I certainly came for the lobsters.
I found dumpsters.
Oh oh oh. I got a wild desire.
To oh oh oh put this thread on fire.
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I was just thinking that, especially in sports, the leaders are NOT those who are best at the sport. Bruce Bochy is hardly the best player on the Giants’ roster. In fact, it’s been demonstrated that superstar players almost never make good managers.
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And, of course, the Peter Principle teaches us that, in a hierarchy, people tend to rise to the level of their incompetence. That is one problem with a hierarchy.
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It’s also understood that if an “All Star” sportsball team of top individual players is pitted against one of the top regular teams in a league the former doesn’t enjoy any special advantage and often plays at a disadvantage because the players aren’t used to working together.
There have been cases where one superstar player has carried an entire team, but putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t a sustainable formula for long-term evolutionary success.
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None of this contradicts what Peterson argues.
You don’t have to agree with the guy, or even like or accept his arguments, but it’s tiring to see people respond to Peterson and not really understand what he’s actually driving at.
And to be clear, I think his book is a pretty lame self-help book, but when he elaborates on topics like “inequality” in his lectures, he does expose issues that too many folks think can be resolved purely through, say, social or governmental intervention. Peterson – I’m oversimplifying for the sake of posting on a message board – at least begins to address the psychological issues involved in addressing inequalities, as well as the pitfalls of previous political interventions aimed at utopia.
But all we get is bloggers like Cory posting really trite rebuttals to some small part of a much larger argument that fail to even grasp what he’s talking about. Which is infuriating because I’m interested in reading good arguments, but pure snark isn’t how an argument is made.
And it was… well, plain weird… when Cory linked to a parody of Peterson that seemed to confuse many BoingBoing readers (a lot of them didn’t realize it was “fake news” – sad).
Peterson holds degrees in psychology and political science, taught at Harvard, and now teaches at one of Canada’s most esteemed universities. You can hate him, but ffs, he’s an accomplished educator, so take him seriously.
Hell, sometimes just putting the right bunch of rejects together can make magic. Cf. the Vegas Golden Knights.
Expansion draft gives you all the players everyone else doesn’t feel it’s worth it to sign. Now they’re making bookies cry.
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Serious people take an accomplished educator seriously within the context of his disciplines. When Peterson borrows that authority to peddle sexist woo to members of the alt-right in exchange for money and fame he has forfeit that respect so far as his being a public intellectual goes.
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Welcome to boing boing, yet another brand new member who seems to feel so strongly about this dude I’d never even heard of until a few days ago.
We look forward to hearing more of your insightful opinions on other topics…
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Yogi Berra! (and I fuckin’ hate the Yankees… But I love Yogi. Loooooove)
ETA: I’m gonna be thinking about this all night now, but off the top of my head I feel like baseball might be where most of the outliers reside.
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This statement alone shows how little Peterson understands of the modern left but ok…
(ETA: or at least what you understand of what Peterson understands, FWIW)
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I think his idea that the owner -> general manager -> coach -> team model is the healthiest and based on natural impulses says all it needs to. Let alone that public corporations are led around by the nose by a similar pool of people whose only merit is their lucking into cash which work together to make choices that reinforces the hierarchies they created. Or that the US government literally has that same social class defining all policy.
There’s a hierarchy that doesn’t extend past a certain point and then there is literally a close knit set of people working in concert to make sure it doesn’t change and risk altering their hierarchy-less lifestyle.
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Sounds like this famous Hugh MacLeod cartoon:
…and this in-depth exploration of it using “The Office.” The close-knit set of people you describe are the Losers, who:
like to feel good about their lives. They are the happiness seekers, rather than will-to-power players, and enter and exit reactively, in response to the meta-Darwinian trends in the economy. But they have no more loyalty to the firm than the Sociopaths. They do have a loyalty to individual people, and a commitment to finding fulfillment through work when they can, and coasting when they cannot.
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We have, and frankly, Peterson doesn’t deserve
respect, any more than Andrew Wakefield (a published scientist!!) does. Peterson is the über STEMlord - a man accomplished in one tiny area who decidedly believes himself to be an expert in many.
He’s the alt-right’s Tony Robbins: a misogynist, regressive asshole who worships violence and the status quo. His bloviated and grandiose verbiage belies his lack of intellect. Instead of offering an individual a way to rise above their station, he preaches that you must make others accept theirs. Instead of preaching cooperation, he preaches kicking the vulnerable. He claims to understand ancient monomyths but is incapable of grasping the meaning and mores our cultural stories convey. In short, he’s a typical prairie preacher, without the capacity to believe in the existence of truth.
Peterson is a black hole of energy. A spiritual vampire. He and his alt-reich pepe Weird Boys can get lost in space.
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I don’t hate him—I don’t know him. Up until Saturday, I had no idea he even existed.
But I’m not going to take him “seriously” if I think he, at best, is indulging in pseudo-intellectual buffoonery, or at worst, political grift. I also don’t much care what his education is, if this is the company he keeps or these are the ideas he’s chosen to sell.
Hey, if Peterson advocates ever wanted a fair hearing in the “marketplace of ideas,” this is it. You folk are going to have to either accept that he is wrong on matters outside his field—these matters—since his views are evidently flawed (not to mention risible) or we’re inevitably going to start drawing parallels to other famous cults.
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PUBLICLY FUNDED HEALTH CARE IS TYRANNY
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Then…
PUBLICLY FUNDED ROADS ARE TYRANNY
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Sure hate to be criticisin’ the mixed economy, but it’s the Rooooaaaaddd to Serfdom!
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Because he’s the public intellectual of the moment and he’s cutting a huge swathe through the pieties and bromides of the Left. With great success. I’ve got the exact T-shirt on photographed at the head of this article. And, just in case you’re interested, Dr. Peterson isn’t discussing REPRODUCTION in marine invertebrates. LOL
Welcome to BoingBoing, comrade! Remember to say hi to everyone back at /r/JordanPeterson for us, okay?
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Right???
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