CharonY

In the US I found that case is rarely used in many stores. In contrast in many European areas cash is still very common.

Well, the issue is even if I talk about biology but build my arguments based on stuff that I do not understand (say quantum mechanics) rather than from biological principles, my arguments are going to end up crap. If I am ultimately right, it is not due to the argument. And you will note that in much of the famous bits and pieces he is saying in his book and some of the interviews are not based on psychological sciences that much. This includes his ideas of human hierarchies (he tries to use biological principles), or the bill C-16 (where he shows insufficient legal understanding), or what he thinks neo-marxism is (which offends historians and philosophers in equal measure), or his recent objections to vaccinations, or when he tried to peddle meat diets. Even in areas that relate to psychology, in his discussion he mixes in things that are clearly outside of it. Such as why capitalism somehow is not a human development but kind of sortof a natural state? He then tries to frame that in terms of biological terms (adaptive responses) which shows that at least in his outward persona he does not stray on track in terms of expertise. I suspect that his actual scholarly work is simply not that sensationalist and does not make money, so that is why it is not that high on his peddling list. But has found a way to start on a topic that he is comfortable with and then tries to connect it postmodernism, SJW or feminism in six steps or less. I would have zero issues if he was talking about his research more, but that is not what he is selling. And just to be clear, most of his work was on addiction and personality traits. I have not seen much that would point to studies of social interactions, dominance behaviour and related things in his scholarly work.

Not trying to be sensationalist, but I have the feeling that a black person might not have made it to the court room in the first place. A black person running with a gun toward police has likely quite a different life expectancy than a white person. There is a huge systemic issue ranging from laws, law enforcement and law interpretation. Some studies have for example shown that stand your ground laws are very unevenly enforced when comparing cases when black persons are either the shooter or the victims. I also recall studies where law enforcement (and other folks) where quicker to shoot at targets when they looked black so there is quite a subconscious bias which can easily turn deadly in stress situations. In some ways I think there two big issues here. One is how gun laws and control (or lack thereof) and culture can create situations where folks can be shot dead and ultimately no one is really at fault and the second is, even if folks were OK with living in the Wild West, would a black person be afforded the same rights. Evidence suggests that the former situation just amplifies the baked-in inequalities of the system. Now there is another case in trial in play that on its face seems even more clear. Here an unarmed black man (Arbery) was chased by gun-wielding vigilantes and ultimately gunned down. Here, also a self-defence claim was made but I would think that the fact that they chased him down should weaken that argument (but who knows). Now, the killers are not law enforcement, so conviction is not utterly unlikely, especially with the scrutiny following the Rittenhouse trial, but who knows. Just perhaps to add some data: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/race-justifiable-homicide-and-stand-your-ground-laws-analysis-fbi The study showed that 11.4% of White on Black homicides where considered justified, but the reverse case is only justified about 1.2% of cases. Where stand your ground laws were enacted, among Black folks shot to death the rate of homicides ruled to be justifiable doubled, whereas in countries without they fell. https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?r Now this might be a bit of a tangent as I do not think that Wisconsin actually has a stand your ground law, but it goes more to the overall weird tap dance that folks are doing with regard to gun violence (and the uncomfortable issues relating to race).

Another study looked at the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and found additional evidence poi tinting to the Huanan market. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454

Exactly. Add to that some sort of credentials and folks can become really aggressive followers to an almost cult-like degree.

Well, first of all, if it is still under investigation, you cannot claim it is true and then use that to build an argument on top of it. You are also missing the bigger picture that you cannot just take an organism that is so far away and lacking basically almost all of the relevant features (including a brain) and then use it to explain complex behaviour (again, at that point you can take any random trait from any random animal, you will always find similarities somewhere). Thus, the whole argument is bogus. Second, it is not that we know nothing, it is clear that the mechanisms are very different. Folks with high aggression levels and impulse control (which goes into a similar circuit in humans) are not usually very dominant, again, in direct opposition to lobsters. So considering same input and getting different outputs I would claim that these are certainly different systems (and we also know that from a physiological standpoint as the structures are very dissimilar to begin with). Just as a note, lobsters separated from us roughly the same time frame as say, mantidae. As such my example is about as valid as his (which is to say, not very). Again, if he actually did a minimum of research and wanted to make an evolutionary argument (even a very sketchy one) he should have looked at our closer cousins. Except he can't as social structures in primates is very complex and would counter his basic arguments. Therefore he chose a model and ventured into the not even wrong region.

