I had no idea that one in ten Americans had an IQ of 83 or lower — yikes. But I guess it sounds right, statistically, with 100 being the mean, and all that normal distribution/ standard deviation stuff.
A guy I used to work with a long time ago had a favorite saying: “being stupid used to get you killed”. He did not suffer fools gladly, to say the least.
ghostsniperAugust 21, 2018, 7:28 PM
1 in 10 eh?
I thought it would have been higher.
Seems much higher every time I have to venture out into society – at least 5 in 10.
Inneresting that he cites the military as a reference.
Early July 1974, Fort Knox, Basic Training, while in formation the 200 man training unit was asked “Who has a civilian drivers license and can drive a stick?” Me and 2 other guys held up our hands. (I had not learned yet the whole thing about “volunteering”. So yeah, 3 out of 200 met those basic credentials. Seriously.
And it kept going downhill from there. Never stopping. Mid-to late 70’s the army was experimenting with everything it could get it’s hands on. By Oct 74 I was stationed in Germany and thats where the real fun began. All 175 swingin dix in the unit was injected with chicken flue and then our blood stolen to make a cure for it. And then there was the atomic simulator that was dropped from 10k feet and touched off 500 ft above the ground. The entire Wildflecken post lost millions of decibles of hearing ability in that split second. Because more than 10 percent of us were under 83 we were used as guinea pigs just because.
There were people enlisted from all over the planet and alot of them couldn’t speak english but they were good enough to wear the uniform. Yessiree. Guam, Philippines, Syria – yeah, THAT place, Mexico, and did I mention Puerto Rico? Thousands of PR’s filled the ranks. Nasty people. Animal like. Basal. I saw a PR dood on CQ one afternoon cooking a whole chicken right there on the CQ desk in the middle of the hallway in an electric frying pan. Said he caught it a farm outside the post. A week or so later the guts and feathers were stinking like 4 motherfucker’s in the corner of the barracks basement. Yeah, animals.
Should have seen this box of clowns come tumbling out the side of a C130 over Gelnhausen in the middle of the night. It’s only because of the army’s gargantuan redundant redundancy that they all aren’t dead.
What did they want volunteers for at Fort Knox, you ask?
Training areas, the heavy duty stuff – shooting ranges, hand grenade range, etc., were located way out in the distant wilderness areas of the post so lunches were frequently served on the training sites. (all troop transport to the ranges were by way of LPC’s, so going back to post to eat was verbotten)
LPC = Leather Personnel Carriers
So drivers were needed for the brand spankin new International Harvester deuce and a half’s to carry huge mermite cans of screamin hot grub out to the starving range hoons and I was one of the drivers.
lpdbwAugust 21, 2018, 7:36 PM
1. Just because Jordan Peterson sometimes says something that’s true does not mean you should accept anything else he says on face value. His outlook and long-term goals are not in alignment with traditional Americans. He is a progressive globalist.
2. In another video, he got the IQ thing about Jews wrong; his understanding of statistics is weak.
3. There are identifiable subgroups in America with average IQ of 85 and 89. Given a normal distribution, larger portions of those groups will fall in that “less than IQ 83”. Nearly half in the case of blacks in America, approaching half for hispanics. Is he saying that 1/2 of the blacks in America are incapable of being part of a modern technological civil society?
I think he is saying that, without realizing it. I also fear he’s right.
pbirdAugust 21, 2018, 9:20 PM
LPC, that’s funny.
Peterson is right. Its a hell of a problem. In the old world if you weren’t at least crafty something would kill you. Not now. Anybody can reproduce, just about.
Casey KlahnAugust 21, 2018, 9:39 PM
If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, which is to say 20 above and 20 below the mean. How many are above 120, and how many below 80? Damn few, I imagine. Again, I don’t have the data, but it sounds like Americans, in general, score well enough. Our education system is not superb across the board, but it is nearly universal.
Peterson says something that sounds an awful lot like common wisdom, but I think is absolutely unfounded. When did the peacetime military conduct a social service by employing the stupid? In the wars? Apparently not. In the inter-war years? No, because the military was small before WW II. Ghost may’ve hit it close to correct because the 70s were the lowest point for the military: the post-Vietnam era. This quickly changed, however, because of Reagan, and the Gulf War proves that. At any rate, the percentage of the ticklish 80 percenters can be increased, but it still is never a large portion of the military.
Fuck. The armed forces are the elite of our nation. They are made up of virtually all HS grads and above, and physically and psychologically better qualified than the civilian horde. Yes, I knew the duds in the 70s, but in my time I met some heavy-hitters, both intellectually and holistically. I’ve walked many paths in my life, but the service members were the best I’ve known.
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. BTW, I was an honor grad at #6. Fuck him. He simply makes shit up.
Casey KlahnAugust 21, 2018, 9:40 PM
If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, which is to say 20 above and 20 below the mean. How many are above 120, and how many below 80? Damn few, I imagine. Again, I don’t have the data, but it sounds like Americans, in general, score well enough. Our education system is not superb across the board, but it is nearly universal.
Peterson says something that sounds an awful lot like common wisdom, but I think is absolutely unfounded. When did the peacetime military conduct a social service by employing the stupid? In the wars? Apparently not. In the inter-war years? No, because the military was small before WW II. Ghost may’ve hit it close to correct because the 70s were the lowest point for the military: the post-Vietnam era. This quickly changed, however, because of Reagan, and the Gulf War proves that. At any rate, the percentage of the ticklish 80 percenters can be increased, but it still is never a large portion of the military.
Fuck. The armed forces are the elite of our nation. They are made up of virtually all HS grads and above, and physically and psychologically better qualified than the civilian horde. Yes, I knew the duds in the 70s, but in my time I met some heavy-hitters, both intellectually and holistically. I’ve walked many paths in my life, but the service members were the best I’ve known.
Casey KlahnAugust 21, 2018, 10:35 PM
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. BTW, I was an honor grad at #6. Fuck him. He simply makes shit up.
Casey KlahnAugust 21, 2018, 10:35 PM
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. Fuckhim. He simply makes shit up.
Gordon ScottAugust 22, 2018, 5:09 AM
Peterson isn’t making anything up, here. The US military does administer the ASVAB test, which is in fact an IQ test. And while, in the 1970s, things were indeed very bad in the Army (I’m told it was bad, but not as bad, in other branches) things got better, as even the US Army can learn from mistakes, sometimes.
Follow this one back to the origin, and you learn that the Army needs 80,000 recruits in 2018. But by the time you scratch off the obese, the uneducated, those with serious criminal records, and the retarded, they are down to a pool of under 1,000,000. Perhaps one in ten of those actually wants to join the military. And the Air Force, Navy and Marines want their share.
timAugust 22, 2018, 6:08 AM
Just gonn’a throw this out there, found on the intertunnels today – “Just 66 percent of millennials firmly believe that the Earth is round…”
I have tremendous respect for Jordan Peterson. He is a master of presentational shock and he has excellent control of his facts.
However, thinking logically, IQ has to be tested with questions and answers. I ask you a question and you give an answer that is either right or wrong. Therefore it has to be a knowledge-based test. Do you understand the question and do you know (or can you deduce) the answer. That this is so can be proved by the fact that a person’s IQ goes up year-over-year because they have learned more. Because of this simple observation, I disagree with Peterson’s assertion that it is impossible to teach someone who has an IQ below 83.
Anecdotally, my brother is one of the smartest people I know (though slightly lacking in common sense, I’ll admit). He scored low in IQ. One example question: What is the difference between wood and glass? His answer was that wood is a carbon compound. The correct answer was that you can see through glass. By the way, I would not want to share a trench with my brother because of his lack of common sense.
lpdbw: “… his understanding of statistics is weak.”
You can say that again. Then again, he’s a psychologist. Weak understanding of statistics is widespread among academic psychologists.
“If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, ”
One in ten is 40% below the mean of a normally distributed population. This puts that data point (10% of population) about 6.5% into the area of two standard deviations out from the mean. In other words, it’s 6.5% lower than the lower boundary of one SD. 9.5% of the population will still fall within the area comprised by that second SD. Add to that the 0.5 of the third SD and you get 10%
ambiguousfrogAugust 22, 2018, 7:28 AM
@ghost: You gotta write a book, you have a way of explaining things and I’ve read you all over the interwebs. It’s not easy keeping my attention and that says something.
@Casey: I’ve taken statistics a couple of times and you even made my head hurt.
@Solyent: At some point I believe if you can’t reach these people below the 83 IQ, how the hell can you begin to even teach/train them? They become primal. Have they become too Feral? I’m finding this to be the case lately and it appears to becoming generational. But that could be my innate racism bubbling up to the surface.
