Jordan Peterson, winning isn't everything.

I am assuming that readers of this have seen the Jordan Peterson - Cathy Newman interview which has catapulted Mr. Peterson to fame (perfect book launch!). It is compelling viewing, and has been viewed a bit under six million times in the last week. The Australian news paper has also had a series of articles about Peterson and responses to the interview. If you have not seen the interview please take a look:

There is no debate that Ms. Newman got owned, there has been a lot of analysis of the interview, but the main point is that Ms. Newman was unprepared for what she was getting into, a debate with a empirical clinical psychologist.

As a result of this I started to watch some of Mr. Peterson's videos on YouTube, and discovered that all of his lectures are available, and he is a fantastic thinker, and very interesting chap. I particularly enjoyed his viewpoint on atheism)

However the point I wanted to try to capture in this article is that I did think Mr. Peterson made two errors (and possibly only two) and that they are worth noting as they speak to errors that can be made by those people who believe they are winning any argument.

Firstly, beginning at 21:44 Ms. Newman is forced to carefully reconsider her beliefs about free speech, it is the most amazing moment of the interview, Mr. Peterson has made his argument so compellingly, that she is forced to reconsider her beliefs and re-examine her intellectual rigour live!

Mr. Peterson makes his first and simplest mistake then; he says "Ha! gotcha!" acknowledging that Ms. Newman has been playing gotcha politics all interview and yet he has created the moment.

Ms. Newman is doing a very brave thing here, she is genuinely thinking, and about to come up with a reasonable point, and doing it all on live TV (something Peterson has done all interview), and at that point the best thing to do is to wait for your opponent to develop their argument, not to embarrass them. Mr. Peterson has held the upper hand in the interview the entire time, and that was the only point where I felt he lost it.

Finally, when Ms. Newman does develop her augment further, Mr. Peterson says something very interesting, namely that he would address his students by transgender pronouns if asked personally to do so. This is seemingly at odds to his previous position established on air that he would refuse to do so (at 0:48):

Mr. Peterson denies changing his position, and yet it seems to me that he has made a change here, and possibly just to ensure that Ms. Newman has nowhere to run in the interview.

So while I have developed a great interest in Mr. Peterson's work, my lessons from the interview come mainly from what I see as his mistakes...

Quotes

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
- Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind


"We have True Wisdom, Divine Speed, and Maximum Justice. We are, this fine diurnal period kicking serious ass. We are green across the board. The system likes me a lot, and I am awful damn fond of it, too. We have Total Mutual Respect and Admiration." - Daniel Keys Moran, The A.I. War.

On Statues

In the Australian article “PC extremists police thought by rewriting the world’s history” Brendan O’Neil talks of removing statues: 

“In truth, there’s nothing good in this mob-like erasure of history. It’s a reactionary, even Orwellian, movement.”

The the West Australian article “Both sides wrong on burqas"Paul Murray talks of removing statues:

“They want to obliterate the parts of history that offend them, rather than use them as evidence to point to the failings of the past.”

I disagree, I think the details matter. Let us look at the case of the statue amidst all the controversy, that of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. The statue was erected in 1924, well after the civil war, and was erected with a speech about “the moral greatness of the old South”. 16 Blacks were lynched in the United States of America that year, as statues like these were erected as part of a movement to recast the civil war as a conflict between interpretations of the Constitution. The same year as Lee’s statue appeared in Charlottesville, Virginia passed laws which strengthened definitions of who was “colored” and who was “white”, and which reinforced the law prohibiting interracial marriage. Then, two years later, the state passed a law to enforce racial segregation in places of public entertainment.

By Cville dog - Own work, Public Domain, Link

Black people in Charlottesville have walked past that statue for more than 90 years, and their taxpayer dollars have funded the maintenance of a statue designed to recast history. Last year a young high school girl petitioned the City to have the statue removed. This is an appropriate way to address these concerns, and reflects a respect for the law. The City Council considered the request, and eventually decided to remove it, leading to the protests that have occurred.

By abc News

The disturbing presence of white supremacist groups at the recent protests show that these groups understand the real significance of the statue, as well as the importance of continuing to re-position the “Old South”. These protests and the terror attack that followed has certainly reinforced the validity of the original request to remove it.

Statues and public art celebrate history, and there are times when that celebration is not appropriate. Move them to museums and provide appropriate historical context.

Regarding the original article, making broad sweeping statements is always dangerous, but it particularly so when it energises neo-nazis and hate groups, public debate needs to improve in our nation’s papers.


Sources:

• http://www.chesnuttarchive.org/classroom/lynching_table_year.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-rally-protest-statue.html

Impermanence

The current of the flowing river does not cease, and yet the water is not the same water as before. The foam that floats on stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, never stays the same for long. So, too, it is with the people and dwellings of the world. (Hōjōki, Chambers)

The Man who fell to Earth (5.5/10)

Walter Tevis

Science Fiction

A melancholy novel, written in the 1960’s and set in the 1980’s, it build slowly around a character from another planet who is building something on Earth. Very few characters are fully fleshed out here, and those that are, are often drunk especially in the second half of the book. It is well written, and has a timeless feel to it, but it does not provide much in the way of action. The final scenes are not where the standard book would go, and the author should be respected for that, but it still left me feeling a little sad, and a little underwhelmed.

