Tag: mailvox

Apparently the ways of God are very mysterious indeed.

I have been following Jordan Peterson for the last year and his teachings really appealed to me. However, I kept having this nagging feeling that something wasn’t right or some sense of danger. It bothered me that he was always cagey about if he was a Christian or not. All of the fellow Christians I know will tell you pretty quickly they are believers. So I prayed about it and asked that if he was a false prophet or a danger that he would be revealed. Within a few months of my first prayer, the Dark Lord turns his eye upon Jordan Peterson. Prayer answered!

Perhaps it is a coincidence or perhaps it is divine inspiration. But there is no need to take my opinion as given. The truth is out there. And by “truth”, I mean Aristotelian Correspondence truth, not any of the many contradictory definitions provided by Peterson fans. I actually find myself getting increasingly annoyed with the uninformed Peterson fans who quite clearly have not sufficiently familiarized themselves with the teachings of their psycho-prophet and accuse me of doing nothing more than making groundless accusations which don’t prove anything out of envy, ignorance, and malice.

The really strange thing about all of this is that I had no absolutely no interest in Jordan Peterson whatsoever. I knew he made videos and he’d written a bestseller, but I didn’t even know what it was called. I was under the vague impression that the book that sounded a little like Hillary Clinton’s book was the recent bestseller. All I knew is that he got it wrong about Ashkenazi mean IQ and then doubled down when he was called on it. Having previously done the relevant demographic math, I made my point in a matter of minutes – he was wrong and he had to know it – and would have happily left it at that were it not for the angry Jordan Peterson fans attacking me and claiming that the good doctor was a great Christian man dedicated to the truth and a saint who would never have done such a thing.

The more I looked into the man, the more falsehood I saw. Now I’ve seen that every time I quote the man, I am accused of misrepresenting, mischaracterizing, misleading, and lying by the very people who are denying that Jordan Peterson is what he himself claims to be. They will go so far as to claim that he doesn’t really mean what he says, he doesn’t really understand what he says, and he doesn’t actually know what he is saying rather than take the man at his word and accept that he is not what they believe him to be.

Challenge accepted. If they require a conclusively damning case even the man’s own wife can’t deny, then I will give it to them. Deus vult, apparently.

Jordan Peterson is a conservative.

I abandoned the traditions that supported me, at about the same time I left childhood. This meant that I had no broader socially constructed “philosophy” at hand to aid my understanding as I became aware of the existential problems that accompany maturity. The final consequences ofthat lack took years to become fully manifest. In the meantime, however, my nascent concern with questions of moral justice found immediate resolution. I started working as a volunteer for a mildly socialist political party, and adopted the party line.

Economic injustice was at the root of all evil, as far as I was concerned. Such injustice could be rectified, as a consequence of the rearrangement of social organizations. I could play a part in that admirable revolution, carrying out my ideological beliefs….

I had attended several left-wing party congresses, as a student politician and active party worker. I hoped to emulate the socialist leaders. The left had a long and honorable history in Canada, and attracted some truly competent and caring people. However, I could not generate much respect for the numerous low-level party activists I encountered at these meetings. They seemed to live to complain. They had no career, frequently, and no family, no completed education—nothing but ideology. They were peevish, irritable, and little, in every sense of the word. I was faced, in consequence, with the mirror image of the problem I encountered on the college board: I did not admire many of the individuals who believed the same things I did. This additional complication furthered my existential confusion.

My college roommate, an insightful cynic, expressed skepticism regarding my ideological beliefs. He told me that the world could not be completely encapsulated within the boundaries of socialist philosophy. I had more or less come to this conclusion on my own, but had not admitted so much in words. Soon afterward, however, I read George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. This book finally undermined me—not only my socialist ideology, but my faith in ideological stances themselves. In the famous essay concluding that book (written for—and much to the dismay of—the British Left Book Club) Orwell described the great flaw of socialism, and the reason for its frequent failure to attract and maintain democratic power (at least in Britain). Orwell said, essentially, that socialists did not really like the poor. They merely hated the rich. His idea struck home instantly. Socialist ideology served to mask resentment and hatred, bred by failure. Many of the party activists I had encountered were using the ideals of social justice to rationalize their pursuit of personal revenge.

