Jordan Peterson: A Case Study in Sophistry and Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

I first became aware of Jordan Peterson sometime during 2018 and really didn't have much of an opinion. In the midst of the "Culture Wars" I saw the viral video between him and the aggressive college students and honestly kind of felt bad for the guy. This led to the Channel 4 interview, where I thought he properly represented free speech values and remained composed during an interview that seemed designed to represent him negatively. Given these events, I decided to grant him an audience, so to speak, to hear some of his ideas in light of the alleged controversy he'd been arousing. Initially, he presented like anyone else; some of his ideas resonated with me, others I completely disagreed with, and others prompted further research. However, over time I noticed reoccurring patterns that made me sincerely doubt his credibility, authority, sincerity, and seriousness as an academic; to the point where I decided someone of this stature should not be free of criticism given the cult-like following he's gained over the course of the last 8-ish years. He has become overtly partisan, a champion of pseudo-intellectuality, blatantly contradictory, and agenda driven under the guise of a serious thinker in this new "podcast era". Given the politicization of his media presence, any criticism registers as an "attack" among his loyal audience. I have even heard college educated people state "Jordan Peterson can say anything and I will believe it". His adherents ipso-facto agree with anything he says because he has insulated himself from rigorous scrutiny among his academic peers under the conspiratorial assertion that he is the victim of some broad agenda designed to eliminate he and his followers. Jordan Peterson capitalizes on divisive political narratives at the expense of rigorous intellectual inquiry; he has gained a loyal following who idolize his existence, serving as the "anti-establishment" intellectual, at the expense of the critical scrutiny someone of his media presence deserves. One of the biggest ironies is that, while calling himself a classical liberal, he maintains the persecutory delusion that the entirety of his detractors are simply ideologically driven leftists who want to suppress his message that will save western civilization (see Messiah Complex); it would seem that someone committed to liberal principles would do their best to avoid succumbing to The Conspiracy Theory of Society.

None of my criticisms are going to resemble the leftist critiques you may have heard. My main criticisms stem from the fact that I find psychiatry (and clinical psychology) largely pseudo-scientific (at best it is a mixed bag of moderately reliable insights, prone to pathologizing) and that he is not well read in 18th-19th century continental philosophy despite basing his entire partisan agenda on vague misunderstandings of the topics covered by philosophers of this time. When his misunderstandings are presented, he evades refutation by lapsing into obscurantism (similar to Jacques Lacan and other psychoanalytic quacks). I prefer methodologies of thinkers like George Lakoff to William James and Carl Jung, because the pinnacle of Jungian analysis, "The Archetype", really just seems like a weird mystical neo-paganism (collective unconscious), and Pragmatism seems like an American postmodernism. Given this skepticism, it follows that I will highly doubt the intellectual clarity and meaningfulness of any Jordan Peterson derivative. Furthermore, given the replication crisis and methodological issues in psychology and the social sciences more broadly, there are only a few branches of psychology that convince me: Cognitive Psychology (think of Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, and Thomas Gilovich) and some research in Social Psychology (given the issues of test sensitivity, test validity, test reliability, and consequentially, the severe lack of external validity). It seems rather dubious to infer latent mechanisms based on surveys and questionnaires. If crafted thoughtfully combined with proper experimental design you might be able to yield informative conclusions but it seems like these methods are consistently abused (due to biased wording, leading questions, biased context etc. see more about survey methodology , survey design, developing your questionnaire, and uses/abuses of survey methods), the conclusions dramatically overstated, and achieving construct validity seems impossible in practice (due to the Hawthorne Effect, seemingly inevitable biased experimental design, lack of double blinds, and obvious confounders); you can see more about statistical validity here. I wouldn't even call these methods "indirect" methods of data capture; there is a significant difference between probing your subjects for data versus observing indirect measures that can substitute for the direct measure. For more discussion on the relative plausibility of psychology as a legitimate form of inquiry see Is Psychology Finished? (2021) , Questioning Psychology's Findings: A Real Crisis, and How much Fraud is there in Psychology?. Jordan Peterson relies on his academic credentials to persuade his followers and fails to see that his criticisms of the institution (such as it's ideological takeover) can be directly applied to himself when he dismisses the critics that point out his obvious sloppy scholarship and thinking patterns; this has negative implications because his followers will simply cast doubt on any criticism due to the "leftist takeover" narrative and never take the time to investigate the actual methodological issues buttressing some of his bizarre claims (See this video as an example of legit criticism: Factchecking Jordan Petersons Conversation with Richard Dawkins). In short, he is also ideologically driven. It seems to me not only is he politically ideological, but also ideological in his academic work; actively adhering to Jungian methods at the expense of ignoring other psychoanalytical theorists who are equally obscure and mystical (with seemingly no justification). He seems to overtly ignore anything from the Cognitive Revolution and Neurobiology in favor of mysticism. This holds true I think with regard to his current regressive tendencies being in the spotlight; some of his older lectures are of decent quality.

