Jordan Peterson - The most PROBLEMATIC intellectual of our time

this video is brought to you by my supporters  on patreon buy me coffee and YouTube if you'd like to support me you can find the links  below Jordan Peterson let's talk about him shall we I used to be a fan of the guy and now I  absolutely detest him how did I go from point A to point B what changed in my thought process  and if there are some of you that hold him in high regard which my comments tell me there are  quite a few of you maybe this video might change your minds or maybe I'm wrong so

mewhere and you  can point out the flaw in my logic oh one more thing in one of my recent videos I said this I  think Jordan Peterson is the Sadhguru of the west or Sadhguru is the Jordan Peterson of the  East depending on how you look at it I should probably clarify what I meant for that statement  because a lot of you have a disagreement here so I definitely will my name's pranav you're  watching Sciences dope let's begin foreign [Music] this video will I try to mock Jordan Peterson  I watched

a bunch of videos while researching for this one and a lot of the content that is critical  of him has this element of marker in them maybe they wanted to add some entertainment value to the  video but the only people it entertains are the ones who agree with the content of the video it's  like preaching to the choir I've been making an active effort lately to reach people that disagree  with me and I hope this video will do just that also if this video is gonna be a long one because  it's a de

ep type I've made it easier for you to watch by inserting timestamps in the scroll  bar check them out a lot of my Indian audience may not be super familiar with him so I should  probably start with who he is and how he rose to fame Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychology  Professor Who Rose to popularity through this video that came out in 2016. Peterson do you have  any comments on the Nazi Presence at your protest the presence of Nazis and white supremacists  assaulting people at your protes

t do you have any comment on that yeah I don't like Nazis  in the video Peterson can be seen arguing with trans activists due to your protests Peterson  was against the legally mandated use of gender pronouns something which according to him would  become legal and mandatory once Canada enforced its c-16 Bill Peterson's main argument was that  the bill infringed upon his freedom of speech and allowing the government to decide which words  illegal and which ones are not was a stepping stone to a

dystopian world where all of what  you say and express can be moderated by the government we'll Circle back to bill c-16 and his  views are not later on in the video but right now let's get back to why he's popular his arguments  and his eloquence while using them resonated with a lot of people particularly young men and he  developed a massive fan following in the years that followed a lot of media appearances a lot of  talks and debates and two best-selling books later here we are today to a l

ot of people who stand  against all movements and ideas from the left from trans rights to climate change from atheism  to feminism Peterson became something of a role model with them parroting his words and talking  points and there was a time when I got swayed by some of these points [Music] flashback to me during  2016 I was just as addicted to YouTube as I am now the only difference was that I was in the Creator  back then but I was an endless consumer now I was already an atheist at this po

int thanks to  the likes of Richard dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens I hadn't deeply thought about  things like feminism LGBT rights gay marriage Etc because I'm a straight man fairly privileged  these things didn't really affect me and so there was no motivation in me to learn more about these  things I was still definitely a feminist I was for LGBT rights I was four gay marriage because these  things are no-brainers right I mean which sane person wouldn't want equal rights for a

ll groups  and individuals especially if giving them rights wouldn't take anything away from you although very  superficial these were my positions z back then and apart from atheism there was no real thought  behind any of these this was around the time when I discovered Jordan Peterson some of the things he  said really spoke to me I don't think that young men are here words of encouragement some some of  them never in their entire lives as far as I can tell that's what they tell me and the fa

ct that  the words that I've been that I've been speaking the YouTube lectures that I've done and put online  for example have had such a dramatic impact is an indication that young men are starving for this  sort of message because like why in the world would they have to derive it from a lecture on  YouTube he gave some really strong arguments against LGBT rights and sometimes even feminism  here's him talking about the gender pay Gap the gender pay Gap stands at just over nine percent  so it

seems to a lot of women that they're still being dominated and excluded to quote your words  back to you it does seem that way but multivariate analysis of the pay Gap indicate that it doesn't  exist but there's multiple reasons for that one of them is gender but it's not the only reason women  in aggregate are paid less than men okay well then we break it down by age we break it down by all  occupation we break it down by interest we break it down by personality now I'm an impressionable  young

