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Originally Posted by rubecube
Anyways I won't beat this point to death, but I do tend to believe after watching a number of interviews, Youtube videos, reading articles written by the man and following his online persona that Peterson is more of a great salesman and self-promoter than profound intellectual. I'm certainly open to having my opinion changed if anyone wants to point me in the direction of any of his work that they believe is profound but at this point I think he's found an audience of easy marks and is capitalizing on it.
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On this point, I agree 100%. I would add storyteller to it as I think that's the primary way he sells his stuff. He isn't any great intellectual. He hasn't really introduced anything new to the world, just communicated a lot of ideas that already existed in a more digestible package.
This doesn't make one a snake oil salesman though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
I can spend 5 minutes on Google and "reveal" that homeopathy "works" for a substantial group of people. That doesn't mean its peddlers aren't hucksters.
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What works means for medicine and homeopathy is completely different than what works means in terms of helping people sort out and improve their lives. The one is about banishing an illness and making people feel better, and the other is about helping people navigate the world in a fulfilling and productive way. The long term effects of Peterson's advice is yet to be seen, but in the short term, it seems he's making a difference.
https://twitter.com/user/status/928981541849522176
As for Peterson's tweet above, I'm still not sure what he meant by that. It seems given the limited context that he is referring to the risks of being accused of assault are higher if you have sex out of marriage (probably true), not that sexual assault rates are high if you have sex out of marriage.
Either way, it seems that this tweet is referring to something obviously false; the idea that sex was traditionally confined to marriage to preserve one's reputation and/or reduce the risk of sexual assault. These are both obviously not the case as marriage throughout almost all of history was about successfully raising children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage provides a decent high level summary of the history of marriage.