Jordan Peterson Debates Linguistics Professor On Gender Pronouns

professor Peterson oh I have hi Barry hey good to see you did I teach students I teach trans students and I'm asked often to call people singularly they it started probably about four years ago it struck me as very odd I'm 52 and some of them you can tell that it's coming from a very deep place and that's how they feel and they deeply need to be called Bay some of them my horse sense says that they're kind of enjoying giving me a certain shock and that there's a certain theatrical aspect it's my horse sense that there's a certain a potala bourgeois aspect to it I kind of feel it and I'm probably right but I can't know I'm a linguist I'm a person and my general feeling has been whatever they ask just go with it and let's change our usage of the pronouns because we have a lot to do now what you said was interesting you said that the way that you make the difference in deciding these cases is based on the fact that you have psychological training and you can tell what I want to know is for my own elucidation and also because I think many of us wondered but then it kind of went by how do you know now I want to specify I'd rather you didn't recount the whole episode of how ridiculously you were treated amidst that whole controversy sure three quarters of the room knows I sympathize with you I thought it was ridiculous I want to know specifically because I'm a linguist you have psychological training how would you know well if you hear a must-own oh yeah if you hear a tiny bit of skepticism in my voice you're correct hmm however I am open to being convinced based on your training which is immense how would you know which students to discount as opposed to which to go along with okay well first of all I wouldn't know right which is part partly why your skepticism is justified but I have to be responsible for what I say based on my willingness to take responsibility for my judgement so I would be willing to do that despite the fact that I might be wrong but having said that in in any reasonable situation I would err on the side of addressing the person in the manner that they requested to be addressed an address but that's not the issue for me the issue is now I'm compelled by law to do so it's like no not doing it not now because it's compelled by law so that's the end of the game as far as I'm concerned so because there is no excuse for compelling it by law that's my position and I think I think there's all sorts of reasons for that I don't think it was an isolated legislative move I think it's part and parcel of a whole sequence of legislative moves that have been made and that continue to be made in Canada I think it's an attempt by a certain radical ideological what would you say a certain radical ideology to gain the linguistic upper hand which i think is a terrible thing to do to allow so I had lots of reasons for rejecting the legislation but it had nothing to do with you that's very interesting we're talking about expertise here and my ears pricked up when you talked about how there is a way of thinking that would allow us to decide I know there's a way of thinking that would allow me to decide for me know us to decide for us surely you have a larger mission than just what's going on in your own head and I mean that no I had a perfectly straightforward mission which was there was no damn way I was gonna say those words when I was compelled to by law but that was my mission you weren't trying to model for the rest of us a way of thinking was really only about you know what was about me in the law that the law the law makers had gone too far they'd stepped out of their appropriate territory into the domain of linguistic freedom and as far as I was concerned I was going to put up with that and so if people were happy about that and wanted to follow the example that was fine with them but for me it was some thing and that was the statement I'm not doing this and then a people can draw their own conclusions from that maybe they want to do it I mean and I've spoken with no shortage of trans people and you know my proclivity has been without exception so far to address them in the manner that seems most socially appropriate under the circumstances now you asked you know you asked a specific question which was do I have special expertise that I might share with other people you're doing Martin Luther and I think that these issues are a little subtler than those and so what do what makes you think that you're doing the kids that are grandstanding any favors by going along with their minute cuz I can't decide which ones those are well looked fair enough but you have a type 1 and type 2 error problem so one error is that you don't call students what they deserve to be called that's one error and the other error is that you you call students what they want to be called even though they don't deserve it and so what you're trying to do optimally is to minimize both those errors and to do that you have to take a middle route now what you've decided to do and I'm not criticizing it is you've decided to allow for the possibility 100% of one of those errors because you think it's a less significant error and you know you might be right but it's not like you're acting in an error-free manner you've just decided to minimize one form of error at the expense of the other because I would say you're allowing what would you call it attention seeking and somewhat narcissistic undergraduates to gain the upper hand over you in your class now on that's believe me it's not a criticism it's not a criticism I understand why you're erring on the side of generosity passion one more thing to say but sure I'm not gonna take up any more space okay are you saying that psychological theory has nothing to teach us about this because you're talking around my question your gorgeously articulate you're smarter than me does psychology have anything to teach us or not yes or no I do like this question I don't think that it has