He’s not going to be able to wiggle out of this one, although I’m sure he’ll try: Jordan Peterson is a climate change denialist. That link has all the evidence, direct quotes, tweets, etc. He praises some loon who thinks CO2 is steadily declining, leading to the extinction of all life on Earth in 2 million years, and that we ought to praise the heroic oil companies for releasing sequestered carbon and saving the planet. One of his sources is Richard Lindzen, prattling away in a Prager U video. He’s a fool on this subject, and many others.
But why would a well-educated college professor plunge so deeply into ignorance? The article has a good explanation.
But as his former mentor at UofT said, Peterson loves the rhetorical patterns of demagogues. He loves that when they said something and got roars of approval, they repeated it more loudly, and then honed in on the subset of things that got them the biggest roars.
That’s all Peterson is doing. Saying things that his audience loves to hear, reveling in their roars of approval, then repeating himself.
And since his audience is mostly younger, white, conservative men, and that audience has a strong tendency to be climate change deniers and to love trolling liberals, when he says ‘climate change stoopid’, they roar their approval.
Given that he makes a very good income out of this audience, just as Shapiro and Coulter do, this is actually smart, even if venal, ugly, and intellectually dishonest. But Peterson has shown every evidence of venality and intellectual dishonesty while spouting often ugly things — enforced monogamy anyone? — he later pretends were misunderstood for a couple of years. This is just par for the course.
Young, white, conservative men are the root of the problem, I suspect. Of a lot of problems. And it’s wealthy, older white men who are feeding them the poison.
I find it amusing that Michael Barnard repeats the statement, “Peterson’s complete lack of adherence to what is empirically valid outside of his area of specialization — clinical psychology — is well understood by everyone except his supporters.”.
I am not a clinician but as far as I can tell Peterson is a Jungian[1]. I suspect your modern run-of-the-mill clinical psychologist looks upon him as a modern chemist would look at one of the last chemists to teach phlogiston theory, at least in English and French speaking North America. A source of wonder and amazement not to say disbelief.
He must have academic publications out there somewhere but I have not found them. Anyone have some pointers? Certainly the last time I visited his UofT site, there did not seem to be any clue to his published research.
“younger, white, conservative men”
didn’t they leave out ‘pig-ignorant’?
Jordan Peterson who???
He has really faded into his natural niche, the lunatic fringes.
As soon as people looked closely at his voluminous writings and videos, it was over for him.
There is no intellectual content there, just feeding the hate and lies of his fanboys back to them for money.
Peterson takes his place along side his peer group of Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Franklin Graham, and the rest of the right wingnuts.
richardelguru@2: Wouldn’t that have been redundant?
The wikipedia page on Peterson does list a number of academic publications, though none since 2012. I am not overly impressed. The first was titled “Acute alcohol intoxication and cognitive functioning.” According to the abstract: “… a high dose of alcohol detrimentally affects a number of functions associated with the prefrontal and temporal lobes, including planning, verbal fluency, memory and complex motor control. Expectancy does not appear to play a significant role in determining this effect.” Whodathunk?!
[I guess the bit about expectancy was the justification for the experiment.]
A lotta people can’t distinguish between reality and fiction anymore. Maybe they never could, but the internet gave them a voice,
“The internet gave them a voice”… Would it be unreasonable to profile the climate deniers as those who never got out of the house much to ever notice what was going on outside?
I guess climate change denial is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Peterson is the ultimate conclusion of the “scientist as celebrity” process, just as Trump is in politics. Once you become famous for being famous, attractive to the media because of your ratbaggery, then you have to keep on feeding the media with ever increasing nonsense and craziness, otherwise the media moves on to the next wackaloon.
@ 5 petesh
Thanks. That wiki is so bad I must have given up before I got to the references. Stupidity on my part.
Just from reading the abstracts, the alcohol related papers seem a bit trivial but all I really know about the area is from the occasional conversations with the alcohol researcher down the hall and a lot of her interests, at the time, seemed to be motor and psychomotor skills.
One is “impressed” with the attempt to melt the Big Five into the Big Two but …. it’s quite a ways out of my area so who knows? Heck, I can never remember what the Big Five are. A lot of personality research leaves me going, “Eh, whatever?”.
This study seems weird just on this statement.
Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated With Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals.
“Meta-analysis of two studies”
What? Two studies? They must have changed the definition of meta-analysis since I was reading the meta-analysis tech literature, which admittedly was a long time ago.
So nothing terribly impressive but nothing damning would be my verdict based on what is probably a biased and too small sample.
Thanks again.
But why would a well-educated college professor plunge so deeply into ignorance?
Not only is he a showman I think he just likes being contrary. With a bit of coaching we could probably get him to agree that the Sun rises in the West.
White genocide is starting to look like a better and better idea. Do they have a kickstarter?
jrkrideau @10
Bingo! We have a winner.
Some people never meta-analysis they didn’t like.
@ 13 Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y
Go stand in the corner.
Isn’t Peterson dead yet, from consuming only salty beef washed down with shots of vodka?
That’s not going to do much for his serotonin system, he’ll lose all his aggression.
As far as I can tell, Jordan Peterson has no obvious academic qualifications that would enable him to judge the merits of climate change denial but neither does the author of the paper PZ links.
“Young, white, conservative men”.
As an erstwhile member of that cohort, I can only heave a great sigh and do what I can to inform a new generation of the same that it does not pay anybody anything (except the speakers they might flock to) to be easily led, easily influenced, easily manipulated and easily separated from one’s shekels. Let alone separated from one’s own better judgement and one’s voting potency.
I think it was Judy Sill who sang the words
I’ll not apologize for the “religious” connotation. Sad and true are
what we got when sixty odd million of us voted for Dahnnie.
Kyrie eleison indeed.
Apology. Her name is spelled Judee.
After a quick search I could not find the song I referred to above. Wish I could because the orchestration and production values moved me more deeply than the song’s content.
Here is a link to a Gregorian chant that comes closer than the other inept musical interpretations I had to wade through. Perhaps she was inspired by something like this.
Apologies to Judee. She killed herself with opiates much as my daughter did. No wonder I still remember this album that I bought home before Diane was born.
RIP, both of you girls. I still remember.
If only time worked like a clock I could reset it.
Jordan Peterson has, sadly, convinced himself he’s right about everything. His entire time in the limelight he’s been spouting one barefaced, flatout lie after another. And most of the nonsense he spews is not even wrong, and so much is immediately dismissable at face value. Even more sadly it seems this kind of arrogance and ignorance pays. =8(-DX
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blockquote>As far as I can tell, Jordan Peterson has no obvious academic qualifications that would enable him to judge the merits of climate change denial but neither does the author of the paper PZ links. – chris61@13
The first of PZ’s links is to an article (paper?) in an online tech magazine. The writer, Michael Barnard, sets out to show that Jordan Peterson is a climate change denier, not to show that anthropogenic climate change is real. In my judgement, he succeeds, but in any case, his expertise in climate science is wholly irrelevant. The second link is to an article by a denier, which Peterson has praised, and no, that denier is not qualified to judge models of climate change, which was part of the point of linking to it. So I don’t know what point you’re making. Could you please explain?
Chris61@16: The wonderful thing about an overwhelming scientific consensus is that you don’t have to be an expert to know it’s right.