Whose fault was it that I was poor or uneducated and unadmired? Obviously, the fault of the rich, well-schooled and respected. How convenient, then, that the demands of revenge and abstract justice dovetailed! It was only right to obtain recompense from those more fortunate than me.

Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone. Quite the reverse. We were out to improve things—but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger—but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

It was not socialist ideology that posed the problem, then, but ideology as such.
– Maps of Meaning

Jordan Peterson is a Christian

Although I had grown up in a Christian environment—and had a successful and happy childhood, in at least partial consequence—I was more than willing to throw aside the structure that had fostered me. No one really opposed my rebellious efforts, either, in church or at home—in part because those who were deeply religious (or who might have wanted to be) had no intellectually acceptable counter-arguments at their disposal. After all, many of the basic tenets of Christian belief were incomprehensible, if not clearly absurd. The virgin birth was an impossibility; likewise, the notion that someone could rise from the dead.
– Maps of Meaning

Lott: Do you believe that Jesus rose again from the dead?”

Peterson: I cannot answer that question. And the reason is because… okay… let me think about that for a minute… see if I can come up with a reasonable answer for that. Well, the first answer would be: It depends on what you mean by Jesus…. I don’t understand the structure of being well enough to make my way through the complexities of the resurrection story, I would say it’s the most mysterious element of the biblical stories to me, and perhaps I’m not alone in that, it’s the central drama in the Christian corpus let’s say. But I don’t believe that it’s reasonable to boil it down to something like “do you believe that or do you not believe it”, you know, it’s not… I don’t know what the limits… I don’t know the limits of human possibility.
– Am I Christian? Interview with Tim Lott.

Jordan Peterson’s approach is that of a psychiatrist, not a philosopher or theologian

I am playing at the philosophical level, or maybe I’m playing at the theological level and what I am trying to do is say what I think as clearly as I possibly can and to listen to the feedback and modify my message when that seems to be necessary and apart from that I am willing to let the chips fall where they will.
– NBC interview

Jordan Peterson believes in God.

Q: How would you define your God? Do you believe in the supernatural? Do you pray?

A: My God is the spirit that is trying to elevate Being. My God is the spirit that makes everything come together. My God is the spirit that makes order out of chaos and then recasts order when it has become too limiting. My God is the spirit of truth incarnate. None of that is supernatural. It is instead what is most real. It depends on what you mean by pray. I don’t ask God for favors, if that’s what you mean.
– Reddit Ask Me Anything, 2017

This defense of Jordan Peterson is very typical of the other attempted defenses of the man and his philosophy that I have seen. From a comment on the Darkstream: The Core Purpose of Jordan Peterson.

That is completely taken out of contexts. Hes encouraging people to clean up there act. The first step is stop doing things you know to be wrong.  Hes encouraging you not to get mixed up in philosophy of weather or not something is actual wrong because you can end up justifying anything. He says in starting out this process you can use your own standard (although he strongly emphasizes looking at tradition) to guide you in stopping the actions you know you shouldn’t do.

The “.Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place.” comes way later on the page and doesn’t directly follow the “use your own standard” line Vox is quoting. That quote is suggesting if people stooped lying and started taking care of what is right in front of them and fulfilled there responsibility’s to one another then the world might be better. Not “If everyone does what makes them happy everything would be great”

That is so against Peterson’s world view its not even funny. Vox is deliberately miss-characterizing and slandering Peterson.

Oh, is that so? Well then, let’s read what Peterson actually wrote, in full. The quote I selected and correctly indicated I left out a section of text with ellipses is in bold.

You can use your own standards of judgment. You can rely on yourself for guidance. You don’t have to adhere to some external, arbitrary code of behaviour (although you should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you).

Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city? Let your own soul guide you. Watch what happens over the days and weeks. When you are at work you will begin to say what you really think. You will start to tell your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, what you really want and need. When you know that you have left something undone, you will act to correct the omission. Your head will start to clear up, as you stop filling it with lies. Your experience will improve, as you stop distorting it with inauthentic actions. You will then begin to discover new, more subtle things that you are doing wrong. Stop doing those, too. After some months and years of diligent effort, your life will become simpler and less complicated. Your judgment will improve. You will untangle your past. You will become stronger and less bitter. You will move more confidently into the future. You will stop making your life unnecessarily difficult. You will then be left with the inevitable bare tragedies of life, but they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and deceit.

