"The Intellectual Dark Web," what a fucking joke. Reminds me of "New Atheists," and that term was a dumb invention by Wired magazine as there was nothing new about them, we were just witnessing the downfall of the religious right and other than the new-kid-on-the-block Sam Harris the others (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett) were around a long time saying what they were saying. (Of the four Sam Harris has always been the one I like the least). Their arguments weren't new (nor did they need to be; I largely agree with them), it was just a dumb phrase. But unlike the Intellectual Black Hole, the "New Atheists" didn't style themselves as such and it was almost rightly viewed as a pejorative. The Intellectual Black Hole are just people that go on each other's podcasts and youtube channels to say the same things or react predictably. The so-called "New Atheists" sort of won in the end as they were the nail in the Religious Rights' coffin. However, by sealing away the RR a demon was unwittingly released from the bowels of hell--the Woke Left. And associated with the "New Atheists" was the burgeoning skeptic movement, not the Sargon of Akkad shit but the James Randi stuff, and the Woke Left RESOUNDINGLY destroyed that movement. Destroyed the JREF forums, took away all the wind from investigating pseudoscience and con artists and instead focused on woke politics instead, derisively calling true skepticism "bigfoot skepticism" (not wholly unmerited, a lot of members of the JREF forums got off on pointing out the obvious and debunking stuff that nobody really was ever going to believe) .
The old guard of intellectuals were so much better than the current crop. Sam Harris is a very hit or miss guy but he's nothing in comparison to Dawkins or Dennett. Now we have ramblers like the Weinsteins and people like Dave Rubin and other talking heads who may or may not be nice guys, but they just don't have a lot to say and aren't doing serious intellectual work against these people.
Now, back to JBP. How is that relevant? I disagree on JBP's intellectual outlook. Psychology as a field is actually pretty mysterious to people looking in from the outside, and that's why there are so many misconceptions about it, and often times it's psychology's own fault. Yes, psychology is a science, and yes, a lot of it is bad science for various reasons; ethical concerns in experimental protocols, bad theories, bad statistics, even politics, and so on, and people like JBP contribute to the public perception that psychology is claptrap. JBP adheres to the psychodynamic/psychoanalytic school of psychology, and it's kind of remarkable JBP even exists; out of all psychologists to become famous the way he has, one of the few remaining psychoanalytic psychologists gets the spotlight. For the uninitiated, that's the Freudian-based school of psychology. Modern psychology sort of lacks a school, or at least when contrasted to past schools of psychology it's called "cognitive-behavioral psychology," or maybe there's also "biological psychology", though psychological instruction frequently sucks and these schools really aren't mutually exclusive at all anymore. But anyway, modern psychology owes a lot to the John Watson and BF Skinner behaviorism, and though you will be taught that cognitive psychology overthrew behaviorism, in reality cognitive psychology is in many ways just an elaboration, clarification, extension, and and revision of behaviorism to be less strict and adhere less to the dogmas of the now dead philosophical movement of Logical Positivism.
I bring all this up because one accusation against JBP I keep seeing about him bothers me: he's not a grifter and he's not a con man. I'm familiar with a lot of his ideas. His arguments on religion actually adhere to some unnamed-school of religious thinking I used to run into back in my internet atheism adventures; the Stephen J. Gouldian Non-Overlapping Magisteria-type of argument where "religion" and "god" are given such wishy-washy incoherent definitions where discussion is impossible. It's not deliberately intellectually dishonest, it's just muddled thinking, I've seen JBP criticize Dawkins about Dawkins attacking a caricature of God that nobody believes, but in fact if you have read Dawkins's books (JBP clearly hadn't before speaking) Dawkins repeatedly addresses exactly this and has rightly defined god as a "creative divine intelligence" (or something of the sort). Since JBP is unable to provide a definition of what god is, I think he should stop the discussion there. His thinking is merely muddled. But it's all tied up in his "metaphor-this, meaning-that" psychodynamic-inspired worldview. You have to sort of understand some of the literary tradition behind some of the psychoanalytic type of thinking to see where JBP is coming from. That doesn't make it any less bogus, but JBP is not just running his mouth out of nothing for the sake of it.
It's true he tried to make a name for himself, but if you've watched him talk and interact with others, he's personable and authentic to himself (yeah, that's some gay phrasing, I know) and the dude is clearly just a depressed man that is lonely, blackpilled, and probably wanting an intellectual legacy to survive him after he goes so he can be remembered. Compare to the SJW woke left whom are almost all grifters by definition--they talk about vulnerability and weakness but only show their fangs and claws to other people and never actually demonstrate real emotional weakness to other people, because they're soulless sociopaths. JBP starts crying when he thinks about the hell horror that is coming. We've all laughed at the screenshots but I've cried like that too because I'm also depressed and I see the same dark omens he does. I may not really respect a lot of his intellectual program, but I can oppose JBP without thinking too ill of the man himself. Unlike his opponents he actually acts human.
Being familiar with the background of JBP's thinking and ideas I can't believe he's merely tried to make a buck and aggrandize himself.
Anyway this rant got longer than I expected so I'm spoilering it.