Peterson is surrounded with smart people and yet cheating on the test by craning his neck to look over the shoulders of the dumbest guys in the room.
@20 KG
Does Peterson deny that anthropogenic climate change is real? That is far from clear from the ‘evidence’ provided by Barnard.
Speaking of “intellectual dishonesty”:
“He’s famous for refusing to use the gender pronouns preferred by his students” – patently false.
“as quoted in Wikipedia with full references.” – apparently, the intellectually honest author couldn’t bother to actually click on the reference links, even when they are provided in one easy to look through list.
And of course.. the lobsters and enforced monogamy. Favorite talking points of all people with shitty reading comprehension skills. But why would a well-educated college professor happily tout a badly written, unsupported, and purely ideologically motivated article is unclear to me. Given that he makes a very bad income out of his audience, unlike Shapiro, Coulter, and Peterson do, this is actually likely to be a sign of envy. That, or simply ideologically-induced-cognitive-malfunction syndrome.
@22
I do not believe he is. At least in one source (12 Rules?), he notes that increased CO2 emissions are result of societal changes that enabled us to prevent (or at least lower) starvation and extreme poverty. The implication, of course, is not that yay, climate change, but rather that working on long-term problems is only possible when short-term, immediate problems (e.g. starvation) are solved. This argument, at least, indicates that he does, indeed, believe in anthropogenic climate change.
Chris61: If you deny the science (as represented by the models), particularly without understanding the science, you are a climate science denialist. If you deny the established science demonstrating the adverse consequences of anthropogenic climate change, you are a climate science denialist.
A detailed Global Circulation Model (GCM) is NOT essential for demonstrating the validity of the science. A much simpler model (e.g. a two-box model) is sufficient. Indeed, it has been known that CO2 was a greenhouse gas since the 1850s, and that anthropogenic CO2 would warm the planet since 1896. There is no serious climate scientist that rejects this.
Peterson is like the fucking moronic politicians who say, “I’m not a climate scientist, but…” Protesting that fossil fuels have been instrumental in increasing prosperity is not only a logical fallacy (argument from consequences), it is irrelevant, as renewable energy, with perhaps some help from nukes or improved energy storage could not extend prosperity into the 21st century or beyond.
So, yes, Peterson is a climate denialist in addition to being scientifically illiterate in most of the rest of what he writes as well.
@25
As far as I can see (at least from the links in Barnard’s article), Peterson doesn’t reject this either.
@25 “Peterson is like the fucking moronic politicians who say, “I’m not a climate scientist, but…” Protesting that fossil fuels have been instrumental in increasing prosperity is not only a logical fallacy (argument from consequences), it is irrelevant, as renewable energy, with perhaps some help from nukes or improved energy storage could not extend prosperity into the 21st century or beyond.”
Once again, you miss the point. The point is not that climate change is A-OK, because it is a result of life-saving technologies. The point is that we would not be worrying about climate change today if we were dying of starvation. Should we solve the problem? Absolutely. Should we find CO2-neutral technologies? Duh!..
There is no argument from consequence, because no one is saying that climate change is alright, because it is a consequence of something beneficial. There isn’t even any argument. There is just an observation that we are only concerned about climate change and CO2 emissions, and can concentrate on solving this problem, because we have already solved more pressing problems of starving to death.
I am very happy to hear that starvation is no longer a problem.
Maybe all those charities will quit whinging at me.
Looks at the Peterson sycophants in the comments.
Oh goodness grief.
Once again we see the classic “You’re not reading Jordan Peterson properly” defense. But if that’s the case then at the very least Peterson needs to improve the clarity of his written and verbal presentations. And of course a classic variation on the Argument From Popularity, when in reality popularity neither proves nor disproves the quality of something.
How much conperson Peterson makes from his audience of fanboy trolls is irrelevant.
You are implying that how much a conperson gets is related to whether what they are saying is true or not.
This is a pure logical fallacy.
It just shows that there is big money in feeding his fanboy’s hate and lies back to them.
Hate is always a best seller and Peterson is a garden variety, routine, hater.
Peeterson’s hates are just about everything and everybody not a right wingnut, dull witted, white male.
One of his main hates is the majority of the world’s population, women. Old post
Forget that Enforced Monogamy Red Herring.
Sure it is disgusting and cuckoo.
It’s also just one of many Peterson’s misogynistic comments.
Just going to Xpost from a Pharyngula thread.
Jordan Peterson is a sick puppy!!! No matter how horrible a human being you think he is, the reality if far worse.
https://www.quora.com/Why-i…
The poster below on quora has some Peterson quotes. I normally don’t like to copy other people’s comments but in this case it’s important enough that I will with attribution. The sources are at the original article reached by the link.
My replies are in bold.
Riley May
Answered May 4, 2018 · Author has 70 answers and 83.4k answer views
Because he says things like:
..women have a subconscious wish for brutal male domination
This is bullcrap. He doesn’t know this.
..that it’s unfortunate that men can’t control women who say crazy things because they aren’t allowed to hit them
How about crazy men like Peterson. We aren’t allowed to hit them either.
Peterson admires violence and is frustrated that he can’t be violent towards women.
Guy is a sick puppy.
..young women are outraged because they don’t have a baby to suckle
Gibberish. He doesn’t know this. It’s just a misogynistic insult.
more….
Peterson vaporized his credibility as soon as people starting reading what he wrote and viewing his videos.
There are pages and pages of sick garbage like this and hours of sick garbage videos.
No matter how ugly and vicious Peterson seems, the reality is going to be far worse.
..if a woman doesn’t want to have kids, there’s something wrong with her
Gibberish. It’s an opinion or an assertion without proof. It’s also wrong.
It’s a sick puppy thing again.
..and says “The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.” – despite women lacking basic human rights and legally being owned by men throughout history
The oppresion was/is blatantly true and obvious.
..says stuff like “Men cannot oppose pathological women because chivalry demands they keep their most potent weapons sheathed” on twitter
That violence thing again. I would be very surprised if Peterson doesn’t have a history of violence against women, children, and pets. Anything smaller and weaker than himself.
I really don’t understand Peterson’s defenders. He links approvingly to corporate shills who have repeatedly lied about climate change science. What the fuck more do you want?
Fun fact: the people producing most of the CO2 today are not at risk of starvation, while there are actually people dying of starvation, where one of the contributing factors is climate change.
But, of course, if your diet is the most ecologically damaging diet imaginable, then you need to justify that.
Peterson is, as usual, stupid, lying, and wrong.
Our choice isn’t between using fossil fuels or dying of starvation.
This is a false dichotomy, a false choice.
Our choice is between transitioning from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources now or later.
They are called fossil fuels for a good reason. They accumulated over hundreds of millions of years and are finite. They will be gone sooner or later.
In fact, we are making that transition right now.
And it is working.
No one is starving because we installed a lot of wind turbines and solar panels.
So you’re conceding that Barnard’s level of expertise in climate science is completely irrelevant? As for Peterson, I should have said he is (and is shown by Barnard to be) a climate science denier, as a_ray_in_gilbert_space says @25. Such people follow a variety of strategies, and Peterson’s approach is probably growing in popularity as the basic facts become ever clearer. This is to avoid straight denial that climate change is happening or that people have a causal role in this, while scoffing about the models, the significance of climate change in relation to other issues, climate scientists themselves, any proposed action either individual, national or international to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. etc. That way you are just as useful to the fossil fuel lobby, you troll the libs and greenies, and you have plausible deniability! What’s not to like?