Perhaps you will discover that your now less-corrupted soul, much stronger than it might otherwise have been, is now able to bear those remaining, necessary, minimal, inescapable tragedies. Perhaps you will even learn to encounter them so that they stay tragic—merely tragic—instead of degenerating into outright hellishness. Maybe your anxiety, and hopelessness, and resentment, and anger—however murderous, initially—will recede. Perhaps your uncorrupted soul will then see its existence as a genuine good, as something to celebrate, even in the face of your own vulnerability. Perhaps you will become an ever-more-powerful force for peace and whatever is good.

Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place. After that, with continued effort, perhaps it could even stop being a tragic place. Who knows what existence might be like if we all decided to strive for the best? Who knows what eternal heavens might be established by our spirits, purified by truth, aiming skyward, right here on the fallen Earth?

Daniel makes an interesting observation about the similarities between Jordan Peterson’s nameless quasi-philosophy and Dianetics.

There are some interesting overlaps between Peterson’s 12 rules and Dianetics 8 Dynamics. L. Ron Hubbard was also highly intelligent, mentally unhinged, AND deeply helpful to some broken people.

In fact, most ex-Scientologists will tell you that the hook – “Dianetics works” – is, at a basic level, very true for a very lost person. It is the truth-bait for the broken that sucks them in and seals them into the cult.

8 Dynamics of Dianetics:

• Self: Peterson has rule 1, 2 and 10
• Sex: Rule 5
• Group: Rule 3, 9
• Mankind: Rule 6, 11, 4
• Animal: Rule 12
• Universe: not applicable
• Spiritual: Rule 7
• Infinity: Rule 8

This all is related to your thesis that methadone is only okay for the addict. A lot of people were helped by Dianetics in the 1950s, before there ever was a Scientology. It was an intoxicatingly useful deception.

While there is no indication that Peterson actually intends to expand his mental chaos management into a full-blown religion, the possibility that it could be a nascent Dianetics 2.0 merits further contemplation. Fortunately, at this point, he appears to be more interested in Canadian politics than in creating an actual cult.

UPDATE: I did a Darkstream discussing this and the first chapter of 12 Rules for Life: Jordan Peterson is bait for the broken.

I particularly enjoyed this comment. I look forward to quoting it again once I have convinced even the most dubious Peterson fan that my case against him and his philosophy is conclusive.

Vox, you are a fucking loon. You know absolutely nothing about the guy and hadn’t watched any of his videos or interviews or read his books or talked to him………but you just knew that he was intellectually dishonest, now you say he’s mentally ill, he’s totally fucking insane, his philosophy is insane and incomplete, he’s a gamma, he’s in a bubble, he’s deluded,……..Dude, you are telling trying to tell the world what the moon is made of after looking at it once.

It’s a good point. Imagine how smart and discerning I must be to be able to do so correctly.

Rule 33: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
– Jordan Peterson

You know, there just might be a book in that one.

The Crazy Christ’s followers continue their ever-so-convincing campaign of character assassination in lieu of actually trying to defend their hero:

You are trying to provoke him into having a debate with you just so you can get more attention. Pathetic.

Actually, no. As it happens, I’ll be going on the Alex Jones Show on Monday to discuss the two leading charlatans of the Approved Opposition, Jordan Peterson and Benny Shapiro. So, I’m assuming that should more than satisfy any craving for attention that I might have for the foreseeable future.

I’m not trying to provoke Peterson into a debate. Why would I bother to do that when I am confident that he will run away from me every bit as speedily as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, PZ Myers, Matt Walsh, and Ben Shapiro all have? He’s an imposter, he knows it, and if he knows who I am, then he knows that I know it too.

And if he knows anything about me, then he probably knows that all of his usual little dodges, qualifications, and evasions are not going to work.

