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.
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!