@37 KG
PZ’s OP says Jordan Peterson is a climate change denialist and here is the evidence (with a link to Barnard’s article). Barnard’s evidence rests on saying Peterson supports loons and disagrees with ‘real’ climate scientists. That is only evidence if Barnard’s level of expertise in climate science is adequate to distinguish between loons and real scientists.
@Chris61
“That is only evidence if Barnard’s level of expertise in climate science is adequate to distinguish between loons and real scientists.”
I’m not a medical doctor but I can distinguish competent medical advise from quackery given by someone like Dr. Oz. I’m not a politician, but I can distinguish between public policies like medicare for all and “Build that Wall”. I’m not a clinical psychologist but I can recognize that Jordan Peterson is feather-headed loon. I’m not a Jordan Peterson fan but I can recognize that Jordan Peterson fans are, by and large, insufferable fools.
You should try actual gymnastics instead of the mental gymnastics you’ve been doing trying to defend this fraud. No one is buying your excuses because they are transparently fallacious. Embarrassingly so.
I love how fckideologs thinks it’s a defense of Peterson to portray the guy as upholding historically inaccurate and western chauvinistic myths about how the sort of social advances (really technological advances) that produce catastrophic levels of CO2 have lessened starvation and poverty.
How dare y’all accuse him of believing that nonsense when he (probably, maybe) believes this nonsense instead.
Chris61: ” That is only evidence if Barnard’s level of expertise in climate science is adequate to distinguish between loons and real scientists.”
Fortunately, one need not be an expert–the work has been done. The experts are those who publish, whose publications get cited and who not only subscribe to, but define the scientific consensus. Peterson is clearly on the side of the loons. AGAIN. That he does not embrace their position boldly speaks more to his cowardice than it does to any sort of expertise or understanding on his part. Peterson belongs to the “not even wrong” club.
And once again, we see Peterson acting as an apologist for the status quo–intimating that because it is thus, it could not have been other. Spinning his Just-So stories in the service of the powerful patriarchs–be they conservative assholes, oil oligarchs or both. He is a cowardly, ignorant, reprehensible, little turd of a man.
@38 chris61: So, what, are you claiming GWPF and Richard Lindzen aren’t loons rather than real scientists? Care to back that up? Because whether or not Barnard has the “level of expertise” to tell, he provides references, both in the form of links on each and a Michael Mann quote on the latter. And I’m sure if you weren’t convinced, you could investigate them further.
Because that’s how this sort of thing works. Trying to make it a contest between Peterson and Barnard for levels of “expertise”, as if whoever has a higher level is automatically right on their own, is a nonsense approach. Good arguments are decided not by the status of the person quoting them but by evidence, and there is a whole world of evidence out there that things like “human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation & extinction due to C02 [sic]” are dishonest red herrings used to distract from the very real problems of climate change.
I mean, I get why it might be upsetting to admit he’s spreading denialist talking points. I don’t know about you personally, but I imagine there are people who found something of value in him telling them to sit up straight and clean their room, and don’t like hearing he’s venal and intellectually dishonest. There was a point where I enjoyed Dilbert, and discovering Scott Adams was a misogynist and then Trump apologist wasn’t fun. But you know what? He is, and it benefits nobody to make excuses for him.
If you found something of value in Peterson at some point, great, you can hold on to it on your own terms. But look at what he’s saying, look at where it comes from, and look at what’s actually true. Unless you can show that all the Peterson quotes are fake – not “might look different with some imagined context”, but fake – arguing about whether Barnard has all the right qualifications is just refusing to admit what’s in front of you.
chris61 defends all the best people.
Richard Lindzen is very much a real scientist. Not everyone who holds opinion different from yours, even if that opinion is wrong, is a “loon”. News flash: whether you agree with someone or not is not yet a criterion by which we decide who’s a “real scientist”.
@36, raven:
You missed the point. I don’t know how to explain it clearer.
@43, Saad
he was not actually defending anyone. Try first reading and then forming an opinion, not other way around.
@42, monad,
“Unless you can show that all the Peterson quotes are fake – not “might look different with some imagined context”, but fake – arguing about whether Barnard has all the right qualifications is just refusing to admit what’s in front of you.”
Your burden of proof is reversed here. People like Barnard do not get to take quotes out of context to scaffold their attacks with and demand that others explain the quotes, especially if the MO is then to dismiss any other interpretation or any context that does not fit the preferred narrative.
I find it fascinating that you guys cannot differentiate the person from that person’s opinions. If you disagree on something, automatically the person as such becomes stupid, loon, and whatever other childish insults you can think of. Case in point: “He is a cowardly, ignorant, reprehensible, little turd of a man.” You don’t even know the guy. You just read some second-hand sources, sources that are obviously biased, and formed an opinion about Peterson’s personality. Do you guys honestly not see a problem with this reasoning? Why are you so incapable of separating a person from his or her opinions? Can you think of any characterization I would come up for you if I were to adapt your style? ;)
In any case, whatever happened to the good old principle of trying hard to disprove your beliefs and hypotheses instead of trying hard to find confirmation for them?
No, I didn’t miss the point.
You don’t explain anything.
You just lie a lot.
I’ve never seen a Peterson troll that didn’t lie.
I’ve never seen a Peterson troll that wasn’t very stupid.
fckideologs the troll lying some more.
You just read some second-hand sources, sources that are obviously biased, and formed an opinion about Peterson’s personality. I knew the Peterson troll would lie a lot.
They always do.
Simple minds are very predictable.
This is BTW not only a lie but two logical fallacies in one. Ad hominem and killing a strawperson.
We’ve all read Peterson’s writings and watched his videos. They are everywhere and amusing in a sick puppy idiot sort of way.
I posted some Peterson direct quotes in 32 and 33 about his sickening hate for women.
You just ignored them.
We’ve all heard the Peterson trolls lies and excuses over and over again.
You haven’t read the primary sources.
It is all out of context.
You don’t understand.
Repeating the same old tired lies a hundred times doesn’t make them true and its boring.
I knew the Peterson troll would lie.
It’s all they have and all they can do.
Simple minds are so predictable.
We’ve all read Peterson’s sick trash before. It’s everywhere and amusing in a sick puppy moron sort of way.
I posted some direct quotes of his in 32 and 33 which you simply ignored.
Your hero isn’t much of a hero if the only defense you have for him is to lie a lot.
More Peterson quotes that the lying troll claims we never read.
Peterson the violent sick puppy: “If you’re incapable of violence, not being violent isn’t a virtue.”
Peterson comes close to flat out calling for violence.
He is also a merchant of hate, hate for women, atheists, Muslims, trans, nonwhites, the educated, Progressives.
Add them up.
This is most of our society.
This is why Peterson and his fanboy trolls are getting a huge amount of push back.
They are all haters and violence is a real possibility here.
Wherever you have hate speech, you will have hate violence.
We have the right and responsibility to defend ourselves and that is what we are doing.
fckideologs,
I admit it. I have a prejudice against lying sacks of shit.