But in the meantime, I address Chapter Two of the 12 Rules, which explains why Jordan Peterson sometimes doesn’t take his happy pills.

Jordan Peterson’s fans are starting to get upset because apparently they think I am too mean. Perhaps Warning: Award-Winning Cruelty Artist At Work Ahead should be attached to my Peterson-related videos.

By the way, how do you know Jordan Peterson is depressed?  You diagnosed him by reading some of his interviews and 2 chapters of that dumb book?  That’s pretty amazing.  You could put a lot of psycholgists out of business and revolutionize the field with your kind of ability. Peterson has a practice doing psychiatry for decades.  Is it not possible that Peterson picked up a lot of this information and developed these methods, from working with his patients?   How do you know Peterson must be talking about himself all the time?

I didn’t need that much. I could have diagnosed him from nothing more than reading Chapter 2 of 12 Rules of Life. Think about it: if you are giving the whole world advice, and you decide that the second-most important thing you have to tell them is “remember to take your pills, because you are not too ugly, ashamed, worthless, and cowardly to deserve to take care of yourself”, then there is absolutely zero chance that you are mentally healthy and the odds are very high that you are suffering from depression, among other mental illnesses.

I suspect many people don’t realize how much an author’s writing unintentionally reveals about the author, particularly to an editor who has been able to see how many authors approach similar subjects in different ways. Frankly, I know more than I want to about the interior lives of the novelists I edit from nothing more than the choices they instinctively, and habitually, make.

But, as it happens, I did not have to do so, because I already knew that Peterson was depressed and taking some sort of drugs for it by his own admission. Chapter 2 is merely iron-clad confirmation that Peterson is telling at least part of the truth about his mental health issues and an enlightening illustration of how deep they run.

Another viewer questions my objectives.

Vox, I question where you are going with this and what you are hoping to achieve. I think there’s great value in critiquing Peterson’s work but again you’ve made a series of unverifiable ad hominem claims regarding Peterson’s mindset and motivations. This is completely unnecessary for the purposes of critiquing the subject content. I’m not questioning your analysis of Peterson – you may be correct – I’m questioning your decision to deploy that analysis in your critique. 

It’s not merely my purpose to critique the content of the 12 Rules of Life. It is my purpose to expose Jordan Peterson for the intellectual charlatan and professional con man that he is. The man is preying upon the intellectually and emotionally vulnerable and is selling them an evil, destructive philosophy while trying to divert them from the objective truths of logic, science, Christianity, and history. My statements about Peterson’s mindset and motivations are far from unverifiable; to the contrary, they are frequently based on Peterson’s own direct statements, verbal and written.

Yet another commits the genetic fallacy while confusing me with the Fake Right.

I’m no huge fan of Peterson, but for someone who repeatedly emphasizes his “high IQ” and how literate and well-read you are, it’s rather astonishing to see you accuse Peterson of being self-obsessed.   Every time I’ve watched your videos, you seem a bit neurotic and thin-skinned, as you routinely call your viewers “morons” and kick them out when they say something that bothers you.  What are you trying to accomplish with these ongoing rants about Peterson, anyways?  The Alt-Right, which you are a self-proclaimed proponent of, is imploding.  They just shut down your buddy Richard Spencer’s website.  Don’t you have other, more important, issues to address?

First, Peterson is self-obsessed. By observation and by his own admission, his talks are more inward-focused self-dialogue than proper lectures. Second, whether I am Hitler or Mother Theresa makes no difference concerning what Peterson is. Third, MPAI. Fourth, I kick people out because they repeatedly attempt to disrupt the Periscope. What I am attempting to accomplish with these “ongoing rants about Peterson” is to expose the truth about Jordan Peterson, which is that he is an intellectual charlatan and professional con man preying upon the intellectually and emotionally vulnerable. And fifth, the Alt-Right is not imploding, but to the contrary, is inevitable. Sixth, Richard Spencer is not my buddy. And seventh, no, I don’t have any more important issue to address.

Vox, are you going to formulate a well reasoned argument at some point or  just keep insulting someone because they may have mental health problems? When did you get your PHD in psychiatry?