FredAugust 22, 2018, 7:34 AM
A high IQ has nothing to do with being able to function in a high trust mutually beneficial society. At a certain level Brainwashing and Propaganda work. All of histories worse actors were smart, some even brilliant. Hmmm, I wonder if evil could be real (he said sarcastically)?
RayAugust 22, 2018, 7:38 AM
When I was in the Navy there was a guy in my division that was not very intelligent. The Chief said that when you sent him out on a job you had to send someone with him to make sure he didn’t screw it up. I didn’t recommend him for retention. We joked that you can’t have stupid people in the Navy because they will kill themselves, and if you happen to be in the vicinity they will kill you too.
While statistical evaluations can be useful, they’re best application is in baseball. Don’t take his word for it, evaluate Peterson’s contention for yourself, using your ears and eyes while out and about in your daily life. What I see while out and about, is, at least 10% or the population if not low IQ, then simply ignoramuses strutting about parroting sound bites.
TerryAugust 22, 2018, 8:12 AM
My two cents folks. Receiving a HS diploma from an American government run school does not qualify anyone to do anything. It only indicates that a person was of the mettle to finish what he or she, started.
Statistics is not an absolute science. Statistics is best used by propagandists to fool people on virtually any issue. Numbers pulled from a rotating drum of BS. My stat teacher in college used to say this with gusto. Read *The Black Swan* by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Bill HenryAugust 22, 2018, 8:58 AM
I will throw a quarter in as well…
His statistics are wrong or misleading or both. Depends on his intent.
Knowing something is not terrifying. The condition(s) already existed before you aggregated and
analyzed the data. The low IQ people that are living before they were measured are still with us.
Peterson uses the classic humanist argument to devalue life. The implications are… HMMM low IQ people = terrible problems. I disagree. Human Beings have agency. Life is valuable. Joy is independent of IQ. The Christian perspective is that God changes the heart, not man. You do not educate a person into belief. You expose them to the Gospel and it does the work.
Alot of the uncivil circumstances we find ourselves in now is cause by the devaluation of simple work and creating unrealistic, materialistic-based, wants/needs and desires.
Listen to Mike Rowe, not Jordan Peterson. Peterson is compelling, I get that. He speaks well. But his worldview is NOT classically a western-man viewpoint. NEO western? Post- Christian, Humanist Western? I don’t know and will not pretend to know his heart and intent.
Value life, value simple work and trust in God. Work like its all up to you, and Pray like its all up to God. You can do no more than that… but trust me, its our nature to do much less….
OK. I hate stats. And I had high Asvab, GT and OIR scores.
Peterson says that the military in peacetime tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals. I call bullshit on that. Actually, the opposite is true. He is only mouthing a popular belief that stats do prove is wrong. All other things being equal, your best hire is a veteran vs. a non veteran.
I wouldn’t hire JP to wash my car.
Bill HenryAugust 22, 2018, 9:13 AM
I will tell you a statistic that is scary as hell….
“According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, roughly 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States — that’s roughly 2,000 per day. Of those, there are 115 child “stranger abduction” cases each year, which means the child was taken by an unknown person”
Also…
Of the nearly 25,000 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2017, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of those, 88 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing.
That is around 3,500 per year REPORTED child victims due to sex trafficking. The actual numbers are estimated by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children to be much, much, higher…
This is the swamp Trump and Sessions are draining… At the bottom of the evil facing modern civilization is not low IQ faces.. but instead the real evil is destruction of innocence by pedos, gays, dykes and lefty idiots…
DolittleAugust 22, 2018, 9:42 AM
Peterson says that during peacetime the military can afford to induct more lower IQ individuals since it is not quite the life or death situation of wartime. He says the military can provide training and discipline, which can serve as an entree to the civilian labor market. And it does. And he says 83 is the absolute bottom required for service. I didn’t hear it at all that the military “tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals” during peacetime. Different interpretation, I guess. “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”- Karl Popper
Interesting how much anger, and repeated postings, Peterson draws out of the folks here in the comments.
I like the guy & what he says though of course I don’t always agree with him.
I really like Mike Rowe as well. I like his momma even more.
Now go make your bed.
timAugust 22, 2018, 9:55 AM
“Peterson says that the military in peacetime tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals.”
He did? Strange I didn’t hear him say that.
BTW, I believe the whole point Peterson is trying to make, rather than get bogged down in statistical analysis, anecdotes and/or personal experiences in the military, is the implications of the low IQ population in society in general.
As somebody in the comments already pointed out, just note the low IQ behavior of people around you daily. It use to be a small percentage of the population were morons but unfortunately I believe it’s a lot more than that now.
Attacking the messenger, Peterson, seems rather counter productive. Read his “12 Rules for Life” and your opinion of him will probably quite a bit.
timAugust 22, 2018, 10:01 AM
One last thing, the military doesn’t have a “peacetime versus wartime” recruitment scenario. For the simple reason that first, peacetime can change into wartime in a day. Secondly, the mental aptitude needed to perform the tasks and operate the equipment doesn’t change for training versus war.
Carry on.
FredAugust 22, 2018, 10:45 AM
The US .mil in peacetime does in fact offer a viable path to ‘social (what I call Upward) mobility’. And the Dept of Defense does in fact know this and the Congress does in fact support this. The .mil, like college can provide a leg up and the Congress is willing to spend your money to provide this leg and to offer the GI bill on top of that for even further upward mobility. This is not news nor disputable. These are the facts of the Congressional Record.
You know, despite our problems folks of reasonable IQ and some level work ethic can still make it in America. Yeah it’s harder than it used to be but you can whine or work.
PunditarianAugust 22, 2018, 11:27 AM
Interesting to me how many seasoned commenters here are responding to their own version of what they think Dr. Peterson said, rather than what he actually said. Or rather than what I think he said.
I don’t think he said anywhere that military officers or members of elite units were or are anything other than of the highest calibre and quality.
I think his main point is really rather straightforward, and I am not sure why it seems to be so controversial.
Peterson says that, using standardized testing, the military has established the equivalent of an IQ for all recruits, and that over time, the military has discovered that recruits who score below a certain measurable threshold, have proven to be incapable of being trained for any of the tasks that are available to be completed in today’s military environment.
He says nothing about the worth of such recruits, their moral fibre, or anything else. Just that they are incapable of contributing to the military’s mission in the current era.
Peterson then states the next premise in his developing syllogism, that participation in the economic life in our modern civilian society requires that an individual perform on the job to at least the same minimal level required by the military.
He then concludes that approximately ten percent of the people around us are incapable of meaningfully participating in the economic life of the modern world.
In no way does he advance the proposition that their lives are therefore of lesser moral value than anyone else’s. Just that they are incapable of holding down even the simplest job.
I think that he may be overstating his case a bit.
I think there are some simple jobs that people with limited intelligence can still do, even in 2018. But I’m not sure how many of those jobs there are, and I’m not sure that our society values such jobs enough, to make fulfilling them a satisfying solution to the problem of earning one’s keep.
AnonymousAugust 22, 2018, 11:48 AM
“In peacetime the military is motivated to get as many people in as they possibly can,” says JP. Not true. The military is mustered to an authorized number. Standards are set. When recruitment is low, IQ scores dip. He praises the military for developing IQ tests, then shits on them for having low standards, which is not the case. It is the damnation of soft expectations, and of credible sounding constructs. My point is that the military is the best institution in America for a lot of reasons, and the personnel are the main one. I won’t give an inch on that, and especially after the experiences we had post Vietnam.
Just following my president’s lead. Shit on me not is his mantra.
ghostsniperAugust 22, 2018, 1:48 PM
It’s not magic. Though to a young head full of mush it may seem so. The military. The Army. It is made up of people like you and me. Nothing special here. Stupid people out here, stupid people in there. The biggest diff is that people have 100% of everything and in there you have 100% of what they allow. Yep, they own that ass and you’ll do exactly as told. Ever been forced to live that way? Prison is similar. Civilian life? Not even close. Civilians get to walk away, no matter what. Soldiers don’t.
Before I went in the army other people that had been in told me about some of the things they were forced to do but none of them could explain to me HOW they were forced to do them. My cousin who had spent 6 years in a sub (Drum) told me about 1 swab that was forced to push a dust ball around the floor with his nose. How? Then there’s the embarrassment of being forced to run around holding your M16 over your head with 1 hand and the other hand firmly clenched around the family jewels yelling at the top of your lungs, “This is my weapon, this is my gun, one is for fighting, one is for fun.” I never saw the dustball incident but I saw the jewel incident, several times.
All people are logical when they have no other choice and they will always choose what they perceive is the lesser of 2 evils. Would you like to scrub immersion heaters at the messhall for the next 5 days or would you rather push that dustball around for a few minutes? Would you like to sit in the brig at Mannheim for a couple months for misappropriating military property or run around with your hands full of guns and weapons for awhile? See? The military can cause learning moments. You just learned how to clean your area better and the proper military name for your civilian notion of a gun. Even a sub 83 IQ nitwit can learn when the inducement is adequate.