Given my position, it follows that I began to find other opinion pieces that also point out some of Jordan Peterson's flaws. I find am not the first to notice issues related to the quality of his ideas. And no, this has nothing to do with his "Clean your room" metaphor, I actually agree with that (and other advice he gives). For example, these three articles reveal a type of flaw in his style of reasoning that I too find present:

To avoid reinventing the wheel, here is another set of criticisms that I will provide but not comment on in depth for the sake of providing novelty later:

What is particularly interesting is his baffling claims about Atheism. This is mentioned in the links above but also reoccurs in many of his debates in particular with Sam Harris. In fact, that debate series was what motivated me to finally provide a more thorough criticism of his thinking. During his discussions I found myself utterly confused by his consistent evasive maneuvers and lack of clarity. I think it can be summarized with this clip:

How can you actually say that its not obvious in the biblical account that Jesus was resurrected? If anything this is the most abundantly clear thing in Christianity. I mean, if you are a textual critic you might say this. It's odd because Jordan Peterson literally advocates for the church to be more involved "in the culture" but explicitly states that "God is the ultimate metaphor" and cannot clearly state the basic dogma of Christianity: The literal resurrection. By this measure, he is an Atheist by most standards, but disdains Atheism; comparing all Atheists to Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the maniacal murderer. He makes claims like "you are not really an Atheist, because you are not a murderer" implying that the absence of belief in a deity causes people to act immorally. This is ridiculous on its face (unless he is clairvoyant and I am simply not aware), but not even Biblical; see James 2:19, demons still acknowledge the existence of God and yet they seem to act like bastards. Peterson imposes Jungian concepts on the bible during his exegesis, seeing God as a "Useful" story we narrate; purely symbolic with adaptive purposes (See An analysis of Jordan Peterson’s lectures on the stories of the Bible). This is literally what non-believers say about the concept of God; maybe he wants to appear on the fence to his audience because of the negative connotation associated with "Atheism" attributed to by religious groups, so he can maintain a favorable image among his supporters. It is this sort of cognitive dissonance that is interesting, which I think contributes to some of his odd metaphorical conceptions about God but for some reason cannot take a Panentheistic position like Spinoza probably out of fear his base audience will reject him. I guess calling God the "ultimate metaphor" in a Jungian Archetype sense qualifies as God belief, but equating God with nature remains an Atheistic blaspheme. This isn't the only odd thing I noticed upon further inspection. As mentioned earlier, His alleged classical liberal foundation is consistently contradictory with his implied/revealed position when playing the role of political partisan:

I think Gabor Mate accurately describes the root cause of this phenomenon. He mentions that Peterson is an agent of repression and that he is filled with rage. This is especially revealing when we take a look at the types of audiences he attracts. An example I found on Youtube is called "Modern Wisdom"; with a title like this I am sure you are expecting a well balanced approach to the presentation of the wisdom traditions throughout history. On the contrary, it is a collection of video clips "exposing the truth", "destroying critics", "schooling and shocking non-believers", and (hilariously) "destroying Greta Thunderbird". You don't have to think hard to see what demographic he appeals to. Unsurprisingly, these are the same types who constitute the Conspiracy Theory of Society who prefer the teleological narrative over mismanaged complexity (Hanlons Razor).

Back to sophism, what is it? You can consider it as a type of incorrect argument designed to trick or deceive. The chain of reasoning need not be contradictory, although contradictions can arise. A good sophist will use clever language to alleviate the contradictory tensions, with amazing showmanship. A Sophist is someone who conducts Sophistry; the term is obviously used as a slander but in this case I think it readily describes some of the verbal tactics Peterson uses, albeit pejorative. The conceptual origins come from ancient Greece, from Socratic Dialogues such as Protagoras (which are ironically absent in the Peterson conception of metaphorical thinking in our collective psyche, including their impact on biblical cannon).

In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly in Athens, "sophist" came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. "Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience."^[2] Sophists went to Athens to teach because the city was flourishing at the time. It was good employment for those good at debate, which was a speciality of the first sophists, and they received the fame and fortune they were seeking.

Sophists were rhetoricians; elegant oral speakers who knew how to convince an audience of a position despite lack of evidence or solid reasoning. Modern sophists have many tools in their arsenal: misleading statistics, fallacious appeals, appeal to narrative/conspiracy, and Pseudo-Profound bullshit (among many more). Peterson does not really misuse statistics, despite the frequent cherry-picking of un-established literature; his work (Maps of Meaning: the Architecture of Belief) is profoundly unempirical. He is the culprit of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit.

The Sokal Affair was an academic hoax pointing out the severe lack of rigor growing in certain social science departments; among the "post-modernists". Shortly after, Fashionable Non-sense was released showing the misuse and misunderstanding of technical mathematical concepts, presumably with the intention of appearing profound. Jacques Lacan (a French Psychoanalyst) is referenced many times as an example of the Pseudo-Profound bullshit generator, who actually ended up influencing the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, subsequently Louis Althusser and the most notorious intellectual Jordan Peterson disdains: Michel Foucault. Surprisingly, Lacan is never mentioned in the list of post-modernists who are allegedly ruining the world. When we look at some of Lacan's material, I think the methodological similarities to Peterson are striking, demonstrating the utter lack of rigor running rampant within "psychoanalytic" departments. Ironically, Peterson's disdain for postmodernists, can equally be applied to his own work. Below is a sample of Lacan's work from lacanonline.com.

If you come from a technical background, you will find this "diagram" to be utterly arbitrary and meaningless. The underlying conceptual framework is poorly defined, the relationships between structures in the diagram are non-sensical, and there is no empirical demonstration that connects this structure to something tangible. Here is another one about repression:

Notice the pseudo-profound bullshit here; there is a functional relationship between "signifiers", the emergence of "signification", and "congruity" relation? Again, there is no empirical validity or possible verification of this ill defined relationship. This is precisely what Sokal was referring to. Diagrams have a purpose, but they need to be representative of something. Architectural diagrams refer to common patterns of some physical instantiation of a process, object, entity, relation, feedback, or structure; the ontological foundation of the symbols involved must be based in something actually meaningful. Consider a book I am currently reading: Enterprise Integration Patterns; the patterns refer to common instantiations of broadly similar integration solutions that reoccur in a modern enterprise. The diagrams here actually refer to something; their relations, sources, sinks, concurrency, and grammar make sense because there are formal aspects that can be represented with a Modeling Language. Now consider Jordan Petersons diagrams:

Of course these can start to make sense when you begin to rationalize or tell a story (engage in sophistry), I'm sure Lacan's diagrams become meaningful as well. Peterson is supposed to be representing the "Architecture" of a belief . In no way is this: related to neural-biological structures, overlap with anything from the field of Knowledge Representation, represented with Bayesian networks, formally specified with an accepted vocabulary like UML, account for a description of flows/dynamics (processes), related to cognitive architecture, layered, related to anything observable, or conceptually clear; this is methodologically identical to Lacan. This is not how we represent architecture in technical disciplines. In other words, it is Pseudo-Profound bullshit. My main problem is that when referring to "systems" and "architecture" we have methods of formally specifying the system under discussion in order to reduce vagueness/ambiguity and impose structure; psychoanalysts (and other pseudo-thinkers) completely ignore this, preferring the mysticism involved with arbitrarily designed diagrams involving the "unconscious". The problem is this is his magnum opus, the alleged profundity underpinning his thought; it is incredibly unstructured, undisciplined, chaotic, and consistent with the postmodernists he disdains (more on this later).

Why do I think this is pseudo-profound bullshit? I've yet to provide a definition of the concept; lets compare these diagrams to something semantically precise as an example so the definition makes more sense later on. Earlier I mentioned Unified Modeling Language (UML) as a method describing the behaviors and relations among components in a system. UML has basic types of diagrams representing structure and behavior of a system.

If i want to build or represent a system from a blueprint and abstract away implementation details, UML provides an unambiguous representation of how various components are defined, interact, and are structured. This way of diagramming at the abstract architectural level provides a common language for people to unambiguously understand the system. There are many other modeling languages that we can use to formally specify (see Specification Languages) aspects of a system at an architectural level. Another example is SysML; granted these are engineering/implementation oriented but the principles of reducing ambiguity and increasing specification while retaining core features of a system remain. Creating an architecture or model of a system requires an understanding of the components, stable meaning of the symbols representing components, and a non-arbitrary method of system decomposition. Here the types from SysML along with the four pillars:

Source: Visualization of SysML Project Meta-Model Architecture and Evolution

There are ways of specifying the actual process of modeling as well, like the V model below:

A modeling framework I consistently use is the Entity Relation Model from the domain of data modeling. Keep in mind, diagrams are supposed to help you understand the major components of a system; it should explicate the features of a system to provide maximal understanding while not getting bogged down in extraneous implementation details. ER models describe the relation among data components. The data represents aspects of the process and system. Data represents measurements about an Entity; which are typically Nouns containing features, aspects, properties, and attributes. Entities can be related to one another, typically conceived as a Verb (but can be any other mathematical relationship); the relations have non-arbitrary definitions which define the constraints between entities unambiguously. Data can be modeled a number of different ways (better or worse, there is no one "true" model, it depends on your objectives/purposes); the relations derive from relational algebra. An example taken from Wikipedia shows how a complex system can be modeled with this technique. Definitions of the entities are typically debated; what is an Account? What is a Region? Closely related is the Concept Lattice, Formal Ontology, or Semantic Web. The basic point is that there is a controlled vocabulary and precise structure for explicating a systems architecture.

I can hear someone saying "this is engineering, it is a different domain of inquiry" to which I say there are entire fields of research dedicated to studying general features and ways of representing systems: systems science, system dynamics, systems theory, network science etc. which study natural systems (non-engineered), can't we use some of the formalisms here to enhance the quality of the work done in psychoanalysis? Consider a simple example from systems dynamics: The Causal Loop Diagram. How do we represent the cause-effect interactions and the flow of resources among components in a system? Perhaps you have a set of components and would like to understand if they are invariant under certain transformation logics. Perhaps you would like to understand feedback loops. This seems like it could be useful as applied to the concept of a mental disorder (negative information feeding back into your cognitive processing). You can understand many systems of interacting components with the use of this diagram; the best part is that it enhances the clarity of the subsystems and factors you find relevant in a system. Causal models can be complex but are understandable in principle because the features and semantics of the diagram actually means something. Here is an example from Developing a Preliminary Causal Loop Diagram for Understanding the Wicked Complexity of the COVID-19 Pandemic:

Another closely related and common modeling method is Stock and Flow analysis. This allows you to see how a measurement of interest flows through a system over time, and how the flows effect existing levels of that resource. This was introduced by Jay Forrester at MIT, and is commonly used for analyzing system dynamics. Below is a basic diagram, followed by a more complex diagram:

The main point here is that the symbols mean something and can be verified and validated empirically. A stock is accumulated over time by inflows and/or depleted by outflows. Stocks can only be changed via flows. Mathematically a stock can be seen as an accumulation or integration of flows over time – with outflows subtracting from the stock. Stocks typically have a certain value at each moment of time. A flow changes a stock over time. Usually, we can clearly distinguish inflows (adding to the stock) and outflows (subtracting from the stock). Flows typically are measured over a certain interval of time. Flow Rate is always expressed per some unit time: If these flow into/out of a stock that keeps track of things of type X. Clouds represent Source of the flow – when the flow is originated from outside the model or Sink of the flow – when the flow sinks. Both sources and sinks are assumed to have infinite capacity and do not impose any limitations on the flows. Clouds are drawn as part of the flow element, in case the flow does not flows in/out of some stock. Link is used to define a dependency between elements of a stock and flow diagram. If some element A is mentioned in the equation or initial value of element B, you should first connect these elements with a link going from A to B and only then type the expression in the properties of B.