It’s not an either/or proposition; I intend to do both. That being said, it’s not an insult to observe that Jordan Peterson is mentally ill or that his mental illness has significantly influenced his worldview, his philosophy, and his most recent book. To the contrary, it is a highly pertinent fact. One does not need a PhD in psychiatry or anything else to observe that someone is crazy or to observe the effects of that craziness. Jordan Peterson isn’t wandering through the night with a knife in his hand muttering “don’t be evil” to himself, he’s doing an intellectual version of that by weeping on stage with a mic in his hand as he begs people to not be too ashamed to take their prescribed medication.

“remember to take your pills” is more of an analogy of you need to do what you need to do to progress you life even if you don’t want to. 

It’s really not. Re-read the chapter, and as you do so, keep in mind that the author has himself been prescribed medication for his mental illness.

And this emailer obviously didn’t think through the consequences of his question.

Criticize Peterson’s ideas and attribute his success to media manufacturing as much as you feel you need to, but do ask yourself why hundreds of people are not lining up to ask you questions like, “My brother committed suicide, and I’m taking care of my sister’s kids (ages 7, 3) until she’s stable. How can I help them cope with the loss of their uncle?”

I don’t need to ask myself that. I haven’t been anointed by the media as the prophet uniquely in touch with the wisdom of the ages and the answers to the meaning of life. I suggest the reader should ask himself whether he thinks it is a good thing that these hurting and vulnerable people are being directed to seek answers from an intellectual charlatan and professional con man who teaches that the Bible is myth and metaphor.

What is Peterson going to tell them anyhow? Affect dominant postures? Clean their room? Make sure they take their vitamins daily? Don’t holocaust anyone? Or is he just going to get weepy on stage again? Perhaps he can draw upon the deep wellspring of his philosophy and tell the children that their suicidal father was pure evil for unnecessarily causing their suffering. That should do wonders for their psyches.

Not everyone disagrees with me, of course. Future Israeli has already seen enough to reach a verdict:

I was a fan of Vox Day and Jordan Peterson… now I’m just a fan of Vox Day.

And this viewer has figured out the true purpose of Jordan Peterson, which is to preach Holocaustianity to a generation that knows nothing and cares less about WWII-era history. (And that sound you just heard was Avalanche’s tender heart shattering.)

I felt something was off as soon as Jordan Peterson showed up he already teaming up with: Ben Shapiro, Denis Prager, Gaad Saad, Ezra Levant, Dave Rubin, Christina Hoff Sommers, Mark Levin (CRTV), Bret Weinestine, Steven Pinker etc etc

His peculiar obsession with Nazis and the Holocaust is the primary reason for Peterson’s unexpected and otherwise inexplicable rise to prominence in the media. Peterson was discovered by TV producer Wodek Szemberg, the producer of Big Ideas, who is, we are told in the Foreword to the 12 Rules of Life, “always on the lookout for potential public intellectuals, who knows how to spot people who can really talk in front of a TV camera and who look authentic….” Then he was picked up and pushed heavily by Ezra Levant of Rebel Media until he was embraced by the neocons and Never Trumpers.

I suspect Jordan Peterson’s cargo cult is going to react very, very angrily once they understand how badly they’ve been played by their psycho-charlatan false prophet:

You spoke of people thinking you were egotistical, they may have been right. Your whole speech is depressing, and you are unable and just plainly unwilling to say anything genuinely positive about him. You throw out certain things just so people think your being objective but these are not honest. The difference is that Jordan Peterson is honest and people follow him because of that—he is not trying to pull a fast one on anybody. We know he is trying to find truth and is passing those truths he has found. Evidence is him sticking his neck out when defending freedom of speech. He was unwilling to fold although many would have. That’s why the things you say are not believable and honesty it is boring. Difficult to watch. 

I note that this is how Jordan Peterson sticks out his neck “defending” freedom of speech.

QUESTION: I understand that Faith Goldy was removed from the original August panel because of her podcast with the controversial Daily Stormer after Charlottesville…. This strategy appears to parallel the SJWs, who wish to deny platforms to conservative speakers. I want to understand why Faithy Goldy was removed from the event simply for associating with identitarians, and if each of the panelists agree with that decision.