As a lifelong learner that enjoys learning the army was a breeze for me in that regard, and I mastered it, but I did not like their teaching methods. I learn much better and faster on my own, and that’s where we parted ways. To learn the army way, I had to slow way the fuck down. To a dismal crawl.
I’m the guy that had his M16 yanked apart and put back together before the instructor gave the command of execution, and I was the soldier in the corner doing push ups for the rest of the afternoon. And fuming.
The army is geared to the lowest common denominator. The first time I threw a hand grenade the instructors hands, both of them, were wrapped tightly around mine. And his hands stayed on mine until about 1 second before I actually threw the thing. That was embarrassing. After I threw a half dozen I wasn’t babysat like that any more. Seems that in the past some sub 83’s turned around while in throw mode and disaster ensued. Grenades don’t believe in 2nd chances. So those of us that could drive a stick legally at 16 and had been shooting guns since about the age of 4 and had blown up coffee cans full of gas and mothballs and nails, and thousands of other things that require balls and brains, had to pull way back to the level of the vast majority that had done none of that. The under 83.
When you spend 19 years going 120 mph all the time and then are forced to go 15 mph for 4 years those 1460 days take F..O..R..fucking..E..V..E..R. After the 3rd day I went in, not a day went by that I didn’t stand there and wonder, “Will this fucking nightmare EVER end?” I saw new guys rotate in and old friends leave, and we all promised to meet up “back in the world” someday. My day never came and it was never going to come.
When you’re 63 the days fly by like hours but when you’re 20 a day takes a week. My 4 years seemed like 10 lifetimes. Looking back now it was a blink of an eye. About the same as the first 10 years of our marriage. A blur. Perspective is everything.
I could say that my life of despair in the army drove me to drug and drink but that’s not true. I did those things cause I liked them and when I had no money I didn’t do them. The despair was there whether the drink and drug was there or not. Don’t be fooled by people that say they do those things because of their problems, they are liars. They like it too. If they didn’t they wouldn’t do them. Period.
But my day did come in spite of my staunch disbelief that it ever would, and the relief I felt was unmeasureable. Still, it is the best day in my life, and can’t imagine anything ever better. That is how much I loathed the army. Early on I learned the saying, “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.”, and I lived it to the end. I was the soldiers soldier and excelled in all of it. When I got to Ft Campbell I was the highest ranking E4 on post and I had a long list of credentials on the docket. I had every reason to be proud, but I wasn’t. I just wanted out. Getting out was what drove me. It was my focus. My light. My beacon. My reason for living.
I was the dove finally released from it gilded prison, I was launched. And then I soared. To the stratos. And beyond. No longer caged I was boundless. No 83 here, ever. Never.
“If you want to torture someone cage their body, if you want to kill someone cage their mind.”
–gs, 2099
KirkAugust 22, 2018, 4:57 PM
I’d have a lot more agreement with Jordan Peterson if he were to acknowledge that what we’re testing with the ASVAB and IQ tests in general ain’t really “intelligence”. Instead, the more accurate way to frame this is as a half-ass “adaptation to modern society”, because in raw terms, you don’t measure intelligence with anything other than real life performance in a specific environment. Anything other than actual performance against actual standards and problems is utterly irrelevant, because of proxy and replication issues.
Dump Albert Einstein at age 20 into sub-Saharan Africa. Does he survive, thrive? Replace him with Tsombe, in his life in Switzerland. Does he do well, as a customs agent?
A lot of what we’re taking as “intelligence” is actually narrow specialization; can you make the right noises and hand motions necessary to make your teacher happy? Why, then… You’re smart. You can’t? Well, that means you’re stupid, in our context. The reality is, outside the narrowly defined “game” of the classroom (and, modern civilization…) your actual results will vary. Widely. Some of the stupidest people I ever met did wonderfully well on standardized tests, and were utterly unable to cope with life outside those narrow definitions.
Peterson is worried about people with low-IQ scores finding their way in life. Observationally, what I’ve seen is that the opposite end of the spectrum has similar problems, and those are quite often more severe and tragic than for the really stupid. A really stupid person can be perfectly content and happy in their stupidity, while leading a productive life. There’s a young lady who has Down’s Syndrome, and who works as a bagger down at the local market: Measurable IQ? Probably not even 60, on a test. Is she a decent human being, capable of demonstrating all the qualities I expect from one? Oh, hell yes. Can she cope with modern life? With a little help, apparently so.
You get out on the other end of things, though… Lordy, lordy, lordy… Angst, hatred, self-destructiveness, and a general incomprehension for why they can’t make their way in the world–Which has nothing to do with IQ score, and a lot more to do with other traits, like empathy and ability to work with others.
I think Peterson is guilty of thinking that if someone can’t make it in his world, that of the overly-educated academic, then they’re unable to have a meaningful and productive life. Which, I will submit, is far from the truth–Peterson flatly needs to get out more, and actually find out what those other people, who don’t do well on standardized tests, do in their lives. Most of the time, you really don’t know other people are “IQ stupid”, to coin a term, because, well… Nobody talks about their IQ, and we don’t brand it on people’s foreheads. I learned the hard way that IQ scores don’t mean much of anything in the Army, once I observed that productivity, effectiveness, and the ability to make your way through life are almost completely disconnected from IQ/ASVAB scores. If anything, I’m now more highly dubious of the people on the upper end of the scale, because what I learned the hard way was that there ain’t no stupid like a really intelligent stupid person. I never had any of my low-score guys do things like my CAT I functional dolts got up to–The ideas simply never occurred to them. Thank God.
I am morally certain that if we did go around tattooing IQ scores on foreheads, we’d all quickly start taking them a lot less seriously. Whatever quality it is that we’re measuring, it’s not what most of us are talking about when we use the term. Peterson would be better off finding another proxy for his concerns, because this one doesn’t hunt. If it were me, I’d pick out something that more accurately measured the factors that go into adaptation to the environment we live in, and leave the virtue-assigning to history. Because you’re not an academic and good at academic skills does not make you a lesser human being; likewise, the ability to do well on standardized tests is not a sign of any real virtue, in any way, shape, or form.
pbirdAugust 22, 2018, 10:40 PM
Kirk, I don’t think you’re talking about the same stuff Peterson is. He just set you off.
Dolittle and JiminAlaska and tim seem to get him.
I don’t think anyone would be happier than Dr. Peterson if low testing people did well in life and were happy. He does get a little emotionally involved in what he is saying sometimes.
My IQ usually tests out at around 125. Hasn’t done me a lot of good, probably why I’m moody. lol
pbirdAugust 22, 2018, 10:40 PM
As usual, Ghost tells a great yarn.
KirkAugust 22, 2018, 11:46 PM
@pbird,
No, I’m talking about exactly what Peterson is talking about. The root problem with all this crap is that these wonderful academic theorists out there have come up with all this lovely psychometric BS, and the actual on-the-ground facts and experiences don’t survive departure from the statistical abstract.
People with an tested IQ of 83 can be perfectly functional, and they can be utterly doltish troublemakers. The thing we’re actually trying to measure isn’t what we’re actually deriving from these tests, and the whole damn paradigm is fundamentally and fatally flawed. I’ve observed people whose IQ scores were known to me to be disturbingly low, and whose ability to think on their feet, adapt to new situations, and “get things done” simply didn’t match the vaunted predictions of their tests.
The tests are measuring something, but they don’t measure everything, nor do they accurately assess many things that signify actual ability. Peterson’s use of them as a proxy for gauging success in life is thus fatally flawed, as well.
In general terms, yeah… The test can be used to assess a spectrum of things that relate to potential demonstrated performance. But, and this is the biggie, it’s not a hard-and-fast absolute.
Like with much of what goes on in the fuzzier sciences, the test only gives you likelihoods, not reliably accurate predictors of real-life performance. In other words, the results of these tests are not measuring predestined predictables that are doomed to deliver foreordained results; it’s more like a measure of potentials, propensities. Making public policies based on the results of IQ testing is only going to take you so far, and then you need to let life happen. I dealt with a lot of people who didn’t fit into the boxes that the ASVAB put them in, while I was in the Army. I had a lot of faith in the whole concept, going in. After a few years of running troops, I learned the hard way that about the only thing I could really rely on was that my guys with the higher scores were going to produce more interesting examples of extreme situational stupidity, and that was about it.