Dick Lindzen was at one time a scientist. He stopped being a scientist when he started lying to non-scientists who are not equipped to spot his lies. There are numerous instances where he has done this–in testimony to Congress, in Wall Street Urinal Opinion pieces, in “debates”. I know he is lying because he is too smart to buy the bullshit he was spouting (e.g. that other planets/moons are warming, so anthropogenic climate change is bunk). Interestingly, Dick does not use these arguments among scientists. Now why do you suppose that is?
Peterson is nominally, a scientist. As such, he should realize the danger and inappropriateness of commenting on areas well outside his expertise. He should be particularly aware of the risk involved in quoting “experts” who dissent from the scientific consensus in an area outside his expertise. He mindlessly parrots Lindzen’s lies. That makes him a lying sack of shit.
But there is more. Peterson is guilty of a lot of logical fallacies. His blind acceptance of Lindzen’s BS is an example of the fallacy of argument from authority (a fallacy in this case, because his authority, is not a reliable authority). However, his favorite is the is-ought fallacy: What is out to be because it is what is. It’s his go-to argument for everything. To argue that the dominance of fossil fuels is inevitable because they came to dominate and to attribute to fossil fuels all the good that has come about due to cheap energy demonstrates a deep ignorance of history as well as an epic failure of imagination. No doubt that in the late 1800s, he would have been arguing for the extinction of whales because how else would we light our streets?
I suspect Peterson is too smart to really buy into his bullshit, but he keeps with the Randian schtick because of fanbois like you.
Gosh I love the “you can’t tell what a person is like just by examining the opinions, ideas, and agendas they incessantly promote or observing who they denigrate and who they defend” and the “you’re being mean to him because you can’t rebut his ideas” arguments that come rolling out the moment a fan gets schooled on his “you just haven’t read everything he’s said and watched all his videos” argument.
So apparently in order to publicly state that Peterson is sub-atomic levels of wrong on just about everything a person must consume literally every word the man has spoken and have expended vast quantities of energy directly addressing each point personally no matter how ludicrous, and even in doing so, no person can ever come to the conclusion that they dislike Peterson as a person regardless of the venality of the ideas he promotes, unless they also have a close personal relationship with the man. Otherwise, shaddup.
Funny how those requisites never seem to apply to Peterson’s fans, innit, fckideologs? Y’all aren’t required to engage at length in public with literally every idea the man has ever had and know him intimately before you decide he’s some unassailable god-figure who Must Not Be Questioned.
.
fckideologs, #44
chris61 is a she and she’ll thank you to remember that.
@51 Saad
Thank you, Saad.
@44 fckideologs: They are all things Peterson said, and many of them on twitter, which means he did not provide them with any other context. So they’re all Peterson telling us about his position in his own words. To try to then make them instead about Barnard because he quoted them as evidence is reversing the burden of proof. I won’t have it, and you can see, nobody else is going to be persuaded by it. Pretending nobody here can possibly actually know anything about Peterson, even when his words are familiar to all of us, is only embarrassing yourself.
I think Peterson is a goofier, perhaps less Islamophobic version of Mark Steyn In other words the token Canadian right winger latched onto by the US hard right. Gavin McInnes might have taken that role, but didn’t because he’s too obviously a reactionary douchebag, and took too much of a hand’s on role in organising his fandom.
@49, a_ray_in_dilbert_space
I really find denying someone’s status as “scientist”, because you are personally convinced that that person lied or often because you disagree with them, problematic. I am not talking about the specific case of Peterson and Lindzen, but in general. A scientist is a job description, it is not a lifestyle or a higher calling. Someone does not stop being a scientist because he or she did something wrong, holds a wrong opinion or disagrees with you on something. You can call out individual’s opinions and arguments and behaviors without claiming that they are not a scientist or an artist or what have you. You are not making the roll call of scientists, you do realize that, right? Do you not see a problem with this approach?
@raven,
dear raven, how old are you?
fckideologs: “A scientist is a job description, it is not a lifestyle or a higher calling.”
Wrong. To be a scientist means that you place the truth above any other value–specifically with regard to your research, but truth doesn’t compartmentalize. If you use your superior knowledge of your subject matter to deceive lay people, you cease to be a scientist. You lose credibility in the eyes of your fellow scientists, your influence in your field decreases, everything you say becomes suspect in the eyes of your peers. Your career as a scientist is effectively over.
If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand what science is, let alone how it is done. You and Jordan have so much in common. Jordan, that you?
@fckideologs.
To be a scientist one must, at minimum, employ the scientific method. Saying that someone, like Deepak Chopra, is not a scientist is not a statement objecting to Chopra getting a fact wrong. It’s a statement that Chopra rejects the scientific method at the very least in significant part.
Peterson rejects the scientific method in significant part. He maintains the validity of hypotheses in the face of contradictory facts. He has held himself out as an expert in courts of law on specific issues – such as whether a given confession in a criminal case might be a false confession – without having such expertise and while contradicting known facts. He maintained that he could predict whether a person’s confession during an interview or interrogation would be truthful or false based on that person’s scores on a personality test. In fact he could not. And he should have known he could not because he’d never done any research testing correlations of personality test scores with the truth or falsity of confessions made in different environment.
In short, he announced in court, under oath, that he could reliably inform the jury how science would evaluate a confession without ever running a single relevant experiment to determine the science on such confessions.
He’s either announced that he can predict the future outcome of a future experiment (based on tea leaves, I guess?) or he announced that experiment and observation are irrelevant when he’s the one doing the pontificating.
In either case, his methodology is profoundly anti-scientific and a direct rejection of both the necessity of observation and experiment and the value of the scientific method itself.
Peterson, therefore, is not a scientist.
@a ray in dilbert space is using this same line of argument. It’s not about Peterson getting a fact wrong. It’s not about Peterson “doing something wrong”. It’s about Peterson rejecting the scientific method:
The argument isn’t merely that Peterson gets something wrong. It’s that Peterson argues contrary to facts. Although he also argues contrary to common sense (which seems to be another line of ARIDS’ argument), we must be careful with that since there are times when observation and experiment defy common sense. Nonetheless, despite not having laid out what might be a complete case, ARIDS is clearly arguing not that Peterson is not a scientist because Peterson made a mistake, but rather that Peterson is not a scientist because Peterson rejects evidence, rejects reliable observations, rejects experiment.
ARIDS could have gone on a little longer to make the argument entirely explicit even to the most obtuse, but I think you’re failing pretty hard when you reduce ARIDS argument to “Peterson got one wrong, therefore not a scientist.”
As for your “general case” that I quoted above, it’s correct as far as it goes, but it has nothing to do with what ARIDS typed, because nothing in ARIDS comment asserts that a single error (or to use your language, a single instance in which someone “did something wrong”) ends one’s status as a scientist.
LOL.
You don’t have an answer for anything I wrote!!!
Trivial insults that don’t even show the slightest imagination.
I don’t give out personal information to very stupid but highly likely to be violent followers of a tenth rate demagogue like Peterson.
We’ve now established that I’m at least an order of magnitude smarter than you and likely to have passed the second grade. Not that this is saying much. I’m sure my cat is smarter than you.
No surprise.
I’ve never seen a Peterson troll that didn’t just lie and lie some more.
I’ve never seen a Peterson troll that was either smart or educated.
What you expect for residents of the lunatic fringes.