man at the time watching Peterson's team rule over gender pay Gap arguments thinking these  feminists are either lying on their stupid the gender B Gap doesn't exist obviously I'm taking  Peterson at his word why would an academic like Peterson lie to me or misinform me another thing  that's happening at the same time is YouTube is filled with these right-wing creators I'm talking  about American creators because creators from India hadn't really gotten on the platform yet  I'm watching them pu

t up videos of Ben Shapiro who's another right-wing spokesperson Ben Shapiro  destroying sjws I also see feminist outbursts from these redhead clearly man-hating feminists talking  about how masculinity is toxic and ruins lives on the one side and on the other side I see people  like Peterson saying toxic masculinity isn't a thing and these feminists are clearly in the  wrong what precisely is toxic masculinity as opposed to say toxic femininity so if it's a  matter of transgressing against the

boundaries of gender appropriate behavior it's just as likely  to happen among women as among men in which case it's not toxic masculinity a combination of all  this created a very negative image of feminism in my head now I acknowledge that it was my fault  for not looking deeper into this and forming my opinions based on superficial takes from these  folks but hey here was an impressionable young man who got swayed by the content he was exposed  to but now that I'm a little older and I've had

the time to reflect on what I was thinking  I realized my characterization of feminism lies on arguments like these made by Peterson  right-wing creators like Ben Shapiro dunking on college kids and right-leaning creators making  content attacking feminism let's take them one by one first Peterson denying the gender pay Gap  unfortunately he doesn't cite where he is getting his research from but a little bit of digging  and here's what I found a paper published in the Journal of economic literat

ure that looks at data  on the gender pay cap over three decades and does exactly what Peterson wants controls for multiple  variables that could explain the wage Gap and you know what it font there is still a nine percent  pay gap between men and women even with all those controls Kathy Newman was right Jordan Peterson  for all his confidence while making this assertion turns out to be wrong by the way this video went  pretty viral for the way Kathy Newman tried to straw man Peterson throughout

the phrase so you're  saying that has become a meme at this point now despite how poorly this interview was conducted  Newman it turns out had some good points second I also understand how these man-hating feminists  are probably not the best examples of feminism to paint the whole of feminism as just these people  from the extremes is is a basic black and white fallacy and third anyone who uses ben shapiro  as an argument a man who only dunks on college kids and can't face a journalist in an a

rgument  instantly loses my respect I saw how feminism had been misrepresented to me by the people who stood  against it as for Jordan Peterson his various lines of arguments on different issues not just  feminism began breaking down one by one in front of me if you want you can find tons of videos  critiquing him by various creators mine will be just one among them there's more to come on Jordan  Peterson attacking trans rights on Bill c16 on how all this relates to India all that is going to 

come later in the video but I wanted to talk now about what made me what prompted me to look  deeper into Jordan Peterson the things he says so confidently with so much conviction may not  hold ground once you look deeper into it [Music] since before I discovered Peterson I had a  pretty solid understanding of my position and I could hold my ground pretty well in an  argument on atheism and so it really surprised me when I learned that Peterson was a practicing  Christian all his other talking p

oints seemingly made sense to me but his God belief didn't and  so I was really interested in what he had to say in the topic and I would diligently watch  his conversations with prominent atheists like Sam Harris Matt Dillahunty Etc to try and understand  his views see my position is this if you want to claim that there exists a God who can influence  things in your life or anywhere in the world or anywhere in the universe for that matter then  that is a claim about reality and any Claim about

reality is meaningless without evidence because  evidence is an indicator of Truth and there is no evidence for God now when you ask Peterson do you  believe in God this is what you'll probably hear what do you mean do what do you mean you what do  you mean believe and what do you mean God because Peterson defines God in a very sophisticated way  which is very different from the way the average person defines it you have a hierarchy of values  you have to otherwise you can't act or you're painfu

lly confused you have a hierarchy of values  whatever is at the top of that hierarchy of values serves the function of God for you but the  average person will only see how a well-spoken intellectual like Peterson believes in God and  finds validation for his or her own belief now it may be a God that you don't believe in or a  God that you can't name but it doesn't matter because it's God for you this definition of  God is so vague in all encompassing that he gets away with calling well-renowne