I had a guy working for me in the Army. Absolute shiite on the ASVAB, super-low scores on all the predictors for success in the jobs he wanted to get into. So, he didn’t get offered those jobs–And, oh, boy, was he unsuited and uninterested in the job they did put him in. But, we managed to shift him over to one of those jobs he was supposedly “unqualified” for, and what did we get? A guy who was both super-competent at that job, and a hell of a lot happier. But, a psychometrician would have said “Nope… Unsuited. Use someone else…”. An IQ test does not measure motivation or talent–I’ve seen guys who had what amounted to incredibly good instincts for fixing things, but whose test scores indicated that they were likely to be mechanical dolts. As well, some guys did really well on those parts of the ASVAB that were supposed to assess mechanical aptitude, and they demonstrably couldn’t poor piss out of a boot with written instructions on the side. Did really well on the tests, though…
Not a fan of the whole realm of mismeasuring man. In my personal case, I have an instinctive grasp for how people write tests–I can (and, have…) taken standardized tests on subjects I literally know nothing about, and have managed to achieve passing scores on them. Including an EIT pre-test, which ain’t no joke to take and do well on. The fact that I can do this leads me to believe that a great deal of testing isn’t really useful for telling us much of anything, aside from measuring the ability to take that test at that moment, and do well on it.
james wilsonAugust 23, 2018, 12:45 AM
I’ve never seen a comment desert at AD before. The intelligence thing scares knocks well balanced people off balance. This condition may have begun with the 11th commandment in 1776, all people are created equal. It looms larger than ten commandments and ten amendments put together.
ghostsniperAugust 23, 2018, 4:40 AM
Where’s everybody getting all these IQ scores from?
As far as I know I’ve never had an IQ test.
My army GT score was 120.
If you had an IQ test and the number turned out low would that make you feel like MORE of a dumb ass?
On a day to day basis the thing that I have noticed with my own occular glands is gross amounts of people stumbling around not giving a dam about the other people around them. It’s almost mesmerizing to see, if not downright aggravating. I don’t think this has anything to do with intelligence. But rather arrogance, laziness, and don’t-give-a-shitness.
I call them retards.
You see it when you’re driving. You know who they are. Yapping on the phone. Texting. Eating. Being a pain in the ass to other drivers.
You see it in the grocery store. Every time you go. Blocking the aisle with their cart. Yapping with their friends. Yapping on the phone. Being a pain in the ass to the other customers.
Retards. Arrogant, lazy assed retards. You just wanna clip em from behind, and when they hit the floor land on their trachea with your elbow, full force.
One or two is bearable but if you have to spend any serious time in society, say a couple hours or so, the backwards drag is overwhelming. It actually wears me out. After a few hours in that shit, when I get back to home-sweet-home I have to fire up a stout mud and go sit on the porch for a spell and recharge. Serious. That shit wears me out. BAD!
Weekends, Monday’s, and Friday’s are the worst days for trying to avoid these retards. If you venture out of the lair on those days you’re a retard too cause you already know what lays in wait. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the days the retards generally stay out of the way, and the non-retards can actually get societal stuff done. Not always, but most of the time.
I believe the arrogance comes from lack of difficult times. When people struggle, I mean REALLY struggle on a day to day basis they tend to appreciate life, and others, more. People are kinder and more thoughtful toward others. When people are struggling they as a group are also innately aware that fuses can burn down instantly and differences of opinion can be settled right then and there. Life is lively when you have to fight for it.
If your life is easy, almost given to you on a silver platter, mental sloth clambers in and takes over. You drag your feets, don’t give a shit about anyone else, allow little nothings to irritate you, and other people’s business suddenly becomes your business. You feel entitled. You become a trite little asswipe that needs to be slammed back into submission.
Those pictures of the 30’s and the long breadlines where everybody just wanted a couple calories – the only nutrition they had for 3 days. You didn’t see fistfights or people getting all up in each others grills. Nobody did anything that might make it take longer to get that piece of bread. Difficulty made people get along. If an asshole did get out of line the hammers were pulled out and the problem got solved immediately. Then back to the business of waiting on that solitary slice of bread.
That was how low hanging fruits got culled back in the old days before microwaves and cellphones made everyone lazy and arrogant. Their own words and actions were their sentences, which were levied right on the spot. Of course the size, scope, and ire of gov’t was much smaller then so average people were not coerced into not solving problems. Men were expected to be men and do what needed done. Now, men are expected to be women in mind, action, and spirit, so they just stand there and take it. And they take a lot now. Worse, they expect to take a lot. They know their hands are tied. To do otherwise in this world now, covered in wall to wall gov’t, to stand up and be a man means you risk arrest, caging, and gang anal rape. That risk will cause most regular men to stand down. And avoid the problem in the first place.
One day the world will be populated by what appears to be one gender. Uni-gender. Appearance and clothing will be uni, so will job functions and leisure activities, I mean, everyone’s equal, right? The only diff will be below the frost line, where some people have front holes, or frun’ls, and some will have pipes. And at the end of the day everyone will go back to their human storage facility and plug-in and tune out.
HAugust 23, 2018, 5:01 AM
Tim said, “One last thing, the military doesn’t have a “peacetime versus wartime” recruitment scenario.”
Explain McNamara’s 100,000 to me then.
Although on the other hand, Robert McNamara is to the military as a widget is to a widgeon, so his sorry ass may be an exception to Tim’s rule.
FredAugust 23, 2018, 6:26 AM
@Kirk,
You’re wrong about the ASVAB. It and it’s users don’t claim it to be a measure of intelligence. It’s an Aptitude Battery. It’s designed to find things like Mechanical Aptitude, or language skills, or puzzle solving, electronics cognition, etc. Because the .mil trains it’s recruits it requires no prior experience. Inclination and propensity and natural abilities, and therefor likelihood of successful completion of expensive training, especially in the highly specialized fields within the AF and Navy, is measurable and the ASVAB is a pretty good tool for this. Granted that the Army and Marines are little different, everyone is first a Soldier or Grunt, so whether somebody is good at that or not these branches care not at induction. I took it 3 times and in fact, it found the perfect ‘job’ for me. I kicked ass at it. Of course I had some intangibles, work ethic and leadership ability among them, but by submitting myself to the system (I went all in buddy) I had great success and enjoyed my specialization. I always praise the ASVAB because if I’d have had my way I would have ended like 70 percent of the civilian work force that don’t like their job. I content that all 100 million of you Americans who don’t like your job is because it ain’t God designed to do. Take the ASVAB and go where your natural abilities may lie for a better life.
That was my accidental anon post above, sorry. My Officer Test, now called an OIR I understand (can’t recall the nomenclature in the 70s-80s), was 124, iirc. I imagine all of the members on this board are in the 120 and up range. I once had a cadet for a couple of days to train in a field exercise who had a score in the 140s. He had a logistics background; this was the Mech. Infantry Platoon in the Attack (fixed position). By the time he was finished, he remarked “I thought the infantry were stupid, but that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”
Peterson. This conversation reminds me that there are a number of conservative commentators who I just don’t like. Most of the never Trumpers I feel will never understand how shit works. Trump is our wrecking ball. He is a turn around CEO. How farking hard is that to understand? Peterson sounds stupid to me, and often his conversations throw up flags for me, as I’ve been saying. I also don’t like Glenn Beck, who is stuck on cataclysm no matter what, and is a vociferous anti-Trumper. Alex Jones is a hoot, but much of his bullshit is specious. Breitbart (not Andrew; he was excellent!) as a media network barfed their soup with their stance against Trump in the election, and their rock-ribbed ideology.
This present group has a variety of beliefs, but I think some spark of thought goes into what is said.
ambiguousfrogAugust 23, 2018, 7:51 AM
@ghost :
roflmao ” You just wanna clip em from behind, and when they hit the floor land on their trachea with your elbow, full force.” Holy guacamole!
Keep it comin’. Damn right, when things were simpler during my youth (70’s) I remember all of it because we had nothing. You were forced to be creative and imaginative. As a kid if you wanted something it had to wait for an entire year and if you were lucky you got it during Christmas. Plaid pants and sneakers for little league. Nothing was as disposable as it is today. Maybe a single television with rabbit ears and foil. A single family car with no air. Now we surround ourselves with cheap Chinese crap just to numb us from the reality of our destruction.
I could destroy all 5 televisions I have today along with the work cellphone. It’s all soul sucking.
It is exhausting to step out of the cave now and then. You can’t wait to get back.
Agreed, we’re complacent and lazy because we’ve had it too good for too long. We’ve forgotten struggle, not that I like it or want it, but it is a great motivator.
EskymanAugust 23, 2018, 1:15 PM
What a fascinating topic thread!
However much Jordan Peterson makes on his lecture circuit, he’s worth every penny. His ideas, correct or not, have generated more commentary than any 10 others put together!
His encounter with an empty-headed left wing female on Britain’s Channel 4, where she attempted over and over to put words in his mouth, was the first time I saw Peterson; he demolished her in no uncertain terms and left her literally speechless. It was, and still is, a joy to behold.