Crip Dyke (#57)
For an anti-ideologue, fckideologs seems to be having real trouble noticing when people aren’t sticking to The Script. You’d think engaging with people’s actual arguments would be part of the job.
fckideologs
<
blockquote> You just read some second-hand sources, sources that are obviously biased, and formed an opinion about Peterson’s personality. Do you guys honestly not see a problem with this reasoning? Why are you so incapable of separating a person from his or her opinions?
<
blockquote>
What do you think a personality is, if it is not shown by someone’s opinions and things they say?
@56, a_ray_in_dilbert_space
“Wrong. To be a scientist means that you place the truth above any other value–specifically with regard to your research, but truth doesn’t compartmentalize.” That is patently and demonstratively false.
@57,
both Peterson and Lindzen are highly cited, successful scientists. Do you honestly believe they accomplished all that while disregarding scientific method?
“The argument isn’t merely that Peterson gets something wrong. It’s that Peterson argues contrary to facts. Although he also argues contrary to common sense”
You are the arbiter of what facts are and what constitutes common sense? This seems to again reduce to “they disagree with me –> they disagree with facts –> they are not scientists.” At least ARID’s argument seems to also hinge on intent: “He stopped being a scientist when he started lying to non-scientists who are not equipped to spot his lies.” Which is a non-starter as far as arguments go – how could ARID possibly know the person’s intent?! I mean, any chance that e.g. Lindzen really believes what he says, any chance that he might see some things differently from you? Any chance that he might be right? (NB, for those with reading comprehension problems – I am not saying that Lindzen is right on the matter. I am just wondering if the possibility has ever entered your mind? Or do you all automatically assume that anyone who disagrees with you, disagrees with facts and/or lying?)
@60,
“What do you think a personality is, if it is not shown by someone’s opinions and things they say?”
It is. I am saying you have shit sources. In particular, they are biased. They are even open about being biased. For all the lip service to scientific method, there is a strange disregard of objectivity, testing – i.e. by trying to falsify, not merely confirm – your beliefs, and so on.
@58, raven,
“Trivial insults that don’t even show the slightest imagination.”
And in the very same post, a mere sentence or two later:
“very stupid but highly likely to be violent followers of a tenth rate demagogue like Peterson.
We’ve now established that I’m at least an order of magnitude smarter than you and likely to have passed the second grade. Not that this is saying much. I’m sure my cat is smarter than you.”
Oh man! This is brilliant! How did you know I love irony?
@ the rest,
is raven for real or a satire act/troll that I am falling for?
Fucknuts,
Jesus wept, you are obtuse. The arguments that Lindzen made in the Intelligence Squared debate, if front of Congress and in the Wall Street Urinal Op Eds. regarding the so-called Pause and so on are patently absurd. That Lindzen was at one time a successful climate scientist makes it absurd to argue that he believes these arguments unless he has suffered a debilitating stroke. That he does not make the same arguments to his erstwhile colleagues in climate science clinches the deal. Lindzen is being disingenuous in trying to persuade non-experts for political reasons. His actions betray his motivation.
Also, Lindzen has not published anything that wasn’t an embarrassment since the early ‘oughts.
As to Peterson’s motivations, they are betrayed by is selection of false experts when the scientific consensus is well known to him and remarkably successful in predicting the evolution of climate change. Peterson is clearly catering to his conservative fanbois (like you). He has done this again and again, in a vast variety of fields–constructed Just-So stories to satiate the curiosity of gullible nimrods (again, like you) and inoculate them against discovering just how wrong they (and you) are.
The truth is the highest value of science. If you reject it, if you lie, if you embrace “alternative facts,” you are not a scientist. Period.
You don’t.
You aren’t bright enough to even know what it is.
Still no answer to the quotes I posted directly from your horrible person hero, Peterson.
There won’t be because you can only lie and lie some more.
Why are you here, fcked up idealogue?
You are just boring and not convincing anyone of anything. Except:
A liar, dumb, uneducated, potentially violent, and a very creepy troll.
You won’t answer that question either.
But it is obvious.
This is a Holiday for most of us, even though most of us aren’t xians.
You are simply a Peterson troll, a hater with nothing better to do then , stop here to drop off some lies and gibberish.
The rest of you can at least enjoy a day off from work.
I’m not wasting any more time on a pathetic troll who has nothing better to do with his holiday than hang around, act stupid, and lie a lot.
Happy Holidays, raven.
.
Bless your heart, fckideologs.
One more Peterson quote for the road that the lying troll claims we never read.
Peterson’s hates are most of our society, women, nonwhites, trans, Muslims, Progressives, the educated.
Notably Peterson also hates atheists.
Since this is an atheist blog, that is most of the people reading and commenting on this blog.
Since Peterson hates most people, most people don’t much like him back.
The quote above is just another fact Peterson got wrong.
Godel never said that proof is impossible without an axiom. His Incompleteness Theorem proved something very different. Peterson is just name dropping here, the Logical Fallacy of Appeal to Authority.
And this is a deepity.
It sounds profound until you look at it twice.
It’s meaningless. and completely wrong. Faith in the gods has absolutely zero to do with any and all proof.
Peterson does this a lot. When he isn’t outright lying, he makes up facts that are just easily proved to be…wrong.
@fckidiologs:
No, but unless someone else on this thread has a Canadian law degree and more years experience than I’ve got, I’m the closest you’ll get to an expert on Canadian jurisprudence here, and I’m telling you that the Manitoba Court of Appeal (effectively the provincial supreme court, though if you’re from the US the relationship between provincial Courts of Appeal and the CCC is different than the relationship between states’ Supreme Courts and SCOTUS) called out Peterson in about the harshest possible language you’ll see in a judicial opinion from an appellate court, particularly in highly polite Canada, for ignoring facts, disregarding the questions asked, and pretending to scientific certainty he couldn’t possibly have had. And, yes, they are the arbiters of who counts as an “expert witness” and who is a charlatan in Manitoba courts.
You’re free to read the original trial transcripts, including the trial court’s hearing on Peterson’s fitness to take the stand as an expert witness (or, indeed, a witness at all) in R v Pearce, 2012 MBQB 22 and the appellate court’s damning review of Peterson’s fitness after Pearce requested reconsideration of the trail judge’s rejection of Peterson’s fitness in R. v. Pearce (M.L.), 2014 MBCA 70. Of course, you can always read a popular account for lay persons if you haven’t got the specific education required to locate and then parse legal opinions on your own. One lay account can be found here. It includes links to the trial court judge’s decision and the appellate decision. If you need the trial court hearing transcript, you’re free to get that (as a public record) from the court clerk at the Court of Queen’s Bench, Winnipeg Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba. (There may be a small records request fee.)
The observable evidence clearly shows that Peterson held himself out as expert in an area that he hadn’t researched. In fact, he made specific claims about his “Unfakeable Big Five” personality test – including not only that it was unfakeable but also that it could predict false confessions – that had never been subjected to scientific scrutiny. When this was challenged in court, his claims crumpled like a cheap suit.
All of which is to say that ARIDS never made the claim you tried to attribute to ARIDS – that “doing something wrong” costs one the label “scientist”. But that wasn’t ARIDS argument. ARIDS argument was different and, in fact, there are plenty of observations you could perform if your eyes were open that would support ARIDS argument that Peterson has left science behind.
Jordan Peterson’s own words are shit sources? I mean, I agree that Peterson is full of shit, but this is a surprising from someone trying to defend Peterson.
