31 Comments on Jordan Peterson wipes the floor with Channel 4 Interviewer
I found this interview very interesting with Jordan Peterson staying consistent in his logic and correcting all misinterpretations and Cathy Newman trying at times to move out of what had been prepared to seem genuinely trying to consider his arguments. That was great, but it seemed that she was to just attack, Because Professor Peterson just speaks what he believes, and was trying to communicate, not to just be labelled again,her efforts in comparison seemed silly in the face of the actual truth of his meaning. We need to relearn how to honestly and respectfully discuss and debate. And interviewers will do well to gain the freedom to truly understand. Not follow a shallow plan of attack.
Clear thinking intelligent male scientist meets rude, screeching, female journalist and her army of straw men. Well, I guess we all understand the gender pay gap a little better now.
As a psychotherapist who holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy ~ and as a thoroughly committed conservative, hence my forays onto here ~ I find myself wondering what form the next insult of my life’s work will take, courtesy of the SR.
I know that I would benefit greatly from hearing your views on what and how psychotherapy does useful things for the client.
Please, would you comment on this here, or better, it would be good if Editor Harris gives you space for a full article on the matter.
And, I detect a cry from the heart -insult to one’s life-work is a challenge to deal with, as many of us know. So please include treatment of that topic in your piece.
Cathy Newman was only doing her job, which was to represent the views of the majority of the viewers of Channel 4 news, usually left, often wrong and unthought out. She was not there to represent her own views,(she may hold the views she put forward or not but it is of no matter) no more than if she was a defence or prosecuting lawyer would she be there to advance her own beliefs. What worries me about both the left and the right is their devotion to emotion and self identification with various causes. Orwell’s ‘Two legs good, four legs bad’. Forget the facts its how the devotee preens himself in relation to a cause. In this interview, both protagonists offered a crystal clear picture of a controversial subject from both sides.
Absolutely lovely Harry, and both very good points. You’re saying that there is no substantial matter, only a display of style running on a sick emotion. But I think, if you dig, you will find a substantial matter. Let’s dig and see. Let’s not get irritated by Critias and weird grammar, and therefore at Gaurav Singhmar. Here it is! The point: Peterson has balls, Peterson slays the Gorgon Newman, but now move from the excitement of the fight to two cooler subjects. Firstly, Peterson has a project and its elements are (forgive me, Harry) to employ experimental psychology to determine deep-psyche Jungian archetypes in order to reconstruct myth & values in a world in the shadow of Nietzschean nihilism. These are his terms, not mine, and I know this because I have read his book Maps of Meaning (it is on Nietzsche and Jung). I have also followed him for years on obscure Canadian broadcasters, whence the second point. I suspect Peterson thinks that the heavy weapon that is rapidly forming in his hand is his by right and can only be put to righteous use by him. He is not skeptical towards it and he is not constrained by the compromises everyday conservative actors have to make. Now, both these items represent risks (as we learned accountants say), the one about his basic concepts, the other about his truest intentions.
my opinion is that its not what Jordan Peterson said that was so odd, its just that ‘journalism’ is so poisoned with illogical bullshit that its quite a surprise to see someone actually just talking about reality and not following the usual wishy-washy script.
The interviewer also lets herself down by just sticking to her pre-decided agenda. Its not what Peterson said that is so surprising, its how stark a light it shone on the interviewer.
I have often wondered in a culture of such starling richness which has the wide horizons of Plato, the fundamental depths of Kant, and the accumulated majesty of Aristotle, of what use the dwarvish digging into shellfish brains is. It’s a nice living for dwarves but you can smell their fear of free & open thinking and more their refusal to acknowledge it because it’s bad for dwarvish business. Shellfish have had brains now for some 400 million years, that’s countless generations, these days as hydrocarbons they occupy massive geologic formations filled with never to be used again neurons, yet a great deal of pointing and mentioning of crustaceans like lobsters follows on their account, but no advance of understanding of who we are. Yet we still have Socrates … preserved through two millenia of textual transmission.
My respect to you on the matter of your enormous knowledge base. You certainly know a lot about a lot of things.
I offer you the following in the spirit of advancing one’s intellect:
1. There can come a time, in the process of learning, where time spent on the display of knowledge actually hinders the emergence of the capacities to use one’s knowledge to conceptualize matters in useful ways, and to devise new ways of acting to deal with threats and respond to opportunities, and in doing so, create new abundance.
