I think your reading is in fact over-charitable. He is clearly referring to “weird creatives” as people who behave oddly without explicit negative effects, and is trying to argue that oddness has some diffuse, unobservable cost on society
So far, three different interpretations of weirdo have come up. If weirdos are social non-cooperators, then the statement that society should grudgingly tolerate them is at its strongest. The argument becomes weaker if the word refers to highly flexible and open-minded people who might make mistakes because they are traversing unmapped territory. It’s at its weakest if a person who behaves oddly without negative consequences counts as a weirdo.
I think it’s also important to remember in these discussions that there’s often skin in these games. Trying to find baileys to which bigots can retreat might promote dialogue and openness that results in wandering truth-wards, but may simply spread misinformation.
In this post, I’m assuming that Peterson is making a good faith argument. The agreement extent game is only valuable when you believe the other person is acting honestly. I’m not claiming that Peterson is factually acting in good faith, however (it’s beyond my expertise to judge that).
The approach I outlined wouldn’t work well if the opposition is arguing dishonestly, pining for another goal. Honestly, I don’t know what an optimal strategy might be in that situation. It would presumably involve some degree of politicking. It’s worth digging into this from the perspective of truth-seeking. Good strategies would probably account for different settings (public vs private setting; written vs spoken; face-to-face vs writing). Right now, I have a blind spot when it comes to this. I’m getting hyped to learn more about this, though!
Agree on the first point. On the second point, my comment doesn’t rely on Peterson arguing in bad faith, merely that he is arguing with excessive faith in his priors—Bayesian reasoning doesn’t work if one person has 100% confidence in their initial position, and may be very inefficient if you have extremely strong priors and don’t update well. He may sincerely believe that same-sex families can’t bring up children properly, but if his position is unlikely to change much from the argument, the social effects of how you engage with it (the effects on onlookers who may be insulted by the argument or marginally update towards his viewpoint) may be larger than the benefit of his marginal update.
Thanks for the context!
So far, three different interpretations of weirdo have come up. If weirdos are social non-cooperators, then the statement that society should grudgingly tolerate them is at its strongest. The argument becomes weaker if the word refers to highly flexible and open-minded people who might make mistakes because they are traversing unmapped territory. It’s at its weakest if a person who behaves oddly without negative consequences counts as a weirdo.
In this post, I’m assuming that Peterson is making a good faith argument. The agreement extent game is only valuable when you believe the other person is acting honestly. I’m not claiming that Peterson is factually acting in good faith, however (it’s beyond my expertise to judge that).
The approach I outlined wouldn’t work well if the opposition is arguing dishonestly, pining for another goal. Honestly, I don’t know what an optimal strategy might be in that situation. It would presumably involve some degree of politicking. It’s worth digging into this from the perspective of truth-seeking. Good strategies would probably account for different settings (public vs private setting; written vs spoken; face-to-face vs writing). Right now, I have a blind spot when it comes to this. I’m getting hyped to learn more about this, though!
Agree on the first point. On the second point, my comment doesn’t rely on Peterson arguing in bad faith, merely that he is arguing with excessive faith in his priors—Bayesian reasoning doesn’t work if one person has 100% confidence in their initial position, and may be very inefficient if you have extremely strong priors and don’t update well. He may sincerely believe that same-sex families can’t bring up children properly, but if his position is unlikely to change much from the argument, the social effects of how you engage with it (the effects on onlookers who may be insulted by the argument or marginally update towards his viewpoint) may be larger than the benefit of his marginal update.
That’s a very good point! I haven’t considered that excessive faith comes with its own problems. Thanks for pointing that out!