Jordan B Peterson Channel 4 Interview

rjsterry

Alex99 wrote:

"All those assumptions above, about 'women being agreeable, not assertive..."

I'm pretty sure those are not just assumptions. Maybe you need to read up a bit.

Of course there are a number of studies showing differences in the prevalence of certain character traits and a correlation with gender. Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?

From there there seems to be a lot of supposition (because there is no practical way to provide evidence one way or the other) that this is somehow an evolutionary adaptation to traditional male and female roles - i.e. nature rather than learned behaviour. The expression of genes is always due to a combination of inheritance and environment, and I would suggest that in the case of personality traits, even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour.

Character traits as learned behaviour fits the evidence of 'women who act like men' and vice versa, far better than the idea that they are inherent to gender. Once you look at it that way, the whole thing is just a self-reinforcing pattern of behaviour where assertiveness is rewarded because it fits the pattern rather than having any inherent benefit.

rjsterry

Rick Chasey wrote:

nickice wrote:

OK, Rick, just this once I'll engage with you (given your usual stellar thinking I'm surprised you haven't called me a sexist yet). You've got some balls to say that agreeableness means nothing when it's widely recognised as a trait in psychology.


Companies want the best labour at the lowest cost. If women were much cheaper to hire than men, why don't companies hire only women? In any case, nobody is arguing there isn't prejudice just that it's more complicated than that.

You're accusing him of making generalisations but that's exactly what talking about the pay-gap does. Then you talk about the people you've personally spoken to but that's anecdotal evidence. Also, agreeableness doesn't mean politeness. I'm going down the road of pyschology here that I don't know (nor it appears do you) know much about but, Jordan Peterson is right on agreeableness-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

And this- http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2016101 ... sonalities

"all three large, cross-cultural studies by Costa, McCrae and others actually found men and women differed in average personality more in more developed and gender-egalitarian cultures, such as in Europe and America than in cultures in Asia and Africa where there is less gender equality (as measured by such things as women’s literacy and life expectancy).

This seems to run against the idea that our personalities develop from cultural expectations around traditional gender roles. "
In fact, this ties in with what JP was saying about Sweden.

Any other arguments you've made are negated by the evidence above. Do you genuinely believe that we're some kind of blank slate? (that book by Steven Pinker)

So, I'm arguing that we only know the world in a certain (in this instance, sexist and patriarchal) way, and that that conditions our behaviour. If you only know yourself as x or y, then surely you'll have a much higher propensity to be either x or y, right?

So all this 'look, the evidence is people we think do x do x, and the people who do y do y' is missing the point. All you're doing is citing the output of what I explained above.

And as for

Companies want the best labour at the lowest cost. If women were much cheaper to hire than men, why don't companies hire only women?

, well, bluntly, there are laws against that.

(And once upon a time in the 19th Century ,that's exactly what happened. There was even a nice little example of it on the 'house through time' program, where a saddler company gets a competitive advantage by hiring women at a quarter of the rate of pay to the men, and so undercutting the competition.)

Children were even cheaper, and slaves cheapest of all.

nickice

It's not illegal when it comes to individual salary negotiation or if it is, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to prove. If women will accept a lower wage, for the same job, then it would absolute sense to hire them over men. At the lower end of the scale we have the minimum wage or wage bands but that's not where the difference is.

I'm not buying the whole gender is a social construct argument and you haven't provided any evidence for it. I'm not ruling out some social conditioning but the evidence cited above points in a different direction.

finchy

Differences between men and women don't have to be explained by genetics OR environment. It is possible for the 2 to combine...

nickice

rjsterry wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

"All those assumptions above, about 'women being agreeable, not assertive..."

I'm pretty sure those are not just assumptions. Maybe you need to read up a bit.

Of course there are a number of studies showing differences in the prevalence of certain character traits and a correlation with gender. Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?

From there there seems to be a lot of supposition (because there is no practical way to provide evidence one way or the other) that this is somehow an evolutionary adaptation to traditional male and female roles - i.e. nature rather than learned behaviour. The expression of genes is always due to a combination of inheritance and environment, and I would suggest that in the case of personality traits, even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour.

Character traits as learned behaviour fits the evidence of 'women who act like men' and vice versa, far better than the idea that they are inherent to gender. Once you look at it that way, the whole thing is just a self-reinforcing pattern of behaviour where assertiveness is rewarded because it fits the pattern rather than having any inherent benefit.

