"Not a problem?" JP?! Really?! If you don't care if we understand, then what's the point of listening to you at all? Might be time to get some help brotha. I wish JP the best, but he's just not right anymore.
me too! I wouldn't have enough patience! It would be like getting on the interstate but only driving 20 mph to get somewhere and then having the driver of the vehicle give you bullshit reasons as to why we can't speed the conversation up.
Wife: Did you eat yet? Me: Well what do you mean by "eat?" Wife: Have you had lunch today? Me: Now hold on bucko! There is a lot to unpack there and I don't think you understand the question you're even asking. Wife: Has food enter your mouth this afternoon? Me: Food is never not entering my mouth. It's entering my mouth right now. It's not just food. It's hyperfood! If you look in Genesis, food was basically equivalent to knowledge and you can't live without knowledge. YOU CAN'T! Wife: I want a divorce Me: Well, what in the bloody hell even is a divorce?
Exactly. Jordan P. is "Me" and I would be his wife. I'd divorce the son of a bi*** as soon as possible. I can't stand people speaking on and on and on, but saying absolutely nothing. To me he's not an intellectual. Real intellectuals have every day common sense, Jordan P. doesn't. Richard Dawkins can't stand him, nor can I.
"Incomprehensible, therefore must be profound? Or just pretentious, meaningless bilge? If you have something worthwhile to say, why would you deliberately cultivate obscurity?" - Richard Dawkins -
Well Richard does not research things he talks about so you know very easily things can become incomprehensible. If someone talked about cars with me there would be a lot of things that I would not get , does that mean the person talking about cars in pretentious and says nothing? No. I just don't know what the person is talking about because I have no idea what is going on exactly.
@@gandalainsley6467 Hogwash. The car person can still explain things to you and not be incomprehensible or pretentious. JP doesn't have the nerve to say in response to questions about Jesus' supposed resurrection. "Personally I think it is all figurative but because I now have a select audience that bankrolls the insane amount of money I make...I won't bluntly point out the absurdity of the idea that a man was magically resurrected from the dead 2000 odd years ago and then flew to heaven."
@@GoogleIsNotYourFriend If you don't know what is going on you will get lost at some point anyway. That is what happened with me when I was a kid and my grandfather kept asking me for things when he was fixing his car and I had no idea what he was talking about. Also you yourself don't seem to know what is going on either. In that one mock version of what JP said you already made mistakes. See how easily you got confused ?
Read montaigne on this, apology for reymond sebond. It is the duty of a philosopher to be obscure, so that people like Richard Dawkins will keep on stumbling in blindness.
@@gandalainsley6467 Jordan doesn't research things he talks about either or he'd know that the archaeology does not support Exodus. The point is that Jordan Peterson deliberately obfuscates in order to befuddle listeners. Sounds like it may have worked on you
That’s taken out of context in fairness, the question was asked most profoundly by Nietzsche. It’s not to relegate or denigrate truth but to really ask, what is truth in service of? For Nietzsche it was always in service of the will to power
@@nerdyali4154 Maybe his position in all of this is not to know but just to be the open conscioussness we all can watch grapple..that is a bit more appetizing than thinking he is pretending to know it all. Maybe he sees himself as a philosopher on a search not whos found the answers. That's the most generous reading of peterson I can offer.
@@george5464Does Peterson agree with Nietzsche here? Because oh boy… . But I’m not sure Nietzsche even puts it like ‘truth in service to will to power’.
It's funny watching people who don't get what Jordan is saying. Does he mean historically accurate or objective truth? We don't know anything from the distant past objectively. We can only craft history from combining story and archeological findings. A lot of history is combined with mythology because our ancestors used mythology and fantasy to explain the unknown world around us. Unless we have a time machine, we won't know what the objective truth is. The fact that this goes over everyone's head is astonishing.
Except,,, when Alex asks which he means..JP admits that he knows which one their asking... And yet he still answers neither ? It's the definition of obfuscating@@naisyjohns
@naisyjohns, it's not going over everyone's head, though.....he's making a statement in doing what he's doing by purposefully obfuscating the point. If someone asks, "Did it really happen"? Everyone knows what they mean by that. Whether or not that's a good question is certainly up for debate. But Peterson shouldn't just throw his hands up and say that's not my problem. He should explain his position without someone having to interrogate it out of him. It's ridiculous....
I love how in this conversation you very clearly got him to admit he knows EXACTLY what people are asking him when they ask this sort of thing, but then he still refuses to answer that question because he wants to avoid ‘traps’ that ‘recruit him’. Essentially what he means is he knows that he doesn’t believe in these things in the way most Christians do and he doesn’t want to alienate them. It’s a cowardly attempt to have his cake and eat it.
It's because his true motives are being hidden by the concept of religion (And mysticism in general) which he uses to validate his true beliefs and malevolent nature. Most of these people use religion to hide behind and justify their behaviours and statements (Usually statements about other people like abortion) so their true inclinations are seen as meritorious, somewhat.
This is actually very similar to what Niel Degrasse Tyson does when people ask him if he is an atheist... He wants to educate people, and I think he thinks people will stop listening to him if he gets labelled.
Exactly. Why would you even engage in conversation and then not be interested in the other person understanding you? Either don't say anything or explain yourself. Jesus Christ...
@@argfasdfgadfgasdfgsdfgsdfg6351 It's not just that. It's that he gets very picky in trying to "understand" so he can answer "properly" by asking very specific "what do you mean by...", but when done to him, he just dismisses them.
JP painted himself into a corner a long time ago. So for years now he had been trying to-with his remaining paint-draw a window on the wall that he can crawl out through. And by virtue of that, we have to listen to this kind of bombastic, rude, obfuscation.
He wants to remain vague on his religious beliefs as to not piss off his mainly christian audience but also be true to what he actually believes, which has turned into this ridiculous avoidal of any straight forward answer that satisfies no one 😂
It took mother effing Alex O'Connor to finally squeeze out those decisive statements from JP. Bravo. Alex did something quite literally no other interviewer has been able to do.
I think it’s finely stated at the end that JP doesn’t view subtext in the Bible as physical in the way we do in our time. He’s smart enough to know that there’s no way of proving most events in the Bible or even peoples existence for that matter. And so he chooses the metaphorical approach of the Bible. Which from any backing of I intellect is really the only way to view the Bible, as a scripture of blind faith. So JP knows this and is annoyed with questions that reflect the true blessing we have now. One thing I will say is that even with our modern technology history will be warped by bias and subjectivity. 1000 years from now if we are still around people will ask if JFK was real or just deep faked. If a 100 year period of Industrial Revolution and war was compressed and reduced or even conflated. History is quite literally what we make of it. Our bubble will pop generationally and the future scholars will have to put the pieces back together. Religions and political movements will ebb and flow. What we see clearly today will be foggy tomorrow. Anyway this is the perspective of an agnostic atheist.
True. He's definitely out of his element with religion, but he also seems hyper focused on religion, and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe Peterson enjoys the uncomfortableness of a topic that he doesn't quite understand or believe. That jacket is definitely giving me some tacky televangelist vibes. I like Peterson but he seems a little off to me
I really don't think that you can watch the full podcast, understand it to a minimal degree and conclude that. You might not believe or agree with it, but they literally go into what he means, and it is not nonsensical or "bullshit". And Alex most defenetly does not think that it is. You can have the opinion that he is overcomplicating questions, but to just say that all of it is just bullshit or an atempt to unnecessarily complicate the conversation, with no other purpose, can only come from someone who does not understand what he is saying. I agree that Jordan sometimes uses words or concepts inappropriately in different contexts, wich I think is Alex's opinion. But from this coment and other coments on this videos, it really just seems that there are a lot of atheiest people who just hate Jordan Peterson for being a Christian and talking about topics in a more complex manner then they would like, but have no real arguments against his opinions and just use Alex's ideas to atack Peterson, without even really understanding them. Especially beacuse I am seing a lot of coments expanding Alex's basic arguments to something that he would most certenatly no longer agree with. I am an atheist btw.
@@athenaa23 I think the best part is when he cuts JP off in the middle of answering his question in order to criticize him for not answering questions (3:24).
@@andrewtucker94 I think we have made more sense of the world in the last several hundred years as we have discovered the hows of the world and at this point the only reason to keep philosophers around is to make sure that when it comes to medical experiments is to answer the question: Is it ethical?
I appreciate you not engaging with the rambling and pattern of speaking over someone. When Peterson speaks over you, I love that you take a step back and allow him to finish showing better decorum and respect than he can reciprocate.
So few want to define their own terms but want him to agree or disagree anyway. So few want to take the trouble to be forthright about their take on a Biblical passage, whether they be religious or skeptical.
@@booksquid856Surely as the supposed mighty word and high law of the creator of infinite time and all space the fact that his book is able to be interpreted as opposed to just standing matter of factly by it's own words and declarations clearly means it's not the word of god.
He did say what he meant though. He admits he doesn’t know what happened historically cause HES NOT A HISTORIAN, but argues that the truth of the abstraction of the story may be just as REAL as the historical account. Engage with his point it’s astounding how I haven’t seen a single refutation in this comment section just personal attacks.
JP is an obscurantist. Yes, sometimes he is clear and straight forward and says what he means directly, but on/at too many crucial moments when asked the most important questions he his obfuscating. So, why isn't he obscure in less important cases, why especially when the most important questions are asked? Because he wants to hide behind nuance. JP doesn't want to be open. He pretends te be open with all his overdone nuanced reasoning and seemingly admitting certain of his shortcomings, but still he's hiding. He is very, very, very ambiguous.
The idea that anyone would watch this video and come away thinking that Peterson is a genius is hilarious. All he’s doing here is evading questions like how Neo evades bullets. He’s saying nothing substantive at all. He is truly the patron saint of all pseudo-intellectuals.
For someone who used to espouse ‘be very careful and precise in your speech’, that goes completely out of the window when it comes to religiosity. Contrast how he speaks on this subject (and about most subjects now..) with say his interview with Helen Lewis - yes that was more adversarial - but he was incredibly precise in setting out his clear definitions prior to elucidating a point, as Alex tries to here, when not being cut off. I say this as something of a lapsed JP fan. I think the ego has landed - to borrow a pun. He’s become a bit of a character, playing a part, rather than the person who genuinely had reservations and bravely stood up to a piece of legislation back in 2016. I think that blazer says it all.. like Jerry Fallwell or something or a corporate evangelist.. I won’t say huckster (but Hitch would have!). He knows it’s a cash cow. He can get a few more books and tours out of the Christian audience.
@@arsene4440 He's supposed to cry because JP is a nutcase? What the hell does THAT mean? This feels like the embodiment of that crying wojak wearing a cool wojak mask.
jp:"what do you mean by saying what do you mean"... it is psychology but JP stuff before he was famous is still good... his lectures spurred me to dismantle my faith/ change my thinking
I'm really impressed at how far Alex has managed to get by pressuring this slippery charlatan into actually making coherent claims about what he believes. It's not far, but it's farther than anyone else has ever gotten.
Jordan felt very stung by Dawkins and frequently debates him in absentia because Dawkins said he was drunk on symbols. Some part of Jordan knows that's very true.
That is the essence of the entire right-wing problem...they are completely obsessed with the symbolic order rather than the real. One can never find peace in the symbolic order. In the best case it is ideally disposed of entirely. But good luck with that without lsd.
"Drunk on symbols" is a very good description of what spiritual alchemy is, which is also the kind of thing that Jung was doing. The connection is there. "Drunk on symbols" is a far more accurate diagnosis than Dawkins himself realizes.
Peterson could simply say "I am not a fundamentalist, i dont believe in the inerrancy of the bible, and i dont believe that the bible should always be taken literally." This is what most historical-critical scholars of the bible would say, and I seriously dont understand why he needs to spend an hour to communicate this.
Except that would alienate many in his cult of young men he brainwashed into being Christian, and by being ridiculously vague he can playcate his followers into thinking he’s some kind of genius, and trap those who disagree with him in a dumb game of semantics and definitions.
@MrZomBie775 the thing is he can say those things and still be a Christian. Accepting biblical errancy and being a christian are not mutually exclusive. In fact, most reasonable Christians would probably be on his side there. I don't think it has to do with that. Faith is complex to be sure, but it doesn't have to be so esoteric and vague, especially to someone who is usually a good communicator.
Because that in itself is an answer phrased in a rationalist atheist perspective. It's not sufficiently dimensional enough to address the inherent complexities of christianity/god.
still better than the 'postmodern-marxist-ideologically-woke types'. luckily, that category is defined very firmly.it's whatever you need it to be. and it's definitionally evil, which makes everything so much easier
It always amazes me that the infamous "so you're saying" interview is presented as evidence of the journalist trying to put words in his mouth rather than trying to nail down the intended meaning of someone who is being deliberately vague and employing plausible deniability about everything he says.
I've noticed with Peterson that the more he's on shaky ground and is aware that his thesis is being effectively dismantled, the more he interrupts his opponent. He interrupted Alex A LOT in this six minutes.
When he says “that’s not my problem” it tells me all I need to know about his approach to communication. You either get on board with his monologue, or it isn’t his problem. He doesn’t understand that others are looking for the root meaning of communication - it’s something that we do together, it’s a communion. We’re looking for a shared experience, to realise a common understanding whether we agree or not. He’s a lecturer, not a communicator.
Yeah I felt the same when I heard him say that. Like, how un self aware do you have to be to think that it's someone *else's* problem when your answer to the question of "did the exodus happen" is "it's still happening today". No normal person would ever think that's an appropriate answer to such a question.
Yes, exactly. And if he's trying to be some kind of mystic or mythologer, or something, why would you go to him instead of the great mystics or scholars of history?
3:45 JP backed into a corner where he can't answer without either contradicting his initial claim or dropping the metaphorical smokescreen. He responds: "that's not my problem"
It was a very poor response wasn't it? Me O'Connor could have gone for the jugular at that point, but out of politeness framed it impersonally. "Mm. Yes. But it becomes a problem...".
it is fundamental in discussion and especially debate for the other person to know and understand exactly what you said and meant, this reminds me of a teenager losing an argument when it was never about winning or losing but about sharing information
@@sukatidi Quite. And also, Jordan Peterson seems to have an appeal to certain teenage males and young men who hang on his every word - salad or main course. It's unfortunate in that Peterson also promotes other conservative ideas for young men like auto-erotic abstinence for singles. Meanwhile, the SCIENCE says this is dangerous and may cause an increased risk of early death from prostate cancer. Yet the all-knowing Dr. Peterson seems unaware of the research: Credible medical research shows a decreased outflow from the prostate gland, for whatever reason, significantly increases the risk of prostate cancer later in life. The risk ratio is comparable to smoking. Plus, the risk factor is especially noticeable for younger males. It seems proper outflow from the prostate is necessary for the healthy growth of the organ. Turns out Mother Nature never designed the prostate to shut off like a valve. But Peterson is unlikely to inform his fan base of the actual science as it could interfere with his cash flow.
Thank you Alex for being so patient. Disecting and reframing this question and letting Jordan comment on that really showed that he's just simply not willing to agree with the reality, that someone would like to ask about the Exodus in a historical context.
I also do not get at all why that should be an invalid question? He frames it as if it would be the height of hubris to try to determine if something is an accurate account of historical events, when such study is _essential_ in multiple fields of research, not only to actually understand events of the past, but also to grasp at which sources are reliable and which are not. And I think therein lies his issue; if you can clearly say that the bible story is, largely, entirely fictional/metaphorical and does barely recount any historical events at all, then that just opens yourself up to saying "well, why consider it special then?" After all, it's not an outrageously good book. It has good stories with good lessons in them, sure, but it isn't the height of literature. And it has absolutely disastrous and ugly lessons in it, abhorrent teachings that I would never want to ever be taken as 'gospel'. His argumentation seems like a desperate attempt at defending something he deems more valuable than any other given piece of literature which can just as easily be examined for its veracity and value; when the bible is nothing else but that. A book to be read and interpreted. It most definitely is _not_ a book inspired by any supernatural being residing in a special place above the clouds, which _was_ the conception in the past. He entirely refuses to accept or say that it is literally false.
@@lVideoWatcherlYeah exactly, and his argument could be used for any other mythic legend like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad/Odyssey, but I doubt he’d give those the same fair treatment because they don’t fall within the special value he has for Christianity. And that value of his is fine, it’s his opinion at the end of the day. But the way he dodges being honest about it is just obnoxious.
@@LordJagdyes, he's being intellectually dishonest in his arguments and when you corner him into an easy to answer question, he obfuscates by trying to reframe the question in order to confuse the topic by using word salad. Like when Sam Harris asked if the resurrection actually happened and his answer was "that would take me 30 hours to explain".
@@lVideoWatcherl It's also a valid question because people do literally believe Exodus (and even much more mythological Biblical stories) are historically reality. If everyone understood it in the way that he seems to, then it wouldn't make any difference and no one would really be interested. Like if Young Earth Creationists were only talking about the young earth as a metaphor and God's creation of species as an allusive reference to evolution, no one would debunk them. And it only gets more difficult with the Bible as we get into Jesus and the New Testament. You can interpret it through the lens he's using here, where the meaning of the story matters more than the historical reality, but that's not how billions of people treat it.