2. The expansion of one’s intellectual powers can be hindered when one’s personality is overly occupied by factors comprising what is labelled, in several schools of psychology, as passive-aggression.
And: the willingness to take a bit of feedback is essential to the process of intellectual development.
On Youtube, Scott Adams (Dilbert author) has a very instructive treatment of the Peterson/Newman interview using the theme of “attacking the other’s hallucinations, and what happens next”.
The problem with old sources is not that we have exhausted them, but that we have forgotten them. For the record, I am an accountant (not an academic) and I enjoy my maths and science. Now if I ask a scientist, my wife for example, she’ll tell me that evolutionary psychology is a doubtful science (though it may play well on TV), much like Freud was a doubtful scientist and Atkins a doubtful diet. What you’re smelling is not my fear but the sulphur from the match that burns down the old library of learning.
I have often wondered in an age of such startling discoveries as that of the hierarchical nature of the lobster’s brain, that space is curved, and time elastic, what use the endless study of the dead philosophers is. It’s a nice living for academics, but you can smell their fear of science (Gaurav Singhmar?) more their refusal to understand it because it is terribly bad for business. We have had the dead texts now for thousands of years, millions of useless commentaries on them, these days they occupy aircraft hangers full of never to be read again PH.D thesis, a great deal of posturing and mentioning of names like Critias, but no advance on our understanding of who we are. Now we have the lobster…delivered by neurochemistry.
Let’s see what all we can throw out now that we are in “an age of such startling discoveries”. Certainly reason and philosophy (not empirical). Also, religion (what could be more pre-scientific). But religion is the traditional foundation of morality, and without philosophy we cannot shore it up (yes, but what about the lobsters?). We’ve also lost one of the pillars of art (but not of contemporary art) and, in general, we no longer consider the inner life as a place of insight. What about received patterns of life and their stored up wisdom? Let’s put all that business on a new, scientific footing. I have often wondered in sum, in an age of cheap RAM, of what use human memory is. It’s a nice recreation for old men, but old men are smelly. And … consider the lobster, there’s the truth of man.
It’s a bit much to call a basic taming of an angry dog “the case for civilization”. Jordan Peterson is not afraid of heedless accusations, this makes him something better than a child, and that is a high standard only in a setting with little culture of courage.
This kind of TV is useful, I think.
Yes, the interviewer grossly, wildly over-did the provocation, with massive exaggerations and generalizations, with anti-logic, with anti-empiricism, with vicious, random, unfounded attacks on the guest’s integrity and with appeals from the most un-hinged depths of emotionalism.
Against this, Prof Dr Peterson presented his case, the case for civilization actually, in a performance that was good, true and beautiful.
I am not concerned in the least if the interviewer is “really like that” or does it because it pays well and/or gains her admiration from certain followers, allies, benefactors and patrons.
TV programming exists almost entirely for entertainment, as that is where the money is.
So be it. If we do not like it, here’s a suggestion: Let us pull together funds that would enable a new, large media entity that is constituted, organized, managed and staffed to host and present good stuff that will assist in the war to save Western Civ.
As for your media proposal Harry and the desire behind it, take another look at JBP: he is minting money at a fabulous rate (between patreon, speaking fees, and the new book – it will be hundreds of thousands of pounds a month), his base of enough-is-enough admirers is growing by leaps & has in a matter of months jumped well clear (by heat & volume) of any public intellectual I know, and he is disposed to use his wealth & power for the old-timey-religion purpose you can see in his eyes (except it’s no real religion at all).
Jordan Peterson was so on point here with logic and reason. the feminists and whiteknights can`t handle it because they are brainwashed, but Peterson told the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.
He even caused her feminist-hamster wheeling brain to seize for a moment so much logic he threw at her!
If a woman wants to be on the board of a major oil company, why doesn’t she buy a derrick, go off into the wilderness, strike oil, transport it, refine it, and then deliver petrol and diesel to a garage near you?
Then she’ll be a director of an oil company.
Women wanting to be on the boards of companies that men built is rather like a rich divorcee wanting half the money that her husband created. Equality means standing on your own two feet.
It is difficult for feminists to own up to the fact that they are simply demanding a large share of the best bits of the (mainly white) male world. To achieve this end they choose to portray women as victims of male injustice forced to take up a heroic struggle to claim what (they insist) is rightfully theirs.