For some reason many people seem determined to do exactly the same thing as that hapless talking head: put words in Peterson’s mouth that he has not said. Thus the straw-man is constructed, and then demolished, with great satisfaction; Don Quixote was victorious in many a bout with windmills, too.
For my part, I admire Jordan Peterson’s dogged attempt to resist mandated speech, and for his attempt to point out that those who cannot even keep their own room tidy may not be the best advocates for public policy. Put your own affairs in order before you tell others how to take care of theirs, is my understanding.
Peterson is not afraid to go mano-a-mano with all comers. Those hiding in the dark, who are afraid that they may be misrepresented by the media so refuse all encounters, are cowards. Peterson, right or wrong, stands up and fights like a man! I admire that, too, though the cowards in the dark do not.
In this clip, Peterson is pointing out that many people are not capable of some common tasks in our high-tech society; this hardly seems controversial, yet it apparently is. 100 years ago there were plenty of jobs involving manual labor: farm work, picking crops, digging ditches, etc. Now to dig ditches the laborer uses a machine, which he has to know how to operate. It isn’t just swinging a pick and knowing which end of the shovel goes into the dirt, it’s become technological. Some people will never learn to operate that machine, and it will be dangerous to others when they try. Watch some of the funny “driving a forklift” videos on YouTube if you don’t believe this obvious point.
As to the statistics… whether it was Disraeli or Twain, “lies, damned lies, and statistics” still rings true to me. Some people say that there’s a measurable, discernable difference between an IQ of 83 and one of 84: I say Poppycock! Show me. Perhaps in large quantities of people that is true, but not individually. Still, look at sub-Saharan Africa: vast areas of sub-85 IQs, where no civilizations ever existed. (Except for Wakanda, of course.) Those are people who may have any number of wonderful attributes, but intelligence isn’t one of them.
I meant to finish with a link to a video called “Empire of Dust,” about the Chinese difficulty in finding intelligentt workers in Africa; but that’s been disappeared from YouTube, along with a frightening number of other videos I’ve liked. This is all I could find: https://youtu.be/mtsa0MT2H4I
Gordon ScottAugust 23, 2018, 3:26 PM
Remember what Peterson said. He didn’t say that the ASVAB was the perfect test. He said the US armed forces needed a way to pick out those who could learn from those who could not, and accomplish this quickly. After a lot of research they settled on IQ tests. In the process, they learned that anyone who tested 83 or lower–10 percent of the population–was pretty much unsuitable for military service in any capacity.
And that’s another thing. Even an infantryman needs to be able to operate and maintain a rifle, and to employ it in a way that minimizes risk to himself and his buddies. He’s got to be able to operate within the squad, and perform some tasks without direction. And some people are simply not smart enough to do this.
Howard NelsonAugust 26, 2018, 10:22 AM
J Peterson’s more complete description of IQ, human value, and the unexplained variance around the IQ vs. “Performane’ correlations, https://youtu.be/9MJUhDQKJcY
PunditarianAugust 27, 2018, 7:04 AM
Terribly sorry, but IQ is real. IQ tests are reproducible and reliable across nations and cultures. They measure something real. Something that affects more than just your ability to hold down a technical job:
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
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Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
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I had no idea that one in ten Americans had an IQ of 83 or lower — yikes. But I guess it sounds right, statistically, with 100 being the mean, and all that normal distribution/ standard deviation stuff.
A guy I used to work with a long time ago had a favorite saying: “being stupid used to get you killed”. He did not suffer fools gladly, to say the least.
1 in 10 eh?
I thought it would have been higher.
Seems much higher every time I have to venture out into society – at least 5 in 10.
Inneresting that he cites the military as a reference.
Early July 1974, Fort Knox, Basic Training, while in formation the 200 man training unit was asked “Who has a civilian drivers license and can drive a stick?” Me and 2 other guys held up our hands. (I had not learned yet the whole thing about “volunteering”. So yeah, 3 out of 200 met those basic credentials. Seriously.
And it kept going downhill from there. Never stopping. Mid-to late 70’s the army was experimenting with everything it could get it’s hands on. By Oct 74 I was stationed in Germany and thats where the real fun began. All 175 swingin dix in the unit was injected with chicken flue and then our blood stolen to make a cure for it. And then there was the atomic simulator that was dropped from 10k feet and touched off 500 ft above the ground. The entire Wildflecken post lost millions of decibles of hearing ability in that split second. Because more than 10 percent of us were under 83 we were used as guinea pigs just because.
There were people enlisted from all over the planet and alot of them couldn’t speak english but they were good enough to wear the uniform. Yessiree. Guam, Philippines, Syria – yeah, THAT place, Mexico, and did I mention Puerto Rico? Thousands of PR’s filled the ranks. Nasty people. Animal like. Basal. I saw a PR dood on CQ one afternoon cooking a whole chicken right there on the CQ desk in the middle of the hallway in an electric frying pan. Said he caught it a farm outside the post. A week or so later the guts and feathers were stinking like 4 motherfucker’s in the corner of the barracks basement. Yeah, animals.
Should have seen this box of clowns come tumbling out the side of a C130 over Gelnhausen in the middle of the night. It’s only because of the army’s gargantuan redundant redundancy that they all aren’t dead.
What did they want volunteers for at Fort Knox, you ask?
Training areas, the heavy duty stuff – shooting ranges, hand grenade range, etc., were located way out in the distant wilderness areas of the post so lunches were frequently served on the training sites. (all troop transport to the ranges were by way of LPC’s, so going back to post to eat was verbotten)
LPC = Leather Personnel Carriers
So drivers were needed for the brand spankin new International Harvester deuce and a half’s to carry huge mermite cans of screamin hot grub out to the starving range hoons and I was one of the drivers.
1. Just because Jordan Peterson sometimes says something that’s true does not mean you should accept anything else he says on face value. His outlook and long-term goals are not in alignment with traditional Americans. He is a progressive globalist.
2. In another video, he got the IQ thing about Jews wrong; his understanding of statistics is weak.
3. There are identifiable subgroups in America with average IQ of 85 and 89. Given a normal distribution, larger portions of those groups will fall in that “less than IQ 83”. Nearly half in the case of blacks in America, approaching half for hispanics. Is he saying that 1/2 of the blacks in America are incapable of being part of a modern technological civil society?
I think he is saying that, without realizing it. I also fear he’s right.
LPC, that’s funny.
Peterson is right. Its a hell of a problem. In the old world if you weren’t at least crafty something would kill you. Not now. Anybody can reproduce, just about.
If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, which is to say 20 above and 20 below the mean. How many are above 120, and how many below 80? Damn few, I imagine. Again, I don’t have the data, but it sounds like Americans, in general, score well enough. Our education system is not superb across the board, but it is nearly universal.
Peterson says something that sounds an awful lot like common wisdom, but I think is absolutely unfounded. When did the peacetime military conduct a social service by employing the stupid? In the wars? Apparently not. In the inter-war years? No, because the military was small before WW II. Ghost may’ve hit it close to correct because the 70s were the lowest point for the military: the post-Vietnam era. This quickly changed, however, because of Reagan, and the Gulf War proves that. At any rate, the percentage of the ticklish 80 percenters can be increased, but it still is never a large portion of the military.
Fuck. The armed forces are the elite of our nation. They are made up of virtually all HS grads and above, and physically and psychologically better qualified than the civilian horde. Yes, I knew the duds in the 70s, but in my time I met some heavy-hitters, both intellectually and holistically. I’ve walked many paths in my life, but the service members were the best I’ve known.
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. BTW, I was an honor grad at #6. Fuck him. He simply makes shit up.
If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, which is to say 20 above and 20 below the mean. How many are above 120, and how many below 80? Damn few, I imagine. Again, I don’t have the data, but it sounds like Americans, in general, score well enough. Our education system is not superb across the board, but it is nearly universal.
Peterson says something that sounds an awful lot like common wisdom, but I think is absolutely unfounded. When did the peacetime military conduct a social service by employing the stupid? In the wars? Apparently not. In the inter-war years? No, because the military was small before WW II. Ghost may’ve hit it close to correct because the 70s were the lowest point for the military: the post-Vietnam era. This quickly changed, however, because of Reagan, and the Gulf War proves that. At any rate, the percentage of the ticklish 80 percenters can be increased, but it still is never a large portion of the military.
Fuck. The armed forces are the elite of our nation. They are made up of virtually all HS grads and above, and physically and psychologically better qualified than the civilian horde. Yes, I knew the duds in the 70s, but in my time I met some heavy-hitters, both intellectually and holistically. I’ve walked many paths in my life, but the service members were the best I’ve known.
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. BTW, I was an honor grad at #6. Fuck him. He simply makes shit up.