I say this without any bias here, I'm just observing from a bit of a distance - Why are we so caught up with this guy? What fascinates people so much? He's a relatively academically smart person who got ideas way above his station by some accidental fame among a certain demographic, and is now heralded as some sort of all-knowing, wise guru....When he just talks, quite clearly....bollocks. Like.....Why do we keep bothering to understand a man who is quite easily understood as a charlatan and a chancer. Perhaps not an awful man at heart, but in the end, not someone we actually need concern ourselves with that much? Now, of course, that isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned about the potential damaged being done to young people who are enthralled, but that isn't a reason to keep banging on with him in these sorts of serious conversations, when he's obviously not a serious person. What am I missing?
'What am I missing?' very succinctly captures the whole JBP phenom! Although his star has waned considerably of late, he's at best been a kind of live-improv-comedy attempt to be mass media's Big Thinker of Late. If Peter Sellers were still alive he'd be riffing on him in a movie. At this stage, all that's left is a kind of performative crankiness and wilful obscurantism. To summarise the video: 'Can an event have symbolic power if it didn't actually take place?' should be a question anyone with a high school diploma could answer. Hey ho.
He’s an icon of a certain brand of human dogma that is frighteningly popular now adays. A dogma that tears at the cloth Liberalism (capital L) and reality with angry nonsense wrapped in righteousness. Modernity has driven a certain type of people mad. He’s an avatar of this madness. It needs to be addressed again and again and again until more and more people see it for what it really is.
He is not academically smart. Everything he says is just stupid. What he is good at is throwing out word salad nonense at rapid speed and avoid any clear definitions of what he actually means. On the surface when he talks in words salad nonsense it seems to be smart to the lame person but when you actally break down what he says it's all stupid nonsense. If you manage to catch him in something, he hinges on one word and says "but what does that mean?" and if you clarify that, he moves onto the next word and does "but what does that mean?" ad infinitum
@@IceBlueBeard Fair. I was being nice. I suppose what I mean is, he must have reached where he did, academically, before his fame, for a reason. I feel like he is a man who has gone very wrong since online fame.
I think a lot of people missed him finally giving a straight forward answer. JP says “The people who are asking the question believe that 'true', unerringly means 'objectively happened in history like things that we’re seeing right now happened’. Well, no. Thats not what those stories are like.” JP admits he knows exactly what they mean when they ask. And if I’m interpreting the “well no” correctly, he doesn’t believe these things “objectively happened in history like things that we’re seeing right now happened”. Side note: The way Alex cut this clip, starting with JP saying “well what does it mean ‘historically’” and ending it with the JP quote I wrote above, was beautiful.
In a way that seems to be what he believes having heard him talk about this for years and trying to make it sound more complicated and as if you are asking him the sort of question that is so private you really only share the details with family or very close friends who are practically family. But when asked about if the resurrection actually happened. As in a man wasn't close to death, or like people who have been technically dead for a certain amount of minutes. But 100% physically dead and all that being dead entails for 3 days, and after that got out of his tomb walking amongst the living again. He says "I would suspect yes." That is the closest thing to a straight answer he has ever given and likely will ever give. Look if he had been upfront from day one that he might view the bible a bit differently than others. That he thinks that it's more complex than it's critics makes it out to be, and that you have to read it with disernment. That he doesn't fully understand what it all means but he does believe that God made himself into a man called Jesus, or had a son pick your poison. Did all the things the bible says it does and so on. Okay fine people like Alex, myself and many other don't but your allowed to believe it. But what he's been doing with religion and faith speaking for myself feels like he's playing the same game that he critizies the left of doing with gender and language in general. And until he said that I've felt a sort of undertone the same one that Sam Harris was the first person I saw to really call him out even though he wasn't as succesful as Alex to get him to admit it. That he was Jesus smuggling, but maybe not because of it was something he believed in himself directly. More because he saw it as a good guide for people who don't know any better to behave in morally right ways. Being afraid of what happens if the world got rid of religion altogether, sort of like when he talks about how you won't get into the military with an IQ below 83 because it's counter productive and that's 10% of the population right there. I think his thought process regarding both those could be connected, I don't really know that for sure I have to make guess work since he finds it so difficult to answer. When he says things like he doesn't care what other people thinks about how he speaks about belief. Hard not to notice the irony, if a man can come back to life. Why wouldn't he afford the same type of interpretations regarding gender expression? Having stated multiple times that he doesn't believe there is any such thing as non binary people, that it's not a fact and in many ways is harmful. I myself don't believe that there is such a thing as 70+ genders. And I do think it's harmful to allow children to be medicated causing sterilization, decreasing bone density, losing the ability to have an orgasm (something we don't like to talk about yet kind of important when humans need to experience some level of dopamine and oxytocin getting released to create bonding and other health benefits that isn't something you need to turn to drugs to get). But so far no wars have started unlike religious texts which causes wars all the time.
@@dcworld4349 I think Peterson has changed the way he talks about the Bible, God, etc. I remember one of his most popular answers from a few years ago, when he was asked if he believes in God, was, "well, I act as if I do". I'm certain, as a clinical psychologist, that he believes in personal heaven and hell. I'm certain he believes that myths and legends not only may be based on real events, but are also "selected" stories to help guide people between the difference of right and wrong. I do think he has over-thought his response these days, because he I think he believes so strongly in the effect that "proper" story-telling has on guiding people to a better inner world. I think the result is as you say related to the left and their dependence on "narrative", and he wants people to believe a narrative that results in good for people, rather than one that results in bad things.
@@elqueso5524 I think you are quite right in that assumption. I do however think he does not understand that he is being counter productive. He says he doesn't want to please the people who are already religious with a simple answer like they have been giving their entire life. Fine nothing wrong with that. But he seems to think that he can continue to flirt with that side and somehow get enough people who are straight up atheist or agnostic to turn over to that side if not all the way. Just enough to live in a correct manner. And that is where I think he's made a huge error. He was already getting a lot of people to make a ton of right life decisions. By appealing to the most basic facts that had always been there but had been left forgotten in a world where large groups of people wanted to change the world without knowing what they were changing it to. I've seen the turns happen, not that they feel any animosity. But this is a path they can't follow him on. I'm sure he won't notice it, and in some sense it might actually be a relief as opposed to the time where he couldn't be left alone for 5 seconds. He still will have plenty to occupy him. And I'm not saying he should have stayed as the same sort of brand for the sake of being a brand if its not how he thinks anymore. If people fall off because you change then that's the price you have to pay. But on occasion I have seen him make certain complaints about pushbacks. And they are not the kinds of pushbacks that he got where people misrepresented his views because they thought he was what Andrew Tate actually is. I understand you will grow extra sensitive going through such an experience. And he still gets that sort of pushback but he doesn't see the difference between that and the people who say they don't want to argue for 1 hour about if a factual event happened or not because there are points of views you can look at it from. That is literally what he is most famous for being against.
@@dcworld4349 This is really well communicated, thank you. I think I have different opinions to you on say, gender expression, but the fact you didn't let that view make you pick your reasoning based on tribalism to others that might think that is really clear in your consistent and balanced thought process here. I feel better for reading this discussion, and you have put into words something about peterson that is totally valid but doesn't therefore completely invalidate all of his points and philosophies. I also think a fundamental thing people must realise about people like Peterson, is that they are ultimately being led by their ideology. There is much more feeling and will to what Peterson believes that outright logic or rationalism, and I think that's fine, but people and even Peterson himself sometimes in conversation seem to align him more with those philosophers or... I guess qualitative analysers? who are searching for more base level axioms, and will not go back on that logic, even if it defeats one of their previous arguments. Alex, someone that seems more these days to take no sides other than to answer a particular question, isn't comfortable moving on until he can use examples to challenge even his own point, and won't make a point otherwise. Whilst he has strong beliefs he acknowledges them and has even recently admitted when he has been hypocritical or verging on it so changed his actual living, with regards to veganism. I think i'm wandering form the point now, but I think its sort of relevant as I think people need to watch discussions with those that are vessels simply to test and challenge theories, not advocate for them, and to acknowledge when you are doing one or the other (or both) and I feel slightly worried by Peterson and all current 'debaters' at some point for prioritising 'winning' over being clear about the base premises for their stance, or acknowledging not everything they say is as reinforced with consistent backing as other points they make along the way. you can see I cant translate my own feeling as well as you!
@@robbie5181 Thanks for the kind words, usually on RUclips I'm used to people getting weirdly angry because of the length I sometimes end up writing. So this was a nice change of pace. It might be a bit overused saying these days, but it's true. Just cause I have areas where I disagree with Peterson doesn't mean I have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. 2015 was a really eye opening year for me, the year Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Larry the cabel guy said they would no longer perform at colleges because the students were too sensitive. I respect Seinfeld his comedy was just not for me but if he was "too edgy" for college students. I knew something was wrong. And this was before cancelling people, unless you count the Michael Richards incident, had truly started. But it started coming out in the air with people writing articles about and discussing if comedians should have a line. If TV and movies needed lines and quotas. That's when I handed in my "membership card." I tried to talk about it and those who listened said I was overreacting, but I held on to the belief that if we went down this path we would enter the 1950s. Everything needing to be clean and censored people would be arrested for saying certain things. Before the free love of the 60s came along, which then lead to the grimier 70s. Which also included yet again arresting comedians for breaking obscenity laws which lead straight into the self censoring 80s. And the self censoring 80s was something I'm glad I didn't have to live through and I didn't want a self censoring decade Part 3. I don't know if I was arrogant or naive I really thought the arresting people for comedy part was something that would never happen again. But these new Edenborough laws proved me wrong. I hope it doesn't spread. The biggest most raw, none negotiable stance I have is you do not tel comedians what they can and can't say. That doesn't mean you force people to buy tickets, and of course you can't force the audience to laugh. But that is the relationship the comedian should be allowed to have with their particular audience and they set are the ones who sets the stage for what winds up in the stand up specials. The only way the comedian can know if they crossed the line is if they cross the line and most of the audience no matter where or how they try to change the joke to make it work don't react with even a "I can't believe I laughed at that" kind of joke. As I predicted it became a hobby for journalists to go watch people work on their material once they were done with their last special, and then report what they said on stage as if it was their true opinion. As for the if we have different opinions on gender expression, maybe we do, maybe we don't. I don't really know your stance. For me it's quite simple I believe adults should get to live life the way that works best for them, so long as what they are doing doesn't hurt anyone else, it's really none of my business. I'm not going to take the time and learn about all the genders, and I'm not going to learn about any more letters and numbers than LGBTQ. In part because I think lumping them all together would be like saying all straight people think the same. And I know from having talked to people from some of the letters they are not comfortable with being used as political footballs. They wanted the freedom to marry the person they loved and get treated the same under the law, that was really it. When a family friend, a 50 year old gay man got told that he has straight white privilege because he doesn't present as very feminine the way a lot of gay men do. That is understandably frustrating considering what he had to endure in a time where it wasn't accepted. The reason I look at the gender issue at all is because I can't help but wonder if we are doing what Iran is doing with gay people. Considering 80% who struggle with identity in their teens turns out to be gay or have autism. It's not like we are Lego bricks and can just switch back if we regret something. If we could have a completely accurate test that showed which kids would want to go through with treatment their entire lives and which would simply be gay. Now I wouldn't care at all about treatment starting too early so long as you did it safely, but we are not there yet. I'm fully aware that in the time we are living in what I've just said will come across as very right wing. But I didn't hand in my membership card to trade it in for another. I decided that it made sense when I was younger to have a kit so to speak, that came with being a part of a tribe. But I found that it became more like a straightjacket. I concluded that year as I was doing some soul searching I shouldn't be able to know someone if I know just one thing about them and the same goes in reverse. I decided to do careful picking and choosing to build up something more robust and figure out what I actually thought about things. I had a lot of time on my hands that year cause life took a dramatic shift. I didn't know it at the time but I had to give up on things most people take for granted and had to start to accept a new reality of which I wasn't in control. My body betrayed me, the only thing I had left was my mind so I was going to use it for what it was worth. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to use it in any meaningful way. But I had to do something. The only reason I'm still here is I made a promise to not do what I did again, once it became clear that I couldn't be the man I wanted to be. I could no longer be there for my friends and family like I had been used to. Something which gave me meaning, purpose and stopped that voice in my head telling me I was worthless garbage whenever I wasn't helping them out. Sorry for the long and dark turn this probably went I can't really tell right now, currently on a morphin drip, it takes some time for the worst of it to stop while the morphin kicks in. And typing on my phone helps me redirect my focus on something besides the pain. Thanks for the distraction, the kind words, and no you are doing just fine, continue to express even when people say you are wasting time. If you can do so in person with another human being that is of course always better. I try to keep it to a minimum, I'm already enough of a burden on my family and friends. I don't want to put more on their shoulders than they already have to deal with.
Ironically it's gotten him quite far, IMO because he doesn't impose his answers on others, i.e. it's not the core of he wants to talk about. Like people always wondering and asking if Elvis or the Beatles were single, and they'd downplay whatever answer
@@SoroushTorkianit's from a previous segment that Alex shared wherein he got JP to effectively give a straightforward answer after coming at the issue from multiple angles.
Not really it depends on what your talking about when you talk about metaphysical truth he’s non committal for yes no questions on did god exist yes / no did Jesus walk on water, etc etc. But for example his work is very pragmatic. His psychology lectures are refreshing for their practical focus. There are just so many clips of people asking Jordan Metaphysical questions and getting wishy washy answers and it makes him look like he never says anything which is far from the truth. I mean some of the talks are labeled “what is true.” And then people get annoyed that the conversations get convoluted.
Wild that this guy started his Internet famous career complaining about how postmodern neo-Marxists use language for obfuscation. Also wild that lots of people think he's some kind of genius.
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
Technically it started with him lying about the contents of a proposed piece of legislation. No wonder he has trouble with meaning. Dishonesty is the foundation of his worldview.
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
As long as what you do gives the powerful a licence to be cruel, or the faithful the right to be bigoted, you can be backed by money and basically point at things and fart.
As someone that truly loved his earlier work. The current conversations he takes part of I think are very very worthy of criticism however I really hope people do not throw everything he has ever said away because of it. His initial claim to fame focusing on getting your own life in order and by taking more responsibility it will lead to a more purposeful life are still invaluable.
@@lalakingo7 And you can get that from a lot of people. You can erase the very existence of JP from the universe, and that message would still be out there. You have to remember that JP did not become popular because of his insights, he shared his insights after gaining notoriety. Heck, the fact that he refuses to take responsibility for his own words ("Not my problem"), should tell you all you need to know about him.
@@Fernando-ek8jp Agreed with regard to not my problem sentiment. But as for his insights, I mean his book 12 rules for life was pretty incredible. I dont know anyone that has written a book that covers the same combination of material? And please if you have suggestions let me know. I think if you want to try limit his influence as best as possible. Credit where he is on the right track and suggest where people can find similar or most likely better work and in the same breath, critise where he is wrong and suggest where to find the correct or more insightful material or sources ?
@@lalakingo7 I don't, I try not to just take stuff from a single source if possible, specially when it comes to how to live your life. Interact with the world, evaluate stuff independently, see different points of view. Do not be constrained by someone who states that there are hard and immutable rules for how to be a better person.
In order to correctly understand Jordan Peterson you need to actualize yourself as a known and knowable subject who categorizes and thereby catalogues a wide spectrum of concepts of being-as-is and being-as-becoming. Thus, the comprehension of the true object can only materialize after one conceives of the metempsychosis inherent in all epistemology of your momma's so fat that when a car drives around her it runs out of gas.
Careful, the mere use of a piece of continental philosophy jargon will lead to kajillions of gulags run by blue haired Himmlers, we’ve run that experiment. Please quote old imperial british fox hunting manuals instead. God save the grass feed beef!
This dude is more slippery than an eel swimming in bacon grease. You can tell Alex has him on the ropes because he’s literally screaming. Got that vein shooting out of his forehead and he’s convulsing in his chair the entire interview. It’s like you sat Jordan down for a debate moments after he had a near-death experience. Dude is in fight or flight. 😂
JP is the perfect case of the Emperor’s newclothes, people agree with him because they have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about in response to really simple yes or no questions
People have no idea what he's talking about because he says literally nothing. He produces sounds that resemble words. Peterson is one of the most dishonest grifters out there.
@@czerskip I kinda stopped caring about JBP two years ago because I essentially "got the message, and put the phone down". But now that two years have passed, I'm honestly shocked that there are still quite a large number of people who don't understand what he's trying to say (considering how much care Jordan Peterson takes to explain his position). I suspect that due to his utmost care to help people understand him, he ends up extending his talks to be longer, which might not be to his benefit. And reading some of the other comments under this video it has become quite evident that a lot of people just lack the patience and attention span to listen and understand him. In which case I agree with his statement that he made in the video: "it's not his problem". Honestly being from a STEM background and seeing people with a social studies or humanities backgrounds struggle to understand him, make his arguments against modern social studies/humanities programmes even more so believable. Theres no way you guys should be struggling that much to understand him lmao.