anything to teach I don't think it has anything to offer that I could teach you without let me think so it's just too complicated no no it's not no no it's not that well it is that in part because it's not easy to articulate out the principles the unerring principles by which you would make such a categorical judgment right because those are very situation specific problems you know and it's it's part of the problem of how of how to make a generic moral truth applied to a very individualistic situation and the problem is in the sorts of situations that you're describing is generally the Devils in the details right if you have all these students the ones that you just laid out they vary in their attitude towards their their self professed gender from the ones who are grandstanding to some degree let's say to the ones that are very serious and you have to make a judgement in the moment that is dependent on the variables that present themselves in a very complex way in that situation and I understand why you you took the pathway that you took and it's it's perfectly reasonable to do so my point was that you you don't minimize all the errors by doing so it's fine it's it's still a fine way of approaching it isn't my point was that because of my psychological acumen I would say that the experience that I've derived is that I would be comfortable in making the judgment and taking the consequential risk I'm not saying I'd be correct that's not the same thing at all I'm willing to suffer the consequences of my error that's not the same thing as being right and so if I feel that a student is manipulating me then I'm not gonna go along with it now I might be wrong about that and actually hurt someone who's genuinely asking for something that they need but I'm also what would you say sensitive to the error of allowing manipulation to go unchecked so hi you're back no time and then there could be a two-hour podcast about this on your wonderful podcast which everyone should listen to invite him on okay hands here in the orange and pink scarf Thank You Barry and thank you both for this really interesting conversation which is not like most of the conversations we've had here at the ideas festival that's my first one so I got no idea so dr. Peterson there are million questions that I'd like to ask him only gonna ask one obviously I'm a psychologist I'm a social psychologist with a clinical background and the thing that I think I'd like to most hear about right now at this moment is the very noisy small percentage of people who oppose you have you thought about something they might be right about that that they might actually have a point about that you hadn't thought of but you've started to think they might actually have a point I don't know if I've started to think about the point that they have that I didn't think about before I mean people have been characterizing me as right-wing it's like I'm not right-wing so the characterization isn't very helpful and one of the things I do all the time in my public lectures is make a case for the utility of the left so and the case can be made quite rapidly if you're going to pursue things of value in a social environment you're going to produce a hierarchy it's unavoidable because some people are better at whatever it is that you value and so when that lays itself out socially it will produce a hierarchy the hierarchy has its miss that hierarchy has a necessity if you're going to pursue the things of value but it has a risk the risk is that we'll ossify and become corrupt that's risk number one and risk number two is that when you produce the hierarchy you're going to dis possess a number of people because there'll be lots of people in the hierarchy who aren't good at it and they'll be dispossessed so you need a political voice for them that's the left so I make that case over and over now what the right does is say yeah but we still need the hierarchy it's like yes you still need the hierarchy the reason we need the political dialogue is because we need the hierarchy and we can't let it get out of control so we and and the way to balance those two competing necessities isn't by only having the hierarchy or dissolving the hierarchy you have to live with the tension and the way because because the situation keeps shifting so the way you live with the tension is by talking say well here's the current state the hierarchy needs to be tweaked this much because it's getting too tyrannical and it's dispossessing too many people so we need to tweak it so that it's not as corrupt and so that it's a little bit more open and we have to talk about that all the time and that's what the right and left it's not the only thing they do because they also talk about the necessity of borders that's the other fundamental thing that they do the dialogue has to continue so that we can have the hierarchies and utilize them as tools without allowing them to descend into tyranny okay so I made a case I made a case on on the web I did a talk at the University of British Columbia left-wing case for free speech as if that's so difficult to make I mean that's the sort of case that was made until like 2014 or something like that so the left-leaning types have all sorts of things that are correct to say now the problem is one of the problems of the left but this is and this is another thing that I talk about all the time in my public lectures by the way is we have a problem we know how to put a box around the extremists on the right basically we say oh you're making claims of ethnic or racial superiority you're not part of the conversation anymore what do we do on the left nothing that's not good because there's a there's an issue can the Left go too far yes win oh we don't know oh that's not a very good answer now you could say well then it's up to the moderate leftists to figure that out so they can dissociate themselves from the radicals and it is up to them but that's actually not a very good answer either because it's all of our problem [Music]

