Jordan Peterson’s existential relativism

I’m sorry, Peterson fans, but now that I have begun to look more closely at him, it increasingly appears your intellectual hero is a complete joke at best. At worst, he is a insane monster of inhuman ethics. Assuming that others have understood him correctly, his definition of “truth” is absolutely and utterly false – which explains his lack of intellectual integrity – and his Darwinian ethics are not only incoherent, they don’t even rise to the functional level of Sam Harris’s hapless utilitarianism.

Harris, who is far from my idea of a formidable intellect or coherent debater, has absolutely no trouble resoundingly dismissing Peterson’s shoddy logic:

I recently interviewed the psychologist Jordan B. Peterson on the Waking Up podcast. As I said at the beginning of our conversation, I’d received more listener requests for him than for Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Edward Snowden—or, indeed, any other person on earth.

The resulting exchange, however, was not what our mutual fans were hoping for. Rather than discuss religion and atheism, or the relationship between science and ethics, we spent two hours debating what it means to say that a proposition is (or seems to be) “true.” This is a not trivial problem in philosophy. But the place at which Peterson and I got stuck was a strange one. He seemed to be claiming that any belief system compatible with our survival must be true, and any that gets us killed must be false. As I tried to show, this view makes no sense, and I couldn’t quite convince myself that Peterson actually held it.

I found this extremely hard to believe too, and I won’t utilize it until I confirm it from Peterson’s own writings, but the basic idea keeps cropping up again and again when I read what others have written about the man’s ideas, as well as in the man’s own words. Right now, I’m still at the “you have GOT to be fucking kidding me” stage; I am starting to suspect that this guy’s genius lies in piling up so much highly compressed bullshit that the bedazzled reader only sees a mirror of what he wants to believe.

  • Events as they occurred are only factual but not necessarily true. True is a judgment call and is therefore open to interpretation. The claim of ‘something’s’ validity can only be made when one can see ‘the bigger picture’ — the wellbeing of humanity or ‘life’ itself. Only then can we know if something is true rather than just factual or ‘materialistically true’. – Peterson
  • If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true. – Peterson
  • He seems to claim that any belief system compatible with our survival must be true, and any that gets us killed must be false.
  • Why is Peterson dishonest in some ways? I think he explained this in the debate with Sam Harris, where he said things like ” something which not benefits /potential harms humanity cant be true”.

This is worse than moral relativism, this is existential relativism. Harris correctly demolishes this absurd, childish, and narcissistic conception of truth in his post-interview response.

In the year 2017, the question “How should we act in the world?” simply isn’t reducible to Darwinism. In fact, most answers to this question arise in utter defiance of the evolutionary imperatives that produced us. Caring for disabled children would most likely have been maladaptive for our ancestors during any conditions of scarcity—while cannibalism recommended itself from time to time in every corner of the globe. How much inspiration should we draw from the fact that killing and eating children is also an ancient “archetype”? Overcoming tribalism, xenophobia, honor violence, and other forms of apish barbarity has been unthinkable for hundreds of millennia—that is, until now. And our moral progress on these fronts is the basis of our most enlightened answers to Peterson’s question.

We didn’t evolve to do science, or to build institutions that last for generations, but we must do these things to thrive. Thriving requires the survival of the species, of course, but it’s not reducible to that. Getting our genes into the next generation simply isn’t our only (or even our primary) goal—and it surely isn’t the foundation of our ethics. If we were true Darwinians, every man’s deepest desire would be to continually donate sperm to sperm banks so that he could sire thousands of children for whom he’d have no further responsibility. If we really viewed the world from the perspective of our genes, no other answer to the question “How should we act in the world?” would seem more fitting. I’ll let readers judge how closely this maps onto the human minds with which they’re acquainted.

Peterson believes that there is an inverse symmetry to our views on the relationship between facts and values. According to him, I see “ethics as nested inside scientific realism,” whereas he sees “scientific realism as nested inside Darwinian competition” (which he views in ethical terms).  A clearer way of stating this is that he thinks I locate all values within a system of truth claims, whereas he locates all truth claims in a system that selects for a single value: survival. Hence our stalemate.

Peterson’s peculiar form of pragmatism, anchored to the lone value of survival, can’t capture what we mean by “truth” (or even what most pragmatists mean by it).

But I have always said that the scientific worldview presupposes the validity of certain values—logical consistency (up to a point), explanatory elegance, respect for evidence, and so forth. This is why I think Hume’s famous gap between “is” (facts) and “ought” (values) is misleading on the topic of morality. We can easily reverse direction and discover that we won’t get to “is” without first obeying certain “oughts.” For instance, to understand what the cause of an illness is, one ought to pay attention to regularities in the body and in the environment that coincide with it. (Additionally, we now know that one ought to emphasize material causes, rather than sympathetic magic or the evil eye.) Facts and values are connected.

However, the fact that some values lie at the foundation of our scientific worldview does not suggest that all scientific truth claims can be judged on the basis of the single (Darwinian) criterion of whether the claimants survive long enough to breed.  On the contrary, this assertion is quite obviously false (as I believe I demonstrated throughout our podcast). We can easily imagine our species being outcompeted by one that has no understanding whatsoever of the cosmos. Would a lethal swarm of disease-bearing insects possess a worldview superior to our own by virtue of eradicating us? The question answers itself—because no insect could even pose it. Mere survival doesn’t suggest anything about the intellectual or ethical achievement of the survivors.