I think they take great satisfaction in aggressive, combative responses to liberal questions he does not like and have no bearing to any thoughtful analysis. Yeah, you told that cuck.
You're a far more patient man than I am Alex. Appreciate the effort but I gave up on Jordan a long time ago. He's moving in a different direction to everyone it seems.
As someone live in the ultra materialist China with negative religious influence all my life, I find him fascinating and these brainwashed scientism minded guy like Richard Dawkins stubborn, narrow minded and stupid at best.
You must have not watched or understood anything in the podcast. That is such a bad argument, just because there are topics where it makes no sense to analyze them on a deeper level you should not do it in any topic?? This is not Alex's argument. This is just stuff Peterson haters say that don't even bother to understand the conversation. Alex does not hate Jordan Peterson btw, he has real arguments on why he thinks that Jordan sometimes talks about religion in an inappropriate way, it was a great podcast and a very intresting debate, if you are ever intrested to actually watch and pay atention to it.
@@CarlosMagnus-sd9rf Yeah I think the full podcast was pretty beneficial for the audience that struggles to understand him. Although to me it's surprising people are struggling to understand him in the first place, considering he seems to take a lot of care with emphasizing what he means exactly (albeit at the cost of talking about it longer, which maybe the wider audience lacks the attention span for and thus results in a premature dismissal of him and his points).
I believe JP’s main point: though he believes much of it isn’t literally true, he doesn’t want people to disregard the deeper meaning, the ‘eternal truths’ and ‘archetypes’.
what is the eternal truth of God killing all the firstborn children in Egypt? If 90% of us are taught in Sunday School (in the US) that these are LITERAL stories that happened, you cant have someone just be like, "oh well people know it's just myth, its allegory, its sharing a deeper spiritual truth." The masses aren't taught that. Thats a problem.
Lots of people (rightly) call out the “it’s not my problem” line, but what you’ve picked out “you don’t get to do that [ask a banal question about a biblical tale]…because the stories that you’re dealing with aren’t banal” is a flag in a much richer shade of red imo 😅 The only clear thing he said: I won’t answer that question and it’s your fault for asking it! Blimey
Great to watch someone finally challenge Jordan Peterson and not simply bow down to his reputation for super intelligence. So many times JP gets away with spouting nonsense because he is so good at deflecting and obfuscating. Good for you Alex !
How JP ever got that reputation is beyond me. I had heard about him for a long time before ever seeing him interviewed, and he never comes off very well.
This was an insane conversation that im still working through because it sounds like waffling past a direct easy question. I seriously applaud you for how long you were able to ask... Basically the same question for 2 hours
Alex : Are you crazy? JP : What a hell does it mean? Alex : It means : are you out of your mind? JP : But, what does it mean? Alex : It means : Are you lunatic? JP : I don't understand what you mean by that. Alex : I mean whether you are completely insane or not? JP : That's not my problem...
Why? Didn't he finally answer the question? "No that's not what those stories are like". He doesn't think it actually happened (but still finds them true in whatever allegorical ways obviously)
I am so impressed with Alex. He deals with Peterson methodically, gently, and rationally. If I was in his seat, I would have just said to Peterson, "Fuck off mate. That's just a bunch of tedious bullshit." and walked out.
It's not. It's a particular kind of bs that is the opposite of simple. Just like intsocs, he's a Hermetic wizard. Different branch of the same tree. It's a kind of spiritual alchemy where you stare at symbols and wait for gnosis. JP was driven mad by Jung.
There’s a point not made that I wish were. It’s fine to redefine true to mean whatever backwards mental gymnastics JP is playing at but that is not how others use that word. There are many who say, for instance, the events of the Old Testament are literally true in the “banal” way JP is antagonizing. He must realize that others are not taking such a poetic license when they say they think it’s true. You can’t just say, ok well then we agree, if you are using different definitions of true. it matters that JP is equivocating to achieve agreement on the truth claim of the OT when really the beliefs are misaligned.
I was surprised by how openly he admits using different definitions and understanding the difference even. Completely disregarding that we are having to rely on understanding each other by defining words in the same way. The interview showed that to JP "truth" is not factual, but a matter of faith and interpretation, so a subjective reality. "Believe" in his words is something someone is "willing to die for", so believe actually comes very close to an objective reality to him.
I Dont like the term redefined as there are several different rigorous definitions of truth. But otherwise i agree, and there is nothing rigorous in jbp
@cuulcars what an odd point to address. That's what the Ken Ham/Bill Nye type faux debates are for, dunking on creationists. This discussion is about the deeper values/utility the bible has a guidepost, guardrail, and underpinning for humanity. The analysis that is largely casually (or willfully) dismissed the rationalist atheists. There's no new ground to be covered in smugly dunking on creationist OT christians
Liking something is very different from believing something. We all know what constitutes liking something. We arent so sure what it means to believe something. And comparing ice-cream to a spiritual power, as if their definitions are of equal complexity...is the second part of your joke that makes the joke shit, and your reasoning flawed.
It was quite frustrating watching Jordan Peterson give such silly responses. You've got to truly appreciate Alex for his patience and constant probing to get the right response.
Lol silly? See that's your blindspot. Treat the subject matter as silly, then you're not even sticking to a rational scientific perspective. Its more like smug dismissive hubris
@JB-wh3we alright, 'silly' may not have been the right word here. But what I do mean is that Peterson is giving inaccurate reposnses of questions that are at the very least seemingly straightforward. I mean he can elaborate on what exactly it is that he is trying to say, but instead he gives answers that don't really seem to make any sense in relation to the questions being asked
4:40 "you have to be a discriminating reader" well most readers of religious texts aren't very discriminating. In fact most religions actively try to prevent their followers from discriminating at all. And yes it can become a problem. People form their beliefs and identity around this stuff. So of course it matters whether something is literally true or only metaphorically true. It absolutely has real world consequences.
Peterson is so hesitant to be critical of Christianity (and religion in general) cause he knows he’d probably lose so much of his audience if he gives his honest opinion.
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Maybe it's partly true, but the way he speaks about it does make sense on light of all the Jungian stuff he's into
Yeah, Peterson definitely looks like a tipical youtube celebrity who is doing all of this for profit he makes from his audience. He is even pointing towards Daoism for marketing purposes now. Unfortunately he will have to lie about Wu Wei and Qi force now.
Do they though? I'm pretty sure that most Christians don't believe that the events in Genesis literally happened, for example. So how far can you slide the literal--poetic slider until you're not a Christian anymore?
I think you are mistaken in the number people who are literalist believers because they are the most vocal and distort the perception of how many literalists there really are. If only the would stay away from politics.
I disagree that "any" Christian would interpret it this way, but there definitely are sects of Christianity that take those stories literally. However, nearly every Christian will read in their interpretations based on their already-existing political perspectives. Some stories will be metaphorical when it suits them, and literal when it suits them. That post-hoc rationalization is more in line with the common Christian than strict Biblical literalism.
@@JesseLeeHumphry There are different sects of Christianity like Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, Church of England etc. which have differing beliefs centred around similar base. If you ask one of these Christians, do you believe in God? They aren't going to ask what do you mean by God? If one says no, then they aren't really Christian. I haven't investigated in all sects of Christianity, Catholics would believe the events of the Bible.
Jordan has learned that if a “baseline” ever gets defined his world falls apart so he never allows a baseline to ever get set. I returned his book 1 week after buying it and have concluded, like others here, he can be ignored
I must say I can sort of agree with what Peterson is saying, to a certain extent. But the best of this clip is Alex showcasing his ability to get to the point and not allow the other person to go on a tangent. Really amazing.
I really do sympathize with the way peterson sees the question "Do you believe in god" for so many people is basically "Are you in my club" really. So I get his insistence on turning that question around on the asker.
@@deanlowdon8381Yeah I doubt Peterson would make cases for god in any other context besides Christianity. He’s just backpedaling because he ultimately wants to placate to the huge amount of Christians in his fanbase.
6:10 Peterson is a postmodernist thinker in dental. He believes in “truths” rather than “the truth” were it any other position he would be opposed to this kind of language. Were someone to say “I am a woman” he sure as shit would not ask “what ineffable truth are you trying to…” no he would just go “that’s not true though”
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
Whoa whoa whoa, let's not give him too much credit. He's not a postmodern anything. He's just dishonest and obscures his dishonesty with tangents and obscurantism.
I fucking love how he can just so efficiently muddy the waters and convolute the simple 5 words of "Do you think it happened?" 6 minutes of this is crazy to me, or it would be if it wasn't obvious that he just doesn't wanna have to say "No, I don't think Exodus happened historically speaking" and end up angering his right-wing Christian base.
"I think it happened metaphorically, not literally." It's so easy, Jordan Peterson. It takes 3 seconds to say. Alex had to spend 6 minutes to wriggle out this answer from him.
@@shambhav9534 But he doesn't view metaphor and literal as being separate. He thinks that duality limits our ability to understand reality. He's thinking beyond that and trying to share these thoughts, but people are trying to force him to devolve it back to an older way of thinking that metaphor and literal are separate.
Of course the Bible contains lots of genres. Everything from pure fiction, to myths, to legends, to exaggerated and embellished history with a kernel of truth.
The kernel of truth would be the unimportant incidental details, such as the name of a desert or that the place was ruled by a "pharaoh". All the important stories, when you look into them, are contradicted by more reliable history and archaeology. Jericho was destroyed long before they got there, there were no millions of Hebrew slaves, the conquest of Canaan could not have happened because those towns were destroyed at vastly different times, etc.
It's actually a craft to answer the question into a political horoscope. He is vague on purpose, so fans can say we quote him out of context, because they filled in the blanks of his answer with their own bias. The same can be said to many critics, but it's hard to criticize a bloke who is intentionally vague. Yeah, you can criticize him for not being specific enough, and I'm not surprised a clinical psychiatrist actively uses this practice.
"What the hell does that mean?". He knows full-well and doesn't like that they want one angle addressed, and it comes loaded with what HE might consider "out of scope" so he doesn't address the question in earnest. That's something in the veins of things like sophistry, condescension (for their not bringing more into scope or seeing it his way).
And he's never going to tell them. It really is pointless. He is not a serious person. The entire conversation is just an attempt to get him to give a straightforward answer, and his entire existence is dependent upon not giving one. You get absolutely nowhere, but a bunch of bots will still say it changed their lives.
@@Ktmfan450Or Gilgamesh, or Beowulf. Both have mythic meaning within historical contexts, but they’re clearly primarily created to tell stories, not to share historical information
For Peterson to understand what people are asking and to answer another kind of question is the definition of communication breakdown. And since he is doing it knowingly, he is dishonest in his phrasing. To claim "you don't get to ask that question" is pretty strange. Why are only certain questions allowed? Why doesn't he want to give the answers to the other questions honestly? (In most situations).
Peterson has said he doesn't want to be pinned down, which I think is true. The last sentence in this video, he rejects the idea that the events in the Bible happened as written. He sees a great truth in the stories in the Bible and they represent something about the human condition. I think he doesn't want to acknowledge that he doesn't believe because then people will say you have said you don't believe the events in the Bible as they happened, how could be this great truth in it then.
@AdamJones381 if he doesn't at least commit to an overall approach and communicates that openly, he is engaging in dishonest discourse to appease the feelings of his supporters and maybe even for monetary gain. One thing it definitely isn't is intellectually honest. What is especially striking that he has such a loose approach to when a story is "true" and "a construct" but totally opposes an understanding of gender roles as a construct as well. If it is probably true in his mind that Moses divided the red sea how is it less probable that Trans men are men and Trans women are women. Especially we can see them "act out" that truth infront of our eyes and don't have to rely on tradition of traditions written down by people with their own specific bias.
@@carpediem5232 Yeah it is ironic. One of Peterson rules is to tell the truth or at least don't lie. I think Peterson ties himself into knots so he doesn't lie.
@@AdamJones381I don't think he succeeds. One would think that this sustained effort to avoid getting pinned down by one's dishonest statements is an indication that they are aware of the problem, yet, they continues to do it anyway. Kinda just seems like lying with extra steps. Like, did you notice that this whole segment is just a motte and bailey with a bunch of tangents and distractions in between the indefensible claim and the defensible one he retreats to?
Well, I mean Alex doesn’t have the attitude that so much of his audience shows in his comments. Alex is great example for people. He doesn’t act like a lot of his audience does at all.
@@josephposenecker9741O’Connor is unfailingly polite and non-confrontational. I find those qualities admirable, if occasionally a little frustrating. Do you see them in Jordan Peterson?
@@michaelhall2709 yeah, I think Jordan and Alex had a great conversation together and their chemistry was amazing. Great discussion and I expect the two will definitely have more. My comment wasn’t about how Jordan or Alex were with each other. I’m referring to the difference in the comment sections about how polite and complementary Jordan’s audience is to Alex. Unfortunately Alex’s audience is rude and mean when talking about Jordan. Again, Alex’s audience is just very different than Alex.
It’s very clear that Alex is very frustrate with Peterson’s sophistry, but knows the only way to pin him down is to play along and try and get an answer by defeating him logically. He does not respect Peterson, he is giving his best shot at exposing him.
Question: Dr Peterson, what does that mean?" Dr Peterson: That depends on what you mean by "what" and what you mean by "does" and what you mean by "that" and what you mean by "mean."
All the other commenters here have identified the main ways in which Peterson dodges answering question. But one way that isn’t highlighted so much is his constant interruptions to add NEW points, little asides that, if his fellow conversationalist isn’t wary of, will take the conversation down a whole new path and AWAY from the questions that make Peterson uncomfortable. Watch this clip and see how often he interrupts Alex. It’s not excitement at a good conversation. It’s not two pals having a normal conversation (which of course normally do wander all over the place). I think it’s another conscious (or perhaps subconscious, to be less harsh) evasion technique. Edit - Actually, changed my mind. It’s likely all ego. Man just loves the sound of his own voice.
Red Herring logical fallacy: branching off and away from tge original point to argue something else and avoid admitting loss or grappling with the argument at hand.
Did you notice what all of the tangents were in service of? He makes an initial claim, yadda yadda yadda, he retreats to a more defensible claim and uses that to uphold the initial claim. This whole segment is one extended motte and bailey where Peterson hopes to distract you from noticing that he's just committing a very simple logical fallacy. It's not the only time he does it in the interview and really it's kinda his whole schtick. Should change his name to Jordan M&B Peterson.
@@benjaminsnyder9587 It's all over the apologetics circles. The trick is that apologists rarely put themselves in a position where they are likely to be held down to a single point. I'm not sure if this speaks well of Peterson, talking to someone who has demonstrated some competence in interviewing, or if it's another massive blunder like the Zizek debate. Demonstrating Peterson's massive ego and lazy "intellectualism". Either way, pretty embarrassing.
Yep. He's a bad communicator and a bad conversationalist. He doesn't let his interlocutor finish his train of thought, fully complete his questions etc.
At 3:20, JP agrees to answer a question in a simple way. Before he can finish answering, Alex interrupts him: Alex: "Would I see people with feet walking through the desert leaving footsteps?" JP: "Well, let's take it apart rationally. So..." Alex: "But you also understand that when someone's asking that, even if you don't like the question you must understand what someone's asking". JP: "Well yes, I understand many of the things they're doing simultaneously." Here Alex seems to care more about criticizing JP's rhetorical style than he does about the answer to the question that he asked. I wonder what would have happened if Alex had allowed his interviewee to speak instead of interrupting him.
It's rather satisfying to watch a young man I've viewed since he was 16, knock over the king of a man I used to admire when Alex was 16. And with such ease too.
There's no evidence of Jewish slaves, their culture, or iconography in any excavation of Ancient Eygpt. Also, "it's still happening" when referring to Exodus, it's absurd to claim because ancient Eygpt is no longer a thing. Lastly, the trivialization of the Bible's "events" happens when there is a gross lack of abundant evidence.
The Exodus narrative seems to portray the Israelites as only really gaining that identity at Mt Sinai. So there's no real reason to think that they would have been easily distinguishable from any other group of Semitic slaves. And we do have plenty of evidence for Semitic slaves in Egypt.
@@DaVinci-wt6dp So you're saying that all the Egyptian records that show slaves with Semitic names are fake? And the Egyptian artwork showing Semitic slaves (there's even one that shows them making mud bricks). And the accounts that many of the Semitic inhabitants of Avaris were enslaved when the 18th Dynasty overthrew the Hyksos.
@@stephengray1344 The evidence isn't the point of belief, to a Christian they have faith not evidence and that is the question being asked of Peterson.
@@AdamJones381 There probably are some varieties of Christianity which see faith and evidence as two completely divorced categories. But all the varieties I'm familiar with teach that Christian faith is based on evidence. It's usually only the New Atheist types who define the word faith to mean a belief not based on evidence.
He's wrong that the historical record would probably show that the Exodus actually happened, or that history has generally been on the side of the Exodus being factual. It absolutely is not and is almost widely considered by many historians to have been fictional.