d public  atheists as Christians this is the argument I've had with people like Sam Harris The Atheist  types it's like yeah you think you're atheist man it's like you're Christian judeo-christian let's  say to the core I actually don't believe in a god but you act like you do huh that's why you wouldn't throw sam off the stage no now you're making a claim okay so I'm  telling you I don't believe there's a God and yeah your response to that is I really  do because I have a moral sense but my mor

al sense is utterly without any appeal to a  God by the way that conversation between Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillahunty is an  absolute treat to watch I'll leave a link to it down below there were instances  in that conversation where I felt like Peterson was deliberately trying to confuse Dillahunty because he couldn't respond to Matt's coherent points if you chop off my head it's in  contradiction to my well-being I mean that but no I wasn't willing to grant that actually okay  I'm saying th

at's a metaphysical presupposition you're just saying I have to accept that no I'm  not I'm not telling you at all what to expect I'm trying to explain what my position is okay but  but you said that that wouldn't be in accordance with your well-being okay that's a metaphysical  State murder philosophical statement it's not an obvious fact that chopping off somebody's head  is contrary to their well-being depends on how you define well-being sure yeah but it matters  but if you define well-being

as this glass of water we're no longer talking about the same thing  well you can Define well-being that's fine that's what I'm waiting for this is so this is what I'm  it's you can't do it you can't Define well-being well then why should I certainly can't do it  if you keep telling me I can't do it okay sorry okay I'll back off I'll back off there's a bill  but none of that happened Dillahunty cut through all that confusing stuff and laid bare what Peterson really  was a typical conservative a

pologist that had an outdated understanding of what an atheist was this  is something that happened during the Q a section of that talk what in your view would a genuine  atheist be like he'd be like raskolnikov in crime and punishment he murders this horrible woman  who's horrible according to everyone who knows her raskolnikov built himself up to the murder in part  by laying out the rational case but also by saying well there's no God there's no metaphysical reason  that's stopping me from co

mmitting this act and there's all these reasons that appear perfectly  rational people are pushing me in that direction perhaps I'm nothing but a moral coward for failing  to undertake it so he does but what he finds out is that he broke an inviolable moral rule atheists  are murderous what a sad and unsophisticated understanding of what an atheist is something  that you usually hear from a blind believer who has never met anyone outside their circle of course  he said it in a more sophisticated

manner with the Peterson charm and all that needless complication  but Matt came back with a beautiful reply and let him speak for himself and this is what atheists  hear all the time when they come out they've been sidelined because of religious privilege around  the world for years and an atheists come out to their family members or friends or people they've  known for years and they're like you're an atheist how can that be you're such a good person I've  known you all this time it's because

the mindset of what people have about what an atheist is  has been poisoned by religious proclamations we have been denigrated from the pulpit and it  is seeped into every aspect of culture right up to the height of intellectual  Pursuits and it's time for that to end that deserves an Applause anyway this video  came out in 2018 and I remember watching it it was like a turning point for me and I kind of lost  respect for Peterson I mean till that point he was someone that had these hard-hitting

and high level  arguments even on the theism front and I've never seen anyone being able to counter them well and I  just thought I was too stupid to understand what Peterson was saying now I know what he's saying is  just purposefully confusing like he's so precise on literally any of the topic but when it comes  to religion he has to complicate things confuse his opponent muddy the water in order to get away  with justifying his belief because if he States his belief in her straightforward wa

y like he  should then it just becomes very hard to defend if he does though then he just ends up saying stuff  like this there's still a historical story and so what you have in the figure of Christ is an actual  person who actually lived plus a myth and in some sense Christ is the union of those two things  the problem is is I probably believe that but I don't know I don't I'm amazed at my own belief  and I don't understand it anyway it sounds to me like John Peterson is a conservative Christi

an  who doesn't want to admit he doesn't believe in God in a conventional sense instead he says he  believes in God but he has to say what he means but I believe in God as a b c all these things  but all his arguments were reduced to nothing in front of Matt Dillahunty probably why Peterson has  never had another conversation with him since then anyway like I said you should watch the talk and  Link it in the description now it was after the same talk that I decided never to take him at his  wor