There are some newer studies out there, but fundamentally the strongest link is seen in cases of severe deficiencies where impulse aggression seems to be elevated. Outside of extremes the evidence points to perhaps a slight inverse relationship, but it is certainly not a simple quantitative correlation. That, btw. is a common finding in human subjects. For complex traits there is rarely a simple quantitative relationship between a given trait/behaviour/psychological state and a given marker. In some cases changes are more indicative (e.g. increase or decrease of certain hormones as opposed to their absolute values) but almost always the situation is complex. It is likely also for many animals, but we lack the ability to define nuances that we can do with humans, as we can simply talk to folks.

Except of course that in humans the relationship is at best inverse, as I mentioned before. Abnormally low levels are correlated with aggressive behavior, further highlighting the differences between lobsters and humans. I think I may also have provided some info on the more complex relationship between dominance and aggression in primates, which are arguably better models for humans than crustaceans. So while the bolded part might be true for lobsters (and likely there are caveats, but it is not my field), it is certainly not true for humans or animals more similar to us. Don't worry, Peterson doesn't know much about Biology, either. Just say that it is the fault of chaos dragons and you are good.

As a biologist I know that not to be true. What you state is part of a larger evolutionary narrative where biological structures, such as brains are build up successively from simpler to more complex form. Only, that is not the case, it is more like a broad branch of different structures to fulfil sometimes similar functions. It is like saying that modern microchips incorporate vacuum tubes. Specifically, the "old" structure, responsible for fear and aggression is mostly the amygdala, but is only found in vertebrates. Lobsters, for starters do not even have a brain and we do not share the same structures or responses. I.e. it is not more insightful than e.g. saying that folks should always stand their ground, like trees. Those that uproot themselves will die of nutrient deprivation. Or men should never procreate otherwise the women will behead them and use them as snacks. It only sounds insightful if you do not think about it. Also delicious (actual) brains.

No, I think that is fine, and I do that, too. However, at some point you have to drive down to the details where you get to the testable hypotheses (or equivalent). You cannot just remain on the narrative level and claim those as facts. The reason is that strong narratives are often counterproductive to critical thinking. The hypotheses and evidence to support or refute those are those that often challenge narratives and is why science works. I think that it is dangerous a it makes it easier to obfuscate the fact that one actually does not have expertise in a topic. I.e. misleading folks and selling narratives without the evidence. An actual educator should have a balance in these things. Here I can say that your reading is really different from mine. What he does is, for example to take a factoid (lobsters compete with each other aggressively) and then uses that to explain complex human social dynamics. In a science paper that would be a clear misquotation as the studies only apply to an entirely different (non-social) species. Even findings he cites in the psychological area tend to be massive overinterpretation, i.e. he draws conclusions which are actually not part of the study. Together with his debating style he therefore ventures far out away from the actual state of knowledge and sells them as facts. He is therefore more a pundit equivalent than an educator and together with his seemingly convincing debating style, he is far more persuasive than the data and science allows. The annoying bit is that at least some folks still see him more as an educator (or even scientist) rather than a pundit.

That is pretty much the point, actually. The models often do not take behavioral aspects into account. I was asked at various point to predict likely infection rates and I tend to point to things like large gatherings, mask mandates and similar factors rather than exclusively detection rates.

I was putting together some estimates on SARS-CoV-2 infections and was revisiting some older estimates. It is interesting to see that quite a few of them underestimated death rates in the US by a fair bit. Yeah, that is especially annoying as that level is very unlikely to prevent spread. The argument that now seems to go around that if there are still infections despite vaccinations, the latter obviously does not work and you should not get vaccinated in the first place (never mind that it cuts down fatalities).