Quality 2/5

Readability 3.5/5

The young

"When you're young, it's important to have strong opinions about things you don't really understand." -  Harry Jeffreys, 'Cheers, Australia'. The Weekend Australian, 7-8 March.

Great SF Novels

Recently, while reading ‘Existence’ by David Brin I was struck by its’ similarity to an earlier novel of his, ‘Earth’ which in turn made me think about just how affected I had been by that work. This lead me to thinking about all the SF books that had really rocked me, and I decided that it was time for a list.

My (self-imposed) rule was to limit authors to two books at most, and that seemed to work fairly well.

All these books are brilliant, but the order also reflects my opinion on how they rank against each other (finishing with the best).

Iain M Banks

Against a Dark Background

Use of Weapons

Iain Banks is best known for his Culture novels, and they are a ton of fun. Space ships with insane names, bad attitudes, and a taste for intrigue; they tolerate the human meat sacks, but only to a point. Use of Weapons uses a common Banks outsider protagonist to introduce the Culture, but also has a wonderfully dark counterpoint stemming from the main character.

Against a Dark Background is one of the best dystopian SF novels I have read. Filled with creative and dark characters, toys and thoughts, this is a book that showed me what imagination was. This is one of Banks’ rarer non-Culture SF books, and a great stand-alone read.

Dan Simmons

Hyperion

The Rise of Endmyion

When I first finished Hyperion I threw it away, I was absolutely disgusted that the characters that I was so invested in had just been left at the moment of climax. It was only 18 months later that I discovered that there was a second book, and all was forgiven. The Hyperion Cantos is dark and powerful SF, a fascinating look into what happens when religion and artificial intelligence combine. Dan Simmons is a horror writer and it does show, but this horrific vision has a powerful arc, with a touchstone that is our own humanity. The Rise of Endmyion was particularly notable because of how well it brought the series of books together, in a way that I though was going to be almost impossible.

David Brin

Earth

Startide rising

What sets David Brin apart from the other authors here, is his attempts to think about the environment and the moral implications of what humanity does with the Earth. Earth was a 40-years in the future SF novel, one of the hardest to write, but it is done is such a lovely way, introducing us to all the scientific ideas and areas of debate about the future of this Planet and humanity itself.

Startide Rising, one of the Uplift novels, is set in a more distant future, where humanity has been contacted by aliens, and we are bottom of the food chain. In this universe the primary aim is to help other races evolve intelligence, to uplift them, and humans are the only orphan race in the galaxy. I loved the first trilogy in this series and setting up humanity as the underdog certainly makes you empathise with the characters.

 

Frank Herbert

Dune

Proper space opera, with sword fighting, giant worms, and an empire based around one thing, melange. The world building in Dune is fantastic, and the feudal nature of the characters also works well, making loyalties and betrayals even more powerful. This is the classic SF novel, it won every prize in its’ day and remains pure genius.

Daniel Keys Moran

The Long Run

The Last Dancer

Unlike the other authors on this list, Daniel Keys Moran is a relative unknown. This stuns me, because the first few books in his series of the continuing time are as action packed and complexly plotted as any series I have read. The books give you a feeling of scope and vision that sadly DKM has not yet been able to fully realise, but they are just as good as stand-alone novels. The Long Run is a fantastic action tale, based around a strong central character, a thief who is becoming a god. The Last Dancer, however is something else entirely, partially written thousands of years in the past, and partially during a new American Revolution, it is just too much fun.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

Anathem

From the first page of Snow Crash you know that you are reading the best damm SF you have ever laid your hands on. If Vernor Vinge makes you think about the universe, Snow Crash smashed a near-future America into your face with stunning power. A sword wielding hacker against a modern day Howard Hughes armed with Sumerian brain-control is completely over the top, but it is the setting of this novel that truly gives it its’ power. The vision of privatised America and the avatars of the future on the ‘Metaverse’ is one that has already shaped much of the Internet as we know it (Mainly because all the real geeks read, and loved, this book).

The more I read Anathem the better it gets. I still cannot believe the publishers allowed Neal to print a book that is basically a philosophy primer. It is brilliant. The world, the characters, the plot are all absolutely original. The fact that 'humans' actually turn up later in the book only adds to the power of the novel. The book begins focused on a tiny 'monastery' in the North, and ends encompassing the entire world within which it is based. Amazingly for Neal Stephenson, probably his best ending since 'The Big U'. 

Vernor Vinge

A Fire Upon the Deep

A Deepness in the Sky

A Fire Upon the Deep blew me away when I first read it. Here was a truly original set of aliens, here was a guy who was applying the changes in communication heralded by the internet to the Universe, and the story itself was brilliant. I loved having to work out what the aliens were from within their own points of view, and I loved the ‘Zones of thought’ concept. The second book in that universe, A Deepness in the Sky had its’ own unique aliens, and a completely different world view from the first book. Deepness also had a marvellous multi-tiered plot that was beautifully constructed.

This is SF at its’ very best, testing your own vision, questioning our assumptions about life, the fundamental laws of the universe and where we stand in it. The absolute cornerstone of Science Fiction. 

So that's my list, I would love to hear from anyone who feels that they know of a book that could stand up against these, as my reading list is always looking for expansion...