Some who listened to my conversation with Peterson thought that in objecting to his conception of truth, I was endorsing materialism or denying that the mind could play any role in determining the character of reality. But that isn’t the case. I was merely arguing that Peterson’s peculiar form of pragmatism, anchored to the lone value of survival, can’t capture what we mean by “truth” (or even what most pragmatists mean by it).

Peterson is so philosophically incompetent that he quite clearly does not fully comprehend that his idiotic ethical system not only fully justifies the Holocaust, it can actually be logically utilized to require future repetitions on a regular basis! I suspect he may harbor a dim awareness of this, which would explain why he is clinging so desperately to the 115 IQ myth that I disproved.

I have not yet confirmed for myself that the way Peterson characterized his definition of truth during the interview is fully representative of his actual thinking on the matter, or that Harris and other commenters are correctly describing it. But if this “evolutionary pragmatism” is genuinely the basis for his conception of the truth, then I have absolutely no problem dismissing the man as an architect of an evil philosophy, an intellectual charlatan, and a false prophet whose works merit complete and comprehensive demolition.

Spare me the “oh, he does so much good for the broken little boys” argument. If this definition of his conception of truth is correct, then Jordan Peterson is not doing anyone any good at all, and unlike more honest atheists like Dawkins and Harris, he is a philosophical wolf in sheep’s clothing, a Pied Piper who is attempting to transform those broken little boys into unethical monstrosities. He appears to have blown up his Gamma delusion bubble into an ethical system and a philosophy of life. I am even beginning to suspect that he isn’t just comprehensively wrong, but that he is mentally ill. Not unlike Google muttering “don’t be evil, don’t be evil” to itself, Peterson is desperately seeking an antidote to the chaos of his mind.

So, if you’re a Peterson fan, you might want to buckle up. I just read the transcript of the Harris interview, then put 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning on my tablet. The baleful eye of the Dark Lord is now focused squarely upon the man. And we’re not just looking at the possibility that the emperor has no clothes here, we’re being forced to consider the very real possibility that the emperor is actually a recently shorn sheep that sincerely believes it’s a cat.

The literal bankruptcy of Never Trump

Mytheos Holt performs a post-mortem on the quixotic Evan McMullin campaign:

For the forces that backed him, McMullin was not the first, the second, or even the third choice for his appointed task—namely, to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency in the name of donor-driven True Conservatism™. Rather, the forces that supported McMullin leaped from one anti-Trump hero to another, starting with the plaintive-sloganed Jeb!, continuing with the vapid dreamboat Marco Rubio, and finally ending up desperately lining up behind Ted Cruz because at least he went on their cruises.

What separates McMullin’s backers from other Jeb!, Rubio, or Cruz supporters, however, was their total unwillingness to accept that sometimes a primary just wouldn’t go their way. In many cases, this was because they belonged to a class of people for whom losing wasn’t supposed to happen because of who they were. This was particularly true of Bill Kristol, arguably the man who built what little meager infrastructure there was for McMullin, hoping to put up someone, anyone, who would stop the GOP from rejecting its self-appointed neoconservative establishment rulers, and their domesticated coterie of social conservatives, who, goshdarnit, were just too Christian and principled to limit immigration, or to attack the interests of major metropolitan donor industries.

And so it was that people who had never had to fight to win a primary decided they were going to try and fight back against someone whose only experience was winning a primary he was never supposed to win by sheer force of will. First, they did it by attempting to force a brokered convention, which presumably would have produced someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan as the nominee. All they accomplished was screaming helplessly from the floor of the RNC like a certain highly distressed member of the #Resistance.

Not to be deterred, they then decided to follow in the august footsteps of George Wallace and John Anderson, and run a third party protest candidate to ensure that no True Conservative™ would have to sully his or herself with a vote for Donald Trump. And for a while, their push looked like it might be something to worry about. Names like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, or even future Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis were bandied about with excitement. That is, until Romney, Sasse, and Mattis got wind of it and quickly made it plain that on no account were they involved in this, and would you please stop calling, Bill Kristol?!

But even after this, McMullin still wasn’t the first choice. That honor went to the august National Review columnist David French, who entertained the idea for just long enough to get a segment on Fox News complaining about how rude Trump supporters were. Then he promptly fled.

Only then, and finally, after casting about in the “darkness” of the dawning Age of Trump, the disappointed neoconservative Captain Ahabs realized they had to run someone if they wanted to look serious. Enter Evan McMullin, former House Republican Conference Chief Policy Director, former CIA agent, former investment banker, and man with nothing better to do because he was possibly the only unmarried Mormon over the age of 19 in Washington. And so, NeverTrump looked at McMullin, squinted, thought he looked enough like David French, and said: “OK, fine, you’ll do.”

Of course, quite rapidly it became clear that the chances of McMullin actually becoming president were someplace between zero and hahahahahahahaha . . . wait, what? But becoming president was no longer the point. It was all about sinking Trump, to prove to those awful populists who had dared to think for themselves, and not the way Bill Kristol and Bill Kristol’s donors wanted them to think, that they were servants, and could never live in the Big House as equals.