Before the mid century people thought Moses was probably a historical figure, but that was mainly because they wanted him to be real and the archaeological record shows no such migration event, much less the specific mythological story of Exodus. There was some Egyptian who lead a bunch of lepers out of Egypt in some strange revolt, but Egyptian history is so almost incomprehensibly long that you’re bound to find stories that parallel Exodus just by coincidence.
And also considered by many historians to have actually happened. Where do you think the arguments made by Egyptologists like Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier that the Exodus account records at least some accurate history fall down?
@@HS-qv3dh Yes. His claim that the archaeological record supports the historicity of the Bible surprisingly often is either deeply ignorant or grossly dishonest. In either case, it is counterfactual.
But he's fundamentally wrong about the Exodus? From last looking that up, the archeological consensus is that there is no evidence supporting the claim that the Exodus is even slightly historically accurate, because there are no accounts of even there being jewish slaves in egypt, let alone thousands of them going free. For somebody who decries post-moderninsm, Peterson sure has made a huge deal out of re-defining what 'truth' means in every single context he is asked about.
Consensus usually means that the question is completely settled. This is not the case with the Exodus, since there are a minority of scholars (the biggest names being Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier) who do argue that there is good evidence for an Exodus. An extremely barebones overview of their side of the argument would be: * Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Particularly for events happening in the Nile Delta, which is too wet for papyrus records to survive to the modern era. * The text seems to indicate that the Israelites didn't really become Israelites until after they had left Egypt, and so they would have been indistinguishable from other Semites - and we have lots of evidence that there were Semitic slaves. * The city of Avaris (whose population were Semites, rather than Egyptians) fits the location and history given in Genesis and Exodus for the place the Israelites are said to have lived when in Egypt * Avaris is abandoned during the reign of Ramses II, which is exactly the point in Egyptian history which the book of Exodus accurately describes * There are numerous details in the Torah which suggest that it (or at least its sources) date back to this period. These would include Egyptian placenames, Egyptian loanwords, the similarity of the Ark of the Covenant to Egyptian ritual furniture from exactly this period, and the similarity of the Mosaic covenant to treaties of this period. * This dating of the Exodus happens about one generation before Israelites show up in Canaan in both the historical record (the Merneptah Stela - which seems to suggest that Israel had yet to settle into towns and cities) and in the archaeological record * Two of the three things that distinguish early Israelite settlements from Canaanite and Philistine ones (the four-room house and the lack of pig bones) match what we find at Avaris, with only the style of pottery being different. * Several archaeological sites in this period match the descriptions given in the conquest account of Joshua (the altar complex at Mt Ebal and a destruction layer at Hazor which includes the desecration of idols) and none directly contradict the text (the main thing that is cited as such is Jericho - but the most recent archaeological report shows that there was a city there at this period, but we know nothing about how that settlement ended because the site was levelled by later inhabitants). This case isn't conclusive, but it's substantial enough to say that there is at least some evidence supporting the claim that the Exodus account records at least some actual history. The scholars who say that there is no evidence rarely show any indication of having actually read the arguments of those who make a case for it.
@@stephengray1344All of that is interesting, but beside the point. Asked the question, Peterson could have cited those facts in his answer, but he didn’t. Instead, he repeatedly chose to give a non-answer. That’s what he’s being criticized for.
@@stephengray1344 That is not at all what consensus means. There will always be cranks defending a position without evidence. Consensus just means the majority position. Christian apologists masquerading as unbiased historians are the cranks in this particular example.
@@rainbowkrampus No conssnsus does not, and never has, meant 50%+1. It means that (almost) everybody agrees. If a debate is still ongoing then there is not a consensus. For example, nobody would say that the population of the UK had a consensus about the issue of Brexit after the Brexit referendum came out 52% to 48%. In reality the country was split down the middle for years afterwards. I've not come across anybody on the maximalist side of the issue who presents themselves as unbiased. I have come across those on the minimalist side who do, though. How about, instead of using ad hominems, you address the evidence that those on the maximalist side bring to the table. if their view is that of a crank, they must be either completely misinterpreting the evidence or completely misrepresenting it. How are they doing this.
@@stephengray1344 So, you're just gonna walk back your definition and pretend like nothing happened? First consensus is "settled" now it's "almost everyone agrees". "Almost everyone agrees" is my definition, not that strawman you invented. Almost everyone with relevant qualifications in the field agrees that the Exodus story is pure myth. Such language is important because consensus is a moving target as new evidence and arguments are surfacing all the time. Speaking of new things, it's telling that you have to rely on fossils like Kitchen and Hoffmeier (the latter of whom worked at an evangelical school which requires a signed statement of faith as condition of employment) to arrive at anything like a position and then ignore that neither of them have had any relevance in literal decades. Pretending as though nothing has happened in the field in all of this time. You're just living in the past in an effort to uphold your own dogmas. It's weak dude. You can be a christian and recognize reality. The Bible is not a source of history.
When it comes to religion/faith JP is all over the place but it does not mean he always talks gibberish, Some, people simply hate what he says because it burns them, like that we ought to take responsibility for our lives and not blame everything and everybody else. He strongly defended free speech some years ago and that led him to become so well known.
Are y’all too dense to see that he is using that exact same logic you are railing against in this very clip? The same epistemological convictions that have given rise to the woke mob (in what I believe to understand is JPs view) is what he uses here to defend his word salad alla Exodus is happening eternally in the collective unconscious. “people think true just means something that objective happened in historical reality and that’s a problem, because that is not what stories are like.” To quote him directly from this video. That is way more relativist than any of the Frankfurt school ever went. He is closer to Derrida and Foucault than to his conservative friends in that regard.
oh my god. this is one of the best videos of JP getting torn apart. not that alex is going for that, or is a bad actor or anything like that. but anyone, who doesn't even have to be involved in philosophy, can understand that JP just got dismantled on an EXTREMELY basic topic regarding the way he communicates. it's beautiful and cringe and the same time.
Holy hell...this was like watching an interrogation at Guantanamo!! In the end he did finally answer, albeit in a very convoluted way, that; no he does not believe the Exodus historically happened. He easily could've done that in the very first sentence but the clown can't help himself. It's all about being performative. He even dresses as a court jester.
I think Peterson genuinely believes that the Bible has a greater mythological truth, so I think acknowledging the events didn't happen undermines that point.
It's been an interesting exercise trying to find the line in the sand where he's truly lost it.. I used to give him more leeway when he was pulling at more general, aesop's fables kind of story telling about general life lessons (the tale of the gnome with the ruby is a good example of this). The minute he moves into the realm of political rights and wrongs he becomes entirely ill equipped as the consequences of his ideas suddenly become more tangible than he can handle.
I agree. He's well-read. Forms good sentences. He can be elegant. (When he lets someone else choose his clothes). Fairly intelligent. But he also seems very unhappy, resentful and lost.
@@kevinmcinerney1959 more frustrated than lost. He believes he needs to fix the World not realizing that the World is exactly how it should be...always.
@@jordanchen23 Although I don't like his stances once he jumped out of his realm of expertise and tried to be a political pundit, I still think he was the same intelligent guy, just misguided and being reactionary to things he perceived as wronging him. I have been convinced by the theory that he acquired legitimate brain damage due to the radical treatment plan his daughter took him (comatose) to Russia for, due to his benzos addiction. There seems to have been a massive shift in his thinking ability before and after the coma, which can't simply be explained by him just continuing to go down the rabbit hole to looney-town. He rambles FAR more now (and people already accused him of being a word salad machine), seems incapable of actually engaging in a back-and-forth conversation as you can see in this video, is FAR more dead-set in his positions and worldviews, and is far more willing to engage in logical fallacies to protect his stances, while seemingly genuinely unaware that he's committing any. At least before the coma when he spit out word salad it sounded like he was genuinely trying to explain a very complex idea he had about the world, even though someone more properly learned in the subjects of philosophy or religion could explain it much better. Now the word salad just comes out to avoid having to actually explain anything in clear terms, or get challenged on any of the things he believes in.
JP is deliberately obfuscating his ideas on religion. As such he is a very poor communicator on the subject. “That’s not my problem” is simply untrue. You’re the one with the point to make dude, and you’re not making it. That IS your problem.
@@JB-wh3we Certainly not on the subject of religion. He’s a brilliant man, with expertise in so many subjects. But for some reason he coughs up rank psychologism when it comes to answering direct and specific questions about religion. If he does have a message it’s buried in word salad.
JP: "Be clear in your speech"
Alex: "People don't understand what you mean"
JP: "Not my problem"
Damn, great comment. lol
Yeah, very annoying when people pose double standards.
The word is "precise", What you are not being here, ironically.
Oxymoron
"Not a problem?" JP?! Really?!
If you don't care if we understand, then what's the point of listening to you at all? Might be time to get some help brotha.
I wish JP the best, but he's just not right anymore.
Respect to anyone who can talk to Peterson. His refusal to engage with any question at a basic level would drive me mad
me too! I wouldn't have enough patience! It would be like getting on the interstate but only driving 20 mph to get somewhere and then having the driver of the vehicle give you bullshit reasons as to why we can't speed the conversation up.
@@curtyerg nice analogy. I'm getting high blood pressure thinking about it.
Yeah for me he's no better than all the old interviewers he used to cry about being unfair to him.
He's not being honest at all with this nonsense.
Alex is truly a hero for this, and has earned his place in history I think.
Skewering Peterson so expertly is a public service of great magnitude.
You can't engage with someone who insists that the most basic words we use to express ourselves have an unfathomable meaning
A dude that built his career on criticising postmodernism just casually redefined the word "true".
I'm surprised more people don't point this out. As much as jp loves to complain about post modernism. He is extremely post modern
In a jacket that screams "po-mo is hot right now you guys"
@@ZacharyBittner I'd have pointed it out but I was too busy rolling my eyes at the absurdity of it all.
No, there's Darwinian truth, and Newtonian truth, if you can't understand that there's different truths, that's you're problem.
@@CircumambulationMaedia facts are relative, got it.
Wife: Did you eat yet?
Me: Well what do you mean by "eat?"
Wife: Have you had lunch today?
Me: Now hold on bucko! There is a lot to unpack there and I don't think you understand the question you're even asking.
Wife: Has food enter your mouth this afternoon?
Me: Food is never not entering my mouth. It's entering my mouth right now. It's not just food. It's hyperfood! If you look in Genesis, food was basically equivalent to knowledge and you can't live without knowledge. YOU CAN'T!
Wife: I want a divorce
Me: Well, what in the bloody hell even is a divorce?
accurate, lol
😂😂😂
beautiful, thank you
Exactly. Jordan P. is "Me" and I would be his wife. I'd divorce the son of a bi*** as soon as possible. I can't stand people speaking on and on and on, but saying absolutely nothing. To me he's not an intellectual. Real intellectuals have every day common sense, Jordan P. doesn't. Richard Dawkins can't stand him, nor can I.
That almost hurt how accurate it is
"Incomprehensible, therefore must be profound? Or just pretentious, meaningless bilge? If you have something worthwhile to say, why would you deliberately cultivate obscurity?"
- Richard Dawkins -
Well Richard does not research things he talks about so you know very easily things can become incomprehensible. If someone talked about cars with me there would be a lot of things that I would not get , does that mean the person talking about cars in pretentious and says nothing? No. I just don't know what the person is talking about because I have no idea what is going on exactly.
@@gandalainsley6467 Hogwash. The car person can still explain things to you and not be incomprehensible or pretentious.
JP doesn't have the nerve to say in response to questions about Jesus' supposed resurrection.
"Personally I think it is all figurative but because I now have a select audience that bankrolls the insane amount of money I make...I won't bluntly point out the absurdity of the idea that a man was magically resurrected from the dead 2000 odd years ago and then flew to heaven."
@@GoogleIsNotYourFriend If you don't know what is going on you will get lost at some point anyway. That is what happened with me when I was a kid and my grandfather kept asking me for things when he was fixing his car and I had no idea what he was talking about. Also you yourself don't seem to know what is going on either. In that one mock version of what JP said you already made mistakes. See how easily you got confused ?
Read montaigne on this, apology for reymond sebond. It is the duty of a philosopher to be obscure, so that people like Richard Dawkins will keep on stumbling in blindness.
@@gandalainsley6467 Jordan doesn't research things he talks about either or he'd know that the archaeology does not support Exodus.
The point is that Jordan Peterson deliberately obfuscates in order to befuddle listeners. Sounds like it may have worked on you
If you asked him what a woman was, I bet he would have a very straightforward answer to that question.
I bet he wouldn't!
Lol I just commented the same!
I guarantee he wouldn't lmao.
When asked this question, he said: “Marry one and find out”
Ask who, JP?
"Why does the truth even matter" - J. Peterson
Enough said
I need to get that on a shirt with his face on it and go to some trump events.
That’s taken out of context in fairness, the question was asked most profoundly by Nietzsche. It’s not to relegate or denigrate truth but to really ask, what is truth in service of?
For Nietzsche it was always in service of the will to power
@@george5464 Peterson has always avoided clarifying that because he has his own explicit hierarchy of truth and he knows it doesn't sell.
@@nerdyali4154 Maybe his position in all of this is not to know but just to be the open conscioussness we all can watch grapple..that is a bit more appetizing than thinking he is pretending to know it all. Maybe he sees himself as a philosopher on a search not whos found the answers. That's the most generous reading of peterson I can offer.
@@george5464Does Peterson agree with Nietzsche here? Because oh boy… . But I’m not sure Nietzsche even puts it like ‘truth in service to will to power’.
OH MY GOD! Watching Jordan avoid answering a very simple yes/no question is causing my physical pain!!!
This is always a sign that someone knows even less than a person who admits that they do not know.
It's funny watching people who don't get what Jordan is saying. Does he mean historically accurate or objective truth? We don't know anything from the distant past objectively. We can only craft history from combining story and archeological findings. A lot of history is combined with mythology because our ancestors used mythology and fantasy to explain the unknown world around us. Unless we have a time machine, we won't know what the objective truth is. The fact that this goes over everyone's head is astonishing.
Except,,, when Alex asks which he means..JP admits that he knows which one their asking... And yet he still answers neither ? It's the definition of obfuscating@@naisyjohns
@@Arccos3D
What do you mean by "mean?"
@naisyjohns, it's not going over everyone's head, though.....he's making a statement in doing what he's doing by purposefully obfuscating the point. If someone asks, "Did it really happen"? Everyone knows what they mean by that. Whether or not that's a good question is certainly up for debate. But Peterson shouldn't just throw his hands up and say that's not my problem. He should explain his position without someone having to interrogate it out of him. It's ridiculous....
I love how in this conversation you very clearly got him to admit he knows EXACTLY what people are asking him when they ask this sort of thing, but then he still refuses to answer that question because he wants to avoid ‘traps’ that ‘recruit him’.
Essentially what he means is he knows that he doesn’t believe in these things in the way most Christians do and he doesn’t want to alienate them. It’s a cowardly attempt to have his cake and eat it.
Well said
It's because his true motives are being hidden by the concept of religion (And mysticism in general) which he uses to validate his true beliefs and malevolent nature.
Most of these people use religion to hide behind and justify their behaviours and statements (Usually statements about other people like abortion) so their true inclinations are seen as meritorious, somewhat.
Bang on and not only would he alienate them but their hard earned cash that they’re more than happy to give to him - he’s cash happy that one
Bingo!
This is actually very similar to what Niel Degrasse Tyson does when people ask him if he is an atheist... He wants to educate people, and I think he thinks people will stop listening to him if he gets labelled.
The first time an interviewer actually pushes back, instead of letting Peterson just ramble on… Well done Alex!
Matt Dillahunty did it as well, it was great to watch. As a result Peterson's agent told him to never do another event with Dillahunty.
The first time, right...
@@yairsegal2427 The first time I’ve personally seen it done. Happy?
Did the same thing with destiny (Steven Bonnell)@@mirapilates
The Dillahunty debate was great. The whole part where Peterson can't accept that being alive is good for your well-being is hilarious.
"It is not my problem" that I want to be incredibly pedantic when I ask people what they mean, yet I refuse to give that same clarity for my answers.
Exactly. Why would you even engage in conversation and then not be interested in the other person understanding you? Either don't say anything or explain yourself. Jesus Christ...
@@argfasdfgadfgasdfgsdfgsdfg6351 It's not just that.
It's that he gets very picky in trying to "understand" so he can answer "properly" by asking very specific "what do you mean by...", but when done to him, he just dismisses them.
He needs to stop asking what others mean by their use of language and clarify what the hell he means by his.
@@argfasdfgadfgasdfgsdfgsdfg6351 If someone cannot or will not understand you, it is indeed their problem.
@@zzzzzz69 No - others need to clarify what he means for themselves, as he does for himself. Catch up.
JP painted himself into a corner a long time ago. So for years now he had been trying to-with his remaining paint-draw a window on the wall that he can crawl out through. And by virtue of that, we have to listen to this kind of bombastic, rude, obfuscation.