There is another common diagram used for determining causal relations called the directed acyclic graph. This is also used in software applications such as the git version control system, and commonly used to identify data lineage in data engineering applications. The great thing about using graphs to represent networks of relations is that there is a mathematics governing the relations between entities in the system. The structure imposes constraints on relations between nodes in the system, allowing us to speak precisely about what's going on. In econometrics and statistics, causal graphs are represented with DAGs. They allow us to say what's causing what, showing paths of causation between nodes in the system, while helping us identify confounding variables. We can also begin to speak counterfactually; something very useful when attempting to understand what happens when we intervene on a system. This is similar to the causal loop diagram, with the exception that it is a directed process, which captures something very intuitive about what causation is. The key point is that you can formulate the structure however you want, provided it is consistent with the definition of a DAG. You can then fit this to real world data and verify whether the structure is present in the data. If it's not there, you discard it. Here is a simple example followed by a complex example:

I would imagine Peterson should be aware of some of this, given that Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a common empirical method in psychometrics. But do we see this in his book? No. We see nothing structured.

I hope the reader begins to see my point: diagrams and the concepts underlying them should maintain a level of rigor otherwise they become entirely arbitrary and merely a tool for persuasion. Consider a flowchart used to describe the steps taken in an algorithmic process or workflow; the symbols are actually unambiguous and help us understand the actual process. Technical drawings should actually mean something; this is so important that we have ISO standards for representing systems and measurements. On the contrary, in Jordan Petersons work, we have a dragon eating its tail which is allegedly supposed to represent "chaos" in the "psyche"; a "common theme" cross culturally that points to a "hierarchy of metaphors" giving us meaning, communicated to us in a design that is entirely informal, arbitrary, and imprecise with vague mythical notions. It is not a model of anything "real", it is a fictitious construction imposed on the nebulous concept of the unconscious; just like his post-modern enemies whom he criticizes for their wishy-washiness. They are all making a complete mockery of scientific modeling. It almost looks like it could be legitimate, which is why a Sophist can fool people with its pseudo-profundity. I mean imagine if we drew circuit diagrams like this; all of our electronics would be non-functional. But that's the point, these ideas have no bearing on anything real, it is purely ideological; imagine applying these standards in fields that are directly consequential.

A bit more about Pseudo-profound BS "which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous". Below is the abstract:

Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullshit statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”). Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bullshit statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural belief). Parallel associations were less evident among profundity judgments for more conventionally profound (e.g., “A wet person does not fear the rain”) or mundane (e.g., “Newborn babies require constant attention”) statements. These results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bullshit and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity.

We all know what this concept entails, we run into bullshitters all the time. Some bullshitters have PhD's; they can use their credentials to bolster their claims within their field and external to their field, appearing profound to non-specialists who follow blindly. Pseudo-profound bullshit is interesting because the statements appear to convey profound meaning on the surface; they retain grammatically correct sentence structure but are semantically, empirically, and evidentially vacuous.

Thus, bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth. This sort of phenomenon is similar to what Reference Buekens and BoudryBuekens and Boudry (2015) referred to as obscurantism (p. 1): “[when] the speaker... [sets] up a game of verbal smoke and mirrors to suggest depth and insight where none exists.”

Importantly, pseudo-profound bullshit is not trivial. For a real-world example of pseudo-profound bullshit and an application of our logic, consider the following:

“Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.”

This statement bears a striking resemblance to (a), but is (presumably) not a random collection of words. Rather, it is an actual “tweet” sent by Deepak Chopra, M.D., who has authored numerous books with titles such as Quantum Healing (Reference ChopraChopra, 1989) and The Soul of Leadership (Reference ChopraChopra, 2008) and who has been accused of furthering “woo-woo nonsense” (i.e., pseudo-profound bullshit; e.g., Shermer, 2010).

Deepak Chopra has about 600k subscribers on YouTube and 3.1 million twitter followers. The question is "Why do some people seem to systematically fall for meaningless garbage?". I love the paper I am citing because it seeks to answer this question of "Bullshit Receptivity". Why do some people think Jordan Petersons description of the symbolic impact on the collective psyche is worth anything? The first mechanism proposed is that we have a positive bias towards bullshit by default because of the cognitive resources needed to filter out meaningless statements. Some people might be more predisposed to inflate judgements of profundity independent of the content. The second mechanism proposed is that some people might be unable to detect bullshit, confusing vagueness with profundity; they simply do not activate the necessary skeptical faculties because they do not see the cues signaling them to do so. They may rely on simple heuristics such as trustworthiness or in-group favoritism; if these filters check out, then they are willing to accept the bullshit. In the articles the authors report, they find that bullshit profundity ratings are correlated with individual difference factors that are conceptually related to pseudo-profound bullshit.

Most importantly, we have provided evidence that individuals vary in conceptually interpretable ways in their propensity to ascribe profundity to bullshit statements; a tendency we refer to as “bullshit receptivity”. Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.

It should be obvious why the bullshit filter turns off for Jordan Peterson (and which segments of the demographic he appeals to); he presents himself as a credible intellectual who is standing up against the left-wing intellectuals who are "pushing climate change, Atheism, and Marxism". People will by default believe anything he says. This is why he can get away with saying demonstrably false statements about topics outside his domain; any pushback from credible experts will be simply discredited by his audience as the "establishment" suppressing his message. I will list just a few which I have encountered:

On a Joe Rogan podcast (and Lex Fridman podcast) Peterson made claims about the unreliability of climate models and dismissed the very concept of a "climate" (saying it is synonymous with "everything"). He stated that climate models cannot reliably predict global temperatures due to error propagation increasing the uncertainty of predictions as T increases, selecting a subset of factors is impossible (and arbitrary) given the complexity of the eco system (based on his misunderstanding of climate, he thinks you need to model every variable in the system), and the economic impact is overstated. I want to tackle the obvious one; mathematical models are necessarily simplifications of the systems they represent. His criticism that it is a simplification and therefore wrong, simply demonstrates his severe lack of knowledge when it comes to modeling chaotic systems. It is a global defeater, which unfortunately, would also apply to the models he apparently trusts in the psychometric literature. The level of stupidity here is baffling. Furthermore, his criticism that you have to arbitrarily reduce the set of features, makes it patently obvious he is unfamiliar with High Dimensional Statistics, Dimensionality Reduction methods such as PCA, and ironically the very methodology someone in his field should be familiar with; Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. To have a PhD in a field that heavily relies on dimensionality reduction methods would make it seem that he should at least be broadly familiar with these methodologies, but he doesn't even have familiarity. So ironically, his criticisms simply show that, not only does he misunderstand statistical modeling more broadly, he doesn't even know his own field of study. On to the second criticism; error propagation does not invalidate climate model projections. This has been addressed by Dr. Patrick Brown, you can see it here if you are interested and in another commentary propagation of nonsense (part 2 here) or here in Another round of Pat Frank's propagation of uncertainties or here at "A Frank Discussion about the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty". Peterson must be referring to Patrick Frank's publication that allegedly shows the unreliability of climate forecasts. Now the problem here isn't that someone questioned the validity of the forecasts; this is precisely what the scientific process encourages. The problem is that Patrick Frank's paper has been discredited; so why would Peterson continue referencing something that has been shown to be methodologically unsound? As I will show later with ADHD studies, Peterson loves to cherry pick studies that confirm his agenda. The problem is obviously broader than Jordan Peterson; the Pat Frank paper was referenced by the Hoover Institution's David R . Henderson and other economics ideologues who honestly don't have a clue about anything. It is important to note that the Pat Frank paper had been rejected for publication for 6 years; according to him because of the Conspiracy Theory of Society, eventually paying to get it published. I guess this makes sense why Jordan Peterson would cite this single study to discredit an entire body of global literature; it is his modus operandum to appeal to conspiracy. Could it be that you are just wrong? The forecasts aren't even point estimates, they are ensembles (see ensemble forecasting) that predict the evolution of the probability distribution; I'm pretty sure they are not simple AR(1) models. But this just speaks more broadly to Petersons utter ignorance; ensemble methodology is incredibly powerful but Peterson simply is unaware of these methods. This brings me to my next point; why not ask the question whether our past predictions have manifested? Because they have; in fact climate scientists are criticized on the basis that their forecasts have not been granular enough at the local climate level. Here is Tim Palmer, leading pioneer of probabilistic ensemble forecasting techniques and climate prediction, discussing the successes of climate modeling. As for the economic impact, Peterson loves to refer to Bjorn Lomborg instead of serious researchers who specialize in Climate Econometrics like David F. Hendry or Doyne Farmer. What can we gather from all of this? Peterson is a reactionary who cites other reactionaries at the expense of engaging in serious inquiry, speaks outside his "alleged" domain of expertise, and uses fear as his modus operandum to mislead people who listen to him religiously. The U.S. Department of Defense is literally anticipating the effects of climate change, laboratories like LLNL and LANL specialize in estimation of climate models using supercomputers, and results are corroborated across dozens of countries. I guess I must be incredibly blind to the global Marxist conspiracy; we are lucky to have our Psychologist Messiah to save us from the forces of evil.
Jordan Peterson does not understand George Orwell. He makes use of Orwell's criticisms of totalitarianism, but fails to recognize that Orwell was not an advocate for Western Capitalism; on the contrary, he was critical of British Imperialism.
Peterson thinks that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to counter "Wokeism". This is utter nonsense. Russian philosopher responds.
Peterson literally thinks that ADHD "is not real". This one is quite bizarre, but not unusual for people to dismiss clinical disorders in the DSM-5. Russell Barkley, clinical psychologist specializing in ADHD, provides two criticisms showing Petersons utter methodological failure. ADHD & Lack of Play Opportunity - A Rebuttal of Jordan Peterson's Claims About ADHD and ADHD & Lack of Play - Further Refutations of Jordan Peterson. I should note that, as mentioned above, I think there are significant incentives to pathologize due to inherently poor diagnostic methodology (clinical assessment, Evidence Based Assessment, Evidence-Based Psychological Assessment, Clinical Guide to the Evidence-Based Assessment Approach to Diagnosis and Treatment, Clinical Reasoning: A Missing Piece for Improving Evidence-Based Assessment in Psychology, Why Mental Illness Diagnoses Are Wrong: A Pilot Study on the Perspectives of the Public, and Heterogeneity in psychiatric diagnostic classification) in clinical psychology and to principle-agent problems more broadly in the disciplines relation to drug manufacturers. The reason I cite this criticism is that, when criticizing a well established body of literature, I believe you have the burden to provide some sort of comprehensively sound critique in order to dismiss a concept in its entirety; but Peterson does what he does best and cherry-picks an irrelevant and out of date study to cast doubt on the entire enterprise. This is his evaluation criteria for selecting which concepts in clinical psychology are real. I think he does this because if he assesses the discipline by the standards I mentioned above, his very own area of research would be undermined. Matter of fact, I think we should do this exercise. According to Google Scholar, three of the top five articles Jordan Peterson has contributed to are published in personality journals (just a side note, the most cited paper uses Factor Analysis, which again I repeat, is a statistical method used to reduce the set of features in a dataset; so he has no excuse to have a skeptical stance towards feature reduction in climate modeling). So lets go ahead and discuss the relative merits of personality as a reliable concept. I will be focusing on the Big Five Personality Traits test because this really is the only one that isn't pseudo-scientific. According to A meta-analysis of dependability coefficients (test–retest reliabilities) for measures of the Big Five the median reliability was about 82%, extraversion scales being the most reliable indicator while agreeableness ranked lower in the 60% range. It is important to note that this meta analysis pooled 67 studies, combing around 50,000 participants all from the United States; I'm not sure this constitutes a large sample to generalize across the entire human species. In another study How Universal Is the Big Five? Testing the Five-Factor Model of Personality Variation Among Forager–Farmers in the Bolivian Amazon, test reliability of the test drops closer to 50%. In other words, the test does not generalize. How well does the Big 5 give individual specific descriptions, rather than something overly general that can apply to all humans (like a horoscope)? In other words, does your specified personality correlate with or predict certain behavior? Personality Correlates of Risky Health Outcomes: Findings from a Large Internet Study, Personality and the Leading Behavioral Contributors of Mortality, Big five personality traits and performance: A quantitative synthesis of 50+ meta-analyses, and Agreeableness and Its Consequences: A Quantitative Review of Meta-Analytic Findings attempt to answer this sort of question. Looking at the results, target personality traits tend to weakly explain variation in the response (outcome variable); correlations tend to be very weak. This means that, if you tell me you are more "agreeable" opposed to "Openness", I wouldn't really be able to identify different outcomes (say, earnings or health) without significantly more information (covariates) about you. Okay, so far we are not looking so good. How about the personality-situation debate? You can look at the link to see the situationist argument; essentially, it boils down to the invalidity of self-reported measures, invalid clinical procedures, construct validity, and low correlations between personality and behavior. Any test-retest reliability tends to decrease after long periods as well, so perhaps these tests are measuring situational aspects rather than alleged latent traits. This also would indicate that, if personality is a valid construct, it certainly evolves. Is personality a mix of genes (The genetics of human personality, Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies), experience, sociology, environment (Genetic and environmental continuity in personality development: a meta-analysis), and culture? It seems so. Is there a biological basis of personality that is just too complex for us to summarize with these naïve questionnaires? To my knowledge, it does not appear we have identified a neurological structure corresponding to a thing called "personality", but there are fMRI imaging techniques that identify correlations between brain states and behavior. Also to my knowledge, I don't think anyone has identified a gene corresponding with a particular personality expression. The brain is the most complex known structure existing in the universe; maybe Jordan Peterson ought to take his own advice and be highly skeptical of his own field before making naïve assertions about the nebulous "personality" on the basis of shitty questionnaires. All hope is not lost however; as I mentioned above I prefer the cognitive and biopsychosocial approaches to the mind due to their inherent interdisciplinary methods that account for such complexity. It truly baffles me that social scientists think they can understand some of the highest orders of complexity with simple models. There are other Personality Theories that account for these complex interactions between biological structures and environment like the Hypostatic Model of Personality; that is a good start. But Jordan Peterson is obviously not engaged in any of this; rather he just blabs his mouth about topics he's clearly unfamiliar with by bolstering his credentials to appear as an authority. All I really care about is consistency; Jordan Peterson's gripes with ADHD research is obviously not founded on anything substantial, and if his criteria was applied to his own field of study we could easily dismiss personality as a fictitious construct (something I am personally inclined to do anyway based on all the problems I mentioned above). Why not just say that ADHD is overly diagnosed and the drugs/treatments have negative side effects? Because that is not sensational enough for your listeners.
In the context of debating about morality, Peterson tried to make an analogy between Artificial Intelligence and rule based moral systems, which represented his lack of knowledge about the AI. Even better, Peterson refuted his own position (the premise of 12 rules of life): see Jordan Peterson DEBUNKS Jordan Peterson??? with Matt Dillahunty. When you are a master bullshitter, its kind of like being a master liar. Eventually, you find yourself trying to make obvious contradictions coherent by building up the your arguments into more of a jumbled mess (Can We Understand AI? A Response to Jordan Peterson’s Podcast).

