Jordan Peterson and IQ

a few months ago jordan peterson made

the following tweet about the cover of a

sports illustrated magazine that

featured a fat woman yumi nu on its

cover sorry not beautiful and no amount

of authoritarian tolerance is going to

change that and on first pass this tweet

simply makes no sense at all for one

thing it's obviously a complete nothing

burger a non-controversy he's getting

absurdly upset about the reality is fat

women exist there are a lot of them

their being present on some magazines

selling swimsuits is really just a

completely normal thing and even if we

accept that sports illustrated for some

reason should only cater to horny men

who want to see hot ladies it is still a

wildly stupid thing to get mad at i

don't know how to break this to you but

many many men date fat women they marry

them they have kids with them they have

sex with them and yes they enjoy this

fact they fantasize about it and like

the idea of doing it more why then do we

have to pretend this is not the case who

does it serve maybe more important to

this tweet though is that it is just

literal gibberish authoritarian

tolerance what are you talking about

what authority is trying to make you

find this woman beautiful jordan who is

forcing your hand does the mere presence

of an image you're not horny about

qualify as authoritarianism and if so

how exactly do you want me to deal with

that no this tweet is just

pseudo-intellectual word salad right

jordan wants to be petty he wants to

object to a completely inoffensive image

call a random woman he doesn't know ugly

and masquerade it as some kind of

beautiful virtuous act protecting our

culture and by the end of this video you

will understand that this gesture is at

the core of jordan peterson's politics

hey everybody let's talk about a lecture

that jordan peterson gave about iq in

2017 and you know let's just start it

off with an outline of the points he

makes peterson begins the lecture with a

general defense of iq or intelligence

quotients he says that iq tests and the

results are the best researched and most

robust statistics in psychology that it

is very predictive of success on a wide

range of metrics and that denying its

validity is ridiculous if you don't

buy iq research you might as well throw

away all the rest of psychology he then

goes down a chart connecting what your

iq is to what job might be right for you

you know if you're 130 you can become a

lawyer if you're 120 you can write ads

so on and so forth then and this is the

spicy part he ends the list here below

an 85 iq there are simply very very few

jobs a person can do under 87 is there

something well

no jobs for people with iqs of less than

85 are very very rare he ends the

lecture by affirming his point claiming

it's an extremely nasty and relevant

problem and that we need to discuss it

more even as it might be politically

incorrect or unpleasant that's a big

problem and it's something our society

has not addressed at all this video for

better and for worse is not about brain

science i'm certainly not an expert in

psychometrics and have no interest in

presenting myself as one while i did do

some research into this subject for the

sake of this video it's a topic i find

pretty boring and i'm sure other people

could do a better job of it than i could

but in the end that's kind of what

interests me about this whole situation

you know nothing about this particular

jordan peterson lecture is unique he has

made all of these points multiple times

he always affirms the efficacy and

reliability of iq he always talks about

how the bottom 10 to 15 of the

population is too stupid to be a

productive asset to society and he

always always ends the talk by saying

something about the incredible

importance of this issue how it presents

a difficult and huge problem which has

been systematically ignored by a culture

that just doesn't like the science and

the fact that neither side of the

political perspective will take a good

cold hard look at this problem means

that we're going to increasingly have a

structural problem in our societies it's

a vicious problem man and so it's hard

to train people to become creative

adaptive problem solvers impossible in a

complex society like ours and one that's

becoming increasingly complex there

isn't anything for 10 percent of the

population to do

all right well what are we going to do

we're going to ignore that

we're going to run away from that well i

don't have a solution to that but i at

least can point out the problem and it's

this this last point that i want to

focus on today see peterson's enduring

almost repetitive takes on iq are not

merely those of a scientist trying to

assess statistical data but those of a

political actor who wants to direct

society in more optimal ways and the

question on the table is

how what exactly does he think we're

gonna get out of this conversation

what's the point here the desired end

goal of the argument why is jordan

peterson so interested in this

particular iq conversation in a lecture

delivered around 10 years ago jordan

peterson talks about symbolism among

ancient populations in particular he

zooms in on a helix pattern you can see

across cultures and in what amounts to a

kind of a side peterson says this i

think that's a rep i really do believe

this although it's very complicated to

explain why i really believe that's a

representation of dna

so now to jordan peterson's credit i

have no idea what he's talking about he

says that these early societies were

representing dna strands but that the

reason why he thinks that is complicated

and to my knowledge he's never given

that complicated reason so maybe he

doesn't mean what it seems like he means

or maybe his argument would rock my

world who knows still it's hard for me

to imagine that peterson could give

plausible reasons to hold this belief to

suggest that people before microscopes

had some awareness of the microscopic

structures inside their bodies doesn't

make any sense how would that even work

why would they know such a thing and

besides real actual snakes curl around

each other when mating and it looks

exactly like the art that peterson shows

isn't that a more plausible explanation

of where people got this image no this

sentence from peterson just reads like

mysticism to me a belief in a kind of

spiritual eye in the subconscious of man

aware of deep realities that the senses

cannot access and i don't buy it here

because i don't think we have good

reason to buy it still there's something

tempting almost satisfying about this

belief i think for peterson in this

moment society does not merely exist it

is not just a complicated messy series

of connections and beliefs and materials

that make up the social world we live in

no society has a source and its source

quite literally is the body the parts

within us are on the outside and they

always have been our guts order reality

and they do a perfect job

okay what is jordan peterson's iq

argument doing if we blur our eyes what

is the main thing he seems to be talking

about well i think it's pretty simple

peterson is here trying to give us one

major reason why wealth is so stratified

in our society poverty in the united

states tends to hover from around 11 to

15 percent and many more americans than

that live with low incomes that's a

pretty shocking number right one that

requires explanation so peterson comes

in and says you know what 10 to 15

percent of people just aren't smart

enough to be productive under 87 is

there something well

no and doesn't that add some clarity to