Peterson is basically full of horse shit. The military culls for a standard. No other sub-culture I’ve participated in had a more severe standard for the whole man than the military. When I waked onto the parade grounds to muster for day 1 of OCS, there were around 200 persons with me. In 2 weeks time, there were about 70 remaining. We graduated 33, of which 32 received commissions. Fuckhim. He simply makes shit up.
Peterson isn’t making anything up, here. The US military does administer the ASVAB test, which is in fact an IQ test. And while, in the 1970s, things were indeed very bad in the Army (I’m told it was bad, but not as bad, in other branches) things got better, as even the US Army can learn from mistakes, sometimes.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/305296/
Follow this one back to the origin, and you learn that the Army needs 80,000 recruits in 2018. But by the time you scratch off the obese, the uneducated, those with serious criminal records, and the retarded, they are down to a pool of under 1,000,000. Perhaps one in ten of those actually wants to join the military. And the Air Force, Navy and Marines want their share.
Just gonn’a throw this out there, found on the intertunnels today – “Just 66 percent of millennials firmly believe that the Earth is round…”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/do-people-really-think-earth-might-be-flat/
I have tremendous respect for Jordan Peterson. He is a master of presentational shock and he has excellent control of his facts.
However, thinking logically, IQ has to be tested with questions and answers. I ask you a question and you give an answer that is either right or wrong. Therefore it has to be a knowledge-based test. Do you understand the question and do you know (or can you deduce) the answer. That this is so can be proved by the fact that a person’s IQ goes up year-over-year because they have learned more. Because of this simple observation, I disagree with Peterson’s assertion that it is impossible to teach someone who has an IQ below 83.
Anecdotally, my brother is one of the smartest people I know (though slightly lacking in common sense, I’ll admit). He scored low in IQ. One example question: What is the difference between wood and glass? His answer was that wood is a carbon compound. The correct answer was that you can see through glass. By the way, I would not want to share a trench with my brother because of his lack of common sense.
lpdbw: “… his understanding of statistics is weak.”
You can say that again. Then again, he’s a psychologist. Weak understanding of statistics is widespread among academic psychologists.
“If 1 in 10 Americans tested fall below 20% under the mean, that is 10%. I am no statistician, but that seems to me to be a fairly low percentage given the imposed parameters of 40 percent, ”
One in ten is 40% below the mean of a normally distributed population. This puts that data point (10% of population) about 6.5% into the area of two standard deviations out from the mean. In other words, it’s 6.5% lower than the lower boundary of one SD. 9.5% of the population will still fall within the area comprised by that second SD. Add to that the 0.5 of the third SD and you get 10%
@ghost: You gotta write a book, you have a way of explaining things and I’ve read you all over the interwebs. It’s not easy keeping my attention and that says something.
@Casey: I’ve taken statistics a couple of times and you even made my head hurt.
@Solyent: At some point I believe if you can’t reach these people below the 83 IQ, how the hell can you begin to even teach/train them? They become primal. Have they become too Feral? I’m finding this to be the case lately and it appears to becoming generational. But that could be my innate racism bubbling up to the surface.
A high IQ has nothing to do with being able to function in a high trust mutually beneficial society. At a certain level Brainwashing and Propaganda work. All of histories worse actors were smart, some even brilliant. Hmmm, I wonder if evil could be real (he said sarcastically)?
When I was in the Navy there was a guy in my division that was not very intelligent. The Chief said that when you sent him out on a job you had to send someone with him to make sure he didn’t screw it up. I didn’t recommend him for retention. We joked that you can’t have stupid people in the Navy because they will kill themselves, and if you happen to be in the vicinity they will kill you too.
While statistical evaluations can be useful, they’re best application is in baseball. Don’t take his word for it, evaluate Peterson’s contention for yourself, using your ears and eyes while out and about in your daily life. What I see while out and about, is, at least 10% or the population if not low IQ, then simply ignoramuses strutting about parroting sound bites.
My two cents folks. Receiving a HS diploma from an American government run school does not qualify anyone to do anything. It only indicates that a person was of the mettle to finish what he or she, started.
Statistics is not an absolute science. Statistics is best used by propagandists to fool people on virtually any issue. Numbers pulled from a rotating drum of BS. My stat teacher in college used to say this with gusto. Read *The Black Swan* by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I will throw a quarter in as well…
His statistics are wrong or misleading or both. Depends on his intent.
Knowing something is not terrifying. The condition(s) already existed before you aggregated and
analyzed the data. The low IQ people that are living before they were measured are still with us.
Peterson uses the classic humanist argument to devalue life. The implications are… HMMM low IQ people = terrible problems. I disagree. Human Beings have agency. Life is valuable. Joy is independent of IQ. The Christian perspective is that God changes the heart, not man. You do not educate a person into belief. You expose them to the Gospel and it does the work.
Alot of the uncivil circumstances we find ourselves in now is cause by the devaluation of simple work and creating unrealistic, materialistic-based, wants/needs and desires.
Listen to Mike Rowe, not Jordan Peterson. Peterson is compelling, I get that. He speaks well. But his worldview is NOT classically a western-man viewpoint. NEO western? Post- Christian, Humanist Western? I don’t know and will not pretend to know his heart and intent.
Value life, value simple work and trust in God. Work like its all up to you, and Pray like its all up to God. You can do no more than that… but trust me, its our nature to do much less….
OK. I hate stats. And I had high Asvab, GT and OIR scores.
Peterson says that the military in peacetime tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals. I call bullshit on that. Actually, the opposite is true. He is only mouthing a popular belief that stats do prove is wrong. All other things being equal, your best hire is a veteran vs. a non veteran.
I wouldn’t hire JP to wash my car.
I will tell you a statistic that is scary as hell….
“According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, roughly 800,000 children are reported missing each year in the United States — that’s roughly 2,000 per day. Of those, there are 115 child “stranger abduction” cases each year, which means the child was taken by an unknown person”
Also…
Of the nearly 25,000 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2017, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of those, 88 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing.
That is around 3,500 per year REPORTED child victims due to sex trafficking. The actual numbers are estimated by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children to be much, much, higher…
This is the swamp Trump and Sessions are draining… At the bottom of the evil facing modern civilization is not low IQ faces.. but instead the real evil is destruction of innocence by pedos, gays, dykes and lefty idiots…
Peterson says that during peacetime the military can afford to induct more lower IQ individuals since it is not quite the life or death situation of wartime. He says the military can provide training and discipline, which can serve as an entree to the civilian labor market. And it does. And he says 83 is the absolute bottom required for service. I didn’t hear it at all that the military “tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals” during peacetime. Different interpretation, I guess. “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”- Karl Popper
Interesting how much anger, and repeated postings, Peterson draws out of the folks here in the comments.
I like the guy & what he says though of course I don’t always agree with him.
I really like Mike Rowe as well. I like his momma even more.
Now go make your bed.
“Peterson says that the military in peacetime tries to fill its ranks with shitty IQ and poverty stricken individuals.”
He did? Strange I didn’t hear him say that.
BTW, I believe the whole point Peterson is trying to make, rather than get bogged down in statistical analysis, anecdotes and/or personal experiences in the military, is the implications of the low IQ population in society in general.
As somebody in the comments already pointed out, just note the low IQ behavior of people around you daily. It use to be a small percentage of the population were morons but unfortunately I believe it’s a lot more than that now.
Attacking the messenger, Peterson, seems rather counter productive. Read his “12 Rules for Life” and your opinion of him will probably quite a bit.
One last thing, the military doesn’t have a “peacetime versus wartime” recruitment scenario. For the simple reason that first, peacetime can change into wartime in a day. Secondly, the mental aptitude needed to perform the tasks and operate the equipment doesn’t change for training versus war.
Carry on.
The US .mil in peacetime does in fact offer a viable path to ‘social (what I call Upward) mobility’. And the Dept of Defense does in fact know this and the Congress does in fact support this. The .mil, like college can provide a leg up and the Congress is willing to spend your money to provide this leg and to offer the GI bill on top of that for even further upward mobility. This is not news nor disputable. These are the facts of the Congressional Record.
You know, despite our problems folks of reasonable IQ and some level work ethic can still make it in America. Yeah it’s harder than it used to be but you can whine or work.
Interesting to me how many seasoned commenters here are responding to their own version of what they think Dr. Peterson said, rather than what he actually said. Or rather than what I think he said.
I don’t think he said anywhere that military officers or members of elite units were or are anything other than of the highest calibre and quality.
I think his main point is really rather straightforward, and I am not sure why it seems to be so controversial.
Peterson says that, using standardized testing, the military has established the equivalent of an IQ for all recruits, and that over time, the military has discovered that recruits who score below a certain measurable threshold, have proven to be incapable of being trained for any of the tasks that are available to be completed in today’s military environment.
He says nothing about the worth of such recruits, their moral fibre, or anything else. Just that they are incapable of contributing to the military’s mission in the current era.