The achievements of the men who did so much to build the developed world are routinely denigrated and belittled as though they were no more than an accident of history.
That reminded me of a scene from the film ‘As Good As It Gets’ in which Jack Nicholson plays a writer. The young female receptionist at his publisher’s office asks Nicholson …
âHow do you write women so well?â
He responds with …
âI think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.â
Yes, I see this interview getting rave reviews in right-wing circles, but I’m not overly impressed. He did okay, but it wasn’t remarkable. Shouldn’t we expect rational non-leftists thinkers to be able to speak intelligently? I guess if you only watch MSM and don’t listen to people like Peterson and Stefan Molyneux, then this may be quite rare to hear.
I agree, those of us on the right are getting a bit carried away, maybe because this is a rare victory. Everything that’s been said about how awful Cathy Neman was is 100% correct in my opinion. The bit that’s overblown is in saying how wonderful Jordan Peterson was. As you say he wasn’t actually that brilliant.
Cathy Newman was only doing her job, which was to represent the views of the majority of the viewers of Channel 4 news, usually left, often wrong and unthought out. She was not there to represent her own views,(she may hold the views she put forward or not but it is of no matter) no more than if she was a defence or prosecuting lawyer would she be there to advance her own beliefs. What worries me about both the left and the right is their devotion to emotion and self identification with various causes. Orwellâs âTwo legs good, four legs badâ. Forget the facts its how the devotee preens himself in relation to a cause. In this interview, both protagonists offered a crystal clear picture of a controversial subject from both sides.
Yes, alright. But watch it a second time and perceive how little content it all has. Cathy Newman comes in like a barking dog and Peterson behaves like a seducer. The locus classicus of this conversational set-up is Socrates against any number of paper-tiger accusers, say Critias. The thing to appreciate there is not how well the fencing goes for the side of knowledge, but the thinker’s concepts and the peace they engender. As far as Peterson goes, that question still needs a hearing. But on the question of style, I will take Roger Scruton over Jordan Peterson.
I found this interview very interesting with Jordan Peterson staying consistent in his logic and correcting all misinterpretations and Cathy Newman trying at times to move out of what had been prepared to seem genuinely trying to consider his arguments. That was great, but it seemed that she was to just attack, Because Professor Peterson just speaks what he believes, and was trying to communicate, not to just be labelled again,her efforts in comparison seemed silly in the face of the actual truth of his meaning. We need to relearn how to honestly and respectfully discuss and debate. And interviewers will do well to gain the freedom to truly understand. Not follow a shallow plan of attack.
Clear thinking intelligent male scientist meets rude, screeching, female journalist and her army of straw men. Well, I guess we all understand the gender pay gap a little better now.
As a psychotherapist who holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy ~ and as a thoroughly committed conservative, hence my forays onto here ~ I find myself wondering what form the next insult of my life’s work will take, courtesy of the SR.
Greetings Verity True,
I know that I would benefit greatly from hearing your views on what and how psychotherapy does useful things for the client.
Please, would you comment on this here, or better, it would be good if Editor Harris gives you space for a full article on the matter.
And, I detect a cry from the heart -insult to one’s life-work is a challenge to deal with, as many of us know. So please include treatment of that topic in your piece.
Sincerely, Harry Black
Cathy Newman was only doing her job, which was to represent the views of the majority of the viewers of Channel 4 news, usually left, often wrong and unthought out. She was not there to represent her own views,(she may hold the views she put forward or not but it is of no matter) no more than if she was a defence or prosecuting lawyer would she be there to advance her own beliefs. What worries me about both the left and the right is their devotion to emotion and self identification with various causes. Orwell’s ‘Two legs good, four legs bad’. Forget the facts its how the devotee preens himself in relation to a cause. In this interview, both protagonists offered a crystal clear picture of a controversial subject from both sides.