d when he cites the results of studies and that was because of this movement from that talk this  is this is about the language people from smoking well you can stop smoking without any sort  of Supernatural intervention no not really you can't stop smoking Without Really any any  reliable chemical means for inducing smoking cessation you can use a drug called bupu prion  I think that's the one Whatever Wellbutrin is is that Supernatural no you don't need a supernatural  effect but it doesn't wo

rk very well but if you give people magic mushrooms psilocybin and they  have a mystical experience they have about an 85 percent chance of smoking cessation sure one  treatment yeah but that's kind of like evidence you know okay so according to Peterson you have  evidence of the supernatural from the fact that Psilocibin a chemical found in psychedelic  mushrooms when given to people who are trying to quit smoking if it induces a mystical  experience can get them to actually quit smoking now as

suming that the study was perfectly  designed and the results were conclusive this is clearly not the evidence of the supernatural this  is just evidence that psilocybin use helps people quit smoking they are subjective description  of their experience as mystical Can't by any standard be objective evidence that something  mystical is actually happening but let's also look at the study just in case it's basically  a pilot study involving 15 participants who got a 15-week smoking cessation treatm

ent that's  weekly meetings along with psilocybin treatment and although they did have an 80 success rate at  six months the researchers themselves state that the results of the present study are limited  by the relatively small and homogeneous sample therefore these findings must be considered  preliminary compare this with what Peterson said they have about an 85 percent chance of  smoking cessation sure one treatment yeah but that's kind of like evidence you know if this  isn't misrepresentat

ion of science then I don't know what is now to be fair to him it could be  that Peterson misread the study or misremembered its findings and just because he's clearly wrong  here doesn't mean he's wrong everywhere else but one thing was for sure from that point I was  not gonna take what he said at his word [Music] Jordan Peterson's initial rise to fame was when  he claimed that Canada's legislation through bill c-16 was legally mandating compelled speech  namely gender pronouns and this was go

ing against his freedom of speech Let's examine two points  here one about Bill C16 and two about freedom of speech first what did Bill c-16 actually  say I'll leave a link to the actual bill down below so you can read it yourself it's just  an amendment to Canada's Human Rights Act which adds trans people to the list of protected  troops it basically protects people from discrimination in housing employment Etc on the  basis of age race religion disabilities and now gender identity and expressi

on that's it no  compelled speech whatsoever it basically has none of what Peterson says it has his entire  initial rise to fame was based on a straw man let's also talk about Free Speech what is the  purpose of free speech it's not the freedom to say whatever you like it's not the freedom to be  an ass**** why do you need to be legally protected if you want to be a dick does that even make sense  take this example imagine that you were swinging your arms that's perfectly fine right you have  th

e right to move how you like now imagine that someone was in the way and gets knocked back by  exercising your right to swing your arms however you like you're violating another person's right  not to be assaulted basically your right to swing your fists ends wearing other person's nose begins  apply the same idea to speech and expression but not in a simplistic way of one person just saying  something the other person doesn't like that would be a very childish interpretation but imagine  someon

e's speech and expression and practices ends up being discriminatory like denying the  other person housing or employment or even medical care that shouldn't happen that becomes a  violation of their human rights that is oppression and this oppression after a trans Community was  what bill c-16 was trying to prevent freedom of speech is necessary for a free society and  its purpose is so that the powerless can be equals with the powerful this is just my opinion  but once you see Jordan Peterson

as a typical Conservative Christian a lot of his ideological  positions start to make a lot more sense like he isn't against the LGBT community because  uh this bill comes in the way of his freedom of speech that's just how he likes to dress  up his argument maybe just to confuse people because if he says it in a straightforward way  that God doesn't like them how will it look on them I mean he's an academic after all now I  have strong reasons for holding these opinions here's him speaking on g

ay marriage I'm curious  to hear your views on gay marriage well I would be against it too if it was backed by cultural  marxists because it isn't clear to me that um it will satisfy the ever increasing what we call demand for an assault on traditional modes of being now with regards to gay marriage  specifically that's a really tough one for me because if the marital vowels are taken seriously  then it seems to me that it's a means whereby gay people can be integrated more thoroughly into  stan

dard society as Jordan live in the year 1870 or something does he not understand the concept of  gay people being in love and wanting to marry each other I wouldn't be surprised at this coming from  a Conservative Christian but from Jordan Peterson it's even worse when I see his opinions on climate  change the hardest sort out the climate change one is a weird one so that's because there's no such  thing as climate right climate and everything are the same word and I that's what bothers me  abou