He wants to remain vague on his religious beliefs as to not piss off his mainly christian audience but also be true to what he actually believes, which has turned into this ridiculous avoidal of any straight forward answer that satisfies no one 😂
Like an old timey cartoon character throwing a smoke bomb and trying to escape amidst the fog
Perfect
Excellent post.
It took mother effing Alex O'Connor to finally squeeze out those decisive statements from JP. Bravo. Alex did something quite literally no other interviewer has been able to do.
Where and when? I watched the whole interview and JP was going mad trying to answer questions with more complicated questions…
I appreciate O'Connor's attempts here but yeah I'm still wondering where these decisive statements from Peterson are...
@@LoudWaffle the panasonic camera in front of jesus' tomb actually got JP to answer straight
I think it’s finely stated at the end that JP doesn’t view subtext in the Bible as physical in the way we do in our time. He’s smart enough to know that there’s no way of proving most events in the Bible or even peoples existence for that matter. And so he chooses the metaphorical approach of the Bible. Which from any backing of I intellect is really the only way to view the Bible, as a scripture of blind faith. So JP knows this and is annoyed with questions that reflect the true blessing we have now. One thing I will say is that even with our modern technology history will be warped by bias and subjectivity. 1000 years from now if we are still around people will ask if JFK was real or just deep faked. If a 100 year period of Industrial Revolution and war was compressed and reduced or even conflated. History is quite literally what we make of it. Our bubble will pop generationally and the future scholars will have to put the pieces back together. Religions and political movements will ebb and flow. What we see clearly today will be foggy tomorrow. Anyway this is the perspective of an agnostic atheist.
Dillahunty did years ago
Dawkins was right: "When he talks about religion, I think it's bullshit." He just unnecessarily complicates simple questions.
True. He's definitely out of his element with religion, but he also seems hyper focused on religion, and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe Peterson enjoys the uncomfortableness of a topic that he doesn't quite understand or believe. That jacket is definitely giving me some tacky televangelist vibes. I like Peterson but he seems a little off to me
i just find him so tiring
This is what happens when clever people feel the need to defend an idea. They can't shake the feeling, but they have a great vocabulary.
I really don't think that you can watch the full podcast, understand it to a minimal degree and conclude that. You might not believe or agree with it, but they literally go into what he means, and it is not nonsensical or "bullshit". And Alex most defenetly does not think that it is. You can have the opinion that he is overcomplicating questions, but to just say that all of it is just bullshit or an atempt to unnecessarily complicate the conversation, with no other purpose, can only come from someone who does not understand what he is saying. I agree that Jordan sometimes uses words or concepts inappropriately in different contexts, wich I think is Alex's opinion. But from this coment and other coments on this videos, it really just seems that there are a lot of atheiest people who just hate Jordan Peterson for being a Christian and talking about topics in a more complex manner then they would like, but have no real arguments against his opinions and just use Alex's ideas to atack Peterson, without even really understanding them. Especially beacuse I am seing a lot of coments expanding Alex's basic arguments to something that he would most certenatly no longer agree with. I am an atheist btw.
Remove "about religion" and its just as accurate
O'Connor's skill at interviewing is brilliant. Surgical. Humble.
^
@@athenaa23 I think the best part is when he cuts JP off in the middle of answering his question in order to criticize him for not answering questions (3:24).
@@DavidDHorstman FOUND THE jordan peterson worshipper here.
@@susanwjoh0re735 I would characterize myself as an Alex O'Connor agnostic.
@@DavidDHorstman no, but you would as a peterson worshipper.
"Being delulu is the solulu." - Jordan Peterson
😂😂
Jordan Peterson is the most influential postmodernist of our age. His ability to redefine words as it suits his rhetorical goals is powerfully woke.
I see what you did here lol
Yup
Hahah, Good one. Very good indeed!
Underrated comment
He’s not even a post modernist. He’s HIS OWN caricature of a post modernist
When I listen to Jordan Peterson, I always remember that Feynman quote "if you can't explain it to a children, you don't understand it"
Feynman is indeed the answer to the present culture debacle. He's the kind of guy who wants to throw all of philosophy in a woodchipper.
@@junfour We can't make sense of the world without philosophy
@@andrewtucker94 I think we have made more sense of the world in the last several hundred years as we have discovered the hows of the world and at this point the only reason to keep philosophers around is to make sure that when it comes to medical experiments is to answer the question: Is it ethical?
@@PeteOtton We have the science, yes. As soon as we ask 'what do we do with the science', we're engaging in philosophy.
It's like Jordan's personal affirmation is "if you can't obfuscate Hickory-Dickory Dock till it's incomprehensible, you've failed".
Reminds me of a cartoon strip.
Piglet: What day is it?
Pooh: It's today.
Piglet: You know what the fuck I mean.
And in fact it is still today, since the beginning of time to the end
Lmao'd
LMAO
There's a great bit from Hot Fuzz like this as well.
"YOU- When's your birthday?"
"22nd of February."
"What year?"
"EVERY YEAR."
"Are you a taxi"
"NO, I am driving a taxi"
I appreciate you not engaging with the rambling and pattern of speaking over someone. When Peterson speaks over you, I love that you take a step back and allow him to finish showing better decorum and respect than he can reciprocate.
Interesting that JP always answer "it depends...on what you mean" but never "I mean this and this is what I mean when I speak"
Apparently that's "not his problem"
So few want to define their own terms but want him to agree or disagree anyway. So few want to take the trouble to be forthright about their take on a Biblical passage, whether they be religious or skeptical.
@@booksquid856Surely as the supposed mighty word and high law of the creator of infinite time and all space the fact that his book is able to be interpreted as opposed to just standing matter of factly by it's own words and declarations clearly means it's not the word of god.
He did say what he meant though. He admits he doesn’t know what happened historically cause HES NOT A HISTORIAN, but argues that the truth of the abstraction of the story may be just as REAL as the historical account. Engage with his point it’s astounding how I haven’t seen a single refutation in this comment section just personal attacks.
JP is an obscurantist. Yes, sometimes he is clear and straight forward and says what he means directly, but on/at too many crucial moments when asked the most important questions he his obfuscating. So, why isn't he obscure in less important cases, why especially when the most important questions are asked? Because he wants to hide behind nuance. JP doesn't want to be open. He pretends te be open with all his overdone nuanced reasoning and seemingly admitting certain of his shortcomings, but still he's hiding. He is very, very, very ambiguous.
Kudos O Connor once again.....unpicking JPs word salad takes great skill and humility....
Great patience
They didn't even disagree in this entire conversation, what are you even talking about.
@@shantanutamrakar5621
Neither comment before you says ANYthing about disagreements, bud 🙄
I am surprised he can make sense of what he's blabbering about
But why bother?
The idea that anyone would watch this video and come away thinking that Peterson is a genius is hilarious. All he’s doing here is evading questions like how Neo evades bullets. He’s saying nothing substantive at all. He is truly the patron saint of all pseudo-intellectuals.
@MystiqWisdomyea I agree with that. His evasion of the question makes me think he has a internal conflict with what he thinks, and what he feels
@@95ern He can't say what he really thinks because he would lose the sweet sweet patreon money. So he's forced to dilly dally.
Anyone who could see Paster Peterson as a substantial thinker must be naive or not very smart.
JP is an intelligent man, but like all theists, they can’t defend the indefensible. Every apologist falls apart under facts and evidence.
He literally admits to being disingenuous in the 1st half
JP: The bible is remarkably historically accurate
Everyone: Is Exodus historically accurate?
JP: wHat DoeS tHAt EvEN MeAn!?
YOU DONT GET TO ASK THAT!!
Smart people explain complicated subjects in simple terms. JP couldnt be further away from this now.
Cry more
... because he's grifting on his own reputation at this point.
For someone who used to espouse ‘be very careful and precise in your speech’, that goes completely out of the window when it comes to religiosity.
Contrast how he speaks on this subject (and about most subjects now..) with say his interview with Helen Lewis - yes that was more adversarial - but he was incredibly precise in setting out his clear definitions prior to elucidating a point, as Alex tries to here, when not being cut off.
I say this as something of a lapsed JP fan. I think the ego has landed - to borrow a pun. He’s become a bit of a character, playing a part, rather than the person who genuinely had reservations and bravely stood up to a piece of legislation back in 2016. I think that blazer says it all.. like Jerry Fallwell or something or a corporate evangelist.. I won’t say huckster (but Hitch would have!). He knows it’s a cash cow. He can get a few more books and tours out of the Christian audience.
Because he doesn't believe in what he's defending.
@@arsene4440 He's supposed to cry because JP is a nutcase? What the hell does THAT mean? This feels like the embodiment of that crying wojak wearing a cool wojak mask.
u cant help but smirk when the video starts with jp asking "but what does it mean"
jp:"what do you mean by saying what do you mean"... it is psychology but JP stuff before he was famous is still good... his lectures spurred me to dismantle my faith/ change my thinking
What do you mean by "you"? What do you mean by "help"?
Legitimately got jumpscared by that
🤣🤣🤣🤣so true
This has been Peterson's career. His first book was Maps of Meaning, fer crying out loud.
Why do most debates with jp seem like it’s a therapy session and he’s the patient
ahahah, brilliant
Well said.
Honestly I think he is 😂
Perhaps because he never fully recovered from his benzo addiction and still need therapy for it. And add on the brain damage from the coma.
lol. "Physician, heal thyself" comes to mind.
I'm really impressed at how far Alex has managed to get by pressuring this slippery charlatan into actually making coherent claims about what he believes. It's not far, but it's farther than anyone else has ever gotten.
Jordan felt very stung by Dawkins and frequently debates him in absentia because Dawkins said he was drunk on symbols. Some part of Jordan knows that's very true.
Much like a literal drunk, he is hiding from reality and from himself
His solo debates with Dawkins are, of course, merely symbolic ;-)
That is the essence of the entire right-wing problem...they are completely obsessed with the symbolic order rather than the real. One can never find peace in the symbolic order. In the best case it is ideally disposed of entirely. But good luck with that without lsd.
I made a comment that explained how an interview with Christopher Hitchens would go and JP replied to me directly essentially calling me an asshole.
"Drunk on symbols" is a very good description of what spiritual alchemy is, which is also the kind of thing that Jung was doing. The connection is there. "Drunk on symbols" is a far more accurate diagnosis than Dawkins himself realizes.
Peterson could simply say "I am not a fundamentalist, i dont believe in the inerrancy of the bible, and i dont believe that the bible should always be taken literally." This is what most historical-critical scholars of the bible would say, and I seriously dont understand why he needs to spend an hour to communicate this.
Except that would alienate many in his cult of young men he brainwashed into being Christian, and by being ridiculously vague he can playcate his followers into thinking he’s some kind of genius, and trap those who disagree with him in a dumb game of semantics and definitions.
@MrZomBie775 the thing is he can say those things and still be a Christian. Accepting biblical errancy and being a christian are not mutually exclusive. In fact, most reasonable Christians would probably be on his side there. I don't think it has to do with that. Faith is complex to be sure, but it doesn't have to be so esoteric and vague, especially to someone who is usually a good communicator.
Less word salad means less illusion of being a wise philosopher-guru.
See his answer to the hypothetical to being present at the resurrection of Christ and you should understand the implications concerning him.
Because that in itself is an answer phrased in a rationalist atheist perspective. It's not sufficiently dimensional enough to address the inherent complexities of christianity/god.
We finally got there right at the very end, goodness me it's like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling!
I wonder how his mother felt about him. Imagine bearing this child and having to raise it.
@@GhostOnTheHalfShell No kidding. God what a fuckin nightmare that must of been. Poor lady. Now Peterson is a total millionaire. life sux
still better than the 'postmodern-marxist-ideologically-woke types'.
luckily, that category is defined very firmly.it's whatever you need it to be.
and it's definitionally evil, which makes everything so much easier
It always amazes me that the infamous "so you're saying" interview is presented as evidence of the journalist trying to put words in his mouth rather than trying to nail down the intended meaning of someone who is being deliberately vague and employing plausible deniability about everything he says.
@@joepiekl It was both
I've noticed with Peterson that the more he's on shaky ground and is aware that his thesis is being effectively dismantled, the more he interrupts his opponent. He interrupted Alex A LOT in this six minutes.
When he says “that’s not my problem” it tells me all I need to know about his approach to communication. You either get on board with his monologue, or it isn’t his problem. He doesn’t understand that others are looking for the root meaning of communication - it’s something that we do together, it’s a communion. We’re looking for a shared experience, to realise a common understanding whether we agree or not. He’s a lecturer, not a communicator.
Great point.
He’s a -lecturer- wanker, not a communicator.
Yeah I felt the same when I heard him say that. Like, how un self aware do you have to be to think that it's someone *else's* problem when your answer to the question of "did the exodus happen" is "it's still happening today". No normal person would ever think that's an appropriate answer to such a question.
He literally admits to being completely disingenuous twice in this clip. This is 1 of those 2 times.
Yes, exactly. And if he's trying to be some kind of mystic or mythologer, or something, why would you go to him instead of the great mystics or scholars of history?
3:45 JP backed into a corner where he can't answer without either contradicting his initial claim or dropping the metaphorical smokescreen. He responds: "that's not my problem"
It was a very poor response wasn't it? Me O'Connor could have gone for the jugular at that point, but out of politeness framed it impersonally. "Mm. Yes. But it becomes a problem...".
@@kevinmcinerney1959 Alex is coming along great. Finding his own angle and style.
it is fundamental in discussion and especially debate for the other person to know and understand exactly what you said and meant, this reminds me of a teenager losing an argument when it was never about winning or losing but about sharing information
@@sukatidi Quite. And also, Jordan Peterson seems to have an appeal to certain teenage males and young men who hang on his every word - salad or main course. It's unfortunate in that Peterson also promotes other conservative ideas for young men like auto-erotic abstinence for singles.
Meanwhile, the SCIENCE says this is dangerous and may cause an increased risk of early death from prostate cancer. Yet the all-knowing Dr. Peterson seems unaware of the research:
Credible medical research shows a decreased outflow from the prostate gland, for whatever reason, significantly increases the risk of prostate cancer later in life. The risk ratio is comparable to smoking. Plus, the risk factor is especially noticeable for younger males. It seems proper outflow from the prostate is necessary for the healthy growth of the organ. Turns out Mother Nature never designed the prostate to shut off like a valve.
But Peterson is unlikely to inform his fan base of the actual science as it could interfere with his cash flow.
Well said.
Thank you Alex for being so patient. Disecting and reframing this question and letting Jordan comment on that really showed that he's just simply not willing to agree with the reality, that someone would like to ask about the Exodus in a historical context.
I also do not get at all why that should be an invalid question? He frames it as if it would be the height of hubris to try to determine if something is an accurate account of historical events, when such study is _essential_ in multiple fields of research, not only to actually understand events of the past, but also to grasp at which sources are reliable and which are not. And I think therein lies his issue; if you can clearly say that the bible story is, largely, entirely fictional/metaphorical and does barely recount any historical events at all, then that just opens yourself up to saying "well, why consider it special then?" After all, it's not an outrageously good book. It has good stories with good lessons in them, sure, but it isn't the height of literature. And it has absolutely disastrous and ugly lessons in it, abhorrent teachings that I would never want to ever be taken as 'gospel'.
His argumentation seems like a desperate attempt at defending something he deems more valuable than any other given piece of literature which can just as easily be examined for its veracity and value; when the bible is nothing else but that. A book to be read and interpreted. It most definitely is _not_ a book inspired by any supernatural being residing in a special place above the clouds, which _was_ the conception in the past.
He entirely refuses to accept or say that it is literally false.
@@lVideoWatcherlYeah exactly, and his argument could be used for any other mythic legend like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad/Odyssey, but I doubt he’d give those the same fair treatment because they don’t fall within the special value he has for Christianity.
And that value of his is fine, it’s his opinion at the end of the day. But the way he dodges being honest about it is just obnoxious.
@@LordJagdyes, he's being intellectually dishonest in his arguments and when you corner him into an easy to answer question, he obfuscates by trying to reframe the question in order to confuse the topic by using word salad. Like when Sam Harris asked if the resurrection actually happened and his answer was "that would take me 30 hours to explain".
@@lVideoWatcherl It's also a valid question because people do literally believe Exodus (and even much more mythological Biblical stories) are historically reality. If everyone understood it in the way that he seems to, then it wouldn't make any difference and no one would really be interested. Like if Young Earth Creationists were only talking about the young earth as a metaphor and God's creation of species as an allusive reference to evolution, no one would debunk them.
And it only gets more difficult with the Bible as we get into Jesus and the New Testament. You can interpret it through the lens he's using here, where the meaning of the story matters more than the historical reality, but that's not how billions of people treat it.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Exactly.
I say this without any bias here, I'm just observing from a bit of a distance - Why are we so caught up with this guy? What fascinates people so much? He's a relatively academically smart person who got ideas way above his station by some accidental fame among a certain demographic, and is now heralded as some sort of all-knowing, wise guru....When he just talks, quite clearly....bollocks. Like.....Why do we keep bothering to understand a man who is quite easily understood as a charlatan and a chancer. Perhaps not an awful man at heart, but in the end, not someone we actually need concern ourselves with that much?