Jordan Peterson literally presents himself as the outcast intellectual who has been driven out by the Marxist-agenda-driven left-wingers. It can't possibly be that he has overstepped his domain of alleged expertise into fields he knows little about (as I have shown above, his technical knowledge seems highly questionable, and his empirical work seems almost non-existent). This simply refers back to my initial criticisms about Peterson; The Conspiracy Theory of Society and Sophistry. Anyone differing with his position has succumbed to ideological forces; not a very charitable position to tar-and-feather anyone who disagrees with you. He is literally a fear mongerer; this is evident in his obsession with the "deep societal plunge into nihilism" and his tweets (example 1, example 2, example 3) . It is not just the conflation between climate and weather, it is the overtly idiotic statements he makes that sound like witty "gotchas". Consider this statement about the safety of solar energy; he seems to imply that Nuclear Energy is a safer form of energy which is just bizarre to defend when considering the implied risk involved with irresponsible management of nuclear facilities, versus the the empirical probability caused by maintenance to solar panels. I would assume someone of his stature could distinguish between the two risk profiles. It is this utter stupidity that worries me, and do people not die in the construction of nuclear powerplants?

If you want a quick resource on the climate denial phenomenon, I like this website that compiles all of the pseudo-skeptical positions taken against the consensus on Global Warming: Skeptical Science - Getting Skeptical about Global Warming Skepticism. Pseudo-profundity emerges in all sorts of areas. I particularly see it in the field of financial advising; pseudo-profound investing strategies that are absolutely bogus. To see the source of the idea, Harry Frankfurt was one of the thinkers who popularized this concept with his book "On Bullshit" so take a look into it when you get a moment.