And so, a simple strategy for denying Trump the presidency was devised: McMullin would try to carve away enough of his voters in states with high Mormon populations so that even if Trump won a couple of swing states, the losses among Mormons would cancel out Trump’s victory. Whether McMullin won those states, or Clinton won them, was beside the point—which was, and only ever was, to hurt Trump. And, for a few moments, the strategy looked like it might work in Utah, right up until the Mormons thought it through, realized how much trouble they’d gone through making themselves part of the Republican coalition in the first place, and decided they’d rather not self-excommunicate for the sake of panicked Beltway grifters. Ultimately, McMullin came in third in Utah, behind even Hillary Clinton.

As has so often been the case, the light of the God-Emperor has revealed the true character of many a cuck and an America Secondist. I find myself wondering if McMullin even has the self-awareness to be ashamed of how he permitted himself to be used by Bill Kristol to screw over so many sanctimonious conservatives.

Then I recall who those sanctimonious conservatives were and how obnoxious they are, and I remember that I don’t care.

Skin in the game

Last week, I was asked how the Israelis regard the Diasporans and their refusal to join the rest of the Jewish nation. This post by a Jew who lived for nearly 30 years in the USA before moving to Israel  is on the harsh side, but it generally sums up the contemptuous attitude of most of the Israelis I know:

I want a divorce. Not from my wife, whom I love dearly, but from the liberal and progressive American Jewish community. From those American Jews who believe that they have a special right to judge and advise the state of Israel because their parents were Jewish…. Your Jewish DNA does not make you any more knowledgeable than anyone else, nor does it give you a greater stake in the Jewish state, unless you decide to accept the generous offer it has made to all Jews everywhere by its Law of Return.

The fact that you had a Bar or Bat Mitzvah does not mean that your piece in the Forward or your letter to the New York Times in which you explain why, as a Jew, you are traumatized by Israel’s efforts to defend her southern border, should be published any more than that of any other person’s.

Even the fact that at some point in your life you have experienced antisemitism doesn’t qualify you to talk about how Israel should behave toward her own antisemitic enemies. If antisemitism in the US is problem for you, there is always that Law of Return.

There is no reason that the pronouncements of “If Not Now” are any more worth listening to than those of the American Nazi Party. Peter Beinart isn’t a more authoritative source about Israel and the Arabs than David Duke just because he has a bigger nose.

The head of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, likes to talk about how the demands he makes of Israel are made out of “unconditional love,” because he wants to “repair it” according to his notion of tikkun olam. What he calls “love,” I call hypocrisy. He owns an apartment in Jerusalem. He should live in it, send his kids to be combat soldiers in the army, pay taxes, and learn to practice situational awareness when he walks the streets or gets on a bus. Then he can try to fix things here (he probably would still give wrong advice, but then at least he would suffer the consequences).

It shouldn’t be surprising that the Israelis are little more inclined to put up with the eternal backseat-driving and unrequested tikkun-olaming of their nomadic kindred than anyone else is. The difference is that unlike most other nations, they aren’t hesitant to call out the Diasporans for their hypocrisy and their enmity-inspiring behaviors, especially since the latter tend to actively damage Israel’s standing in the world.

For example, attempting to eliminate the First Amendment rights of Americans in the name of slowing down the BDS movement is a horrifically bad idea. There are few things more likely to lead to the USA cutting off all foreign aid to Israel; even the most philosemitic Christian Zionist is not going to legally amputate his own tongue for Israel.

Anyhow, this is the sort of thing that NN Taleb means when he talks about the importance of skin in the game; it is a very clear example of how those with skin in the game are always disinclined to respect or pay any attention to those who lack it.

EXCERPT: Hunter Killer

This is an excerpt from WARDOGS INC. #2: Hunter Killer, published today.

Two weeks later I stood on a platform behind Chief Executive Officer (Planetary) Heiermach, suited up and carrying both my Reaper and my Popov-Norinco 60. I was glad for my battlesuit’s climate control as I watched the important men and women around me sweating in the hot afternoon sun.

I’d placed Zelag and Ward down in front of the stage, behind the local fuzz. Jones was on the stage platform with me, also a bit behind Heiermach. The crowd was pretty big. I’d estimate between twenty and thirty thousand people were there. The whole thing was a legitimately big deal.

DVG and the Chrysalans had managed to put this event together and get it advertised quickly. I suppose you can do stuff like that when you have more money than God. There were plenty of locals present, along with more than a few offworld tourists, historians and media crews interested in the temple. I had no doubt I’d end up in the background of a half-dozen documentaries. Good thing I was wearing my exo and my visor was mirrored.

Wardogs had provided us with an armored luxury skycar and a driver to escort Mr. Heiermach. That got us to the mountain in about five minutes instead of driving an hour or two through the desert. Mount Xirtis looked close through the windows of DVG HQ but the flat terrain played tricks on you.

The ceremony itself was typical PR stuff. Sappy speeches by local politicians and a university professor, various religious stuff, some music, blah blah blah. At one point some young Chrysalans did a little dance with gauzy wings on their backs, then we had to listen to a guy playing some sort of glass organ with his feet. I was desperate for coffee to stay awake within the first ten minutes, and I’d been standing here for two hours.

Fortunately, our suits are well-stocked with pharma. I set it to zing me with a little chemical pick-me-up whenever I started nodding and my heart rate dropped too low.

Heiermach played emcee himself. He was good at it too. He made it look easy, introducing each person and pronouncing their names correctly, then standing back and letting them go for their allotted time, then stepping in and moving everything along to the next portion of the program if it looked like they were going to go on too long.

