Yeah, these are issues outside of his cognitive expertise and it’s quite clear that he’s getting them wrong… you are mostly accusing him of getting things wrong about which he never cared in the first place.
What exactly did you think I meant when I said he’s “technically wrong about many things” and you told me to be careful? I meant something very close to what your quote says, I don’t even know if we’re disagreeing about anything.
And by the way, there is plenty of room for disagreement. alkjash just wrote what I thought you were going to, a detailed point-by-point argument for why Peterson isn’t, in fact, wrong. There’s a big difference between alkjash’s “Peterson doesn’t say what you think he says” and “Peterson says what you think and he’s wrong, but it’s not important to the big picture”. If Peterson really says “humans can’t do math without terminal values” that’s a very interesting statement, certainly not one that I can judge as obviously wrong.
I did in fact have something between those two in mind, and was even ready to defend it, but then I basically remembered that LW is status-crazy and and gave up on fighting that uphill battle. Kudos to alkjash for the fighting spirit.
I think you should consider the possibility that the not-very-positive reaction your comments about Peterson here have received may have a cause other than status-fighting.
(LW is one of the less status-crazy places I’m familiar with. The complaints about Peterson in this discussion do not look to me as if they are primarily motivated by status concerns. Some of your comments about him seem needlessly status-defensive, though.)
Not to sound glib, but what good is LW status if you don’t use it to freely express your opinions and engage in discussion on LW?
The same is true of other things: blog/Twitter followers, Facebook likes etc. are important inasmuch as they give me the ability to spread my message to more people. If I never said anything controversial for fear of losing measurable status, I would be foregoing all the benefits of acquiring it in the first place.
Not to sound glib, but what good is LW status if you don’t use it to freely express your opinions and engage in discussion on LW?
Getting laid, for one thing.
And, you know, LW is a social group. Status is its own reward. High-status people probably feel better about themselves than low-status people do, and an increase in status will probably make people feel better about themselves than they used to.
Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman who just happened to write wildly popular philosophy books, but I think he’d agree that that’s not terribly usual.
Yeah, I thought it could be something like that. I don’t live in Berkeley, and no woman who has ever slept with me cared one jot about my LW karma.
With that said, the kind of status that can be gained or lost by debating the technical correctness of claims JBP makes with someone you don’t know personally seems too far removed from anyone’s actual social life to have an impact on getting laid one way or another.
Your reply below says:
What exactly did you think I meant when I said he’s “technically wrong about many things” and you told me to be careful? I meant something very close to what your quote says, I don’t even know if we’re disagreeing about anything.
And by the way, there is plenty of room for disagreement. alkjash just wrote what I thought you were going to, a detailed point-by-point argument for why Peterson isn’t, in fact, wrong. There’s a big difference between alkjash’s “Peterson doesn’t say what you think he says” and “Peterson says what you think and he’s wrong, but it’s not important to the big picture”. If Peterson really says “humans can’t do math without terminal values” that’s a very interesting statement, certainly not one that I can judge as obviously wrong.
I did in fact have something between those two in mind, and was even ready to defend it, but then I basically remembered that LW is status-crazy and and gave up on fighting that uphill battle. Kudos to alkjash for the fighting spirit.
I think you should consider the possibility that the not-very-positive reaction your comments about Peterson here have received may have a cause other than status-fighting.
(LW is one of the less status-crazy places I’m familiar with. The complaints about Peterson in this discussion do not look to me as if they are primarily motivated by status concerns. Some of your comments about him seem needlessly status-defensive, though.)
Not to sound glib, but what good is LW status if you don’t use it to freely express your opinions and engage in discussion on LW?
The same is true of other things: blog/Twitter followers, Facebook likes etc. are important inasmuch as they give me the ability to spread my message to more people. If I never said anything controversial for fear of losing measurable status, I would be foregoing all the benefits of acquiring it in the first place.
Getting laid, for one thing.
And, you know, LW is a social group. Status is its own reward. High-status people probably feel better about themselves than low-status people do, and an increase in status will probably make people feel better about themselves than they used to.
Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman who just happened to write wildly popular philosophy books, but I think he’d agree that that’s not terribly usual.
Yeah, I thought it could be something like that. I don’t live in Berkeley, and no woman who has ever slept with me cared one jot about my LW karma.
With that said, the kind of status that can be gained or lost by debating the technical correctness of claims JBP makes with someone you don’t know personally seems too far removed from anyone’s actual social life to have an impact on getting laid one way or another.