"half nonsense, half banality" is a good summary. That was basically my takeaway from the my brief foray into some of his stuff a while back. It's like the banality gives cover for the nonsense to people not paying attention.

Procedure “a,” appropriate in situation one, and procedure “b,” appropriate in situation two, may clash in mutual violent opposition in situation three. Under such circumstances intrapsychic or interpersonal conflict necessarily emerges. When such antagonism arises, moral revaluation becomes necessary. As a consequence of such revaluation, behavioral options are brutally rank-ordered, or, less frequently, entire moral systems are devastated, reorganized and replaced.

sounds dialectical, you might like him more than you realize

so he's not wrong, he's just not precise? too flowery?

birdman will always say this is hegelian dialectical idealism, not dialectical materialism.

OMG Cambridge Analytica is so ****ed. They have suspended their CEO.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when taking into account the massive piles of physical evidence against my client, opportunity and motive to commit the crime, keep in mind that “intrapsychic spirits” and “the flow of spiritual water” exonerates him completely.

might be an "intent" argument in there...

Petersons book is the hottest of garbage and none of the things he is preachy about don't have all that much to do with the subjects he is an expert about. A true must-have if you're into physically disciplining your kids and tens of supercool bible stories. He doesn't even know what postmodernism is and gets easily dunked on by anyone taking this philosophy gobbledygook even remotely seriously(see debate with Sam Harris).

Gonna go ahead and say that whenever a cult of manbabies forms around a youtube celebrity, it's probably not going to further our society.

never a more timely or important message

he hasn't solved every social and psychological problem, his data is loose (at best), his conclusions drawn in fields outside of his background are terrible, his gender attitudes are hopelessly constrained by our collectively lopsided history, and his ideas are fodder for rank deplorables

but he's not an idiot and he does have some interesting things to say, eg:

probably, the level of hate on him from some is excessive proportionately to level of love from others is


he should definitely spend more time developing his concepts more concretely, rather than parading his half-baked theories on the airwaves, but I think he is genuinely (however in-/correctly) concerned that the totalitarian strain in our culture is reaching a level of concern

when the author says

"Obscurantism is more than a desperate attempt to feign novelty, though. It’s also a tactic for badgering readers into deference to the writer’s authority."

the author is somehow (apparently purposefully?) not taking into account something the author quotes in the very next paragraph:

"I can see only parts of it clearly at one time, and it is exceedingly difficult to set down comprehensibly in writing"

I’m totally with the first quote. Obscurantism posing as depth is the scourge of academia. Clarity is profundity.

Regarding the 2nd quote, I think a good general rule of thumb that come to mind is that if you can't articulate something, you don't really know what you're talking about.

the other main possibility is that you are in an arena where language itself fails your comprehension and lack the wisdom to stfu.

I see plenty of things clearly when I’m drunk, that evaporate when I sober up.

no u

Hard to have both of these

Or maybe not, what do I know

Self absorption helps delude the inchoate.

I have to confess I haven’t really investigated Petersen much, I’m just here for the take down. His meltdown in response to Mishra’s article is the most amazing self own.

Is it a stretch to say LordJvK was modelling himself on Petersen? Seems like there’s a lot of similarity.

LordJvK is modelling himself on bigger idiots than Peterson.

a high school teacher in california was fired for saying in his classroom that usa military are the lowest of the low *sigh*

Hey in the UK random people can be jailed for"hate" speech

Seems on par with that memo guy

Some guy just got found guiulty of teaching his dog to do heil hitler salutes or something nuts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...-west-43478925

Perfect for a game of Real or OnionMonty Python