t the climate change types it's like this is something that bothers me about it technically  it's like well climate is about everything it's okay but your models aren't based on everything  your models are based on a set number of variables yeah so that means you've reduced the variables  which are everything to that set well how did you decide which set of variables to include in  the equation if it's about everything and that's not just a criticism that's like if it's about  everything your mo

dels aren't right because your models do not and cannot model everything it seems  to mean like John's conservative values especially Christian values are more important to him than  what actual scientists say also this pattern is not isolated to the best it's something I've  seen developing in India for a few years now before 2016-17 I mainly watch YouTube creators  from the west but it was dominated by these right-wing creators if it wasn't a video featuring  Jordan Peterson directly it would

be someone parroting his talking points like how the wage  cap doesn't exist or how climate change isn't an issue but it's a little more balanced now with  almost all his misinformation having been debunked a lot of left-leaning creators have come out of  the space now so the average person who comes in with no pre-existing opinions won't be flooded  with all this misinformation from the Jordan Peterson types that's not the case with India  though YouTube India is still heavily dominated by thes

e rifling creators many of them with a  million plus audiences and most of them putting out misinformation misrepresenting science and all  their audiences just blindly believing the stuff they see I'm not saying that misinformation comes  only from the right both sides have misinformation but when a young person forms opinions based on  content they had bombarded with which is only from one side that becomes a problem and when  something is clearly wrong I don't see enough voices calling it out

but I see one thing in  common if it was Jordan Peterson who led the charge for all this misinformation content in  the west it's sadhguru here in India a lot of creators who follow in their footsteps usually  get most of their talking points from these two Jordan Peterson fans are basically like a cult of  young men misinformed and mostly right-leaning and so are the sadhguru Fanboys the main reason for  this is that the things they say usually targets minority groups and women and so it usual

ly  finds an audience with people that are not in those groups like straight young men now this  isn't to say that they only have audiences in these demographics but they certainly are the  majority I see a lot of young impressionable people coming onto the platform and forming their  opinion means based on all this misinformation content not realizing how damaging actions  based on it can be to certain communities a feature of many people who support ideologies  like these and I'll put religion

s also in there especially Hinduism is that these people usually  come from the upper rungs of these hierarchies they're privileged by these hierarchies that  oppress many others they would never support the ideology that oppressed them just ask yourself  would you want to be bonded to a society with this kind of hierarchy if you weren't allowed to  choose which part of the hierarchy you'd be born into when I made that video and made a comparison  between Jordan Peterson and sadhguru I think man

y people got the impression I'm saying they're  exactly alike of course not Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist a university professor  and sadhguru's what maybe I shouldn't have gone there but their confidence when spouting misinformation and the huge cult-like following they have and the other commonalities I've listed  were should tell you why I made that comparison I'm not saying that Peterson brings nothing  of value he does for instance the best way the best way to teach people crit

ical thinking is to  teach them to write because there's no difference between that and thinking you need to learn to  think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world thinking makes you win the battles  you Undertake and those could be battles for good things this is advice I still use every day  whenever my thoughts feel cluttered I write them down that helps me see various holes in my thought  process I try and address them and the next time I have more clarity about things in fa

ct that's  why I like making these YouTube videos because writing scripts helps me bring so much Clarity to  whatever I want to say now this is the basic idea of journaling and it wasn't invented by John  Peterson or something but I have to give him credit because I do it because of him there are  many similar things of value that he says but the question we must ask ourselves is be it the rhetoric  of Jordan Peterson or someone like sadhguru is the value they bring to the table worth all the  h

arm they cause content like this is something sponsors don't really want to associate with some  of my most popular videos involve debunking myths and superstitions and pseudoscience from religion  that also makes my videos prone to demolitization but at the same time many of you find Value  in this kind of content and it's your support that keeps me going if you'd like to support  me even a little bit you can find links below patreon buy me coffee UPI YouTube memberships  thanks buttons website

and merge there are many options at your disposal I've not had a single  sponsored video since January let's see how long we can keep that going if you like this video  you might also like this one I did recently on sadhguru analyzing his study I'll see you in  the next one till then remember science is dope