I should probably state my bias: I am what one would call a "Liberal", I admire the English enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and Adam Smith. I have Karl Popper's "Enemies of the Open Society" on my book shelf right next to a series of books on Argumentation Theory (from thinkers such as Stephen Toulmin and the Pragma Dialectical school) and Umberto Eco. Bertrand Russell and the positivists were bold and admirable thinkers, although positivism ended up incorrect, their styles of critical thinking have influenced me. John Rawls, John Lock, and Robert Nozick resonate with me. I am interested in Charles Sanders Peirce. I am primarily concerned with how we can use our reason and sensory experiences to better navigate this world, reduce our ignorance, and reduce our suffering. I like the book "The Social construction of What?" by Ian Hacking because it does not dogmatically dismiss the notion of social constructivism but rather engages with it. I like Jean Baudrillard, especially System of Objects. I really liked Althusser when I first read him, especially his notion of the Ideological State Apparatus. I am by no means dogmatically close minded with respect to the variety of content I engage with; I read Kenneth Burke, Nassim Taleb, George Lakoff, and Alicia Juarrero. I like critics. How else are we supposed to self reflect? I am by no means a Marxist, but will engage in conversation. Of course it is difficult to reduce nuances in your thinking to a simple categorical statement "I am X", in some sense its easier to describe what you are not. I am not a Conservative, but some of Edmund Burke's arguments make sense to me. I am not a leftist, but some of Das Kapital makes sense to me. I am attracted to process philosophy and systems science. Does that sum it up?

Now on to the next problem: Jordan Peterson misunderstands the philosophy he dislikes and labels all of his detractors "Post modern Neo-Marxists". Before beginning, I think its necessary to actually read first hand suspicious philosophical or literary texts before assuming the general assumptions of your very local peer group. That being said, here are a few sources that explain the philosophy Peterson attacks:

Theory and Philosophy,
Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy,
Rick Roderick: Self Under Seige - 20th Century Philosophy,
Richard D. Wolff,
Philosophy Overdose - Richard Rorty,
Philosophy Overdose - Hegel,
Philosophy Overdose - Hannah Arendt,
Philosophize This! (Frankfurt School, Gramsci etc.),
Philosophy Overdose - Social and Political Philosophy
Partially Examined Life (de Beauvoir, Sara Ahmed, Sartre, Debord)
Introduction to Theory of Literature with Paul H. Fry
Foundations of Modern Social Theory with Iván Szelényi
Jacques Derrida
Debate on Postmodernism (1984)

One thing I think should be obvious is that Peterson very rarely quotes or directly cites passages from any of these thinkers; rather he asserts a very brief "Peterson interpretation" of his misreading's, subsequently calling them the "postmodern neo-marxist types who see everything as a power struggle". I would encourage anyone to actually engage with some of this material; although I understand the sentiment behind his criticisms, I ultimately find that Peterson has incredibly sloppy scholarship with regards to 18th-19th Century continental philosophy. He seems to arbitrarily focus on Foucault, Derrida, and Marx while ignoring Lacan (someone I've shown above to be remarkedly methodologically similar to Peterson) György Lukács, Adorno, Gramsci, Althusser, Weber, Habermas, Jean Baudrillard, or Richard Rorty ( I mean really man? He was the most prolific American postmodernist in academia ). When he references Foucault I never heard him reference any of his books. When he mentions Derrida I never hear him reference Différance or anything else more broadly from the philosophy of language such as Wittgenstein's Language Games, structuralism from thinkers such as Saussure/Strauss, or Ordinary language philosophy of J.L. Austin. He simply cherry-picks a thinker, misrepresents them, and dismisses them. Now I personally think this is not the way to show someone is incorrect; if you have not fully engaged with the serious content then you should probably shut your mouth. I mean seriously, his debate with Slavoj Zizek should be evidence enough; he reads the Communist Manifesto and proceeds to critique Marx without ever picking up Das Kapital or any of the Western Marxist thinkers who followed. He dismisses French postmodernist thinkers on grounds they are "relativistic"; this is the type of counter-argument you will hear from a first year philosophy student who is learning the basics of argumentation. Here is my position; get to know what a Marxist thinks before you dismiss their thought on grounds of historical failure (you can do so by visiting marxist.org). There is a reason why there are still so many marxists today, for the same reason there are so many Christian's today despite the horrific murders in the name of God; "That's not real Christianity" and "That is not real Marxism", engage with the fundamentals of their core texts.

My main assertion is that Peterson does not know Postmodernism or Marxism; this is evident in the self-contradictory phrase "post modern neo Marxist", you simply cannot be both since one implies the negation of the other. Peterson seems to be aware of this criticism, but brushes it off nevertheless stating that "it is still smuggled in there somehow". His line of reasoning goes like this: some of the post-modern theorists were also Marxists (despite the fact they critiqued Marxism) but when the atrocities of the USSR became public knowledge they instead decided to incorporate it into their work. Peterson comes to this conclusion simply by a misunderstanding of what the two conceptual frameworks entail. I think this derives from the same line of reasoning that leads him to conclude Atheists are actually Theists: we have an apparent contradiction and yet he finds a way to show the two contradictory categories collapse to one. It is also the same line of reasoning that leads him to hold two contradictory notions of Truth (Foundationalism and pragmatism), which I will touch on later.

