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I love how Jordan Peterson vilifies postmodernism via (really bad) postmodern deconstruction of popular culture. Shame on us for not coming up with that as parody before it manifested in real life.

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lot of people seem to think he's saying smart stuff. I confess I haven't done much of a dive, but at a few glances, does not look that way.

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He's a modernist reactionary appealing to the alt-right. The only reason there are people thinking he says smart stuff is because the bar is so low on the right.

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Hard disagree. There are -many- reasons why he gets that effect across, one of the most prominent being that he's very confident in being sort of a douche. But there's a lot of cultural stuff going into this. He is riding a wave. And he is eloquent, even talking out of his ass.

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Oh sure, I don't disagree. He's a product of social forces, not intellectual value. That's was my point.

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Not my only point, actually. I think people either A) overestimate him massively (I have one really obnoxious Facebook friend who thinks he is THE greatest living intellectual) or B) underestimate him or C) mischaracterize him. He is a tabula rasa for people's imaginations ATM.

8:32 PM · Mar 16, 2018Twitter Web Client

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IMO, Jordan Peterson ranges from occasionally brilliant on certain topics in psychology, through eminently reasonable on some aspects of personal responsibility, through completely talking out of his ass on many social issues to being a reactionary hack in some contexts.

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He isn't some one-dimensional caricature. By virtue of actually being honest (one of his few clear upsides), you can get a fairly full picture of how many different opinions he holds. I find he's a neoliberal hack as often as a conservative one, though. He isn't all right-wing.

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I think that's pretty consistent with the social forces idea, no?

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No. I think people are being really unscrupulous with him. Not for the first time. I don't even particularly like many of his ideas, but I think he's said some profound things on *certain topics*. There are a lot of people I disagree with less, that I can't say the same about.

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