JORDAN PETERSON: That’s an excellent question. So, the first thing I should say is that it’s not like we’re unaware of the irony. Number one. So, [unintelligible] cancelled a panel about the cancellation of panels about free speech. That’s irony number one. And then irony number two, the panelists removed a speaker for arguably engaging in the act of free speech. Okay, we got that, believe me.

All right, so why did we come to this decision? I sat down personally – the other people can say what they have to say – I sat down with my son and we went through Faith’s interview. I know Faith, I don’t believe that she is a reprehensible person. I think that Charlottesville was very shocking to her and I think that she put herself in a very difficult position. And I think some of that was brave, that she went down there to cover it.

However, I listened very carefully to her podcast, the one that got her in trouble. And my sense was that she wasn’t, she didn’t, she was associating with people whose views she should have questioned. It was her journalistic, um, responsibility to question them. She had to ask at least one hard question. At least one. Three would have been better. You know, and I understand she had to toe a careful line. She was on the podcast, they had invited her on, it’s much more difficult than you might think when you’re facing people, even when you don’t believe them, to be rude enough to challenge them, right? That’s not so easy, especially if you’re an agreeable person and she is a rather agreeable person.

But I believe she, she failed in her journalistic responsibility. And as a consequence of that, she became too hot a property for us. And not just for us. And, well, that was, that was the reason for the decision. That was, that was my reasoning. So….

This is manifestly not the correct behavior of a principled man or even an honest one. Peterson did something he clearly knew to be wrong, but instead of simply owning up to his obvious failure, he attempted to concoct a ridiculous ex post facto justification to excuse it. He had to know this question was inevitable – he appears to have prepared for it – and yet this was the best that he could manage. If you watch the video, you can even see that Peterson has, he has, a reliable tell that warns you when he’s about to say something that he knows is not true, as well as another tell that indicates when he is going to very carefully attempt to cover up the weakness of one of his assertions or rationalizations.

My question is this: according to what theory of human rights or journalism does one’s right to free speech rely upon one’s correct performance of nonexistent journalistic responsibilities?

This is an excellent example of the incoherence of Jordanetics, where dishonesty, hypocrisy, and moral failure is hidden behind bafflegab and straight-up bullshit.

Why do the whole video talks about what jordan peterson IS rather than what he SAYS??? And things you “learned” are all things you already “knew” but that jordan peterson “should understand”. Everything in this video is judging him on the bases of your beliefs, and not an open-minded view of what he thinks. You’ve learned nothing, you’ve judged. Also, unsubscribed. You’re a narcissist. I don’t care if Jordan acts… very intensely. That’s called passion and intensity, something voxday clearly doesn’t have, this guy makes 1 point every 10 minutes. But anyway, that’s not the point. You too judge jordan on superficial details, “how he acts”, not the entierty of what he says. Jordan makes so many points, and he says so many things, based mostly on SCIENCE and a lifetime of exprience and practice in psychology, and this guy “destroyed” him based on his beliefs (christianity, what is evil, chaos and hell… in HIS opinion).

I directly and accurately quoted Peterson’s book to substantiate each of the 12 things I learned about him. I don’t know what more I am supposed to do to speak precisely about the man and his philosophy. Peterson does make lots of points and says lots of things, it is the inherently contradictory and incoherent nature of those points and those statements that illustrates the problem with Peterson’s charlatanry.

Some of Jordan Peterson’s fans have been leaving comments on yesterday’s Darkstream. They are informative, to put it mildly.