I will paraphrase a few of the arguments presented here which demonstrate some of Petersons issues. To begin, Postmodernity is defined by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition as incredulity towards metanarratives (grand explanatory frameworks and narratives that legitimatize experience, knowledge, values, history etc). A metanarrative is a totalizing worldview that explains all encompassing aspects of anything explainable; it is a type of unchangeable and objective narrative that guides behaviors. This is an important concept to clarify; postmodernists are frequently accused of claiming that True statements do not exist. Rather, they take a deflationary approach to truth (truth might be the label we apply to statements after some process of justification); metanarratives are what they hold skepticism towards. One particular metanarrative postmodernists attack is the notion of Western Rationality; they doubt the logic of practical reason and attempt to demonstrate its invalidity by showing the absurdities it leads to in capitalistic societies. Another metanarrative is that of the Marxist description of historical materialism; Marx creates a Telos of history, which provides the reader an expected historical trajectory provided such-and-such conditions hold, based on concepts and arguments presented in Das Kapital. So as we can see, the two are incommensurate. Maybe Peterson conflates the two because people from both camps tend to be critical of capitalism; we should acknowledge though that Marxism is itself a product of modernity (which the postmodernists reject). If you haven't seen the debate with Zizek, I will post some videos summarizing the utter confusion Peterson has about Marxism. I mean, if you can't even describe the position of your interlocutor how can you show it is incorrect?

On to the second point; Peterson has a remarkable methodological similarity to postmodern psychoanalysts and his pragmatic notion of truth vividly resembles Richard Rorty (someone else accused of being a postmodernist by his contemporaries). This is not coincidental; Peterson very regularly references Nietzsche and William James, thinkers considered to be precursors to the postmodern philosophies Peterson criticizes. Peterson seems to arbitrarily select Nietzschean concepts, like the lapse into Nihilism without a totalizing metanarrative, but ignores his Four Great Errors and does not fully engage with the the collapse of the True World fable; Nietzsche does not propose reverting back to the fable that is becoming increasingly unbelievable (like how Peterson proposes). Peterson's notion of truth essentially reduces to usefulness, which is conceptually similar to Nietzsche's Will to Power and rejection of objective history in On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. Peterson will make reference to the usefulness of biblical narratives without regard to their objective historical accuracy, making a case for their truth based on their usefulness and other Jungian psychoanalytic nonsense. Notice this conflicts with the notion of Truth embodied by modernism; correspondence with observable facts/datum, coherence, verifiability etc. There are other theories of Truth; postmodernists typically take a deflationary view with the added emphasis of subject dependency and a particular analysis of language. Postmodernism is literally what Peterson embodies, inspired by the pragmatism of William James; it is particularly clear when he is pressed to clarify himself (See the video below with Mohammad Hijab) about belief in God. Watch this video describing the postmodern conception of language prior to watching his response to the Mohammad Hijab: This embodies the Peterson rhetorical style.

On to his notion of Truth. He claims to adhere to a "Darwinian Pragmatism", a combination of Evolutionary Epistemology and the Pragmatism presented by William James. This is definitely a minority view and remarkably similar to some of the constructivist notions of Truth espoused by postmodernists. He see's science as a tool rather than method of discovering something we call "Truth" (I am not sure if this makes him anti-realist, but it definitely aligns him with Scientific Constructivism); Truth is a broader concept, according to Peterson, containing metaphor. This is where we get his wishy-washy notion of truth being that which is on top of a hierarchy of metaphors (something he ineffably refers to as God, much how Rorty characterizes our notion of Truth). As mentioned before, this is inconsistent with some of his other assertions about the Bible being a prerequisite for all other understanding to occur, since this would imply foundationalism. More or less, he rejects correspondence, and sees truth as something metaphorical, useful, and evolutionarily selected a-la-James. But this is very similar to the postmodernist rejection of correspondence; Science and other Regimes of Power construct Theories that are not absolute truths, rather they are fallible descriptions that serve the uses of the tool-wielder. This can be represented by the classic quotation by George Box "All Models are Wrong, but some are Useful". We build models of reality, which can be better or worse; the result being a construction of knowledge. Pragmatism precedes William James, these notions are also developed later by John Dewey (someone who Richard Rorty was very influenced by); in other words Jordan Peterson references many of the same thinkers that influenced postmodern thinkers. It has even been claimed (see the lectures by Dr. Darren Staloff below) that James was the American Nietzsche; his ideas preceded many of the ideas considered postmodern from thinkers like Habermas, Rorty, Heidegger, and the French Intellectuals. Below is a video introducing the reader to William James if you are not familiar with him; Peterson get's his inspiration from this philosophy:

One thing to remember: postmodernism is not inherently Leftist; it is a rejection of modernism, there have been rejections of modernism on both ends of the political spectrum. A prominent far-right postmodernist is Aleksandr Dugin, advocating for a unique "Russian Truth" that is self-serving for the current political agenda of their nation state. According to a Peterson analysis of Truth, this would be acceptable and just as True as anything else given the metaphorical "trueness" of the stories guiding the Russian Identity. The mythic systems are true insofar that they function to maximize the probability of survival of the Russian nation-state.

Sam Harris has a brief synopsis of their discussion where Peterson elaborates on his nebulous notion of truth. Of course, his notion of truth is also predicated on his Maps of Meaning book, so as mentioned before, his derivative theory is incredibly underwhelming for me. Here is a quote from Nietzsche's On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, tell me whether this notion of truth seems analogous to the Peterson conception:

A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.[5]

Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth & Lying in a Non-Moral Sense"

If you are interested in learning more about William James and the pragmatist notion of Truth, watch these lectures:

In summary, I am not convinced Peterson should be considered a sophisticated thinker. I really think you can only get away with this level of sloppiness if you have a devote cult-like following who isn't interested in verifying the accuracy of your claims. Peterson knows exactly what to say and what not to say in order to retain his viewership. I think he is intellectually sloppy, overrated, pseudo-scientific by virtue of his lack of empirical rigor, and lacks technical acumen. He is not stupid. No one stupid can create such a following. No, he is a pseudo-profound bullshitting Sophist. Maybe Protagoras is the mythic figure embedded in his metaphorical substrate.

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Jordan Peterson: A Case Study in Sophistry and Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

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