But nobody is saying that all women have feminine traits and all men have masculine traits. Generally, women tend to be more agreeable doesn't mean all women are agreeable it's just that trait is more common in females. It says nothing about any individual.

If it really is the environment, why would an environment that is more equal show more of a difference in choices as JP siad?

rick_chasey

Because of the discourse.

rjsterry

nickice wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

"All those assumptions above, about 'women being agreeable, not assertive..."

I'm pretty sure those are not just assumptions. Maybe you need to read up a bit.

Of course there are a number of studies showing differences in the prevalence of certain character traits and a correlation with gender. Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?

From there there seems to be a lot of supposition (because there is no practical way to provide evidence one way or the other) that this is somehow an evolutionary adaptation to traditional male and female roles - i.e. nature rather than learned behaviour. The expression of genes is always due to a combination of inheritance and environment, and I would suggest that in the case of personality traits, even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour.

Character traits as learned behaviour fits the evidence of 'women who act like men' and vice versa, far better than the idea that they are inherent to gender. Once you look at it that way, the whole thing is just a self-reinforcing pattern of behaviour where assertiveness is rewarded because it fits the pattern rather than having any inherent benefit.

But nobody is saying that all women have feminine traits and all men have masculine traits. Generally, women tend to be more agreeable doesn't mean all women are agreeable it's just that trait is more common in females. It says nothing about any individual.

If it really is the environment, why would an environment that is more equal show more of a difference in choices as JP siad?

If it's not all men and not all women, then by what mechanism are character traits transmitted? Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Possibly those environments are not as equal as we think. Maybe the parameters on which we assess equality are flawed.

rjsterry

finchy wrote:

Differences between men and women don't have to be explained by genetics OR environment. It is possible for the 2 to combine...

Indeed, the particular expression of genes is determined by the environment in which they exist.

mamba80

nickice wrote:

It's not illegal when it comes to individual salary negotiation or if it is, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to prove. If women will accept a lower wage, for the same job, then it would absolute sense to hire them over men. At the lower end of the scale we have the minimum wage or wage bands but that's not where the difference is.

I'm not buying the whole gender is a social construct argument and you haven't provided any evidence for it. I'm not ruling out some social conditioning but the evidence cited above points in a different direction.

If it were down to agreeableness, why in some professions and jobs there are negative pay gaps? or in some professions, like Doctors and solicitors the pay gap is large? are you seriously suggesting a female solicitor or surgeon is timid and will accept lower pay? or is it she is a female in a mans worlds and they make the rules down on the Golf course?

vehicle assemblers, a relatively low paid job, the pay gap is 34%, would it be also safe to assume that men make up the majority of managers at Ford/Vauxhall etc.

https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-do-the-jo ... r-pay-gap/

Its also interesting that JP has a new book out, his interview with C.Newman must have been money from haven for sales, clever guy is our Dr JP.

rick_chasey

nickice wrote:

I'm not buying the whole gender is a social construct argument and you haven't provided any evidence for it. I'm not ruling out some social conditioning but the evidence cited above points in a different direction.

Unfortunately you'll need to go looking for it. From where I'm sitting, all the evidence Jordan provides is evidence that such a discourse exists.

If you are actually interested (I suspect not), read up of Foucaultian discourse analysis and then, armed with that, take a look at how that is used to inform post-modern feminism, and then, if you're still interested and not glazed over, you can do the whole literary deconstruction on Jordan's interview and see aaaall the evidence you need.

rick_chasey

Though this does still illustrate my original point which was there is an issue Jordan identifies at the top of the program, relating to men and masculinity, but his finger pointing shifts the debate he creates away from that very real (and under examined) issue, into an argument on the merits or otherwise of feminism.

finchy

In fairness, Peterson was responding to questions. It would have been better if the programme had been presented by somebody who actually has a clue about science, because CN either didn't understand what he was saying, or deliberately misrepresented his ideas. If they'd been able to delve further into what he was really saying, rather than have him defend himself against moronic accusations, the interview might have been a bit more enlightening.

Alex99

rjsterry wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

"All those assumptions above, about 'women being agreeable, not assertive..."

I'm pretty sure those are not just assumptions. Maybe you need to read up a bit.

Of course there are a number of studies showing differences in the prevalence of certain character traits and a correlation with gender. Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?