Are you going to defend against accusations that Peterson is a fraud by claiming that Peterson cannot be a fraud since he is obviously incompetent to distinguish between true and false, and therefore his false claims are things he honestly believes?
If it works for Trump…
In the first half of the twentieth century, Linus Pauling did some amazing work in foundational chemistry and physics. His works on those topics were (and to some extent still are) used by physicists and chemists everywhere. And his work was so brilliant that he won a Nobel prize for it.
But in his later years, Pauling got into Vitamin C and supplement therapy for cancer and common colds. And clinical trials came back and said “Nope, no better than placebo”. And Pauling got mad and said that the clinical trials weren’t done the way his therapy was. And more clinical trials were done using those methods, and the results were still no better than placebo. And Pauling didn’t care. And scientists stopped caring about Pauling’s claims on those topics.
That doesn’t mean that Pauling’s earlier work was invalidated, but his earlier work still being valid doesn’t mean that Pauling’s later work was validated. And a reasonable inference is that Pauling went from caring about scientific method to not caring about scientific method.
Someone close to Peterson has noted that Peterson changed over time, as well. I think it’s reasonable to infer that Peterson has changed such that he no longer cares about scientific method, even if we charitably assume that he did when he was younger.
CD
I ♥ you.
@68, Crip Dyke
Cool story, bro! But unless you are claiming that one incident disqualifies one from being a scientist, why do you keep bringing up one event?
@64,
for those with reading comprehension problems – I am not saying that Lindzen is right on the matter. I am just wondering if the possibility has ever entered your mind? Or do you all automatically assume that anyone who disagrees with you, disagrees with facts and/or lying?
I don’t understand why you keep arguing that Lindzen is not a scientist. Your view is clear on this point, you can stop now. I was genuinely curious if you ever consider that you might be wrong, that not everyone who disagrees with you is necessarily dumb or evil or “hates atheists.” Since you are unlikely to address this question, until further notice, I will assume that no, you don’t.
@64 & 68,
the problem with your arguments is not so much that they are wrong. It is that you – and here I mean most, if not all, of this group – are woefully unqualified to decide who is a scientist and who is not. Let’s face it, every other one of you thinks that ad hominem is a solid argument, every other one jumps to conclusions, none even wants to consider a differing viewpoint, just to name a few. Look, raven is in a complete meltdown because someone disagrees. The irony of this whole discussion is also that anyone who claims “waah, he’s not a scientist!!!!” in an argument is not in a position to decide that. It is because even if you are correct, and neither Lindzen or Peterson are scientists, that does nothing to show that their claim is wrong. This is just more of your usual ad hominems, which you keep confusing for sophisticated arguments.
Or, to translate the above into your language, “Waaah, you stoopid!!11!!!1!11! You not even scientist!1!!11!”
Shitheaded troll still lying and bullshitting. Troll, links are your way to prove you are right. Providing those links go the peer reviewed scientific literature, and not op-ed pieces by those who are scared the economics of climate warming (AGW).
Refute these shows, based on reality (scientific predictions) showing the effects of AGW. I suspect you 2ill run away with your tail between your legs. Or present laughable, already refuted evidence.
Ficko comes back and goes all multiple exclamation marks on us.
fckideologs @73:
<snicker>
Irony indeed, but not what you imagine it to be.
More irony.
Sorta. If their claim relies on repudiating established science, it is indeed wrong in a scientific sense.
—
PS
Heh. You know everyone can read the thread, right?
(You can’t refute raven so instead you bluster. Futile, but informative)
@76,
“You know everyone can read the thread, right?”
I am hoping so, but I am starting to have my doubts…
@74,
now, where did that come from?
fckideologs, whence your doubt?
You’ve been directly addressed and rebutted, often with quotations. Can’t do that unless you’ve been read.
Let me quote your initial contention:
(And then, later, you wank on about “ad hominem”. Inadvertent irony is your forte, it seems)
fckideologs (#73)
You do understand you’re not at PharyngulAthena, which sprang fully formed from PZeus’s forehead a few days ago, right? The regulars here have been moseying our way towards conclusions for years now. Unable to see beyond your solipsistic stupor, you assume that because you haven’t been here to watch our journey for yourself, it must have been made in a single bound.
You’re like a person who walks into a theater during the third act of a play and assumes that everyone else in the audience shares some collective insanity because they can make sense of the plot while you can’t.
Worse, you accuse everyone else of ad hominem fallacies in one sentence while in the literal very next sentence, you dismiss the content of another commenter’s arguments after supposing the state of their mind from their posting style! That’s like if folks here were to discard what Peterson says merely on the basis of his constipated muppet voice.¹
Now, personally I’ve no taste for Raven’s literary quirks, but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge Raven’s brilliance. I doubt I’d care for the results were we to get into a battle of the wits, to be honest.
There’s nothing irrational or emotionally volatile about the way Raven tossed you aside. You merely proved yourself too feeble of an opponent—nothing more than an incompetent dipshit aping the language of reason with zero comprehension of its meaning.
…………
¹ Just to be clear, no one here does that.
Troll, scientists put up or shut the fuck up. You won’t put up and can’t shut the fuck up. Your lying and bullshitting is the only rational conclusion. Don’t vaguely allege, link if you have honesty and integrity. Which was lacking in your prior posts.
I’m waiting for your links….
raven quotes:
“Peterson’s hates are most of our society, …[lists several other groups],…the educated…”
“I’ve never seen a Peterson troll that was either smart or educated”
“A liar, dumb, uneducated, potentially violent, and a very creepy troll.”
Far be it from me to interrupt your fun with the chewtoy, but I have to speak up and say that I do not care for your use of educational status as a pejorative. Maybe we can dial that down a little?
Troll 2 (inzvznity), you show Raven by your actions how to dial it down. Being a troll is easy. Leading is hard.
inzvanity,
Why do you read it as a pejorative? Especially given your first quotation.
(https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers)
—
Nerd, that was hardly a dialled-up comment; it was a mild petition in keeping with this place’s ethos.
One may take issue with its basis (as I did) or with its appositeness (as I didn’t), but to assert it’s trolling is speculative at best.
Anyway, I was rather amused by fckideologs’ reaction to your comment, so I do appreciate your stimulus-response cycle. Not familiar with your modus, I imagine. :)
I support the spirit of @inzvanity ‘s comment and don’t think that inzvanity was trolling.
On the other hand, I’m not worried about things that aren’t insults, but are rather descriptions (“Peterson hates the educated” being a description of one group that a commenter believes Peterson hates, rather than a use of the word “educated” or its opposite as a slur).
Given that “that one incident” was specifically about Peterson demonstrating proven incompetence in his own field, why wouldn’t it disqualify him from being a scientist?
Is that a tacit concession that they are correct?
You weren’t responding to “this group”. You were responding specifically to two comments by two distinct individuals. Suddenly changing to discussing “this group” is a red herring. Are you able to not commit fallacies whilst accusing others of committing fallacies?
You, specifically, and not some group of other people that aren’t relevant to comments that you have made, are obviously woefully unqualified to decide who is qualified to decide who is a scientist and who is not.
And yet that is exactly and precisely what Peterson has done repeatedly. Which of the following is true?
a) You hold Peterson to a lower standard than this group of commentators.
b) You agree that Peterson makes fallacious arguments, is generally unconvincing and closed-minded, and does not argue at the level of rigor of an actual scientist.