Again, it depends on the type of study. Note that in many areas, including biology we often are only able to get correlation. But if they are strong, predictions based on them still yield reproducible results. Much in medicine relies on empirical data pointing to strong correlations whereas the mechanisms can be only poorly understood. For example, one might want to see whether certain steroids alter certain aspects of mood. While one might argue that mood scales are not perfect, they at least capture something. If then blood levels of certain steroids seem to correlate with these measures, it points that they are at least somehow connected. Then, a follow-up could conduct a double-blind placebo study where these steroids are provided in to modify blood levels and then inspect whether the mood changes in the predicted way. With sufficient rigour and large enough cohorts you can get reproducible results that way.

Well, there are a lot of interviews and documents available, too. Moreover, it was not that long ago. After all, the end of the war did not mean that suddenly folks changed their beliefs. There was a vested interest to downplay their ideology, of course. But with distance pretty much the same sentiment started boiling up again. A recent approach in Germany start by diminishing the role of Nazism in German history, which for me, being educated in a German public school, is insane to hear. The general motivations have barely changed throughout human history I would guess. Fear from the others, using that fear as an unifier, play to a "strong man" archetype, use the others as scapegoats for internal failures and so on. What basically has changed (to use a very broad brush) in history seems to be who we designate as the other. Depending on period and group it is often geography, then religion and after the age of enlightenment, race.

Probably. Generally speaking, reducing inflammatory responses (for the most part) seem to be either beneficial or at least not harmful in a rather wide range of conditions. But conversely, the effect size is often difficult to assess and hard to reproduce. Just as a side note, Ingenta is not a journal but a content provider. The title you listed is from the Journal "Current Medicinal Chemistry". The type of article is a so-called review, i.e. it tries to capture the current literature on a given topic (as opposed to presenting novel research). Those types of articles are often a good entry point into a topic, too.

Well, I suppose it depends. However, I have worked a bit with clinical psychologists and I have been reviewing related projects and while there are areas who have less rigour, at least you generally understand what they are getting at and provide evidence for their claims. But I would agree that the whole Jungian Archetype thingy looks a lot like metaphysical woo. It looks strange to me that this would be part of clinical psychology to begin with, if I am honest.

In the spirit of debate, my assessment is a bit different, though I think watching his videos is misleading. The reason is that he is intelligent and he performs well in debates. However, the content is often either inaccurate or depends on narratives rather than data. In other words, in many thinks (at least those he is most famous for) he appears to make a good argument, but if you dissect it, it is actually not based on research but more like anecdotal narratives. I think the reason why folks disagree on what he stands for, is simply because his arguments are often so vague that they are open to interpretation. Instead of laying down an argument which lead to a conclusion, he often veers of mid-argument so that you can take the first couple of sentence to argue for one thing and the last bit to argue the opposite. That is probably good sales and debated but really grates in sciences where it is important to lay out hypotheses that can then be investigated. For that reason, I have looked into the book when I had to (as there are quite a few students liking him and bringing him up in class in the weirdest contexts). But his written style is if anything even less clear. The parts where I actually can comment on, is when he dips into biology (the famous lobster example) and clearly shows that he is using a simple technique. Find a story that kind of sounds like what you want to talk about and then extrapolate the living sh- feces out of it. As even a semi-academic work I find it lacking, as it really tries more to appeal to evoke ideas and emotions rather than relying on research and data. If he was coming from a discipline with less rigour I would probably be more amendable to simply dismiss him. But strangely he seems to be very good in convicting folks that he actually knows what he is talking about, which is somewhat annoying.