From there there seems to be a lot of supposition (because there is no practical way to provide evidence one way or the other) that this is somehow an evolutionary adaptation to traditional male and female roles - i.e. nature rather than learned behaviour. The expression of genes is always due to a combination of inheritance and environment, and I would suggest that in the case of personality traits, even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour.

Character traits as learned behaviour fits the evidence of 'women who act like men' and vice versa, far better than the idea that they are inherent to gender. Once you look at it that way, the whole thing is just a self-reinforcing pattern of behaviour where assertiveness is rewarded because it fits the pattern rather than having any inherent benefit.

Regarding:
"Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?"
I'm not sure how you found this. For example, the two studies cited on this page give numbers. I can't imagine any such study getting through peer reivew without any such analysis being present.

Regarding methodological biases along the lines of "women who act like men' and vice versa", cross cultural meta studies seem to go against this. There is a reference for a study in the BBC article.

"even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour"

Genes have been shown to account for 40-60 of personality traits. To say that it's impossible to separate nature vs nurture isn't true.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... the+future.

Some people might not like to hear it, but ON AVERAGE men and women are different and they prefer different things. Sexism does exist, but not all of the differences in male/female occupation and pay figures are the result of an oppressive patriarchy.

Alex99

mamba80 wrote:

nickice wrote:

It's not illegal when it comes to individual salary negotiation or if it is, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to prove. If women will accept a lower wage, for the same job, then it would absolute sense to hire them over men. At the lower end of the scale we have the minimum wage or wage bands but that's not where the difference is.

I'm not buying the whole gender is a social construct argument and you haven't provided any evidence for it. I'm not ruling out some social conditioning but the evidence cited above points in a different direction.

If it were down to agreeableness, why in some professions and jobs there are negative pay gaps? or in some professions, like Doctors and solicitors the pay gap is large? are you seriously suggesting a female solicitor or surgeon is timid and will accept lower pay? or is it she is a female in a mans worlds and they make the rules down on the Golf course?

vehicle assemblers, a relatively low paid job, the pay gap is 34%, would it be also safe to assume that men make up the majority of managers at Ford/Vauxhall etc.

https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-do-the-jo ... r-pay-gap/

Its also interesting that JP has a new book out, his interview with C.Newman must have been money from haven for sales, clever guy is our Dr JP.

It might be good publicity for the book, but unfortunately, but what next?

Those whose world view was challenged in that interview will quickly distract away from the interview and the issues, towards the fallout and the victimization of poor Cathy on Twitter and the fears for her security. The victim card will be played. A string of hit pieces on JP will attempt to blur the distinction between him, the alt-right, and anyone being abusive on twitter. JP will be labelled as "dangerous". Organized and sometimes violent rallies will appear when he's due to give a public appearance. Eventually, public appearances will be cancelled for "security reasons". Effectively, he'll be silenced.

kingstongraham

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

rick_chasey

Alex99 wrote:

Those whose world view was challenged in that interview will quickly distract away from the interview and the issues, towards the fallout and the victimization of poor Cathy on Twitter and the fears for her security. The victim card will be played. A string of hit pieces on JP will attempt to blur the distinction between him, the alt-right, and anyone being abusive on twitter. JP will be labelled as "dangerous". Organized and sometimes violent rallies will appear when he's due to give a public appearance. Eventually, public appearances will be cancelled for "security reasons". Effectively, he'll be silenced.

Maybe his supporters should lay off the death & rape threats?

I'm friends with a women in the public eye and when she's done something in public it's normal for her to receive a dozen or so of those, and she's hardly as high profile as a news reporter.

Alex99

Rick Chasey wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

Those whose world view was challenged in that interview will quickly distract away from the interview and the issues, towards the fallout and the victimization of poor Cathy on Twitter and the fears for her security. The victim card will be played. A string of hit pieces on JP will attempt to blur the distinction between him, the alt-right, and anyone being abusive on twitter. JP will be labelled as "dangerous". Organized and sometimes violent rallies will appear when he's due to give a public appearance. Eventually, public appearances will be cancelled for "security reasons". Effectively, he'll be silenced.

Maybe his supporters should lay off the death & rape threats?

I'm friends with a women in the public eye and when she's done something in public it's normal for her to receive a dozen or so of those, and she's hardly as high profile as a news reporter.