“And next we have a woman who is both a priestess of the temple and an honored historian,” Heiermach announced, his hand on the shoulder of a heavy, older woman with facial tattoos. “You may have seen her book on the divine origins of the temple and the many fascinating events which took place over the centuries on this very ground. Her work has been designated as worth preserving in the Alexandrian national library, as well as bring recognized by the Academy of the Ascendancy as a–”

Some yelling up front at the barriers caused Heiermach to pause. My visor was jacked into the security grid and gave me a tactical summary. Four yellows were pushing through the surveillance field and starting to scuffle with the local police.

“Possible hostiles at barrier!” I yelled into my comm, but I could already see Ward and Zelag converging rapidly on the scrum, so I held my position. Just to be safe, I pulled my Reaper and stepped in front of the CEO and the confused historian, holding it up so no one would think I was aiming it at them. Jones stood behind Heiermach, facing backwards in case a second threat materialized from behind the stage.

I focused on the four men and confirmed they were hostiles. They were dressed like tourists, but they’d pulled vibro blades and had put the police down fast. Two police already lay bleeding on the ground, while a third was staggering away holding his bleeding stomach. I flicked the Blitz to a moderate dispersion and braced to fire, but before I had the chance there were multiple flashes of plasma fire from both flanks and all four of the attackers went down hard.

The crowd was yelling and shouting and starting to get frantic.

“Tell them the threat is neutralized!” I said to Heiermach. “Keep them from rioting!”

He recovered fast, taking the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen—everything is under control. Please remain calm—please stay where you are!”

“Jones, stay with Heiermach,” I ordered, then jumped down off the stage.

On the ground were four men, two of them neatly burned through center mass by plasma bolts. Ward and Zelag were already there.

“Ward, Zelag? Who torched these two?” I asked.

“That was me,” Zelag admitted. “I nailed them with my Cerebus.”

“Good shooting,” I said. “Though non-lethal would have been better.”

I kicked myself mentally. I should have specified that to the team. We wanted captures, not kills. Assuming knowledge was not good leadership, especially since Zelag was a new guy.

“I didn’t kill mine,” Ward said, pointing to the other bodies on the ground. They were still breathing with no burns. Stunned. One of them had lost his hair—a wig? I looked at his detached hair, then at his head. On it was a network of green tattoos, ending at his face where they’d been obscured by makeup. I pulled at the other guy’s hair and it came off as well, also revealing ink.

Then I examined the other two. All of them were wearing wigs. They must be radical monks who hadn’t gotten the memo. Apparently the druid was right and not everyone was easily convinced of DVG’s contrition. Or maybe the gods were still pissed.

One of the two wounded police officers was now sitting up, his arm slashed from elbow to shoulder. The other one was being carried off on a stretcher.

“Damn Chrysalans,” said the local police chief, taking my arm and addressing me over the murmur of the crowd. I nodded. He shook his head. “I swear, I know they’ve been around a long time, but if I had my druthers…”

We’d introduced ourselves to the captain before the event when discussing the security plans and he’d told me in no uncertain terms what he thought of the “crazy cultists and their stupid temple.” I watched the police search the living and the dead. All four of the faux tourists had been carrying blades. I thanked Ares none of them had been wearing an explosive vest. Though the sniffers would have picked that up, I mused. Okay, a disrupter. Thank Ares none of them had a disrupter.

“You’d better make an announcement,” I said to the police chief, aware that the crowd was restless. “Get this thing back on track.”

I took the stage again, as did the police chief. He made a quick announcement, stating that two police officers had been injured in the line of duty but were receiving care and that “security had neutralized the threat and we shouldn’t let terror derail this momentous occasion.”

The event resumed, with Heiermach thanking the universe as well as the local gods and the sacred mountain for keeping everyone safe. We made it through without incident. As the sun set over the temple, the chief druid took the stage and publicly hugged Heiermach, accepting his repentance and blessing him for it, then sharing a drink from a large and glittering ceremonial chalice. It was passed around on stage among a circle of Chrysalans along with important members of the city and the DVG staff, then torches were lit and songs were sung for another half hour before the event came to a close.

And that’s when everything went rodeo.

Greatest President ever

The South Korean president says the God-Emperor merits the Nobel Peace Prize:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has shaken off a suggestion that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump “can take the Nobel prize” as long as the Koreas receive peace in return.

Moon made the comment Monday in response to a suggestion that he receive the award by the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 after a summit with then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Moon held a summit with current leader Kim Jong Un last week in which Moon and Kim, the son of Kim Jong Il, walked together across the tense border and agreed to a raft of initiatives meant to ease animosity. Moon responded to the suggestion of Nobel glory by saying, “President Trump can take the Nobel prize. The only thing we need is peace,” according to the South’s presidential office…. Also on Monday, the North’s parliament adopted a decree to sync its time zone with South Korea’s this Saturday. North Korea’s official news agency said the move was made at the proposal of Kim, who found it was “a painful wrench to see two clocks indicating Pyongyang and Seoul times hanging on a wall of the summit venue.”

President Trump still needs to Drain the Swamp and Build the Wall before he can nail down Rushmore status, but he has already accomplished considerably more than anyone had a right to expect.

Further to the indictment

I suspected Jordan Peterson not only lacked intellectual integrity, but was not even on the side of Western civilization at all. Yesterday, he contributed more documentation to the growing pile of evidence that he is an enemy of the truth and the West alike.

Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
Heavens to Murgatroyd! as Bugs Bunny had it: A misogynistic antisemitic right-wing identity-politics ideologue disapproves of me…

He’s referring to this piece by Adam Piggot, a soon-to-be former fan of his:

I have been an advocate of Peterson for a while and he speaks a great deal of truth. But on reflection I am beginning to reappraise my position on him. Did the alt right embrace him so readily because we thought we had finally found someone who taught in progressive universities who wasn’t a foaming at the mouth liberal? Peterson is most certainly not foaming at the mouth; but is it true that he is not a liberal? The assumption has been that but perhaps he is merely a liberal whom we find palatable.

Peterson seems to be the real deal because we desperately want him to be the real deal.

Another thing that I have noticed in his discussions and speeches, and particularly in the Q&A sessions, is that he constantly skirts around the subject of biological reality. Once again the assumption on our part has been that he doesn’t want to go there because it would make his position untenable within the prog system in which he works. But that is a comfortable and convenient assumption on our part. Perhaps the truth is that he doesn’t go there because he himself is a believer of the magic dirt theory of race.

Peterson’s fans have done their best to try to excuse his behavior, to little avail, as his generic and false accusation quoted above could have just as easily been produced by any other Canadian feminist left-wing academic globalist. Furthermore, we now know that Peterson is aware of my post addressing his inept appeal to the mythical “115 IQ”, as it is cited in the article to which he linked.

Recently Peterson wrote a piece titled On the so-called Jewish question. There was a good deal of push-back in the comments, but the real push-back he encountered was from Vox Day – The myth of Jordan Peterson’s integrity.

“I do not know Jordan Peterson, but his incorrect and deceitful arguments and his unfair, unjustified attacks on his critics show him to be an inept and integrity-challenged coward who lacks commitment to the truth. The combination of his sudden success with his observable intellectual ineptitude suggests that he has been elevated by the mainstream media in order to provide a harmless, toothless, and non-Christian alternative to the failed conservative movement of William F. Buckley and the failed neoconservative movement of Bill Kristol and Ben Shapiro.”

As of this time Peterson has not responded to Day’s demolition of his article. A live debate between the two will most probably not eventuate as Day would be too great a risk and the topics at hand are as we know are verboten for Peterson.

Ultimately I believe that Peterson is an elaborate and very clever deception to prevent young men from inadvertently straying off the progressive reservation.

It does rather look as if Peterson is little more than the newest member of the Approved Opposition to be anointed by the mainstream media, to go with “whip-smart” Benny Shapiro, George “now, that twists my bowtie” Will, and the Official Conservative of the Washington Post, Megan McCardle, collectively known as the Washington Generals, media edition. Don’t forget, William F. Buckley became the pope of the conservative movement back in the day on the basis of his show Firing Line and his public demolition of various leftist patsies such as Gore Vidal.

Yes, Peterson speaks certain truths, but only the easy and uncontroversial ones. From what I see, he is treading the broad and easy path that leads to public acclamation as well as other destinations. But the real problem with Peterson is that he is strategically irrelevant. The societal problems caused by modernism simply cannot be solved by a modernist fighting postmodernism.

At this point it is still possible that Peterson will take action to salvage his intellectual integrity. But I think it is increasingly unlikely, as this is the second time in a row that he has doubled-down and resorted to childish attempts to discredit and disqualify his critics rather than responding substantively to them. So, I anticipate that his future behavior, and his continued engagement of other lightweight leftists further to his left in lieu of the growing number of substantial critics to his right, will serve to confirm the opinion of skeptics like NN Taleb and me.

Jordan B Peterson@jordanbpeterson
And you call me a fascist? You sanctimonious prick. If you were in my room at the moment, I’d slap you happily. 

How very fierce. Truly the epitome of the courageous intellectual warrior. I find myself wondering this: if Jordan Peterson believes calling someone else “a fascist” makes one a sanctimonious prick, then what does calling someone “a misogynistic antisemitic right-wing identity-politics ideologue” make him?

“I’m worried always that I’ll make a mistake in what I say… impulsive mistake, careless mistake, that I won’t be on top of things in a combative interview, that sort of thing, that I’ll make a mistake. I’ve been worried about that, almost to the exclusion of everything else for the last 15 months.” 
– Jordan Peterson

Interesting. I am far more inclined to worry about the state of the nation and the survival of the West myself; if I make a mistake, then I will simply own up to it and correct it. In any event, you have made a big mistake, Dr. Peterson. And you’ve doubled down on it twice already.

UPDATE: Another informative Peterson quote demonstrating that he is not on the side of the West.

“I’m not anti-feminist.”
Facebook, August 10, 2017

Mailvox: expert witness

John Fuerst of the Ulster Institute weighs in on the myth of the 115 mean IQ being pushed by Jordan Peterson, among others, with a pair of comments here:

I more or less agree with Vox. I collaborate with Richard Lynn and I am familiar with the literature and most of the studies (both reported and not).

As for Israel, on international tests, Hebrew speakers (Jews) score around the level of White Europeans, while Arab speakers score around that of other Middle Easterners (around 1+ standard deviation below the European White mean). See, for example, “Why Israel does poorly in the PISA exams – perceptions versus reality (2017)”, and the Taub Centers’ “State of the nation picture (2014/2017)” reports.