Yes of course, and when I started to write it, I wanted to mention it, but then forgot. Fundamentally Nazi ideologies were very popular and not only was there overlap and exchange with what was considered scientific thoughts regarding the human race at that time, there was also quite some cross-fertilization. The California school of thought heavily promoted eugenics and saw Germany as a model in their implementation. It was something that was heavily propagated in the Ivy leagues even way before the rise of the NSDAP. Cold Spring Harbor hosted the Eugenics Record Office (starting 1910) which gathered biological and social information with the explicit idea to promote racial health and assist in targeted sterilization (and limiting immigration, they heavily lobbied for the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924). In other words, much of the rejection of Nazi ideology was borne out of political conflict with the Nazi regime rather than actual disagreement with the ideology. The movement lost popularity as the conflict with the Nazis ramped up. But if the US did not go to war with Germany it would be easy to see how this "science" could have taken a permanent hold. And to a certain degree, some ideas still exist. Some folks associate success with innate talent and link socio-economic status with basically genetic (and ultimately racial) traits. While in recent time that has been changing, that part has tangible influence in laws and law enforcement.

If anything, I feel that folks do not think about the implications of the regime sufficiently. I found that especially for Americans, the rise of the Nazis was something uniquely German and often the thought is that none of the Allies would be susceptible to any of the ideologies and vulnerabilities of the Weimar Republic. But then, there are obvious weaknesses in virtually all democratic systems, that sometimes only maintain democratic because most actors agreed not to abuse the system. There are a lot of things (internet propaganda amongst those) that have shown serious weaknesses. While the democracies are not breaking (yet) quite a few show creaks. Some younger democracies, such as Hungary and Poland are under serious internal attacks. I do not think that because something has worked worked even for a long while is guaranteed to work forever. Societies change and with it there might be new weaknesses to uncover. Folks in the US were seemingly shocked that Trump would be breaking conventions. But as it turned out, there was little to stop him. If the system can creak just by someone not following unwritten rules, it might be necessary to take a good look at what is written and maybe add some writing. It is not necessarily specific to Nazis either (though most cases appear to be right wing populist movements) but about rise of authoritarianism. And just to loop back to COVID-19, it also seems to be the case that these populist movements are also strongly downplaying the risks of the disease.

There is little to disagree here. In fact I would go further and say that one of the critical role of the government is to ensure public health. Similar to other large-scale needs of the population (e.g. infrastructure) it simply cannot be ensured without a central coordination. And obviously, we have seen that folks do not only think differently about things, but they do not even agree on the existence of clear and present dangers.

I suspect that is what it is. I have read that he was out of the media for a bit because he went to rehab and was undergoing some experimental treatment a while ago. I suspect interest in his persona went down for a bit and now he found something else to attach himself to.

It is outside my immediate expertise, but what little I know about the interplay of inflammation cascades, (auto-)immune responses and related conditions points to a hot mess of interplay that would make it very difficult to figure out what is cause, effect and/or just a side consequence. A part of the issue is that the interplay of the various signal cascades and how they together form certain phenotypes are, to my knowledge, only poorly understood and one can therefore not easily look at one end of the cascade and predict whether it was causing it or not. That being said, there are groups looking at a zonulin link an the zonulin antagonist AT-1001 has been in investigation as a potential treatment.

Not really surprising, but more details have emerged how the Trump administration actively inhibited efforts of the CDC to contain the pandemic. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/581322-documents-reveal-new-details-of-trump-political-interference-in-covid

So it appears Peterson has thoughts on vaccines, too. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/11/14/jordan_peterson_i_got_the_damn_vaccine_and_the_government_still_wont_leave_my_the_fck_alone_stupid_me.html There is a lot to unpack in terms what he fails to understand, but I think it is telling that he frames being vaccinated as a means to get left alone from (presumably) the government rather than a means to protect himself and folks around him. While this seems rather stupid and dangerous (as it might fuel vaccine reluctance), it is also possible that he is just too cowardly not to get vaccinated, but is unwilling not at least to try to pander to the anti-vax crowd, either. It is especially a start contrast to the stoic manly behaviour he preaches vs whining about the requirement to get tested.

Don't quote me, but I feel you. Even in the almost two decades in academia (in different capacities) the culture in labs has changed and what you can expect from new students (or even how they interact with you). Some is rather innocuous but requires some recalibration, which can get annoying until you are used to it. But cellphones, god, at least put them down when I am in front of you and directly talk to you!