Oh yes, absolutely they should. Of course one could argue that they aren't his real supporters anyway, unless you have an interest in lumping him in with various other groups. They certainly don't seem to align with anything that he says.

People get threats and abuse for Youtube videos on carpentry and knitting. Comments sections are a cesspool. To some degree, people need to get over it and stop playing the victim.

rick_chasey

There is absolutely a trend for women who speak up on issues of gender getting huge amounts of abuse and rape & death threats.

You don't see the same for men who speak up.

rjsterry

That onlinelibrary link talks about precisely what I was trying to say - that a lot of research assumes that variances in the prevalence of traits are due to one or the other of heredity and environment and misses the fact that because of the traditional family structure, people more often than not share both genes AND environment, making it very difficult to separate the effects of each. This is before you take into account that the expression of genes is also affected by environmental factors.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that men and women are identical, just that population level trends for the prevalence of certain character traits are not a valid way to determine remuneration. That it is not all down to an oppressive patriarchy is no reason to let up on it.

rjsterry

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

kingstongraham

rjsterry wrote:

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... an-height/

rjsterry

Does this not suffer from the same problem that that article highlighted? All those Finnish twins are going to live in a pretty much identical environment to their siblings, no?

nickice

rjsterry wrote:

nickice wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

"All those assumptions above, about 'women being agreeable, not assertive..."

I'm pretty sure those are not just assumptions. Maybe you need to read up a bit.

Of course there are a number of studies showing differences in the prevalence of certain character traits and a correlation with gender. Interestingly the degree of variance between genders is rarely talked about - is it 5%? 50%?

From there there seems to be a lot of supposition (because there is no practical way to provide evidence one way or the other) that this is somehow an evolutionary adaptation to traditional male and female roles - i.e. nature rather than learned behaviour. The expression of genes is always due to a combination of inheritance and environment, and I would suggest that in the case of personality traits, even if genetic inheritance did play a role it would be impossible to separate from learned behaviour.

Character traits as learned behaviour fits the evidence of 'women who act like men' and vice versa, far better than the idea that they are inherent to gender. Once you look at it that way, the whole thing is just a self-reinforcing pattern of behaviour where assertiveness is rewarded because it fits the pattern rather than having any inherent benefit.

But nobody is saying that all women have feminine traits and all men have masculine traits. Generally, women tend to be more agreeable doesn't mean all women are agreeable it's just that trait is more common in females. It says nothing about any individual.

If it really is the environment, why would an environment that is more equal show more of a difference in choices as JP siad?

If it's not all men and not all women, then by what mechanism are character traits transmitted? Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Possibly those environments are not as equal as we think. Maybe the parameters on which we assess equality are flawed.

Firstly, neither of us is an expert (I did do a degree in Molecular Biology a long time ago but I've forgotten everything). But certainly some physical charecteristics (height, upper-body strength etc.) tend to correspond with sex. Of course I'm talking relatively as people in general have got taller over the years. There is a whole lot of information in the following document-

https://www.psychologytoday.com/article ... ifferences

I think the short answer would be that it's not clear how much of a difference environment makes but, as I said before, in more equal countries there tend to be more differences. That would appear to exclude solely environmental factors but, like I said, I'm not an expert.

nickice

rjsterry wrote:

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

But not if we're talking about relative height differences between men and women.

nickice

mamba80 wrote:

nickice wrote:

It's not illegal when it comes to individual salary negotiation or if it is, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to prove. If women will accept a lower wage, for the same job, then it would absolute sense to hire them over men. At the lower end of the scale we have the minimum wage or wage bands but that's not where the difference is.

I'm not buying the whole gender is a social construct argument and you haven't provided any evidence for it. I'm not ruling out some social conditioning but the evidence cited above points in a different direction.

If it were down to agreeableness, why in some professions and jobs there are negative pay gaps? or in some professions, like Doctors and solicitors the pay gap is large? are you seriously suggesting a female solicitor or surgeon is timid and will accept lower pay? or is it she is a female in a mans worlds and they make the rules down on the Golf course?

vehicle assemblers, a relatively low paid job, the pay gap is 34%, would it be also safe to assume that men make up the majority of managers at Ford/Vauxhall etc.

https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-do-the-jo ... r-pay-gap/

Its also interesting that JP has a new book out, his interview with C.Newman must have been money from haven for sales, clever guy is our Dr JP.