For example, the non- Haredi Jewish PISA 2012 math average was 489 (SD ~93), for White Americans for the same year it was 506 (SD 83). For Israel and the US as a whole, the means and SDs were, respectively, 481 (SD 90) and 466 (SD 105).
There is year to year variability. But it is safe to say that on international math, reading, and science exams, Israeli Jews do no better than Whites in typical Western countries. Note, these figures exclude most Haredi Jews who both do rather poor on exams (see the Taub Center’s reports) and who are around 80{c2bf88dee429485d3b0f61325a10c26cb2e215274027e21905ef5aec05bbd0e7} Ashk. Thus, the testing samples tend to be less Ashk than the general population, but the excluded Ashk are substantially less proficient than average.)

Thus, as Vox notes, if one argues that Ashk Israeli come in at around 115, one has to maintain that non-Ashk Jews come in around 85. Yet, this latter conjecture is inconsistent with the variance among Jews (e.g., Figure 2, 2017 paper) and, more notably, the national scores at the 98th percentile (e.g., Figure 4, 2017 paper), a point which can be shown quantitatively. The relatively high standard deviation among Israeli Jews (about 93 versus the American White 83) does suggest subgroup differences, though.

Of course, one could make ad hoc accounts for why Ashk Jews in Israel seemingly do worse that Ashk Jews in the U.S. and ad hoc accounts for why the meta-analytic American Jewish IQ is closer to 5 IQ points above the White mean than 15. But, at this point, we are just adding epicycles.

I should note that IQ and achievement tests in Israel indicate a 0.5 to 1.0 standard deviation gap between Ashkenazi/European origin Jews and Oriental & North African origin ones. (Migrant generation, test, and sample depending.) Richard has a somewhat dated summary. Of course, I would advise checking the original studies and taking his summary statistic with a grain of salt — as should be done with everyone.

David, H., & Lynn, R. (2007). Intelligence Differences between European and Oriental Jews in Israel. Journal of Biosocial Science, 39(3), 465-473.

My working estimate is a Ashk ~ 12 point advantage overall non-Ashk Jew in Israel. There is further differentiation between Oriental, North African, and Ethiopian Jews, of course. I base this on what Richard reported and a number of studies missed, but mean it as only a crude estimate.

If the mean Jewish Israeli IQ is about 100 normed on a typical White sample, the mean Ashk Israeli IQ would seem to be about 106.

For the record, John Fuerst is a serious scholar in the field of human intelligence. He knows as much about this stuff as anyone else, and certainly more than the long-dead scholars who cherry-picked test results from first-graders more than sixty years ago.

The myth of Jordan Peterson’s integrity

yclepedbobali observes that Jordan Peterson not only cannot answer my critique in a for summarized by someone else, he is downright afraid of his readers encountering it and exposing his posturing on a subject he refuses to honestly address.

I’m a midwit, at very best. Just synthesising your arguments, with a little embellishment, blew his grand ‘arithmetic triumph over the bucko Nazgul’ into a million tiny leaves on the Canadian breeze.

He can publicise and flaunt his flawless victory over the lead comment, so ‘representative’ of the apparent poor intellectual stock of right wing thugs. Just another conspiracy theorist helpless before the isolate and trinity of that ‘irrefutable’ average IQ of 115, the bell curve tail distribution, and openness to experience and liberalism. But he knows, and he knows we know.

I see why no one debates you. Even a midwit like me becomes something formidable armed with your mental tools and pugilist approach.

Here is my articulated critique of Jordan Peterson’s argument. First, I suggest reading Jordan Peterson’s actual argument in full: “On the so-called Jewish Question” as well as his subsequent response to a critic who did a reasonable job of showing how Peterson’s argument did not hold up given the population demographics. I linked to the archive as well as to his site because I anticipate Peterson will memory-hole it once he realizes how hapless and dishonest it makes him look to an unbiased reader. His argument is summarized as follows:

  1. One requires a victim and a perpetrator in order to play identity politics.
  2. The Far Right has chosen European culture as a victim due to its unrecognized resentment and cowardly and incompetent failure to deal with the world forthrightly, and have incorrectly selected the Jews as perpetrator due to Jewish overrepresentation in positions of authority, competence and influence. 
  3. Jewish people are overrepresented in positions of competence and authority because, as a group, they have a higher mean IQ.
  4. Jews have a mean IQ of 115.
  5. “40.8{c2bf88dee429485d3b0f61325a10c26cb2e215274027e21905ef5aec05bbd0e7} of the 145+ IQ population is Jewish.”
  6. “There is no evidence whatsoever that Ashkenazi Jews are over-represented in any occupations/interests for reasons other than intelligence and the associated effects of intelligence on personality and political belief. Thus, no conspiratorial claims based on ethnic identity need to be given credence.”

Peterson’s argument is not merely incorrect, literally every single aspect of it is false. It is so resolutely and demonstrably false that it is not possible for Jordan Peterson to have constructed it in innocence by mistake. In my opinion, it clearly represents a purposeful intent to deceive his audience and falsely accuse those he labels “the far right”. My responses to those six points, with the numbers updated to reflect the most recent population demographics.