Now, of course, that isn't to say we shouldn't be concerned about the potential damaged being done to young people who are enthralled, but that isn't a reason to keep banging on with him in these sorts of serious conversations, when he's obviously not a serious person. What am I missing?
coz 80% of the world is stupid.. and they give him the time and space
'What am I missing?' very succinctly captures the whole JBP phenom! Although his star has waned considerably of late, he's at best been a kind of live-improv-comedy attempt to be mass media's Big Thinker of Late. If Peter Sellers were still alive he'd be riffing on him in a movie. At this stage, all that's left is a kind of performative crankiness and wilful obscurantism. To summarise the video: 'Can an event have symbolic power if it didn't actually take place?' should be a question anyone with a high school diploma could answer. Hey ho.
He’s an icon of a certain brand of human dogma that is frighteningly popular now adays. A dogma that tears at the cloth Liberalism (capital L) and reality with angry nonsense wrapped in righteousness. Modernity has driven a certain type of people mad. He’s an avatar of this madness. It needs to be addressed again and again and again until more and more people see it for what it really is.
He is not academically smart. Everything he says is just stupid. What he is good at is throwing out word salad nonense at rapid speed and avoid any clear definitions of what he actually means. On the surface when he talks in words salad nonsense it seems to be smart to the lame person but when you actally break down what he says it's all stupid nonsense. If you manage to catch him in something, he hinges on one word and says "but what does that mean?" and if you clarify that, he moves onto the next word and does "but what does that mean?" ad infinitum
@@IceBlueBeard Fair. I was being nice. I suppose what I mean is, he must have reached where he did, academically, before his fame, for a reason. I feel like he is a man who has gone very wrong since online fame.
I think a lot of people missed him finally giving a straight forward answer. JP says “The people who are asking the question believe that 'true', unerringly means 'objectively happened in history like things that we’re seeing right now happened’. Well, no. Thats not what those stories are like.”
JP admits he knows exactly what they mean when they ask. And if I’m interpreting the “well no” correctly, he doesn’t believe these things “objectively happened in history like things that we’re seeing right now happened”.
Side note: The way Alex cut this clip, starting with JP saying “well what does it mean ‘historically’” and ending it with the JP quote I wrote above, was beautiful.
In a way that seems to be what he believes having heard him talk about this for years and trying to make it sound more complicated and as if you are asking him the sort of question that is so private you really only share the details with family or very close friends who are practically family.
But when asked about if the resurrection actually happened. As in a man wasn't close to death, or like people who have been technically dead for a certain amount of minutes. But 100% physically dead and all that being dead entails for 3 days, and after that got out of his tomb walking amongst the living again. He says "I would suspect yes."
That is the closest thing to a straight answer he has ever given and likely will ever give. Look if he had been upfront from day one that he might view the bible a bit differently than others. That he thinks that it's more complex than it's critics makes it out to be, and that you have to read it with disernment. That he doesn't fully understand what it all means but he does believe that God made himself into a man called Jesus, or had a son pick your poison. Did all the things the bible says it does and so on. Okay fine people like Alex, myself and many other don't but your allowed to believe it.
But what he's been doing with religion and faith speaking for myself feels like he's playing the same game that he critizies the left of doing with gender and language in general. And until he said that I've felt a sort of undertone the same one that Sam Harris was the first person I saw to really call him out even though he wasn't as succesful as Alex to get him to admit it. That he was Jesus smuggling, but maybe not because of it was something he believed in himself directly. More because he saw it as a good guide for people who don't know any better to behave in morally right ways. Being afraid of what happens if the world got rid of religion altogether, sort of like when he talks about how you won't get into the military with an IQ below 83 because it's counter productive and that's 10% of the population right there.
I think his thought process regarding both those could be connected, I don't really know that for sure I have to make guess work since he finds it so difficult to answer. When he says things like he doesn't care what other people thinks about how he speaks about belief. Hard not to notice the irony, if a man can come back to life. Why wouldn't he afford the same type of interpretations regarding gender expression? Having stated multiple times that he doesn't believe there is any such thing as non binary people, that it's not a fact and in many ways is harmful. I myself don't believe that there is such a thing as 70+ genders. And I do think it's harmful to allow children to be medicated causing sterilization, decreasing bone density, losing the ability to have an orgasm (something we don't like to talk about yet kind of important when humans need to experience some level of dopamine and oxytocin getting released to create bonding and other health benefits that isn't something you need to turn to drugs to get).
But so far no wars have started unlike religious texts which causes wars all the time.
@@dcworld4349 I think Peterson has changed the way he talks about the Bible, God, etc. I remember one of his most popular answers from a few years ago, when he was asked if he believes in God, was, "well, I act as if I do".
I'm certain, as a clinical psychologist, that he believes in personal heaven and hell. I'm certain he believes that myths and legends not only may be based on real events, but are also "selected" stories to help guide people between the difference of right and wrong.
I do think he has over-thought his response these days, because he I think he believes so strongly in the effect that "proper" story-telling has on guiding people to a better inner world. I think the result is as you say related to the left and their dependence on "narrative", and he wants people to believe a narrative that results in good for people, rather than one that results in bad things.
@@elqueso5524 I think you are quite right in that assumption. I do however think he does not understand that he is being counter productive. He says he doesn't want to please the people who are already religious with a simple answer like they have been giving their entire life. Fine nothing wrong with that. But he seems to think that he can continue to flirt with that side and somehow get enough people who are straight up atheist or agnostic to turn over to that side if not all the way. Just enough to live in a correct manner.
And that is where I think he's made a huge error. He was already getting a lot of people to make a ton of right life decisions. By appealing to the most basic facts that had always been there but had been left forgotten in a world where large groups of people wanted to change the world without knowing what they were changing it to.
I've seen the turns happen, not that they feel any animosity. But this is a path they can't follow him on. I'm sure he won't notice it, and in some sense it might actually be a relief as opposed to the time where he couldn't be left alone for 5 seconds. He still will have plenty to occupy him. And I'm not saying he should have stayed as the same sort of brand for the sake of being a brand if its not how he thinks anymore. If people fall off because you change then that's the price you have to pay.
But on occasion I have seen him make certain complaints about pushbacks. And they are not the kinds of pushbacks that he got where people misrepresented his views because they thought he was what Andrew Tate actually is. I understand you will grow extra sensitive going through such an experience. And he still gets that sort of pushback but he doesn't see the difference between that and the people who say they don't want to argue for 1 hour about if a factual event happened or not because there are points of views you can look at it from. That is literally what he is most famous for being against.
@@dcworld4349 This is really well communicated, thank you. I think I have different opinions to you on say, gender expression, but the fact you didn't let that view make you pick your reasoning based on tribalism to others that might think that is really clear in your consistent and balanced thought process here. I feel better for reading this discussion, and you have put into words something about peterson that is totally valid but doesn't therefore completely invalidate all of his points and philosophies.
I also think a fundamental thing people must realise about people like Peterson, is that they are ultimately being led by their ideology. There is much more feeling and will to what Peterson believes that outright logic or rationalism, and I think that's fine, but people and even Peterson himself sometimes in conversation seem to align him more with those philosophers or... I guess qualitative analysers? who are searching for more base level axioms, and will not go back on that logic, even if it defeats one of their previous arguments. Alex, someone that seems more these days to take no sides other than to answer a particular question, isn't comfortable moving on until he can use examples to challenge even his own point, and won't make a point otherwise. Whilst he has strong beliefs he acknowledges them and has even recently admitted when he has been hypocritical or verging on it so changed his actual living, with regards to veganism. I think i'm wandering form the point now, but I think its sort of relevant as I think people need to watch discussions with those that are vessels simply to test and challenge theories, not advocate for them, and to acknowledge when you are doing one or the other (or both) and I feel slightly worried by Peterson and all current 'debaters' at some point for prioritising 'winning' over being clear about the base premises for their stance, or acknowledging not everything they say is as reinforced with consistent backing as other points they make along the way.
you can see I cant translate my own feeling as well as you!
@@robbie5181 Thanks for the kind words, usually on RUclips I'm used to people getting weirdly angry because of the length I sometimes end up writing. So this was a nice change of pace. It might be a bit overused saying these days, but it's true. Just cause I have areas where I disagree with Peterson doesn't mean I have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
2015 was a really eye opening year for me, the year Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Larry the cabel guy said they would no longer perform at colleges because the students were too sensitive. I respect Seinfeld his comedy was just not for me but if he was "too edgy" for college students. I knew something was wrong. And this was before cancelling people, unless you count the Michael Richards incident, had truly started. But it started coming out in the air with people writing articles about and discussing if comedians should have a line. If TV and movies needed lines and quotas. That's when I handed in my "membership card."
I tried to talk about it and those who listened said I was overreacting, but I held on to the belief that if we went down this path we would enter the 1950s. Everything needing to be clean and censored people would be arrested for saying certain things. Before the free love of the 60s came along, which then lead to the grimier 70s. Which also included yet again arresting comedians for breaking obscenity laws which lead straight into the self censoring 80s. And the self censoring 80s was something I'm glad I didn't have to live through and I didn't want a self censoring decade Part 3. I don't know if I was arrogant or naive I really thought the arresting people for comedy part was something that would never happen again. But these new Edenborough laws proved me wrong. I hope it doesn't spread.
The biggest most raw, none negotiable stance I have is you do not tel comedians what they can and can't say. That doesn't mean you force people to buy tickets, and of course you can't force the audience to laugh. But that is the relationship the comedian should be allowed to have with their particular audience and they set are the ones who sets the stage for what winds up in the stand up specials. The only way the comedian can know if they crossed the line is if they cross the line and most of the audience no matter where or how they try to change the joke to make it work don't react with even a "I can't believe I laughed at that" kind of joke. As I predicted it became a hobby for journalists to go watch people work on their material once they were done with their last special, and then report what they said on stage as if it was their true opinion.
As for the if we have different opinions on gender expression, maybe we do, maybe we don't. I don't really know your stance. For me it's quite simple I believe adults should get to live life the way that works best for them, so long as what they are doing doesn't hurt anyone else, it's really none of my business. I'm not going to take the time and learn about all the genders, and I'm not going to learn about any more letters and numbers than LGBTQ. In part because I think lumping them all together would be like saying all straight people think the same. And I know from having talked to people from some of the letters they are not comfortable with being used as political footballs. They wanted the freedom to marry the person they loved and get treated the same under the law, that was really it. When a family friend, a 50 year old gay man got told that he has straight white privilege because he doesn't present as very feminine the way a lot of gay men do. That is understandably frustrating considering what he had to endure in a time where it wasn't accepted. The reason I look at the gender issue at all is because I can't help but wonder if we are doing what Iran is doing with gay people. Considering 80% who struggle with identity in their teens turns out to be gay or have autism. It's not like we are Lego bricks and can just switch back if we regret something. If we could have a completely accurate test that showed which kids would want to go through with treatment their entire lives and which would simply be gay. Now I wouldn't care at all about treatment starting too early so long as you did it safely, but we are not there yet.
I'm fully aware that in the time we are living in what I've just said will come across as very right wing. But I didn't hand in my membership card to trade it in for another. I decided that it made sense when I was younger to have a kit so to speak, that came with being a part of a tribe. But I found that it became more like a straightjacket. I concluded that year as I was doing some soul searching I shouldn't be able to know someone if I know just one thing about them and the same goes in reverse. I decided to do careful picking and choosing to build up something more robust and figure out what I actually thought about things.
I had a lot of time on my hands that year cause life took a dramatic shift. I didn't know it at the time but I had to give up on things most people take for granted and had to start to accept a new reality of which I wasn't in control. My body betrayed me, the only thing I had left was my mind so I was going to use it for what it was worth. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to use it in any meaningful way. But I had to do something. The only reason I'm still here is I made a promise to not do what I did again, once it became clear that I couldn't be the man I wanted to be. I could no longer be there for my friends and family like I had been used to. Something which gave me meaning, purpose and stopped that voice in my head telling me I was worthless garbage whenever I wasn't helping them out.
Sorry for the long and dark turn this probably went I can't really tell right now, currently on a morphin drip, it takes some time for the worst of it to stop while the morphin kicks in. And typing on my phone helps me redirect my focus on something besides the pain.
Thanks for the distraction, the kind words, and no you are doing just fine, continue to express even when people say you are wasting time. If you can do so in person with another human being that is of course always better. I try to keep it to a minimum, I'm already enough of a burden on my family and friends. I don't want to put more on their shoulders than they already have to deal with.
When someone doesn't understand your answer, try "That's not my problem". See how far that'll get you.
sometimes that will take a person depressingly far.
@@distracted-dad Yes, when you craft your speech so that anyone can understand whatever they want from it...
Ironically it's gotten him quite far, IMO because he doesn't impose his answers on others, i.e. it's not the core of he wants to talk about. Like people always wondering and asking if Elvis or the Beatles were single, and they'd downplay whatever answer
if you would have watched the entire podcast instead of this clip, you would understand that wrong questions don't deserve answers
@@yairsegal2427 I watched the entire podcast.
Biggest flaw of this particular section of argument: Lack of panasonic camera.
I don't get this reference?
@@SoroushTorkianit's from a previous segment that Alex shared wherein he got JP to effectively give a straightforward answer after coming at the issue from multiple angles.
😂
Panasonic camera angle is what needs to be presented each time for JP to answer.
@@iizshowtime8368 Which is a more specific directed question then do you believe but we seem to gloss over that
Talking to Peterson is like playing pool with a rope.
😂😂😂
This is the best analogy I have ever heard. 😅
Not really it depends on what your talking about when you talk about metaphysical truth he’s non committal for yes no questions on did god exist yes / no did Jesus walk on water, etc etc.
But for example his work is very pragmatic. His psychology lectures are refreshing for their practical focus.
There are just so many clips of people asking Jordan Metaphysical questions and getting wishy washy answers and it makes him look like he never says anything which is far from the truth.
I mean some of the talks are labeled “what is true.” And then people get annoyed that the conversations get convoluted.
@@DeTruthfulsure
Wild that this guy started his Internet famous career complaining about how postmodern neo-Marxists use language for obfuscation. Also wild that lots of people think he's some kind of genius.
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
Technically it started with him lying about the contents of a proposed piece of legislation.
No wonder he has trouble with meaning. Dishonesty is the foundation of his worldview.
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
@@rainbowkrampus Why hasn't Canada struck him off the list of psychiatrists? Or did he quietly hand in his license?
As long as what you do gives the powerful a licence to be cruel, or the faithful the right to be bigoted, you can be backed by money and basically point at things and fart.
Can’t believe there are people still praising JP. This man is dodging very specific questions with word salads.
JP fans are just would-be Alex Jones sycophants with even-greater delusions of grandeur.
As someone that truly loved his earlier work. The current conversations he takes part of I think are very very worthy of criticism however I really hope people do not throw everything he has ever said away because of it. His initial claim to fame focusing on getting your own life in order and by taking more responsibility it will lead to a more purposeful life are still invaluable.
@@lalakingo7 And you can get that from a lot of people.
You can erase the very existence of JP from the universe, and that message would still be out there.
You have to remember that JP did not become popular because of his insights, he shared his insights after gaining notoriety.
Heck, the fact that he refuses to take responsibility for his own words ("Not my problem"), should tell you all you need to know about him.
@@Fernando-ek8jp Agreed with regard to not my problem sentiment.
But as for his insights, I mean his book 12 rules for life was pretty incredible. I dont know anyone that has written a book that covers the same combination of material? And please if you have suggestions let me know.
I think if you want to try limit his influence as best as possible. Credit where he is on the right track and suggest where people can find similar or most likely better work and in the same breath, critise where he is wrong and suggest where to find the correct or more insightful material or sources ?
@@lalakingo7 I don't, I try not to just take stuff from a single source if possible, specially when it comes to how to live your life.
Interact with the world, evaluate stuff independently, see different points of view. Do not be constrained by someone who states that there are hard and immutable rules for how to be a better person.
In order to correctly understand Jordan Peterson you need to actualize yourself as a known and knowable subject who categorizes and thereby catalogues a wide spectrum of concepts of being-as-is and being-as-becoming. Thus, the comprehension of the true object can only materialize after one conceives of the metempsychosis inherent in all epistemology of your momma's so fat that when a car drives around her it runs out of gas.
Pretty much 🤣🤣🤣
What do you mean by “inherent”?
Careful, the mere use of a piece of continental philosophy jargon will lead to kajillions of gulags run by blue haired Himmlers, we’ve run that experiment. Please quote old imperial british fox hunting manuals instead. God save the grass feed beef!
What do you mean by "Peterson"? Like is his dad a Peter?
Bro how much of Jp have U listened to 😂😂😂
This dude is more slippery than an eel swimming in bacon grease.
You can tell Alex has him on the ropes because he’s literally screaming. Got that vein shooting out of his forehead and he’s convulsing in his chair the entire interview.
