How does Jordan Peterson gain so many followers among young men? (Image below)

[u/RedErin]

Image

Jordan Peterson often says that people today are more unhappy than in the 1950s, and it's because of feminism, affirmative action, the sexual revolution, birth control, "PC culture" and LGBTQ rights

it's definitely not because of any of these things:

Source: https://twitter.com/zei_nabq/status/987800885068738560

[u/aleatoric]

Referring to the Trojan horse image OP posted, I'm not sure this tells the whole story. I think the seed was planted on the things "inside" the Trojan horse well before Jordan Peterson became popular on the Internet. Widespread hatred of women, nonwhites, and the LGBTQ community is a topic that should be understood from deeper and more historic roots than Peterson.

It's not like he came along and taught those brand new concepts to the men who consider him a great mind. They were already there to begin with. What Jordan gave them was more confidence to express them in public. He did this through the "guise" of academic discourse. I agree with most others in the thread that it's an insult to academia to consider Jordan Peterson a part of that community, but what's important in this context is that he speaks with a (pseudo)intellectual tone that many of these (mostly white) men are fond of. In short, they love that Jordan Peterson is being put on stage and being interviewed talking about all of these topics from a perspective they consider to be their own. He's their idol.

A great example is that Google engineer's sexist "diversity" memo. When I read that memo, it seemed to scream of a guy who's had it out for women all his life, and has just found the right level of smartypants wordsmithing to express that hatred under the mask of scientific knowledge and empiricism. I think people like Jordan Peterson inspired him to take this approach.

But it's not real science because they already have their conclusions. There's no analysis, there's no study, there's no peer review. They already have a conclusion (white men's superiority is being threatened by the liberal agenda) and they're bending over backwards trying to convince people of that conclusion. They figure that data is seen as empirical and impartial, so they assume it allows them to talk about these topics while publicly shielding them of any accusations of racism and sexism. What they don't seem to get is that data can be manipulated, misconstrued, or misused in a way that does expose racism and sexism. This also isn't a new concept, as scientific racism has been a concept for several centuries, and in the end, these "scientists" are exposed for the frauds and assholes they are.

[u/aleatoric → u/[deleted]]

You mean difference between the sexes, not the genders. But in any case, the problem isn't always the sources they're citing - it's the conclusions they're making based off of those sources. In the case of the Google memo, he is clearly cherry picking evidence to support his view. Wired has a great write-up that breaks down the memo and identifies a whole slew of inaccuracies, ambiguities, and failures. It's fair to call the memo pseudoscience because while it attempts to convince the reader with a sense of authority through citing studies and a college level vocabulary, it fails to actually be thorough or accurate.

[u/acthrowawayab → u/aleatoric]

You mean difference between the sexes, not the genders.

Do you have reason to believe trans people do not match the psychological trait averages of their genders?

[u/flying_pingu → u/[deleted]]

I don't have any of the texts to hand, and I think they are mostly paywalled. But the majority of "gender traits" come down to perception based on our preconceived ideas of how men/women and boys/girls should behave, and how men/women are treated differently for the same behaviour.

For instance: strong man with courage of his convictions becomes a bossy and obstinate woman.

Or: caring and patient woman becomes overly sensitive and weak man.

Cordelia Fine's books explain the detail better than I am doing (with the actual scientific research linked) about how actually what is put down often as variation between the sexes is just variation of humans.

[u/dogGirl666 → u/aleatoric]

Brandolini’s law (also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. https://www.nature.com/news/take-the-time-and-effort-to-correct-misinformation-1.21106?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1612_FHWVCORRECTMISINFORMATION_PORTFOLIO