Peterson then states the next premise in his developing syllogism, that participation in the economic life in our modern civilian society requires that an individual perform on the job to at least the same minimal level required by the military.
He then concludes that approximately ten percent of the people around us are incapable of meaningfully participating in the economic life of the modern world.
In no way does he advance the proposition that their lives are therefore of lesser moral value than anyone else’s. Just that they are incapable of holding down even the simplest job.
I think that he may be overstating his case a bit.
I think there are some simple jobs that people with limited intelligence can still do, even in 2018. But I’m not sure how many of those jobs there are, and I’m not sure that our society values such jobs enough, to make fulfilling them a satisfying solution to the problem of earning one’s keep.
“In peacetime the military is motivated to get as many people in as they possibly can,” says JP. Not true. The military is mustered to an authorized number. Standards are set. When recruitment is low, IQ scores dip. He praises the military for developing IQ tests, then shits on them for having low standards, which is not the case. It is the damnation of soft expectations, and of credible sounding constructs. My point is that the military is the best institution in America for a lot of reasons, and the personnel are the main one. I won’t give an inch on that, and especially after the experiences we had post Vietnam.
Just following my president’s lead. Shit on me not is his mantra.
It’s not magic. Though to a young head full of mush it may seem so. The military. The Army. It is made up of people like you and me. Nothing special here. Stupid people out here, stupid people in there. The biggest diff is that people have 100% of everything and in there you have 100% of what they allow. Yep, they own that ass and you’ll do exactly as told. Ever been forced to live that way? Prison is similar. Civilian life? Not even close. Civilians get to walk away, no matter what. Soldiers don’t.
Before I went in the army other people that had been in told me about some of the things they were forced to do but none of them could explain to me HOW they were forced to do them. My cousin who had spent 6 years in a sub (Drum) told me about 1 swab that was forced to push a dust ball around the floor with his nose. How? Then there’s the embarrassment of being forced to run around holding your M16 over your head with 1 hand and the other hand firmly clenched around the family jewels yelling at the top of your lungs, “This is my weapon, this is my gun, one is for fighting, one is for fun.” I never saw the dustball incident but I saw the jewel incident, several times.
All people are logical when they have no other choice and they will always choose what they perceive is the lesser of 2 evils. Would you like to scrub immersion heaters at the messhall for the next 5 days or would you rather push that dustball around for a few minutes? Would you like to sit in the brig at Mannheim for a couple months for misappropriating military property or run around with your hands full of guns and weapons for awhile? See? The military can cause learning moments. You just learned how to clean your area better and the proper military name for your civilian notion of a gun. Even a sub 83 IQ nitwit can learn when the inducement is adequate.
As a lifelong learner that enjoys learning the army was a breeze for me in that regard, and I mastered it, but I did not like their teaching methods. I learn much better and faster on my own, and that’s where we parted ways. To learn the army way, I had to slow way the fuck down. To a dismal crawl.
I’m the guy that had his M16 yanked apart and put back together before the instructor gave the command of execution, and I was the soldier in the corner doing push ups for the rest of the afternoon. And fuming.
The army is geared to the lowest common denominator. The first time I threw a hand grenade the instructors hands, both of them, were wrapped tightly around mine. And his hands stayed on mine until about 1 second before I actually threw the thing. That was embarrassing. After I threw a half dozen I wasn’t babysat like that any more. Seems that in the past some sub 83’s turned around while in throw mode and disaster ensued. Grenades don’t believe in 2nd chances. So those of us that could drive a stick legally at 16 and had been shooting guns since about the age of 4 and had blown up coffee cans full of gas and mothballs and nails, and thousands of other things that require balls and brains, had to pull way back to the level of the vast majority that had done none of that. The under 83.
When you spend 19 years going 120 mph all the time and then are forced to go 15 mph for 4 years those 1460 days take F..O..R..fucking..E..V..E..R. After the 3rd day I went in, not a day went by that I didn’t stand there and wonder, “Will this fucking nightmare EVER end?” I saw new guys rotate in and old friends leave, and we all promised to meet up “back in the world” someday. My day never came and it was never going to come.
When you’re 63 the days fly by like hours but when you’re 20 a day takes a week. My 4 years seemed like 10 lifetimes. Looking back now it was a blink of an eye. About the same as the first 10 years of our marriage. A blur. Perspective is everything.
I could say that my life of despair in the army drove me to drug and drink but that’s not true. I did those things cause I liked them and when I had no money I didn’t do them. The despair was there whether the drink and drug was there or not. Don’t be fooled by people that say they do those things because of their problems, they are liars. They like it too. If they didn’t they wouldn’t do them. Period.
But my day did come in spite of my staunch disbelief that it ever would, and the relief I felt was unmeasureable. Still, it is the best day in my life, and can’t imagine anything ever better. That is how much I loathed the army. Early on I learned the saying, “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.”, and I lived it to the end. I was the soldiers soldier and excelled in all of it. When I got to Ft Campbell I was the highest ranking E4 on post and I had a long list of credentials on the docket. I had every reason to be proud, but I wasn’t. I just wanted out. Getting out was what drove me. It was my focus. My light. My beacon. My reason for living.
I was the dove finally released from it gilded prison, I was launched. And then I soared. To the stratos. And beyond. No longer caged I was boundless. No 83 here, ever. Never.
“If you want to torture someone cage their body, if you want to kill someone cage their mind.”
–gs, 2099
I’d have a lot more agreement with Jordan Peterson if he were to acknowledge that what we’re testing with the ASVAB and IQ tests in general ain’t really “intelligence”. Instead, the more accurate way to frame this is as a half-ass “adaptation to modern society”, because in raw terms, you don’t measure intelligence with anything other than real life performance in a specific environment. Anything other than actual performance against actual standards and problems is utterly irrelevant, because of proxy and replication issues.
Dump Albert Einstein at age 20 into sub-Saharan Africa. Does he survive, thrive? Replace him with Tsombe, in his life in Switzerland. Does he do well, as a customs agent?
A lot of what we’re taking as “intelligence” is actually narrow specialization; can you make the right noises and hand motions necessary to make your teacher happy? Why, then… You’re smart. You can’t? Well, that means you’re stupid, in our context. The reality is, outside the narrowly defined “game” of the classroom (and, modern civilization…) your actual results will vary. Widely. Some of the stupidest people I ever met did wonderfully well on standardized tests, and were utterly unable to cope with life outside those narrow definitions.
Peterson is worried about people with low-IQ scores finding their way in life. Observationally, what I’ve seen is that the opposite end of the spectrum has similar problems, and those are quite often more severe and tragic than for the really stupid. A really stupid person can be perfectly content and happy in their stupidity, while leading a productive life. There’s a young lady who has Down’s Syndrome, and who works as a bagger down at the local market: Measurable IQ? Probably not even 60, on a test. Is she a decent human being, capable of demonstrating all the qualities I expect from one? Oh, hell yes. Can she cope with modern life? With a little help, apparently so.
You get out on the other end of things, though… Lordy, lordy, lordy… Angst, hatred, self-destructiveness, and a general incomprehension for why they can’t make their way in the world–Which has nothing to do with IQ score, and a lot more to do with other traits, like empathy and ability to work with others.
I think Peterson is guilty of thinking that if someone can’t make it in his world, that of the overly-educated academic, then they’re unable to have a meaningful and productive life. Which, I will submit, is far from the truth–Peterson flatly needs to get out more, and actually find out what those other people, who don’t do well on standardized tests, do in their lives. Most of the time, you really don’t know other people are “IQ stupid”, to coin a term, because, well… Nobody talks about their IQ, and we don’t brand it on people’s foreheads. I learned the hard way that IQ scores don’t mean much of anything in the Army, once I observed that productivity, effectiveness, and the ability to make your way through life are almost completely disconnected from IQ/ASVAB scores. If anything, I’m now more highly dubious of the people on the upper end of the scale, because what I learned the hard way was that there ain’t no stupid like a really intelligent stupid person. I never had any of my low-score guys do things like my CAT I functional dolts got up to–The ideas simply never occurred to them. Thank God.
I am morally certain that if we did go around tattooing IQ scores on foreheads, we’d all quickly start taking them a lot less seriously. Whatever quality it is that we’re measuring, it’s not what most of us are talking about when we use the term. Peterson would be better off finding another proxy for his concerns, because this one doesn’t hunt. If it were me, I’d pick out something that more accurately measured the factors that go into adaptation to the environment we live in, and leave the virtue-assigning to history. Because you’re not an academic and good at academic skills does not make you a lesser human being; likewise, the ability to do well on standardized tests is not a sign of any real virtue, in any way, shape, or form.
Kirk, I don’t think you’re talking about the same stuff Peterson is. He just set you off.
Dolittle and JiminAlaska and tim seem to get him.