It’s like you sat Jordan down for a debate moments after he had a near-death experience. Dude is in fight or flight. 😂
It’s always either that or crying 😢
JP is the perfect case of the Emperor’s newclothes, people agree with him because they have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about in response to really simple yes or no questions
Exactly!
People have no idea what he's talking about because he says literally nothing. He produces sounds that resemble words. Peterson is one of the most dishonest grifters out there.
You have no idea.
@@czerskip
I kinda stopped caring about JBP two years ago because I essentially "got the message, and put the phone down". But now that two years have passed, I'm honestly shocked that there are still quite a large number of people who don't understand what he's trying to say (considering how much care Jordan Peterson takes to explain his position).
I suspect that due to his utmost care to help people understand him, he ends up extending his talks to be longer, which might not be to his benefit. And reading some of the other comments under this video it has become quite evident that a lot of people just lack the patience and attention span to listen and understand him. In which case I agree with his statement that he made in the video: "it's not his problem".
Honestly being from a STEM background and seeing people with a social studies or humanities backgrounds struggle to understand him, make his arguments against modern social studies/humanities programmes even more so believable. Theres no way you guys should be struggling that much to understand him lmao.
I think they take great satisfaction in aggressive, combative responses to liberal questions he does not like and have no bearing to any thoughtful analysis. Yeah, you told that cuck.
You're a far more patient man than I am Alex. Appreciate the effort but I gave up on Jordan a long time ago. He's moving in a different direction to everyone it seems.
What a strange comment to something obviously not true lol
As someone live in the ultra materialist China with negative religious influence all my life, I find him fascinating and these brainwashed scientism minded guy like Richard Dawkins stubborn, narrow minded and stupid at best.
@@Jake-dx8pt what exactly has Jordan done in this clip other than overcomplicate or downright dodge yes or no questions?
@@Jake-dx8pt What do you mean by strange? What do you mean by obviously? and what do you mean by "true"?
@@rhinocraft2594 lol, exactly. I think Jordan inhabits a post-meaning world.
Alex: "what is today's date?" JP:"it depends on what you mean by today". Alex (to himsef): "you're an asshole"
And also what you mean by “what” and “is” and “date” and “?”
Whenever I listen to Jordan Peterson speak, I alternate between a sense of great frustration and feeling concern for his well-being.
You must have not watched or understood anything in the podcast. That is such a bad argument, just because there are topics where it makes no sense to analyze them on a deeper level you should not do it in any topic?? This is not Alex's argument. This is just stuff Peterson haters say that don't even bother to understand the conversation. Alex does not hate Jordan Peterson btw, he has real arguments on why he thinks that Jordan sometimes talks about religion in an inappropriate way, it was a great podcast and a very intresting debate, if you are ever intrested to actually watch and pay atention to it.
@@CarlosMagnus-sd9rf
Yeah I think the full podcast was pretty beneficial for the audience that struggles to understand him.
Although to me it's surprising people are struggling to understand him in the first place, considering he seems to take a lot of care with emphasizing what he means exactly (albeit at the cost of talking about it longer, which maybe the wider audience lacks the attention span for and thus results in a premature dismissal of him and his points).
JP shouldn't be taken seriously by anyone.
I believe JP’s main point: though he believes much of it isn’t literally true, he doesn’t want people to disregard the deeper meaning, the ‘eternal truths’ and ‘archetypes’.
what is the eternal truth of God killing all the firstborn children in Egypt? If 90% of us are taught in Sunday School (in the US) that these are LITERAL stories that happened, you cant have someone just be like, "oh well people know it's just myth, its allegory, its sharing a deeper spiritual truth." The masses aren't taught that. Thats a problem.
@@Cottagewitchcraftco Fair. He can still maintain his point.
Beware of anyone who tells you "you don't get to ask that question"
Damn right.
Lots of people (rightly) call out the “it’s not my problem” line, but what you’ve picked out “you don’t get to do that [ask a banal question about a biblical tale]…because the stories that you’re dealing with aren’t banal” is a flag in a much richer shade of red imo 😅 The only clear thing he said: I won’t answer that question and it’s your fault for asking it! Blimey
alex is SUCH beast in these interviews I am in awe of him being able to make these people tell on themselves so plainly
what a legend.
Lol were you sweating when you typed this? This seems like you're here for reasons other than discourse
@@JB-wh3we It doesn't seem like that at all. Your comment however does.
JP is losing it
Can't lose what he never had.
@@stooshiemax1756
That would mean he had it at some point. Or didnt already.
Losing what?
true
Great to watch someone finally challenge Jordan Peterson and not simply bow down to his reputation for super intelligence. So many times JP gets away with spouting nonsense because he is so good at deflecting and obfuscating. Good for you Alex !
How JP ever got that reputation is beyond me. I had heard about him for a long time before ever seeing him interviewed, and he never comes off very well.
This was an insane conversation that im still working through because it sounds like waffling past a direct easy question. I seriously applaud you for how long you were able to ask... Basically the same question for 2 hours
Alex : Are you crazy?
JP : What a hell does it mean?
Alex : It means : are you out of your mind?
JP : But, what does it mean?
Alex : It means : Are you lunatic?
JP : I don't understand what you mean by that.
Alex : I mean whether you are completely insane or not?
JP : That's not my problem...
LOL
Peterson is cleary a lunatic..
I yelled "God fucking dammit" so loud at the end of this.
Same! lol
truuuu😬😬😬
scholars say that no chance that hebrews were enslaved by egyptians and were emancipated. time line dnt match by 2500 years
Why? Didn't he finally answer the question? "No that's not what those stories are like". He doesn't think it actually happened (but still finds them true in whatever allegorical ways obviously)
I am so impressed with Alex. He deals with Peterson methodically, gently, and rationally. If I was in his seat, I would have just said to Peterson, "Fuck off mate. That's just a bunch of tedious bullshit." and walked out.
You and 99% of people (including myself). It takes true patience to expose this man for the charlatan that he is.
I think we have reached the point where Jordan Peterson can be ignored.
Hear-hear!
You mean "reached". "Passed" would mean he can no longer be ignored.
L0L
I say we're past that point. Waaaaaay past.😅
Who?
For me it was slavov zizek dismantling this man in a debate
Watching this I can’t help but agree with Richard Dawkins: It’s just simple and plain bullshit.
It's not. It's a particular kind of bs that is the opposite of simple. Just like intsocs, he's a Hermetic wizard. Different branch of the same tree. It's a kind of spiritual alchemy where you stare at symbols and wait for gnosis. JP was driven mad by Jung.
@@jennifermarlow. He's about as deep as Jung, which is to say "deep".
@Bemantix JP: "What do you meany by "Richard Dawkins"? Also JP: "I am very serious about it" Also JP: "I thought about it for a loooong time"
That's probably a good way for a sub 100 IQ to see it. Move on to something simpler.
Yep, why try to study on a deeper level when it's much more convenient and self satisfying to dismiss it
There’s a point not made that I wish were. It’s fine to redefine true to mean whatever backwards mental gymnastics JP is playing at but that is not how others use that word. There are many who say, for instance, the events of the Old Testament are literally true in the “banal” way JP is antagonizing. He must realize that others are not taking such a poetic license when they say they think it’s true. You can’t just say, ok well then we agree, if you are using different definitions of true. it matters that JP is equivocating to achieve agreement on the truth claim of the OT when really the beliefs are misaligned.
I was surprised by how openly he admits using different definitions and understanding the difference even. Completely disregarding that we are having to rely on understanding each other by defining words in the same way. The interview showed that to JP "truth" is not factual, but a matter of faith and interpretation, so a subjective reality. "Believe" in his words is something someone is "willing to die for", so believe actually comes very close to an objective reality to him.
I Dont like the term redefined as there are several different rigorous definitions of truth. But otherwise i agree, and there is nothing rigorous in jbp
Ask JP if he thinks it’s true there are more than two genders, I’ll bet he knows what true or false means…
Yeah, he should at least aknowledge that his idea of christianity is completely different from the idea the majority of people have
@cuulcars what an odd point to address. That's what the Ken Ham/Bill Nye type faux debates are for, dunking on creationists. This discussion is about the deeper values/utility the bible has a guidepost, guardrail, and underpinning for humanity. The analysis that is largely casually (or willfully) dismissed the rationalist atheists. There's no new ground to be covered in smugly dunking on creationist OT christians
Translation: I don't want to have to battle the validity of what I believe. Tactic: deflect the conversation
"Do you like ice cream?"
"What does that mean??"
Very original comment 👏👏👏
What do you mean by "like"?
Do you mean "ice cream" as cream made from literal ice, or in a colloquial sense?
Liking something is very different from believing something. We all know what constitutes liking something. We arent so sure what it means to believe something. And comparing ice-cream to a spiritual power, as if their definitions are of equal complexity...is the second part of your joke that makes the joke shit, and your reasoning flawed.
Cope harder.
Yet JP fans have the audacity to call Biden senile.
It was quite frustrating watching Jordan Peterson give such silly responses.
You've got to truly appreciate Alex for his patience and constant probing to get the right response.
Lol silly? See that's your blindspot. Treat the subject matter as silly, then you're not even sticking to a rational scientific perspective. Its more like smug dismissive hubris
@JB-wh3we alright, 'silly' may not have been the right word here. But what I do mean is that Peterson is giving inaccurate reposnses of questions that are at the very least seemingly straightforward. I mean he can elaborate on what exactly it is that he is trying to say, but instead he gives answers that don't really seem to make any sense in relation to the questions being asked
Forest Gump is always meeting JFK 😂
It's still happening!
hahah this is good
4:40 "you have to be a discriminating reader" well most readers of religious texts aren't very discriminating. In fact most religions actively try to prevent their followers from discriminating at all.
And yes it can become a problem. People form their beliefs and identity around this stuff. So of course it matters whether something is literally true or only metaphorically true. It absolutely has real world consequences.
Peterson is so hesitant to be critical of Christianity (and religion in general) cause he knows he’d probably lose so much of his audience if he gives his honest opinion.
On point!
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. Maybe it's partly true, but the way he speaks about it does make sense on light of all the Jungian stuff he's into
No, he wants to see it as mistery and paradox
Good point 🤔
Yeah, Peterson definitely looks like a tipical youtube celebrity who is doing all of this for profit he makes from his audience.
He is even pointing towards Daoism for marketing purposes now. Unfortunately he will have to lie about Wu Wei and Qi force now.
Jesus, it's like fighting a wall. I would rip my hair out
A wall? More like trying to grab mercury
The last sentence that Peterson speaks contradicts how any Christian would interpret the Bible, they believe the events took place as describe in it.
"It depends on what you mean by Christian" - Jordan Peterson, probably
Do they though? I'm pretty sure that most Christians don't believe that the events in Genesis literally happened, for example. So how far can you slide the literal--poetic slider until you're not a Christian anymore?
I think you are mistaken in the number people who are literalist believers because they are the most vocal and distort the perception of how many literalists there really are. If only the would stay away from politics.
I disagree that "any" Christian would interpret it this way, but there definitely are sects of Christianity that take those stories literally.
However, nearly every Christian will read in their interpretations based on their already-existing political perspectives. Some stories will be metaphorical when it suits them, and literal when it suits them. That post-hoc rationalization is more in line with the common Christian than strict Biblical literalism.
@@JesseLeeHumphry There are different sects of Christianity like Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, Church of England etc. which have differing beliefs centred around similar base. If you ask one of these Christians, do you believe in God? They aren't going to ask what do you mean by God? If one says no, then they aren't really Christian. I haven't investigated in all sects of Christianity, Catholics would believe the events of the Bible.
Jordan has learned that if a “baseline” ever gets defined his world falls apart so he never allows a baseline to ever get set. I returned his book 1 week after buying it and have concluded, like others here, he can be ignored
It's goddamn exhausting
I'm so glad you're pinning him down on basic facts
I must say I can sort of agree with what Peterson is saying, to a certain extent. But the best of this clip is Alex showcasing his ability to get to the point and not allow the other person to go on a tangent. Really amazing.
What do you agree with? That religion is a mental illness?
I really do sympathize with the way peterson sees the question "Do you believe in god" for so many people is basically "Are you in my club" really. So I get his insistence on turning that question around on the asker.
@@mload45 A Club for brain amputees
@@mload45For me it’s a pretty simple yes or no question. You’re either convinced that some sort of God exists or you’re not.
@@deanlowdon8381Yeah I doubt Peterson would make cases for god in any other context besides Christianity. He’s just backpedaling because he ultimately wants to placate to the huge amount of Christians in his fanbase.
Smart people make the complex sound simple……ie the opposite of what Petersen does.
He makes me think that the opposite can also be a true idiom: dumb people make the simple sound complex.
@SuperEdge67 sounds more like how postmodernists weaponize dunning-kruger on the hubristically ignorant.
6:10 Peterson is a postmodernist thinker in dental. He believes in “truths” rather than “the truth” were it any other position he would be opposed to this kind of language.
Were someone to say “I am a woman” he sure as shit would not ask “what ineffable truth are you trying to…” no he would just go “that’s not true though”
I feel this all the time. The people who mock Peterson often employ the same tactics at least when it comes to gender. But that doesn't change the fact when it comes to religion, Peterson is just as moronic.
Whoa whoa whoa, let's not give him too much credit.
He's not a postmodern anything. He's just dishonest and obscures his dishonesty with tangents and obscurantism.
I fucking love how he can just so efficiently muddy the waters and convolute the simple 5 words of "Do you think it happened?" 6 minutes of this is crazy to me, or it would be if it wasn't obvious that he just doesn't wanna have to say "No, I don't think Exodus happened historically speaking" and end up angering his right-wing Christian base.
LMFAO
"I think it happened metaphorically, not literally."
It's so easy, Jordan Peterson. It takes 3 seconds to say. Alex had to spend 6 minutes to wriggle out this answer from him.
@@shambhav9534 But he doesn't view metaphor and literal as being separate. He thinks that duality limits our ability to understand reality. He's thinking beyond that and trying to share these thoughts, but people are trying to force him to devolve it back to an older way of thinking that metaphor and literal are separate.
@@bike4aday Then the answer should be "I don't know," and Jordan Peterson won't say that either.
@@shambhav9534 That's not a good answer either because it doesn't express what he really thinks which is that the premise of the question is wrong.
Of course the Bible contains lots of genres.
Everything from pure fiction, to myths, to legends, to exaggerated and embellished history with a kernel of truth.
Don't forget about pseudo-historical tribal propaganda
No kernel imo
You're part of the people that Dr. Peterson complains about. Your bias towards the Bible is very clear. "Embellished history with a kernel of truth"
The kernel of truth would be the unimportant incidental details, such as the name of a desert or that the place was ruled by a "pharaoh". All the important stories, when you look into them, are contradicted by more reliable history and archaeology. Jericho was destroyed long before they got there, there were no millions of Hebrew slaves, the conquest of Canaan could not have happened because those towns were destroyed at vastly different times, etc.
@@terrorkfRather than complain about bias, which in this case is analogous with just having an opinion, why not just tell us how he is wrong?
It's actually a craft to answer the question into a political horoscope. He is vague on purpose, so fans can say we quote him out of context, because they filled in the blanks of his answer with their own bias. The same can be said to many critics, but it's hard to criticize a bloke who is intentionally vague. Yeah, you can criticize him for not being specific enough, and I'm not surprised a clinical psychiatrist actively uses this practice.
"What the hell does that mean?". He knows full-well and doesn't like that they want one angle addressed, and it comes loaded with what HE might consider "out of scope" so he doesn't address the question in earnest. That's something in the veins of things like sophistry, condescension (for their not bringing more into scope or seeing it his way).
No one cares what these fairytale stories mean to JP. They just want to know if he thinks they literally happened.
anybody sensible doesn't give one shit about what JP say's or thinks, he's a fucking pseudo-intellectual idiot, spouting bullshit
You may as well ask him what he thought of Lord Of The Rings
And he's never going to tell them. It really is pointless. He is not a serious person. The entire conversation is just an attempt to get him to give a straightforward answer, and his entire existence is dependent upon not giving one. You get absolutely nowhere, but a bunch of bots will still say it changed their lives.
@@Ktmfan450Or Gilgamesh, or Beowulf. Both have mythic meaning within historical contexts, but they’re clearly primarily created to tell stories, not to share historical information
I see the unwarranted narcissism from the r/atheism types is still going strong.
For Peterson to understand what people are asking and to answer another kind of question is the definition of communication breakdown. And since he is doing it knowingly, he is dishonest in his phrasing.
To claim "you don't get to ask that question" is pretty strange. Why are only certain questions allowed? Why doesn't he want to give the answers to the other questions honestly? (In most situations).
Peterson has said he doesn't want to be pinned down, which I think is true.
The last sentence in this video, he rejects the idea that the events in the Bible happened as written.
He sees a great truth in the stories in the Bible and they represent something about the human condition.
I think he doesn't want to acknowledge that he doesn't believe because then people will say you have said you don't believe the events in the Bible as they happened, how could be this great truth in it then.
Could you imagine the meltdown that would transpire if someone told HIM "you don't get to ask that question"?
