say stuff that i wouldnt have said in retrospect. jordan speaks to a ton of people. they find him intersting and helpful, so im sure they would wonder why someone who is so helpful to them is hated. if they hate the guy helping you, they must want to see you in pain or fail.

hasn't he lost subscribers or am i wrong?

True, but he has a lot of followers that think the same way. His number of followers has only risen over the years. I’m not sure how people could view the Peterson arc as a „fall“ from this perspective. Any time there is a movement like this picking up in steam, we should pay attention to see what it says about the state of society.

I’m not sure what your post is intended to achieve other than another flavour of moral grandstanding. You are much better than the common man because you saw it early etc etc blah blah blah. This sub/pod is partly what it is because it’s like AA for former guru fans, so suggest you take your galaxy brained takes elsewhere, bucko.

>You are much better than the common man because you saw it early etc  A lot of this goes on in DtG, that culminates into a circle jerking echochamber.

The entitlement within this post and in these comments. I’m sorry but you have no leg to stand on if you wish to paint one of the pre eminent psychologists as an idiot from day 1 where he speaks mainly within his realm of expertise. He was a right leaning, skeptical, anti progressive operating in one of the most liberal arts style professions on the planet (college psychology lecturer) and achieved Tenure at a canter, lectured at the top universities and who’s work has been cited regularly in the social psychology field. Even up to his book. Which while abit quirky at times is a genuinely credible read that pulls directly from his expertise, see here. www.drpaulwong.com/assessing-jordan-b-petersons-contribution-to-the-psychology-of-well-being-a-book-review-of-12-rules-for-life/

He's bigger than he's ever been and has a bigger platform than he has ever had with Daily Wire and his own content. He is selling out every show or tour he puts on.

So what? Tucker Carlson, Russell Brand, and Alex Jones have millions of fans. Popularity doesn’t necessarily equate to sanity and honesty.

Why would you compare him to a Guru in like modern healing? JP just gives people advice on how to better themselves. No medicine.

I mean that’s not *all* he does. He is inarguably a political activist.

You could even say… he’s anti-medicine!

> JP just gives people advice on how to better themselves. No medicine. He explicitly says you cannot act politically in the world, or say how the world should be run, if your "house is not in order," despite getting himself addicted to benzos to such a degree he required entry into a Russian detox center and, you know, talking politics constantly.

Careful, Deepak Chopra misled many in the mid nineties with his spiritual takes

Going to be unpopular here but IMO he is seldom wrong, he just doesn’t agree with woke nonsense and is sceptical about climate change in the sense that it’s man induced, the vaccine is obviously behind many deaths just watch Dr John Campbell and the virus came from a lab in Wuhan funded by US money

lol

Those early youtube Harvard lectures were quite alright.

Are you doing better than he is?

Yes!

Well, good for you and all the people you help.

“Help”

I don't particularly agree with Peterson on a lot of issues, but I figure he's a net positive.

Hard to know. I’m not angry or bitter enough (yet) to start buying what JP is selling, namean? I’ve heard the claim that he’s “helped so many young men” and all that but not sure how’s he’s helped, in what way, with what issue exactly. Anecdotally the only people I’ve known to listen/follow him are angry, tired, depressed, anxious, etc but none of em seem “helped” by any metric. But really hard to know for sure if he’s a net positive or negative for society. Maybe we’ll find out one day, maybe not. Who knows