Absolutely lovely Harry, and both very good points. You’re saying that there is no substantial matter, only a display of style running on a sick emotion. But I think, if you dig, you will find a substantial matter. Let’s dig and see. Let’s not get irritated by Critias and weird grammar, and therefore at Gaurav Singhmar. Here it is! The point: Peterson has balls, Peterson slays the Gorgon Newman, but now move from the excitement of the fight to two cooler subjects. Firstly, Peterson has a project and its elements are (forgive me, Harry) to employ experimental psychology to determine deep-psyche Jungian archetypes in order to reconstruct myth & values in a world in the shadow of Nietzschean nihilism. These are his terms, not mine, and I know this because I have read his book Maps of Meaning (it is on Nietzsche and Jung). I have also followed him for years on obscure Canadian broadcasters, whence the second point. I suspect Peterson thinks that the heavy weapon that is rapidly forming in his hand is his by right and can only be put to righteous use by him. He is not skeptical towards it and he is not constrained by the compromises everyday conservative actors have to make. Now, both these items represent risks (as we learned accountants say), the one about his basic concepts, the other about his truest intentions.
my opinion is that its not what Jordan Peterson said that was so odd, its just that ‘journalism’ is so poisoned with illogical bullshit that its quite a surprise to see someone actually just talking about reality and not following the usual wishy-washy script.
The interviewer also lets herself down by just sticking to her pre-decided agenda. Its not what Peterson said that is so surprising, its how stark a light it shone on the interviewer.
I have often wondered in a culture of such starling richness which has the wide horizons of Plato, the fundamental depths of Kant, and the accumulated majesty of Aristotle, of what use the dwarvish digging into shellfish brains is. It’s a nice living for dwarves but you can smell their fear of free & open thinking and more their refusal to acknowledge it because it’s bad for dwarvish business. Shellfish have had brains now for some 400 million years, that’s countless generations, these days as hydrocarbons they occupy massive geologic formations filled with never to be used again neurons, yet a great deal of pointing and mentioning of crustaceans like lobsters follows on their account, but no advance of understanding of who we are. Yet we still have Socrates … preserved through two millenia of textual transmission.
Greetings GS,
My respect to you on the matter of your enormous knowledge base. You certainly know a lot about a lot of things.
I offer you the following in the spirit of advancing one’s intellect:
1. There can come a time, in the process of learning, where time spent on the display of knowledge actually hinders the emergence of the capacities to use one’s knowledge to conceptualize matters in useful ways, and to devise new ways of acting to deal with threats and respond to opportunities, and in doing so, create new abundance.
2. The expansion of one’s intellectual powers can be hindered when one’s personality is overly occupied by factors comprising what is labelled, in several schools of psychology, as passive-aggression.
And: the willingness to take a bit of feedback is essential to the process of intellectual development.
Again, with respect, Harry.
Readers might find useful:
On Youtube, Scott Adams (Dilbert author) has a very instructive treatment of the Peterson/Newman interview using the theme of “attacking the other’s hallucinations, and what happens next”.
The problem with old sources is not that we have exhausted them, but that we have forgotten them. For the record, I am an accountant (not an academic) and I enjoy my maths and science. Now if I ask a scientist, my wife for example, she’ll tell me that evolutionary psychology is a doubtful science (though it may play well on TV), much like Freud was a doubtful scientist and Atkins a doubtful diet. What you’re smelling is not my fear but the sulphur from the match that burns down the old library of learning.
I have often wondered in an age of such startling discoveries as that of the hierarchical nature of the lobster’s brain, that space is curved, and time elastic, what use the endless study of the dead philosophers is. It’s a nice living for academics, but you can smell their fear of science (Gaurav Singhmar?) more their refusal to understand it because it is terribly bad for business. We have had the dead texts now for thousands of years, millions of useless commentaries on them, these days they occupy aircraft hangers full of never to be read again PH.D thesis, a great deal of posturing and mentioning of names like Critias, but no advance on our understanding of who we are. Now we have the lobster…delivered by neurochemistry.
Let’s see what all we can throw out now that we are in “an age of such startling discoveries”. Certainly reason and philosophy (not empirical). Also, religion (what could be more pre-scientific). But religion is the traditional foundation of morality, and without philosophy we cannot shore it up (yes, but what about the lobsters?). We’ve also lost one of the pillars of art (but not of contemporary art) and, in general, we no longer consider the inner life as a place of insight. What about received patterns of life and their stored up wisdom? Let’s put all that business on a new, scientific footing. I have often wondered in sum, in an age of cheap RAM, of what use human memory is. It’s a nice recreation for old men, but old men are smelly. And … consider the lobster, there’s the truth of man.
Editor Harris, perhaps you would expand on your comments here?
I’d find a article on this theme very instructive, I’m sure.
It’s a bit much to call a basic taming of an angry dog “the case for civilization”. Jordan Peterson is not afraid of heedless accusations, this makes him something better than a child, and that is a high standard only in a setting with little culture of courage.
This kind of TV is useful, I think.