@AdamJones381 if he doesn't at least commit to an overall approach and communicates that openly, he is engaging in dishonest discourse to appease the feelings of his supporters and maybe even for monetary gain. One thing it definitely isn't is intellectually honest.
What is especially striking that he has such a loose approach to when a story is "true" and "a construct" but totally opposes an understanding of gender roles as a construct as well.
If it is probably true in his mind that Moses divided the red sea how is it less probable that Trans men are men and Trans women are women.
Especially we can see them "act out" that truth infront of our eyes and don't have to rely on tradition of traditions written down by people with their own specific bias.
@@carpediem5232 Yeah it is ironic. One of Peterson rules is to tell the truth or at least don't lie. I think Peterson ties himself into knots so he doesn't lie.
@@AdamJones381I don't think he succeeds. One would think that this sustained effort to avoid getting pinned down by one's dishonest statements is an indication that they are aware of the problem, yet, they continues to do it anyway.
Kinda just seems like lying with extra steps.
Like, did you notice that this whole segment is just a motte and bailey with a bunch of tangents and distractions in between the indefensible claim and the defensible one he retreats to?
Who could be interested in having a discussion with someone who speaks this way? The refusal to commit to anything at all baffles the mind.
Awesome. I've gotta watch the full interview.
Alex, you're a Master level interviewer.
Loved this conversation Alex, you did a great job!
As a side note - the comments section difference in JP's channel and this one are hilarious.
This is where the "smart" 😉 kids gather.
Both echo chambers but I agree with this one more lol
That's the difference a few dozen IQ points make.
@@gh00al I'm sure you think you're on the "smart" team. 😉
@@SaviorMoney-777 haha well everyone does. That's what the IQ test is for...
The difference in the attitude in the comments from Jordan’s audience towards Alex vs Alex’s audience towards Jordan is night and day.
Yes, the respect for the different degrees of intellectual honesty and integrity displayed by Alex and Jordan is unmistakable.
Well, I mean Alex doesn’t have the attitude that so much of his audience shows in his comments. Alex is great example for people. He doesn’t act like a lot of his audience does at all.
@@josephposenecker9741O’Connor is unfailingly polite and non-confrontational. I find those qualities admirable, if occasionally a little frustrating. Do you see them in Jordan Peterson?
@@michaelhall2709 yeah, I think Jordan and Alex had a great conversation together and their chemistry was amazing. Great discussion and I expect the two will definitely have more. My comment wasn’t about how Jordan or Alex were with each other. I’m referring to the difference in the comment sections about how polite and complementary Jordan’s audience is to Alex. Unfortunately Alex’s audience is rude and mean when talking about Jordan. Again, Alex’s audience is just very different than Alex.
It’s very clear that Alex is very frustrate with Peterson’s sophistry, but knows the only way to pin him down is to play along and try and get an answer by defeating him logically. He does not respect Peterson, he is giving his best shot at exposing him.
Question: Dr Peterson, what does that mean?"
Dr Peterson: That depends on what you mean by "what" and what you mean by "does" and what you mean by "that" and what you mean by "mean."
All the other commenters here have identified the main ways in which Peterson dodges answering question. But one way that isn’t highlighted so much is his constant interruptions to add NEW points, little asides that, if his fellow conversationalist isn’t wary of, will take the conversation down a whole new path and AWAY from the questions that make Peterson uncomfortable.
Watch this clip and see how often he interrupts Alex. It’s not excitement at a good conversation. It’s not two pals having a normal conversation (which of course normally do wander all over the place). I think it’s another conscious (or perhaps subconscious, to be less harsh) evasion technique.
Edit - Actually, changed my mind. It’s likely all ego. Man just loves the sound of his own voice.
Red Herring logical fallacy: branching off and away from tge original point to argue something else and avoid admitting loss or grappling with the argument at hand.
Did you notice what all of the tangents were in service of?
He makes an initial claim, yadda yadda yadda, he retreats to a more defensible claim and uses that to uphold the initial claim.
This whole segment is one extended motte and bailey where Peterson hopes to distract you from noticing that he's just committing a very simple logical fallacy.
It's not the only time he does it in the interview and really it's kinda his whole schtick. Should change his name to Jordan M&B Peterson.
@@rainbowkrampus
Thanks for introducing me to this fallacy! William Lane Craig did this to Christopher Hitchens in a debate years ago.
@@benjaminsnyder9587 It's all over the apologetics circles. The trick is that apologists rarely put themselves in a position where they are likely to be held down to a single point.
I'm not sure if this speaks well of Peterson, talking to someone who has demonstrated some competence in interviewing, or if it's another massive blunder like the Zizek debate. Demonstrating Peterson's massive ego and lazy "intellectualism".
Either way, pretty embarrassing.
Yep. He's a bad communicator and a bad conversationalist. He doesn't let his interlocutor finish his train of thought, fully complete his questions etc.
When one starts wearing flashy garb, one is trying to sell more than just sophistry.
'Trashy n flashy' was long a cliche look of sketchy used car salesmen with lemon groves of beater vehicles on their lots.
Yup.
Too much psilocybin.
"what if you get off your intellectual high horse for a bit and answer a very simple question?"
"No"
At 3:20, JP agrees to answer a question in a simple way. Before he can finish answering, Alex interrupts him:
Alex: "Would I see people with feet walking through the desert leaving footsteps?"
JP: "Well, let's take it apart rationally. So..."
Alex: "But you also understand that when someone's asking that, even if you don't like the question you must understand what someone's asking".
JP: "Well yes, I understand many of the things they're doing simultaneously."
Here Alex seems to care more about criticizing JP's rhetorical style than he does about the answer to the question that he asked. I wonder what would have happened if Alex had allowed his interviewee to speak instead of interrupting him.
It's rather satisfying to watch a young man I've viewed since he was 16, knock over the king of a man I used to admire when Alex was 16. And with such ease too.
There's no evidence of Jewish slaves, their culture, or iconography in any excavation of Ancient Eygpt. Also, "it's still happening" when referring to Exodus, it's absurd to claim because ancient Eygpt is no longer a thing. Lastly, the trivialization of the Bible's "events" happens when there is a gross lack of abundant evidence.
The Exodus narrative seems to portray the Israelites as only really gaining that identity at Mt Sinai. So there's no real reason to think that they would have been easily distinguishable from any other group of Semitic slaves. And we do have plenty of evidence for Semitic slaves in Egypt.
@@stephengray1344 Wrong.
@@DaVinci-wt6dp So you're saying that all the Egyptian records that show slaves with Semitic names are fake? And the Egyptian artwork showing Semitic slaves (there's even one that shows them making mud bricks). And the accounts that many of the Semitic inhabitants of Avaris were enslaved when the 18th Dynasty overthrew the Hyksos.
@@stephengray1344 The evidence isn't the point of belief, to a Christian they have faith not evidence and that is the question being asked of Peterson.
@@AdamJones381 There probably are some varieties of Christianity which see faith and evidence as two completely divorced categories. But all the varieties I'm familiar with teach that Christian faith is based on evidence. It's usually only the New Atheist types who define the word faith to mean a belief not based on evidence.
He's wrong that the historical record would probably show that the Exodus actually happened, or that history has generally been on the side of the Exodus being factual. It absolutely is not and is almost widely considered by many historians to have been fictional.
Before the mid century people thought Moses was probably a historical figure, but that was mainly because they wanted him to be real and the archaeological record shows no such migration event, much less the specific mythological story of Exodus.
There was some Egyptian who lead a bunch of lepers out of Egypt in some strange revolt, but Egyptian history is so almost incomprehensibly long that you’re bound to find stories that parallel Exodus just by coincidence.
And also considered by many historians to have actually happened. Where do you think the arguments made by Egyptologists like Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier that the Exodus account records at least some accurate history fall down?
@@stephengray1344in the archaeological record
@@HS-qv3dh Yes. His claim that the archaeological record supports the historicity of the Bible surprisingly often is either deeply ignorant or grossly dishonest. In either case, it is counterfactual.
@@HS-qv3dh So what bit of the archaeological record do you think they are misrepresenting?
But he's fundamentally wrong about the Exodus? From last looking that up, the archeological consensus is that there is no evidence supporting the claim that the Exodus is even slightly historically accurate, because there are no accounts of even there being jewish slaves in egypt, let alone thousands of them going free.
For somebody who decries post-moderninsm, Peterson sure has made a huge deal out of re-defining what 'truth' means in every single context he is asked about.
Consensus usually means that the question is completely settled. This is not the case with the Exodus, since there are a minority of scholars (the biggest names being Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier) who do argue that there is good evidence for an Exodus. An extremely barebones overview of their side of the argument would be:
* Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Particularly for events happening in the Nile Delta, which is too wet for papyrus records to survive to the modern era.
* The text seems to indicate that the Israelites didn't really become Israelites until after they had left Egypt, and so they would have been indistinguishable from other Semites - and we have lots of evidence that there were Semitic slaves.
* The city of Avaris (whose population were Semites, rather than Egyptians) fits the location and history given in Genesis and Exodus for the place the Israelites are said to have lived when in Egypt
* Avaris is abandoned during the reign of Ramses II, which is exactly the point in Egyptian history which the book of Exodus accurately describes
* There are numerous details in the Torah which suggest that it (or at least its sources) date back to this period. These would include Egyptian placenames, Egyptian loanwords, the similarity of the Ark of the Covenant to Egyptian ritual furniture from exactly this period, and the similarity of the Mosaic covenant to treaties of this period.
* This dating of the Exodus happens about one generation before Israelites show up in Canaan in both the historical record (the Merneptah Stela - which seems to suggest that Israel had yet to settle into towns and cities) and in the archaeological record
* Two of the three things that distinguish early Israelite settlements from Canaanite and Philistine ones (the four-room house and the lack of pig bones) match what we find at Avaris, with only the style of pottery being different.
* Several archaeological sites in this period match the descriptions given in the conquest account of Joshua (the altar complex at Mt Ebal and a destruction layer at Hazor which includes the desecration of idols) and none directly contradict the text (the main thing that is cited as such is Jericho - but the most recent archaeological report shows that there was a city there at this period, but we know nothing about how that settlement ended because the site was levelled by later inhabitants).
This case isn't conclusive, but it's substantial enough to say that there is at least some evidence supporting the claim that the Exodus account records at least some actual history. The scholars who say that there is no evidence rarely show any indication of having actually read the arguments of those who make a case for it.
@@stephengray1344All of that is interesting, but beside the point. Asked the question, Peterson could have cited those facts in his answer, but he didn’t. Instead, he repeatedly chose to give a non-answer. That’s what he’s being criticized for.
@@stephengray1344 That is not at all what consensus means. There will always be cranks defending a position without evidence. Consensus just means the majority position. Christian apologists masquerading as unbiased historians are the cranks in this particular example.
@@rainbowkrampus No conssnsus does not, and never has, meant 50%+1. It means that (almost) everybody agrees. If a debate is still ongoing then there is not a consensus. For example, nobody would say that the population of the UK had a consensus about the issue of Brexit after the Brexit referendum came out 52% to 48%. In reality the country was split down the middle for years afterwards.
I've not come across anybody on the maximalist side of the issue who presents themselves as unbiased. I have come across those on the minimalist side who do, though.
How about, instead of using ad hominems, you address the evidence that those on the maximalist side bring to the table. if their view is that of a crank, they must be either completely misinterpreting the evidence or completely misrepresenting it. How are they doing this.
@@stephengray1344 So, you're just gonna walk back your definition and pretend like nothing happened? First consensus is "settled" now it's "almost everyone agrees".
"Almost everyone agrees" is my definition, not that strawman you invented. Almost everyone with relevant qualifications in the field agrees that the Exodus story is pure myth. Such language is important because consensus is a moving target as new evidence and arguments are surfacing all the time.
Speaking of new things, it's telling that you have to rely on fossils like Kitchen and Hoffmeier (the latter of whom worked at an evangelical school which requires a signed statement of faith as condition of employment) to arrive at anything like a position and then ignore that neither of them have had any relevance in literal decades. Pretending as though nothing has happened in the field in all of this time. You're just living in the past in an effort to uphold your own dogmas. It's weak dude. You can be a christian and recognize reality. The Bible is not a source of history.
“It is impossible to make a man understand something when his pay cheque depends on him not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair
Was JFK really the president of the United States, like in Forrest Gump?
Yes, he's still the US president!
Can we just stop listening to JP once and for all? Its not taking us anywhere 😞
You decide whatever you want for yourself
That has always been the case
Sam Harris, Matt dillahunty and Alex have all shown that JP talks in incoherent riddles as well as talking a lot of bs
I agree
When it comes to religion/faith JP is all over the place but it does not mean he always talks gibberish, Some, people simply hate what he says because it burns them, like that we ought to take responsibility for our lives and not blame everything and everybody else. He strongly defended free speech some years ago and that led him to become so well known.
You are free to stop listening whenever you like.
Still can’t get over the fact that this guy built a career on raging against, what he calls “post-modernism” and “subjective truths”
Just baffling…
Lol ooga booga "big brother" ooga booga "woke mob" ooga booga "1984" ooga booga "etc, etc, etc" 😂😂
Are y’all too dense to see that he is using that exact same logic you are railing against in this very clip?
The same epistemological convictions that have given rise to the woke mob (in what I believe to understand is JPs view) is what he uses here to defend his word salad alla Exodus is happening eternally in the collective unconscious. “people think true just means something that objective happened in historical reality and that’s a problem, because that is not what stories are like.” To quote him directly from this video.
That is way more relativist than any of the Frankfurt school ever went.
He is closer to Derrida and Foucault than to his conservative friends in that regard.
@@kieranstyx3633 smart
@MystiqWisdombut he does the same thing even in the political realm so he is also woke even there
There is an irony to that
oh my god. this is one of the best videos of JP getting torn apart. not that alex is going for that, or is a bad actor or anything like that. but anyone, who doesn't even have to be involved in philosophy, can understand that JP just got dismantled on an EXTREMELY basic topic regarding the way he communicates. it's beautiful and cringe and the same time.
Holy hell...this was like watching an interrogation at Guantanamo!!
In the end he did finally answer, albeit in a very convoluted way, that; no he does not believe the Exodus historically happened. He easily could've done that in the very first sentence but the clown can't help himself. It's all about being performative. He even dresses as a court jester.
I think Peterson genuinely believes that the Bible has a greater mythological truth, so I think acknowledging the events didn't happen undermines that point.
Lol @alexlarsen you seem emotionally invested
"That's not my problem"
Nailed.
Peterson is actually losing his mind, I hope he can get some help and stop polluting the public discourse with his nonsense.
No worries he already lost his mind long ago. Hope it's still waiting for him at the lost and found department.
It's been an interesting exercise trying to find the line in the sand where he's truly lost it.. I used to give him more leeway when he was pulling at more general, aesop's fables kind of story telling about general life lessons (the tale of the gnome with the ruby is a good example of this). The minute he moves into the realm of political rights and wrongs he becomes entirely ill equipped as the consequences of his ideas suddenly become more tangible than he can handle.
I agree. He's well-read. Forms good sentences. He can be elegant. (When he lets someone else choose his clothes). Fairly intelligent. But he also seems very unhappy, resentful and lost.
@@kevinmcinerney1959 more frustrated than lost. He believes he needs to fix the World not realizing that the World is exactly how it should be...always.
@@jordanchen23 Although I don't like his stances once he jumped out of his realm of expertise and tried to be a political pundit, I still think he was the same intelligent guy, just misguided and being reactionary to things he perceived as wronging him.
I have been convinced by the theory that he acquired legitimate brain damage due to the radical treatment plan his daughter took him (comatose) to Russia for, due to his benzos addiction. There seems to have been a massive shift in his thinking ability before and after the coma, which can't simply be explained by him just continuing to go down the rabbit hole to looney-town. He rambles FAR more now (and people already accused him of being a word salad machine), seems incapable of actually engaging in a back-and-forth conversation as you can see in this video, is FAR more dead-set in his positions and worldviews, and is far more willing to engage in logical fallacies to protect his stances, while seemingly genuinely unaware that he's committing any.
At least before the coma when he spit out word salad it sounded like he was genuinely trying to explain a very complex idea he had about the world, even though someone more properly learned in the subjects of philosophy or religion could explain it much better. Now the word salad just comes out to avoid having to actually explain anything in clear terms, or get challenged on any of the things he believes in.
Hitch would have thrown him around like a rag doll.
If only. JP wouldn't have a career if Hitchens had a single debate with him
JP is deliberately obfuscating his ideas on religion. As such he is a very poor communicator on the subject. “That’s not my problem” is simply untrue. You’re the one with the point to make dude, and you’re not making it. That IS your problem.
@jimcarpenter965 for a communicator, he sure does seem to be reaching a vast audience. Ya might wanna re-evaluate that take lol
@@JB-wh3we Certainly not on the subject of religion. He’s a brilliant man, with expertise in so many subjects. But for some reason he coughs up rank psychologism when it comes to answering direct and specific questions about religion. If he does have a message it’s buried in word salad.