Thread by @DavidNeiwert

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib You do realize the man is a complete fraud. Ah, no, I guess you don't.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib A couple of examples to demonstrate how you are being gulled by a snake-oil salesman who is saying things you want to hear, which is why you love him so, even though if you examined these things with any kind of serious rigor you would realize he is utterly full of shit.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib First, let's look at his whole bit with lobsters and why young men ought to behave like these male crustaceans. It's predicated, initially, on Peterson's claim that humans and lobsters have a common ancestor.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Well, anyone who is familiar with the rudiments of evolutionary biology would recognize that this is blithering nonsense, a complete nonsequitur. And to an evolutionary scientist, it's an offensive misuse of science to make a modern sociopolitical argument.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib In reality, whatever common ancestor they have would probably precede the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago, That's when the earliest crustaceans appear as well as the first vertebrates. So that ancestor would be from an extraordinarily distant time.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Indeed, it's so distant that it would be possible to find literally any other species of animal on the planet and claim that it and humans have a common ancestor. I mean, I did write about orcas and humans, They're at least both mammals. But I don't argue for a common ancestry.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib So it's clear that Peterson is a kind of con artist with whom scientists are all too familiar -- eager to argue for mushy-headed ideas that promote his cultural and political agenda by misusing and twisting science in really uncsientific ways.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib But the really revealing moment, for me, came when I realized that Peterson claims to be a member of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations Tribe in British Columbia.

facebook.com/drjordanpeters…

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib I happen to have a pretty deep knowledge of this tribe, having actually studied them and spent time in Alert Bay, where they are headquartered. I also know a bit about First Nations tribal membership. It's simply impossible for someone who has no tribal ancestry to be a member.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Peterson, of course, has no such ancestry. It turns out that his claim to membership in the tribe is based on his friendship with a tribal carver who decided out of generosity to make him part of his "box," i.e., his personal family.

thewalrus.ca/the-story-behi…

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Here's Peterson's response. You'll note it utterly fails to address any of the real core issues about his tribal membership claims, including any acknowledgement that no, he really isn't a member, but is just associated with a single member.

jordanbpeterson.com/media/kwakwaka…

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib But the genuinely bizarre thing about all this is that he seems to know literally nothing about the actual cultural history of the Kwakwaka'wakw. That's because, in fact, this tribe is one of the primary wellsprings of the development of multiculturalism.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Franz Boas, considered the father of modern anthropology and, moreover, the father of multiculturalism, began his work in the late 1800s by studying Pacific Northwest coastal tribes, and particularly the Kwakwaka'wakw.

indiana.edu/~libarchm/inde…

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib The reason that this tribe set Boas on the path to developing the ideas that became multiculturalism, in fact, is that it actually employs matrilineal descent at the core of its tribal structure, Matriarchal tribes with women chiefs are part of its history.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib It was Boas's realization that these matrilineal tribes had evolved from formerly patriarchal societies that directed his thinking toward deconstructing the notion of patriarchal societies as the apex of evolution.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib A snippet from a somewhat simplistic but perfectly accurate description of all this in Wikipedia (I'm currently traveling and don't have access to my published sources for all this):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib All of this, of course, runs directly counter to Peterson's ongoing thesis about the superiority of partiarchal hierarchies and why men ought to be in charge of everything and his attacks on female forms of leadership.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Not to mention his conflation of multiculturalism with postmodernism (which is just Peterson's preferred term for the hoax concept of "cultural marxism"). Multiculturalism quite literally has nothing to do with postmodernism.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib Nonetheless, Peterson delivers all this palpable garbage to his eagerly gullible audiences with an air of genial authority, and so they lap it up. Obviously, you too have been happily chowing down at this trough,

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib And obviously, I really haven't any hope that you will learn anything from all this or recognize that Peterson really is a fraud (these are just two examples, BTW; there are dozens of others that demonstrate the same thing). But I do hope my readers are entertained and edified.

@ByterNZL @ChristchurchLib I also hope it gives you pause to realize that not only does Peterson abuse science (see more on lobsters below) but appears to be utterly ignorant of the important cultural history of the native tribe in which he fraudulently claims membership.

washingtonpost.com/news/postevery…