It's not all down to agreeableness, though. He said it was one of many factors and says nothing about individuals. And, no, I'm not suggesting any of what you said. You're coming at it from the Cathy Newman angle which says 'there are differences so it must be discrimination". What he said was that, yes, there is prejudice but much less than what some people think.

Regarding the book, he's trying to sell his book but the agenda was set by Cathy Newman so she's the one he should thank for increasing his book sales. It could have easily been an uncontroversial interview but she didn't want it to be.

nickice

Alex99 wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Alex99 wrote:

Those whose world view was challenged in that interview will quickly distract away from the interview and the issues, towards the fallout and the victimization of poor Cathy on Twitter and the fears for her security. The victim card will be played. A string of hit pieces on JP will attempt to blur the distinction between him, the alt-right, and anyone being abusive on twitter. JP will be labelled as "dangerous". Organized and sometimes violent rallies will appear when he's due to give a public appearance. Eventually, public appearances will be cancelled for "security reasons". Effectively, he'll be silenced.

Maybe his supporters should lay off the death & rape threats?

I'm friends with a women in the public eye and when she's done something in public it's normal for her to receive a dozen or so of those, and she's hardly as high profile as a news reporter.

Oh yes, absolutely they should. Of course one could argue that they aren't his real supporters anyway, unless you have an interest in lumping him in with various other groups. They certainly don't seem to align with anything that he says.

People get threats and abuse for Youtube videos on carpentry and knitting. Comments sections are a cesspool. To some degree, people need to get over it and stop playing the victim.

I agree with this and it's part of a broader conversation about anonymous abuse on the internet. Was there not some study done about the biggest online abusers of women being women? As far as I know, she didn't get any rape threats and I haven't seen any death threats either. As you said, it's an unfortunate side to the internet but only some people choose to 'weaponise' it (to quote Douglas Murray). Someone also pointed out that even though a youtube search showed up 'bitch' 500 times (I'm not totally convinced it's credible) that it didn't show the many uses of that word (to bitch etc.). If Channel 4 genuinely believe that being called a 'bitch' in a youtube comments section is a credible threat, they're living on another planet. Just look at the Quentin Tarantino interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy and how much abuse the interview gets in the comment section. By the way, Jordan Peterson also got abuse on twitter.

kingstongraham

rjsterry wrote:

Does this not suffer from the same problem that that article highlighted? All those Finnish twins are going to live in a pretty much identical environment to their siblings, no?

That is exactly why you can tell - if the Finnish twins share the same environment and the same genetics, it is possible to infer from the similarities and differences between them and the general population the genetic element.

Anyway, my point is that men are as a population taller than women. This does not, however, mean that a specific woman will be shorter than a specific man. Then you can use the same logic for character traits.

veronese68

rjsterry wrote:

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

I thought it was a bit of both. My massively scientific study of my kids and their friends would support this, the tall ones have tall parents, the shorter ones have shorter parents. I'm guessing nutrition will be broadly similar all middle class kids growing up in SW London. Nearly all of them have grown to be taller than their parents which may be down to better diet.

rjsterry

Veronese68 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

I thought it was a bit of both. My massively scientific study of my kids and their friends would support this, the tall ones have tall parents, the shorter ones have shorter parents. I'm guessing nutrition will be broadly similar all middle class kids growing up in SW London. Nearly all of them have grown to be taller than their parents which may be down to better diet.

But are the differences in heigh between genders down to genes or, for example, boys being encouraged to have big appetites to grow up big and strong?

nickice

rjsterry wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

KingstonGraham wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Can you give an example of another group of traits that is known to be genetically transmitted, and roughly correlates with gender, but with many exceptions?

Height.

Got a source that this is actually inherited? My understanding was that this has far far more to do with environment, specifically nutrition.

I thought it was a bit of both. My massively scientific study of my kids and their friends would support this, the tall ones have tall parents, the shorter ones have shorter parents. I'm guessing nutrition will be broadly similar all middle class kids growing up in SW London. Nearly all of them have grown to be taller than their parents which may be down to better diet.

But are the differences in heigh between genders down to genes or, for example, boys being encouraged to have big appetites to grow up big and strong?

Eating a lot doesn't make you tall. It makes you fat. Malnutrition means to don't grow to be as tall as you could be. The genetic contribution to it is described in the article above.