  1. One does not require a victim or a perpetrator in order to play identity politics. One does not need to be aware of identity politics or even to believe they exist to find oneself engulfed in them. To quote Lee Kwan Yew, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” All a society requires is multiracial, multiethnic, or multireligious components and identity politics will inevitably appear once the minority populations become sufficiently numerous or influential.
  2. European culture and the European nations are observably victims of mass immigration. This is a fact that is no more disputable than the fact that the indigenous American populations were victims of mass immigration in the 16th and 17th centuries and Asian populations were victims of colonization and imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. The perpetrators are, by definition, the immigrants, as well as those who worked to alter the various laws to permit the immigrants entry.
  3. Jews are not overrepresented in positions of competence and authority because, as a group, they have a higher mean IQ, because a) IQs over 145 do not tend to help, but rather tend to hinder, an individual’s ability to attain such positions, and b) their higher mean IQ is not high enough to compensate for their much smaller population.
  4. Jews do not have an average mean IQ of 115. Globally, they have an average mean IQ that is a maximum of 103.2. In the US, where the percentage of high-IQ Ashkenazim is higher, they have a maximum average mean IQ of 105.1.
  5. Less than 4 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish.
  6. Thus, conspiratorial claims based on ethnic identity remain a valid potential explanation for Jewish overrepresentation in positions of competence and authority. Jordan Peterson is at best an inept intellectual disputant, and at worst an intentional deceiver.

Now I will proceed to prove responses 3, 4, and 5 in detail. Response 6 follows naturally from them.

On point 3.

There is a linear relationship between intelligence and effective leadership, but only up to 120 IQ. This association reverses at IQ 120. This is primarily due to the IQ communication gap which prevents effective communication across 2 standard deviations (30 IQ points) of intelligence. This negative effect of high IQ is further compounded by the statistical exclusion of the cognitive elite from intellectually elite professions.

The probability of entering and remaining in an intellectually elite profession such as Physician, Judge, Professor, Scientist, Corporate Executive, etc. increases with IQ to about 133. It then falls about 1/3 by 140. By 150 IQ the probability has fallen by 97{c2bf88dee429485d3b0f61325a10c26cb2e215274027e21905ef5aec05bbd0e7}! In other words, a significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded from the population that addresses the biggest problems of our time or who are responsible for assuring the efficient operation of social, scientific, political and economic institutions.

Jordan Peterson’s explanation for Jewish success is not only wrong, but, ironically, even if it had been factually based his argument would have proven precisely the opposite of that which he was attempting to demonstrate. The fact that Jews are overrepresented in positions of competence and authority is actually conclusive statistical evidence that their average mean IQ cannot be uniquely and extraordinarily high.

On point 4

The primary and oft-cited source of the “115 mean IQ” claim is the 1957 study by Boris Levinson entitled “The Intelligence of Applicants for Admission to Jewish Day Schools” published in Jewish Social Studies,Vol. 19, No. 3/4 (Jul. – Oct., 1957), pp. 129-140.

In the study, which reported a 114.88 mean IQ for the 2083 very young students sampled, the author duly noted its intrinsic limitations.

“This study is limited to applicants for Day Schools adhering to the principles of the National Commission for Yeshiva Education. This sampling does not claim to represent the entire Jewish school population or even those children attending yeshiva Day Schools with a different educational emphasis.”

The 114.88 mean IQ did not represent the entire U.S. Jewish population in 1956 and therefore cannot possibly represent the entire U.S. Jewish population 61 years later. Furthermore, even if it did correctly represent the entire Jewish Ashkenazi population in the USA then, it would not do so now, due to the fact that what used to be a relatively pure Ashkenazi population is now 44 percent genetically adulterated by the mainstream population due to intermarriage. The current US population of 5,425,000 Jews is now made up of the following genetic groups:

  • 51.6 Ashkenazi
  • 40.6 Half-Ashkenazi, Half-European (Which really means three-quarters European ancestry.)
  • 07.8 Sephardic, Mizrahi, and other backgrounds

Remember, it’s not the ethnic identity that magically conveys intelligence on an individual, intelligence is primarily a consequence of the individual’s genetic ancestry. Even if individuals in the second category consider themselves to be every bit as Jewish as their immigrant Jewish grandparents in a cultural, ethnic, or religious sense, it is not true from a genetic perspective and the studies on mean Ashkenazi IQ therefore cannot apply to them. I suspect that this is an unintentional focus on identity instead of genetics on Peterson’s part, (an ironic one, given his attack on identity politics), and it is a mistake that he makes it twice. Now, given that the 107.5 mean Ashkenazi IQ given by Lynn is at least possibly correct (unlike the false 115 claim which cannot be) and the 102 mean IQ for white Americans, we can reasonably estimate the Half-Ashkenazi mean IQ to be halfway between the two population groups, or 104.8.

Since the non-Ashkenazi Jewish mean IQ is somewhere between 84.2 (if A-IQ=115) and 91 (if A-IQ=107.5) given the reported average IQ of Israel being 95, this means that the maximum mean IQ of the U.S. Jewish population is 105.1, 3.1 points higher than the mean White IQ of 102 but below the reported mean East Asian-American IQ of 106.

On point 5

Peterson’s claim that 40.8 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish is not merely wrong, it is off by more than an order of magnitude! First, he omits the Asian and Black populations, second, he exaggerates the US Jewish population by 10 percent and fails to account for the fact that 48.4 percent of that population is either part-Ashkenazi or non-Ashkenazi, and third, he again makes the mistake of relying upon identity rather than genetics for the White population. Use of the White, Non-Hispanic population is not correct here, because the White Hispanic population is defined as being genetically white and therefore cannot be excluded from the relevant White population numbers.