• You are clearly not efficient to understand the depth of Jordan. You look more like an autistic 13 year old.. old man that tries to get publicity points. That’s why you are interested on Peterson. Isn’t it? You just heard about Peterson few days ago and you were able to listen to his lectures? Probably not. You are too busy thinking how to get subscribers. Learn to be humble and recognize where you can move with your limited intellectual skill. What a pity. 
• Jordan Peterson is very intelligent and has a very impressive resume. You are unimpressive and lie about having a high IQ. Let’s see those SAT scores. 
• [Vox] obviously took a standardized test and did not end up at a high quality university. He is the type of person who would definitely brag about membership in the Triple Nine Society or even Mensa, which accept college entrance scores for admission because those tests correlate to IQ. He is also a bully who is attacking the integrity of an extremely high quality person. So I am simply pointing out to his naive followers that it is extremely easy to prove an IQ score and that being called on this is Vox Day’s worst fear. He will never provide proof and will block anybody who suggests it.
• I don’t care about JP’s position on Jewish intelligence other than Vox Day’s inability to articulate that position prior to attacking him. I’m not going to repeat the flaws in his reasoning that I’ve already posted on his last few videos. If there is a turd in the punchbowl, I’m not going to even discuss what is least impressive about the other ingredients. 
• He should either show the data or stop using his IQ as though it were an argument. His lie about being in Mensa was disturbing in multiple ways, since they claim he’s never been a member and also he apparently didn’t know that they’re only top 2{c765cef31248bdf9727e0d9ed37c3833bec162074a6cb2d3654476e6b63f536e}. He attended a lower tier liberal arts school, and he has lived a liberal arts life. I have dealt with high IQ people for decades, and other than perhaps the verbal section I see no signs that Vox Day is even in the ballpark.
• Being a lunatic in his particular environment may be a good thing. If you are Bruce Wayne living among the lunatics of Gotham, putting on the mask may be the best way to deal with them. 
• Big words for someone who has a habit of spamming anyone who expresses disagreement with his views on his blog. Methinks that Peterson would chew ya up in a real time debate though, unfortunately, we shall never witness such a debate for you are way bellow his level to warrant any attention from him.

To be clear, I was not only a member of Mensa, but was also a National Merit Semifinalist. I simply don’t brag about either. (It’s amusing how no one knows about Mensa since I ended my column; remember when mentioning that membership in my bio was inevitably equated with bragging about it?) I suppose it should come as no surprise that a supporter of the integrity-challenged Jordan Peterson would so readily resort to blatant and easily disproven lies. But not everyone was so angrily defensive, and it is apparent that at least some of Peterson’s fans are beginning to see past the bilious haze of verbose bullshit that the man spews like a squid attempting to hide its retreat.

• Doesn’t this speak to the apparent truth that millions of people are mentally unhealthy then? Can we at least say then that Peterson’s work is very important in helping unhealthy people step out of their illness and into a more functional existence? I’m not saying you’re wrong about Peterson, in fact sadly I think you’re right. But I’m more saying that if his philosophy is the “methadone” for heroin addicts, then is it alright to see it as such? I’ll be the first to say if I was a “heroin addict” and that I’ll take the “methadone” route in order to gain enough strength to take the next step. 
• I was a fan before, but watching you take down that self righteous blowhard is worth the price of admission. “The baleful eye of the dark lord is fixed firmly upon Mr Peterson”
• I’ve listened to a lot of JP and it got boring fast. If you’ve watched a semester of his lectures you’ve pretty much listened to everything he’s said. Even his analysis of the bible mostly says all the same stuff but with slightly different context. Mostly he seems to reference Jung, Nietzsche, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky. Read them and you’ve pretty much read JP. Aside from quickly becoming repetitive he also always avoided the tough questions. Seemed like he was too busy going on a speaking tour than to flesh out his thoughts or do research so he could eventually answer those tough questions. I started to see him as being more intellectually lazy as time went on. Honestly he seems to be acting more and more like an SJW as people press him on these tough questions.
• As an European and someone looking from the outside in… The fact that Sam Harris is considered a “public intellectual” in the US really makes me worry about what bar you guys set for “public intellectuals” and how low that bar is situated.
• The biggest mistake that right-wingers make is elevate anyone who is not a complete sjw

I’ve read the first chapter of the 12 Rules for Life: The Crazy Man’s Guide for Functioning in Society. I never do partial reviews, so I will not say more than to observe that if the man had written Who Moved My Cheese, it would have been longer than a George R.R. Martin novel.

But I suppose the subject is relevant to the Jordan Peterson investigation, so I’ll tolerate it for the time being:

Is it possible for Gamma’s to stop being Gammas? Is the only choice for a Gamma to do what Peterson has done and form heuristics to protect themselves? If they become committed Christians can they exceed their Gamma boundaries or will they simply be Gamma Christians? If they adopt existential relativism per Peterson, will that ever graduate them to Betas, or is always going to be social masking?