While it doesn’t directly address the claim, pointing out their lack of scientific rigor when making claims that contradict the scientific consensus on the topic of climate change does help explain why they are wrong. As to the wrongness of the claims themselves, that has been addressed by Michael Mann. Which of the following is true?
a) Directly seeing Michael Mann’s refutation of Lindzen would convince you that Lindzen and Peterson are wrong.
b) You don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change, and therefore don’t believe anything that Michael Mann has to say on the topic.
Fucknuts@73
Um, actually, many of us here ARE scientists. I am a PhD physicist with 30 years of experience and almost 2 decades fighting the climate wars.
And actually, a single incident of dishonesty is sufficient to wreck one’s credibility as a scientist–particularly if it involves misrepresenting the science to non-scientists, as both Peterson and Lindzen have done.
And actually, if you make one absurd argument to a lay audience while avoiding making the same argument to your peers, who would recognize its absurdity, that is prima facie evidence of dishonesty.
Sorry, Punkin, but this is not “a difference of opinion”. This is not a matter of interpretation. Honest men don’t act this way. Scientists don’t act this way.
fckideologs’ nym is yet another example of the generalization that any commenter using a nym that proclaims or suggests that they are unusually rational or free of prejudice, is almost certain to display unusually blatant irrationality and prejudice.
Despite the numerous other examples available, my favourite demonstration of Peterson’s anti-scientific cast of mind is his insistence that he really believes that an old Chinese illustration of two entwined snake-bodied beings represents DNA (his insistence that he really does believe this is at around the 5-minute mark of the video). Either he’s lying – although I admit I cannot understand what the point of lying would be in this case – or he really does believe this crap. Which do you think it is, fckideologs? Chris61?
Barnard’s evidence rests on saying Peterson supports loons and disagrees with ‘real’ climate scientists. That is only evidence if Barnard’s level of expertise in climate science is adequate to distinguish between loons and real scientists. – chris61@38
tjfitz@39 and ARIDS@41 are of course correct: you don’t need to have any specific expertise in climate science (or most other fields) to be able to distinguish loons from real scientists (or more generally, experts). The loon will deny points on which the relevant expert community is agreed. They will generally fail to articulate a coherent alternative to the consensus position, jumping from one attempted counter to another opportunistically, and often (vide Lindzen) according to the audience they are addressing. They will often put forward conspiracy theories as to why their views are rejected, and claim to be persecuted (often citing Galileo, or sometimes Wegener). They will misrepresent arguments on specific points within the consensus position as evidence it is about to collapse. All these characterists are found in areas as disparate as creationism, climate science denialism, holocaust denialism, HIV-AIDS denialism, Jesus mythicism, anti-vax positions, and many more. Of course there have been cases where a “maverick” scientist is right and the consensus wrong, but this is much less common than the romantic image of the lone genius suggests, and seldom if ever results in well-established bodies of accepted fact central to a scientific discipline or sub-discipline (such as those concerning anthropogenic global warming) being overturned. Rather, scientific “revolutions” most often result from new kinds of evidence, like the evidence of sea-floor spreading that established both the fact of and a mechanism for continental drift (Wegener had no plausible mechanism to suggest).
@88 KG
Or he’s speaking metaphorically.
chris61 @90:
He says he really believes that ancient Chinese and aboriginal art had representations of DNA. Where’s the metaphor? Does Peterson think these people knew about DNA or not? If not, WTF is he talking about?
@91
I don’t know. Because all I listened to was that fragment of a lecture(?). He doesn’t say why he believes it. His reasoning would likely allow one to distinguish between lie, lunatic belief and metaphor.
@Chris61
No. His reasoning would allow one to distinguish between lie and lunatic belief, but to determine metaphor from non-metaphor, all you really have to do is parse the sentence, or in this case the paragraph:
When he says that the double helix formed by entwined snakes is a representation of DNA, is the vehicle (the word or phrase that exists in the sentence to communicate the metaphor) “double helix” “entwined” “snake” “serpent” “representation” “DNA” or something else?
Double helix is literally true – that’s a factual description of the shape at issue.
Entwined is literally true, “Snakes” and “serpents” are also literally true – you can see entwined snakes in the slides in that he’s showing and at other points in his lectures you will hear him discuss examples other than Fuxi/Nuwa (such as Asclepius’ staff, caduceuses etc.) that are well known even to those of us ignorant of Chinese art history to literally depict snakes.
Visual is literally true – this is pictorial artwork that your eyes can perceive, and your vision not only perceives the artwork, it perceives the double helix in the artwork.
Representation is literally true – that’s what art is, representations.
so … is DNA the metaphor? For what is it a metaphor? There’s nothing in what he says – and yes, I’ve watched the classroom lecture entire, plus I’ve watched a long-ish clip (5-8 minutes, I think?) of the lecture in a theater hall – that would connect DNA to some tenor (the referent of a metaphor’s vehicle). There simply is no viable tenor to which DNA could be connected, and his references to specific timeframes for the discovery of DNA, etc. make it entirely impossible that he’s using DNA metaphorically here.
There are other possible metaphors, such as “arts”, but just claiming that the chinese representations don’t qualify as art as we actually understand the category “art” and must be consigned to some other category only referenced by a metaphorical use of art, well, that does nothing to change the ludicrous and unscientific insistence that pre-scientific revolution artists knew the shape of DNA and wished to express it through … whatever the fuck those sculptures and paintings are if not art.
He was not speaking metaphorically. He was speaking boneheadedly. He was speaking ludicrously. He was speaking unscientifically.
@fckideologs:
Women are not your “bros”. Take your sexist assumptions entirely elsewhere, preferably the interior of a magnetically-contained plasma at the EAST.
chris61@50, 52
He says he really believes that the illustration represents DNA. Either he does really believe it, or he doesn’t – and in the latter case, he’s lying. His statement doesn’t leave any room for a “metaphorical” interpretation, whatever you think that could even mean in this case. I’m beginning to think the same two possibilities apply to you as to Peterson – either you’re arguing in bad faith, and don’t actually believe in your defence of Peterson, or you are as irrational as he is.
@93 Crip Dyke
You’ve obviously spent a lot more time and effort than I have in studying the comment. Based on what you say, it sounds like Peterson possesses at least one lunatic belief. This still doesn’t make him a climate change denialist of course.
Sorry, 90, 92 not 50, 52@95
chris61@96,
Do you accept that Peterson is a climate science denialist?
@chris61:
Absolutely true. My evidence was on a separate topic & I haven’t investigated his statements regarding climate change.
Chris61: “This still doesn’t make him a climate change denialist of course.”
No. What makes him a climate denialist is the fact that he denies the established science behind anthropogenic climate change–science that dates back 122 years. He also denies the consequences of that warming–also well established. And he embraces the positions of contrarian “authorities,” who not only dissent from the consensus science, but do so in a dishonest fashion. THAT is what makes him a climate denialist.
The DNA shit…that just makes him a fucking loon.