Yes, the interviewer grossly, wildly over-did the provocation, with massive exaggerations and generalizations, with anti-logic, with anti-empiricism, with vicious, random, unfounded attacks on the guest’s integrity and with appeals from the most un-hinged depths of emotionalism.
Against this, Prof Dr Peterson presented his case, the case for civilization actually, in a performance that was good, true and beautiful.
I am not concerned in the least if the interviewer is “really like that” or does it because it pays well and/or gains her admiration from certain followers, allies, benefactors and patrons.
TV programming exists almost entirely for entertainment, as that is where the money is.
So be it. If we do not like it, here’s a suggestion: Let us pull together funds that would enable a new, large media entity that is constituted, organized, managed and staffed to host and present good stuff that will assist in the war to save Western Civ.
As for your media proposal Harry and the desire behind it, take another look at JBP: he is minting money at a fabulous rate (between patreon, speaking fees, and the new book – it will be hundreds of thousands of pounds a month), his base of enough-is-enough admirers is growing by leaps & has in a matter of months jumped well clear (by heat & volume) of any public intellectual I know, and he is disposed to use his wealth & power for the old-timey-religion purpose you can see in his eyes (except it’s no real religion at all).
Who was it that said: A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer?
Jordan Peterson was so on point here with logic and reason. the feminists and whiteknights can`t handle it because they are brainwashed, but Peterson told the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.
He even caused her feminist-hamster wheeling brain to seize for a moment so much logic he threw at her!
If a woman wants to be on the board of a major oil company, why doesn’t she buy a derrick, go off into the wilderness, strike oil, transport it, refine it, and then deliver petrol and diesel to a garage near you?
Then she’ll be a director of an oil company.
Women wanting to be on the boards of companies that men built is rather like a rich divorcee wanting half the money that her husband created. Equality means standing on your own two feet.
You make good points, Ancient One. And I Love your spelling!
HEY! đ
It is difficult for feminists to own up to the fact that they are simply demanding a large share of the best bits of the (mainly white) male world. To achieve this end they choose to portray women as victims of male injustice forced to take up a heroic struggle to claim what (they insist) is rightfully theirs.
The achievements of the men who did so much to build the developed world are routinely denigrated and belittled as though they were no more than an accident of history.
That reminded me of a scene from the film ‘As Good As It Gets’ in which Jack Nicholson plays a writer. The young female receptionist at his publisher’s office asks Nicholson …
âHow do you write women so well?â
He responds with …
âI think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.â
Any offence is unintentional.
Especially accountability.
Funny, I recall JBP saying that in the aggregate younger women are showing more accountability / responsibility than younger men.
Yes, I see this interview getting rave reviews in right-wing circles, but I’m not overly impressed. He did okay, but it wasn’t remarkable. Shouldn’t we expect rational non-leftists thinkers to be able to speak intelligently? I guess if you only watch MSM and don’t listen to people like Peterson and Stefan Molyneux, then this may be quite rare to hear.
I agree, those of us on the right are getting a bit carried away, maybe because this is a rare victory. Everything that’s been said about how awful Cathy Neman was is 100% correct in my opinion. The bit that’s overblown is in saying how wonderful Jordan Peterson was. As you say he wasn’t actually that brilliant.
Cathy Newman was only doing her job, which was to represent the views of the majority of the viewers of Channel 4 news, usually left, often wrong and unthought out. She was not there to represent her own views,(she may hold the views she put forward or not but it is of no matter) no more than if she was a defence or prosecuting lawyer would she be there to advance her own beliefs. What worries me about both the left and the right is their devotion to emotion and self identification with various causes. Orwellâs âTwo legs good, four legs badâ. Forget the facts its how the devotee preens himself in relation to a cause. In this interview, both protagonists offered a crystal clear picture of a controversial subject from both sides.
Yes, alright. But watch it a second time and perceive how little content it all has. Cathy Newman comes in like a barking dog and Peterson behaves like a seducer. The locus classicus of this conversational set-up is Socrates against any number of paper-tiger accusers, say Critias. The thing to appreciate there is not how well the fencing goes for the side of knowledge, but the thinker’s concepts and the peace they engender. As far as Peterson goes, that question still needs a hearing. But on the question of style, I will take Roger Scruton over Jordan Peterson.
So you’re saying that Cathy Newman is a dog…
I’m in training to be a CH4 “journalist”. As you can see, it’s going well