I mean, just own it. You are saying he is being honest, mostly. You're saying that Peterson is a nice man. It seems like you're scared to say that and own it. You've ignored the numerous examples of dishonesty in this thread. You admit that he's engaging in sophistry, but then that's kinda okay, because it isn't his intention to be a sophist.
I don't think he's honest at all, I think he knows he's playing a game for power and that this guides him more than any responsibility he feels for the boys and men that follow and emulate him. I think there are more than a few examples of his dishonesty in this thread.
"Depends on what you mean by 'real'"
"It would take me 40 hours of lectures to answer the question whether I believe in god"
"I genuinely believe that the double helix in ancient scriptures was a representation of DNA"
"I never said that it was a representation of DNA"
But I'm sure it's all just a nice old man, dottering about, bumping into furniture, accidently being dishonest. Whoops there goes some more sophistry.
See, this is exactly what I mean by tryharding. JBP is a bit of a laughingstock, but you come off as genuinely pissed off about him.
I mean, if you think I think he's honest because I think he's saying his honest opinion, as muddled as it is, and isn't trying to misrepresent himself or mislead other people, then on those grounds I think he's honest, yeah. Do I think his arguments on various things have solid intellectual backing and that they do more than just obfuscate or confuse? No, not really. You know, it really is possible that someone may not be trying to mislead you or string you along, it really is possible someone may just be being an idiot sometimes.
I mean, you want to talk about sophistry and intellectual dishonesty, we could talk about your own here trying to spin what I'm saying as unmitigated support for the man. I provided my opinion and qualified my statements, I think what I said is pretty clear and I think other people reading this thread understand it too. Did you really need to feign being confused about what I meant when I said "People who craft their image carefully tend to actually not be that careful at all"? Come on.
Dude, I'm defending JBP on these grounds specifically because I hate THIS exact bullshit and it's this exact bullshit that brings me to this thread. It's what I'm here to laugh at. I'm just fully aware that JBP actually believes those four statements you outlined, even if they are tantamount to bullshit. Two things can be true, that JBP uses very dumb arguments that fail intellectual scrutiny and that his thinking is muddled, and that he's not actually trying to be intellectually dishonest. I notice the examples you give all center around religion, I'm going to put on the fedora for a minute (the one I think you're already wearing, but I'll get to that in a second) and say I think religion is all manner of bullshit and there's no good modern defense of it. Practically none. I think enlightenment philosophers on up, from Hume to the Logical Positivists and what's come after, have done a fine job of casting doubt on even the concept of "god." Some people, the JBPs of the world, sort of understand and accept these argument intuitively, but are completely unable to shed the metaphysical baggage and run through intellectual hoops to justify religion.
Hell, you want me to offer one of my own criticisms of something JBP has specifically said that is somewhat "dishonest?" I can also point to specific times JBP has misrepresented Dawkins. Dawkins had actually (preemptively, and not directly, of course) recognized the kind of theologian JBP is, and that he's basically said it's bullshit (true) but he's not addressing them since they don't seem to actually believe the metaphysical claims Dawkins prefers to address. JBP ignorantly stated that Dawkins is foolish and is addressing "a naive child's idea of god" when Dawkins really is addressing the religion I was taught and grew up with in school and everyone else has. People like JBP, the "religion is a grand beautiful metaphor" theologians have this extremely warped, confused, faux-sophisticated idea of what religion is because they're unable to just concede they've been defeated since some part of them is literally unable to give up religion for whatever reason.
So, tell me, do you think religion is bullshit? Do you think there are any good arguments for religion left? If there are, what are they? If not, then are you accusing all religious people of being intellectually dishonest sophists? I guess, you could say that and in some sense it would be true, but not every sense, particularly the most important one--intent. This is JBP's, and many other's, attempt at justifying religion in the face of devastating arguments against its validity and contemporary usefulness to humanity.
Now, back to the fedora tipping. I may be completely missing the mark, so correct me if I am, but I assume you're an atheist like me that thinks JBP's arguments are dogshit retarded and cringy. You have to step back and realize that just because he's on the other side of this issue he's saying retarded things, slippery fish things, doesn't mean he thinks he lost and he's trying to obfuscate. JBP is lost within the haze of his own confusion, as are all these people, they have this gut feeling that religion is true and are trying to explain and describe it to us but they can't because that gut feelingless is substanceless nothingness. But he just can't see it. Religion is part of his identity and he can't let that go even though apparently the secular philosophers have won so much that even he implicitly accepts many of their arguments. It may be dishonest, but that doesn't mean the man himself, his character, has a dishonest nature, anymore than Gould and his non-overlapping magisteria bullshit was intentional subterfuge (and that shit is entwined with this shit, believe me).
So do think JBP is honest? Do I think he's dishonest? I don't know, there's my qualified answer, take it. As for JBP contradicting himself like the DNA thing, I don't know the specifics, but anyone who constantly thinks about things might forget what they originally said if they've changed their mind without realizing it. I've suffered that embarrassment myself so many times I'm not going to mark that against JBP here because I think that's what happened. Don't you think occasional human idiocy is a better explanation than him planning everything he says like a mastermind, that's he always conscious of all or even most of the stuff he's said in the past and when? It actually takes effort to be consistent, a lot of it, and everyone fails at it eventually. I've even had friends unknowingly agreeing with me that a movie sucks when I know they praised it when it came out, they just didn't realize their opinion changed. Human memory is dogshit, even memory of self. It's even not that hard to induce false memories in a laboratory setting through leading questions, I'm not impressed by finding instances where someone idiotically contradicts themselves later on and using that to imply they're being willfully deceitful.
What are you taling about? If people scrutinized everything Lowkey and me did all day they would find that we are nothing more than silly little fluffballs.
But that's because you guys do what, play minecraft and watch anime all day? I kid...
Lmao, seriously now. I know what you are talking about. But he does craft his image, of course. Candice and Milo are legit idiots. They let the fame get to their heads and don't stand for any real values other than what may benefit them in the moment. People can see through that, and you did.
Everyone crafts their image to some extent, JBP no more or less than the average person. Much, much, much less than the Candace Owens in the world, who literally are nothing BUT their crafted image.
Peterson does stands for something and has some unchangable values. Having said that, he is a bussiness man. He admitted it, and even said he has bussiness partners. His brand and image is how he makes money, as opposed to most other wage jobs. He has a twitter and he obviously is trying to promote a certain image. How much of it is honest to god intent and how much is image crafting for the PR probably Peterson himself doesn't know it.
I'm not sure the context. He's a businessman in multiple contexts, probably primarily when he did clinical practice. In the sense of being an author and teacher, which is what I suspect was meant here, then sure. But I think many of these people that aren't like Milo or Candace actually try to be honest, even the actual big assholes. They might fail, but there's a league of difference between willful intent and confused stupid thinking. And HE might be the brand, but I think JBP is very deadset on his brand also being truly "him," the two being one and the same.
Honestly JBP doesn't strike me as anymore more malicious than any other intellectual scientist passionate about what they do, and I say this having known research scientists. I'll reiterate the Gad Saad is an example of everything you accuse JBP as being of, and I actually am way closer philosophically to Gad Saad.
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