@101,
yes, that would make him a climate science denialist. The problem is, Barnard did not provide evidence for these claims. Neither have you. Repeating ad nauseum does not establish the claim either. So far the arguments for claiming that Peterson is a climate science denialist are:
1) Barnard article
2) “He’s not a scientist” claim
3) He has some weird beliefs in completely unrelated subjects
4) Repeating the claim that Peterson is a climate change denialist on a loop
There might be more that I am missing – perhaps the “He hates atheists!!11!!11!” argument, courtesy of that luminary Raven. :)
1 – simply does not provide evidence.
2 & 3 – simply cannot provide support for the claim because they are in no way related to it.
4 – repeating something is not enough to make it true.
Dear ARID,
you say you are a scientist. You also claim that Peterson is not, because of the following:
1) He does not value Truth above all
2) He falls for logical fallacies
3) HE LIES!!!11!111!
if I understand you correctly.
Although I think #1 is an odd requirement for being a scientist, certainly not even something that can be tested, and one that is unlikely to be fulfilled by any scientist alive, but let us grant you that one.
Now, let’s look together at the Barnard article, the article on which you base your claim that Peterson is a AGW denialist:
“He’s a former Professor at the University of Toronto, now on likely permanent leave.” Why likely permanent? There is no evidence of that. Is this just a cheap shot at trying to undermine P.’s credibility?
“He’s famous for refusing to use the gender pronouns preferred by his students for reasons he claimed were related to freedom of speech.” Misrepresentation. “He’s been adopted by the alt-right and incels as one of their preferred intellectuals, over his very faint protests.” Faint? Again, why faint? Because if they were faint, it would make Barnard’s claim stronger? Again, another cheap shot. “And he’s a climate change denier.
What’s the evidence for that? Well, his own words, as quoted in Wikipedia with full references.” Using Wiki for sources? Seriously? Do I even have to point out why that is a problem, scientist?
“These are all climate change denial talking points, and the sources are climate change denial organizations such as the GWPF and Richard Lindzen.
Michael Mann is a famed and awarded climate scientist. He’s an American climatologist and geophysicist and currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.”
Do you see the change in tone here? It’s very subtle, you might have to squint. ;) Mann is introduced as ” famed and awarded climate scientist” and so on. Lindzen, who is also a scientist and also holds a number or prestigious awards, is given no introduction whatsoever. At best, this is a cheap and dishonest miscategorization trick.
And so on. Do you see how your source is extremely biased? I hope you do. Do you see how he uses bad sources as well as cheap tricks to buttress his claim? I hope you do. If so, in what way do you:
1) put truth above all?
2) avoid logical fallacies?
Let’s assume that you do not lie. Never ever! That is still 2 out of 3. Are you sure you want to continue to argue that Peterson and Lindzen are not scientists? What possible implications could there be if you are right?
What’s the evidence for that? Well, his own words, as quoted in Wikipedia with full references.” Using Wiki for sources? Seriously? Do I even have to point out why that is a problem, scientist?
You don’t have to point it out at all. Just go to the sources and explain why you do not choose to believe them, same as if Wikipedia was never mentioned. Categorical Wikipedia denialism is akin to the fetishistic belief that once someone says “Nazi,” they’ve lost the argument on behalf of their entire side.
Fucknuts,
Who said I was relying solely on the OP or on the Barnard article? I am quite familiar with Lindzen’s career, as I am also familiar with Mike Mann’s career. I don’t have to rely on secondary sources.
I am also familiar with the career of Jordan Peterson, and… oh, dear!
Scientists are trying to advance knowledge in their chosen areas of research. That means that they are experts in the subject–they will know it better than anyone else if they’re doing it right. But that creates a problem. If you know your subject better than your audience, then you will be capable of hoodwinking them. They know this, and it makes them likely to have doubts about what you say. It’s called information asymmetry. The only way to counter it is to establish credibility where the audience has more confidence in their ability to discern truth from falsehood. Hence the importance of valuing truth.
Now, let us imagine (and I know this strains credulity) that you are an expert in some field that overlaps with mine. If I see you lying to a lay audience to advance your agenda, you’ve destroyed any credibility you had with me as an expert–even if you don’t use the same bogus arguments with me.
That is where Lindzen finds himself. He couldn’t convince his peers with scientific arguments. He couldn’t get his increasingly marginal research published, so he the Wall Street Urinal Op Ed page and the halls of the Republican led Congress. In addressing these audiences, he has used arguments that I know, from my own limited expertise in climate science, are bogus. Since he knows more about Earth’s climate than I do, I know for certain that he knows they are bogus. What is more, he has never used these arguments among climate scientists.
Now, as Jordy is not a climate expert, it is possible he doesn’t realize how bogus Lindzen’s arguments are. There is still a well established scientific consensus out there that contradicts Lindzen’s BS. And a scientist, if he/she is to express an opinion in a field outside their expertise is expected to at least evaluate dissenting claims against the consensus position.
And then there is the history Peterson has of distorting the influence of his own research to lay audiences that don’t know any better. Sorry, Punkin, you are well out of your depth here.
fckideologs, hyper-skeptic. <yawn>
Fine, fine. You want to believe JP is not a denialist even though he’s on record saying he doesn’t think it’s an important issue, he doubts the data, he doubts the models, and he doubts the science in general, don’t let anyone stop you.
(denialism denialism is a thing, as you demonstrate)
—
PS “Human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation & extinction due to C02”
(Yeah, I know. You doubt those are really his own words, since they’re quoted in a Wiki. heh)
Wait, what?
Wow, that’s dumb, even for Peterson. I hope that was just a misstatement, but even so…
Just looked it up on rationalwiki – it provides a handy link right to Peterson’s twitter feed.
And it’s written – not a spoken statement. While all people (yes, including me) can brain fart even in a written medium, it’s harder and less frequent, making his (mis-?)statement even less understandable.
Just… wow.
CD,
If you follow the link in quoted tweet in the cited article, it is to a lecture (Date: 15/10/15 – Patrick Moore PhD, Global Warming Policy Foundation), which begins thus:
I think any reasonable person would think that tweet with that link is evidence of denialism.
(Though not about that specifit tweet, cf. #24 for a creative interpretation of the sentiment to the contrary conclusion)
(I realize this is late. Well, sometimes I just want to have the argument articulated somewhere)
It occurred to me that both the University, and JB Peterson, might well have compelling reasons to make the leave permanent, due to irreconcilable differences in fundamental values and goals.
1) The University of Toronto has policies in place regarding concepts like equity and diversity. Peterson has decried, repudiated, and rejected those concepts. The UofT would want him to accept those policies; Peterson does not want to do so. It is at least potentially possible that Peterson, as a UofT professor, would deliberately and perhaps even repeatedly violate those policies, and refuse to apologize, possibly embarrassing the University, or even putting the UofT at risk of legal liability. It is certainly the case that Peterson’s vocal opposition to those policies is already an embarrassment to the UofT. And from Peterson’s perspective, well, he wants his own speech to be free and unrestricted by policies that he rejects.
2) Peterson has, as noted here and elsewhere, made many statements and pronouncements that are scientifically dubious at best, and anti-scientific or pseudo-scientific at worst. This is again embarrassing to the UofT, and again, Peterson wants the right to say whatever he wants.
3) Peterson has become enormously financially successful as the result of his popularity, so much so that he could probably retire now and live comfortably. He has no financial reason to remain with the UofT. And from the UofT’s perspective, Peterson raking in lots of money via Patreon, book sales, and lecture fees, means that they can encourage him to leave without guilt.