Also in trying to generalise from your list of qualities, is it a combination of intelligence plus poor social skills plus generalised low self-esteem? So by that I mean, can socially adroit, physically attractive, plain-speaking men who are good with women still be gamma if they have low self-esteem deriving from some source like a traumatic life event or bad brain biology? If Pyjama boy was able to derive a sense of humility and self-esteem that wasn’t at the expense of others could he stop being a Gamma?

I know a lot of men who are very impressive men, resilient, accomplished, educated, self-confident, but in marriages to women who utterly dominate them in the household with abuse and passive aggression. Are they Gammas because of their inability to exercise dominion over their wives despite all their external accomplishments?

I apologise if these are all stupid questions. I know you hate people asking if they’re Gammas. I’ll freely admit I’m trying to apply the model to myself a bit, but I’m also trying to understand it’s general operation.

First and foremost, “Gamma” is a male behavioral pattern. You are a Gamma to the extent that you behave in accordance with that pattern. One’s socio-sexual rank can be reliably ascertained by one’s behavior, and one’s rank is conferred by the behavior of others, but the core element is always the behavior.

So, in answer to the questions:

1. Yes, it is obviously possible for Gammas to stop being Gammas. They merely have to permanently change their behavioral patterns. But this is considerably harder than it sounds, as anyone who has ever tried to lose weight, stop smoking, or start working out knows.
2. No, the choice that Peterson has made is a very conventional Gamma action that is totally consistent with Gamma self-protection.
3. A Gamma becoming a Christian merely produces a Christian Gamma. Christianity can help a Gamma alter his behavior patterns, but it must be admitted that Churchianity tends to encourage some Gamma behaviors, particularly where women and conflict are concerned.
4. Existential relativism is only going to cement the Gamma’s behavioral pattern. Any Gamma following Peterson’s philosophy is merely going to become a Gamma with a clean room, better posture, and an iron-clad delusion bubble.
5. No, to say Gamma is a combination of qualities is mistaking the qualities for the behavioral patterns. My current understanding is that Gamma is primarily caused by the need to avoid experiencing emotional pain. Obviously, the lower on the socio-sexual totem pole you are, the more emotional pain you are likely to experience from rejection, bullying, and failure.
6. No Gammas are good with women. Women are literally repulsed by the behavior pattern. But Gammas are not the only men with low self-esteem. Except for Alpha and Sigma, any behavioral pattern can possess low self-esteem. One might even argue that a Beta is an Alpha with lower self-esteem.
7. Pajama Boy will never stop being a Gamma. His behavioral pattern is too embedded in his self-identity.
8. Married men who are dominated by women are usually Deltas. But any man, of any rank, can marry the wrong woman, and find his behavioral patterns modified to some extent as a result.

There are two easy Gamma signals. The first is dishonesty, particularly in the face of conflict. That dishonesty can take many forms, from false bravado to bizarre lies about their accomplishments to inaccurate explanations of their actions. When Jordan Peterson mentioned that 90 percent of his self-talk in his youth was dishonest, that was a dead giveaway, because Gammas are engaged in a constant monologue with themselves. Whether they talk themselves up or they talk themselves down is irrelevant, the point is that they are always talking to themselves instead of anyone else.

The second is heightened sensitivity. The Gamma is constantly on the alert for what others are thinking and saying about him. He is excessively pleased by praise and will often cite it, and is inordinately upset by criticism. He has a very limited capacity for shrugging off either.

Women are very, very good at identifying Gammas. But they tend to think of it as negative sex appeal. So, if you ask a woman if she would ever have sex with someone and her instinctive response is to shiver in horror at the mere suggestion, you can be confident that he reliably exhibits the Gamma behavioral pattern.

If you want to stop being a Gamma, there is a guide to doing so called Graduating Gamma, written by a Delta who succeeded in breaking his former behavioral pattern.

• Graduating Gamma 1
• Graduating Gamma 2
• Graduating Gamma 3
• Graduating Gamma 4

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.

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.