Channel: Social Justice Fails

Views: 4,311,405

Rating: 4.7825851 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Gender, Pronouns, Racism, Feminism, Psychology, Jordan Peterson Cathy Newman, Jordan Peterson Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson Interview, Jordan B Peterson Interview, Jordan Peterson College Speech, Social Justice Warrior, Jordan B peterson 12 Rules For Life

Id: E1PeOfbT_q0

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/palsh7]

I take issue with “Vs”. This is a civil questioning, not an attack. Everything doesn’t have to be MMA.

[u/JeffersonPutnam]

Peterson really misses the point here.

If you're in a workplace, you might be expected to exercise politeness to maintain a civil environment. You might be an extreme Muslim or Christian who hates gays, it doesn't mean you have a right to call your gay students "disgusting faggots." That might be your opinion, which you have a right to, but it doesn't give you a right to create a hostile environment in public.

That's what John McW is referring to. There are civil rights laws about not discriminating or harassing women, blacks, gays, Jews, men, etc. in the workplace. Peterson doesn't want to include calling a transgender woman by her preferred pronouns in those non-discrimination laws. His reason is that the cuckoo crazy transgender people will abuse the law and force him to call them pronouns like Xym and zelpself. That's his whole big argument.

Peterson says you can distinguish these fake Marxist Leftist transgender people from sincere transgender people, and just be polite to the real transgender people. John is asking how to distinguish them and Peterson can't answer.

[u/AvroLancaster]

It's pretty clear that Peterson was answering a different question than McWhorter was asking.

The question McWhorter was asking was what tool of diagnosis do you use to determine whether or not a trans person is sincere?

The question Peterson was answering was why do you not give the trans person the benefit of the doubt automatically?

McWhorter was looking to find a method that Peterson seemed to be claiming to have from his years as a psychotherapist to separate honest actors from dishonest actors. Peterson told him that his years as a psychotherapist have convinced him that simply giving in to the demands of bad actors is a terrible idea because it's harmful to you, them, and society at large.

This is a case of crossed wires and I expect we'll hear it come up again on BloggingHeads.

[u/loveshock]

Completely tangential to the video, but in his response to the to the first question, I loved it. This is JP at his best. And it's not because of his actual stance, it's because of his articulation, insight into his thinking, and his ability to be very intellectually honest about what his claims are, where his responsibilities lie, and where his values interact with the problem at hand. I can follow his words like a razor, and the clarity in following his thiughts are similar to how Sam puts many topics into perspective. This is the kind of thing I listen to JP for...because (like even Sam admits) he's on point a lot of the time.

I just wish he could bring this kind of thinking along with his philosophy/religious/epistemology stuff. It goes off the rails pretty quickly for him there, and I agree he deserves the criticism many here give him for it. But I think this is a good example showing that it's possible for him to be clear and articulate instead dodgy/Chopra/word salad. Of course it kinda makes it that much more of a disappointment because it's not like his incapable of clear thinking...I think there's some sort of mental block that is never going to to let him analyze truth/religion/skpeticism/supernatural claims in an objective way.

[u/Compulsive1]

I usually stay away from these sociological in nature discussions, but I will stick my head out because I really like John McWhorter.

What if someone asked to be called the n-word and had a slew of well thought out logical reasons for it? Or let's say someone wanted to be referred to in terms that are commonly agreed on as being derogatory, and just making others hear those terms would be hurtful, besides being potentially career-ending for John if taken out of context? What case would John make for going along with the request or to deny it? One does not need psychology training to know better.

To JP, manipulating language in certain ways is comparable to, or at least reminiscent of, certain old leftist tactics that he has a very strong emotional reaction to. When the state compels him to go along, it harms his psychological wellbeing. No special training needed here either.

[u/[deleted]]

Ugh, I wish John hadn't said Peterson is smarter than him. That's patently untrue. Why kiss the man's ass to get an answer, even tongue-in-cheek?

[u/two-]

The "compelled speech" argument is pure BS and is not given any credibility within any other domain of daily life. He's lived under C-16 for more than a year and prior to that, Canadian states had their own versions that he lived under. The Supreme Court of Canada came out and said that this only applies to extreme cases wherein the intention is known.

Peterson is lying and, like he said to Joe Rogen, he just found a way to monetize SJWs. As long as he continues to lie, Red Pillers will continue to throw money at him.

[u/2WordOpinion]

This is going to be groundbreaking, so hold on to your gameboy's kids.

Who. Fucking. Cares.

Someone wants you to use a W A c K y pronoun? Just do it out of politeness? Who even uses pronouns to address anyone directly? Don't people just use names? I know I do, but maybe i'm just a crazy po-mo-no-mo.

If someones lying about being transgender...okay? Again,

Who. Fucking. Cares.

And before all you "LOBSTERDADDY DOESN'T HATE TRANS PEOPLE ITS JUST THAT HE DOESN'T WANT COMPELLED SPEECH" people get your over-sized boxers in a knot.

That's not a thing, that was never a thing, he invented that in his deluded mind for a myriad of reasons. None which we can claim to know.

[u/michaelrch]

r/samharris seems to have more mentions of Peterson than of Harris. Is there a structural reason for this?

Does seeing the world in the light of Harris’ work automatically put you on a collision course with Peterson such that we have to train our counterarguments against him on this subreddit? It just seems a little strange...