Here’s Why You Should Stop Listening to Jordan Peterson

Part 2 of 2

Image credit: Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons)

Welcome to the second of a two-part essay on Jordan Peterson. In the first part I discussed Peterson’s habit of engaging in the Naturalistic Fallacy, and how this taints both his epistemology and his ethics.

In this part I want to look at another distressing habit of Peterson’s: his tendency to use jargon and equivocation, such that it becomes very difficult to determine what he actually believes.

Flaw number 2: Self-serving Obscurantism

I pointed out in the last essay that Peterson’s “Darwinian perspective” on truth seems to have a lot in common with the postmodernist ideas he claims to detest. But he also resembles postmodern continental philosophers in his use (misuse?) of jargon. On this score, for a great analysis of Peterson’s magnum opus, “Maps of Meaning,” I recommend Nathan Robinson’s critique in Current Affairs.

“What’s important about this kind of writing is that it can easily appear to contain useful insight, because it says many things that either are true or ‘feel kind of true,’ and does so in a way that makes the reader feel stupid for not really understanding. (Many of the book’s reviews on Amazon contain sentiments like: I am not sure I understood it, but it’s absolutely brilliant.) It’s not that it’s empty of content; in fact, it’s precisely because some of it does ring true that it is able to convince readers of its importance.”

In fact, there’s actually a name for this: the “Guru Effect,” after a 2010 paper by the philosopher Dan Sperber. The Guru Effect refers to the way that obscurantist language can actually appear to contain deep, important meaning so long as the source is someone we trust. “Impenetrability indicates profundity.”

It isn’t difficult to see how a clever writer or orator could use technical or esoteric language ambiguously, and thereby create the sense that something very meaningful has been said, when in fact whatever meaning is being conveyed is either trite, or supplied primarily by the readers or listeners themselves. And nowhere is Peterson’s penchant for this kind of rhetoric more pronounced, or more frustrating, than on the topic of religion.