With a mean IQ of 105.1 and a population of 5,425,000, the standard distribution curve indicates 21,158 Jews with 145+ IQs in the United States. In addition to this, the mean IQ of 102 for the White population of 246,660,710 indicates 517,987 Whites with 145+ IQs, plus another 31,913 equally high-IQ Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans resident in the United States.

Jews therefore account for 3.7 percent of the 145+ IQ set in the United States, not 40.8 percent of it. Jordan Peterson was off by more than an order of magnitude, his argument is completely incorrect, and his public charges of cowardice and “incompetent failure to deal with the world forthrightly” appear to be emotional projections of Peterson’s own cowardice and incompetent failure.

On point 6

I do not know Jordan Peterson, but his incorrect and deceitful arguments and his unfair, unjustified attacks on his critics show him to be an inept and integrity-challenged coward who lacks commitment to the truth. The combination of his sudden success with his observable intellectual ineptitude suggests that he has been elevated by the mainstream media in order to provide a harmless, toothless, and non-Christian alternative to the failed conservative movement of William F. Buckley and the failed neoconservative movement of Bill Kristol and Ben Shapiro.

Wardogs Inc. #2: Hunter Killer

All war is murder for profit.

Some corporations are just more open about it.

WARDOGS INCORPORATED is one of the largest and most professional mercenary corporations operating in the Kantillon subsector. If you need a bodyguard, an assassination team, or an armored cavalry regiment complete with air support, WARDOGS Inc. can provide it for you… for a very steep price.

Fresh from the nuclear-scarred battlefields of Ulixis, Tommy Falkland and his squad mates are happy to be assigned to a simple corporate bodyguard contract when the interstellar corporation Datacon Verlag inadvertently offends a seriously strange religious cult with an advertising campaign and turns to Wardogs Incorporated for protection. But the contract proves to be considerably more challenging than expected when the executive they are guarding ends up dead, murdered by a military-grade toxin, and they find themselves ordered to track down his killer. But how do you solve a murder when your two primary skills are breaking things and killing people?

HUNTER KILLER is the second in the WARDOGS INC. series of military science fiction novels. From the reviews of the first book, BATTLESUIT BASTARDS:

  • Excellent MilSF. Gritty and no nonsense mercs far into Earth’s history. Its the Acendency now, the world of Quantom Mortus. Thoroughly enjoyed this and looking to more in what must be a series. The mercenaries, their tactics, combat moves are all there. You could actually get a low level tactical and some strategic education from novels like this. Obviously written by someone who knows of the craft of war.
  • This is what I call military science fiction. I could tell from the first two lines that this book was going to be worth the read! The opening was very strong. There is no time for afternoon tea for these guys, because there is so much action.
  • Surprisingly good yarn. Well realised universe. Lots of action. Very much in the mercenary companies idiom. Easy to race through to find out what happens next. Expert writing and pacing.
  • Wardogs is a fun romp through the Quantum Mortis universe by a new author. I loved the story and the characters it was non-stop action from beginning to end. I’m hoping to see many more Wardog stories. If you like Drake, Ringo, Carr, or Stirling you should enjoy this book.
  • The book compares well to David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, the original book on Sci Fi Mercs. This takes place in the world of Quantum Mortis, where you have super advanced technology, in a universe that resembles city states. And with a fight going on with AIs. This is a mercenary company, publicly traded with stock options, in that universe. 
If you like Quantum Mortis, then I can assure you that you will like these books.

Test-optionality

That’s one way to avoid the merit-based IQ showdown that is looming at the elite universities. Get rid of the tests:

There are now well over 1,000 colleges and universities that don’t require SAT or ACT scores in deciding whom to admit, a number that’s growing every year. And a new study finds that scores on those tests are of little value in predicting students’ performance in college, and raises the question: Should those tests be required at all?

Colleges that have gone “test optional” enroll — and graduate — a higher proportion of low-income and first generation-students, and more students from diverse backgrounds, the researchers found in the study, Defining Access: How Test-Optional Works.

“Our research clearly demonstrates that these students graduate often at a higher rate,” said Steve Syverson, an assistant vice chancellor at the University of Washington Bothell, and co-author of the study.

“When a college considers going test-optional, one of the first reactions that people, including alumni, feel is that the college will be admitting less qualified students,” he added. Syverson says the study should reassure admissions officials who’ve decided to go test-optional.

Syverson and his team of researchers studied 28 public and private institutions that no longer require test scores, and tracked about 956,000 individual student records.

Students like Ian Haimowitz, a sophomore at George Washington University, a test-optional school in Washington D.C.

He says in the beginning, he felt like a fish out of water.

“I know for a fact I’m the first Nicaraguan-American, the first Latino, the first Jewish Latino that a lot of kids meet,” he says.

He adds that when he arrived at GW, he looked around and asked himself, “What am I doing here with kids who went to private schools and got the best education possible?”

It was a very different world than he grew up in back in New Mexico.

“I remember my freshman year of high school, I didn’t have a math teacher. Maybe that’s why you see in my test score that I didn’t have a good grounding in math. But I believed my potential was still there.”

Ian was a straight-A student in high school, but his SAT scores were so low he didn’t think any top tier school would accept him. He says not having to submit his test scores opened the doors to a top selective school.

We can safely expect the Ivy League schools to try to get rid of objective testing as soon as possible, before it becomes obvious that there have been some very heavy thumbs on the admissions process at all of their institutions.