I don’t think anyone would be happier than Dr. Peterson if low testing people did well in life and were happy. He does get a little emotionally involved in what he is saying sometimes.
My IQ usually tests out at around 125. Hasn’t done me a lot of good, probably why I’m moody. lol
As usual, Ghost tells a great yarn.
@pbird,
No, I’m talking about exactly what Peterson is talking about. The root problem with all this crap is that these wonderful academic theorists out there have come up with all this lovely psychometric BS, and the actual on-the-ground facts and experiences don’t survive departure from the statistical abstract.
People with an tested IQ of 83 can be perfectly functional, and they can be utterly doltish troublemakers. The thing we’re actually trying to measure isn’t what we’re actually deriving from these tests, and the whole damn paradigm is fundamentally and fatally flawed. I’ve observed people whose IQ scores were known to me to be disturbingly low, and whose ability to think on their feet, adapt to new situations, and “get things done” simply didn’t match the vaunted predictions of their tests.
The tests are measuring something, but they don’t measure everything, nor do they accurately assess many things that signify actual ability. Peterson’s use of them as a proxy for gauging success in life is thus fatally flawed, as well.
In general terms, yeah… The test can be used to assess a spectrum of things that relate to potential demonstrated performance. But, and this is the biggie, it’s not a hard-and-fast absolute.
Like with much of what goes on in the fuzzier sciences, the test only gives you likelihoods, not reliably accurate predictors of real-life performance. In other words, the results of these tests are not measuring predestined predictables that are doomed to deliver foreordained results; it’s more like a measure of potentials, propensities. Making public policies based on the results of IQ testing is only going to take you so far, and then you need to let life happen. I dealt with a lot of people who didn’t fit into the boxes that the ASVAB put them in, while I was in the Army. I had a lot of faith in the whole concept, going in. After a few years of running troops, I learned the hard way that about the only thing I could really rely on was that my guys with the higher scores were going to produce more interesting examples of extreme situational stupidity, and that was about it.
I had a guy working for me in the Army. Absolute shiite on the ASVAB, super-low scores on all the predictors for success in the jobs he wanted to get into. So, he didn’t get offered those jobs–And, oh, boy, was he unsuited and uninterested in the job they did put him in. But, we managed to shift him over to one of those jobs he was supposedly “unqualified” for, and what did we get? A guy who was both super-competent at that job, and a hell of a lot happier. But, a psychometrician would have said “Nope… Unsuited. Use someone else…”. An IQ test does not measure motivation or talent–I’ve seen guys who had what amounted to incredibly good instincts for fixing things, but whose test scores indicated that they were likely to be mechanical dolts. As well, some guys did really well on those parts of the ASVAB that were supposed to assess mechanical aptitude, and they demonstrably couldn’t poor piss out of a boot with written instructions on the side. Did really well on the tests, though…
Not a fan of the whole realm of mismeasuring man. In my personal case, I have an instinctive grasp for how people write tests–I can (and, have…) taken standardized tests on subjects I literally know nothing about, and have managed to achieve passing scores on them. Including an EIT pre-test, which ain’t no joke to take and do well on. The fact that I can do this leads me to believe that a great deal of testing isn’t really useful for telling us much of anything, aside from measuring the ability to take that test at that moment, and do well on it.
I’ve never seen a comment desert at AD before. The intelligence thing scares knocks well balanced people off balance. This condition may have begun with the 11th commandment in 1776, all people are created equal. It looms larger than ten commandments and ten amendments put together.
Where’s everybody getting all these IQ scores from?
As far as I know I’ve never had an IQ test.
My army GT score was 120.
If you had an IQ test and the number turned out low would that make you feel like MORE of a dumb ass?
On a day to day basis the thing that I have noticed with my own occular glands is gross amounts of people stumbling around not giving a dam about the other people around them. It’s almost mesmerizing to see, if not downright aggravating. I don’t think this has anything to do with intelligence. But rather arrogance, laziness, and don’t-give-a-shitness.
I call them retards.
You see it when you’re driving. You know who they are. Yapping on the phone. Texting. Eating. Being a pain in the ass to other drivers.
You see it in the grocery store. Every time you go. Blocking the aisle with their cart. Yapping with their friends. Yapping on the phone. Being a pain in the ass to the other customers.
Retards. Arrogant, lazy assed retards. You just wanna clip em from behind, and when they hit the floor land on their trachea with your elbow, full force.
One or two is bearable but if you have to spend any serious time in society, say a couple hours or so, the backwards drag is overwhelming. It actually wears me out. After a few hours in that shit, when I get back to home-sweet-home I have to fire up a stout mud and go sit on the porch for a spell and recharge. Serious. That shit wears me out. BAD!
Weekends, Monday’s, and Friday’s are the worst days for trying to avoid these retards. If you venture out of the lair on those days you’re a retard too cause you already know what lays in wait. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the days the retards generally stay out of the way, and the non-retards can actually get societal stuff done. Not always, but most of the time.
I believe the arrogance comes from lack of difficult times. When people struggle, I mean REALLY struggle on a day to day basis they tend to appreciate life, and others, more. People are kinder and more thoughtful toward others. When people are struggling they as a group are also innately aware that fuses can burn down instantly and differences of opinion can be settled right then and there. Life is lively when you have to fight for it.
If your life is easy, almost given to you on a silver platter, mental sloth clambers in and takes over. You drag your feets, don’t give a shit about anyone else, allow little nothings to irritate you, and other people’s business suddenly becomes your business. You feel entitled. You become a trite little asswipe that needs to be slammed back into submission.
Those pictures of the 30’s and the long breadlines where everybody just wanted a couple calories – the only nutrition they had for 3 days. You didn’t see fistfights or people getting all up in each others grills. Nobody did anything that might make it take longer to get that piece of bread. Difficulty made people get along. If an asshole did get out of line the hammers were pulled out and the problem got solved immediately. Then back to the business of waiting on that solitary slice of bread.
That was how low hanging fruits got culled back in the old days before microwaves and cellphones made everyone lazy and arrogant. Their own words and actions were their sentences, which were levied right on the spot. Of course the size, scope, and ire of gov’t was much smaller then so average people were not coerced into not solving problems. Men were expected to be men and do what needed done. Now, men are expected to be women in mind, action, and spirit, so they just stand there and take it. And they take a lot now. Worse, they expect to take a lot. They know their hands are tied. To do otherwise in this world now, covered in wall to wall gov’t, to stand up and be a man means you risk arrest, caging, and gang anal rape. That risk will cause most regular men to stand down. And avoid the problem in the first place.
One day the world will be populated by what appears to be one gender. Uni-gender. Appearance and clothing will be uni, so will job functions and leisure activities, I mean, everyone’s equal, right? The only diff will be below the frost line, where some people have front holes, or frun’ls, and some will have pipes. And at the end of the day everyone will go back to their human storage facility and plug-in and tune out.
Tim said, “One last thing, the military doesn’t have a “peacetime versus wartime” recruitment scenario.”
Explain McNamara’s 100,000 to me then.
Although on the other hand, Robert McNamara is to the military as a widget is to a widgeon, so his sorry ass may be an exception to Tim’s rule.
@Kirk,
You’re wrong about the ASVAB. It and it’s users don’t claim it to be a measure of intelligence. It’s an Aptitude Battery. It’s designed to find things like Mechanical Aptitude, or language skills, or puzzle solving, electronics cognition, etc. Because the .mil trains it’s recruits it requires no prior experience. Inclination and propensity and natural abilities, and therefor likelihood of successful completion of expensive training, especially in the highly specialized fields within the AF and Navy, is measurable and the ASVAB is a pretty good tool for this. Granted that the Army and Marines are little different, everyone is first a Soldier or Grunt, so whether somebody is good at that or not these branches care not at induction. I took it 3 times and in fact, it found the perfect ‘job’ for me. I kicked ass at it. Of course I had some intangibles, work ethic and leadership ability among them, but by submitting myself to the system (I went all in buddy) I had great success and enjoyed my specialization. I always praise the ASVAB because if I’d have had my way I would have ended like 70 percent of the civilian work force that don’t like their job. I content that all 100 million of you Americans who don’t like your job is because it ain’t God designed to do. Take the ASVAB and go where your natural abilities may lie for a better life.
That was my accidental anon post above, sorry. My Officer Test, now called an OIR I understand (can’t recall the nomenclature in the 70s-80s), was 124, iirc. I imagine all of the members on this board are in the 120 and up range. I once had a cadet for a couple of days to train in a field exercise who had a score in the 140s. He had a logistics background; this was the Mech. Infantry Platoon in the Attack (fixed position). By the time he was finished, he remarked “I thought the infantry were stupid, but that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”
Peterson. This conversation reminds me that there are a number of conservative commentators who I just don’t like. Most of the never Trumpers I feel will never understand how shit works. Trump is our wrecking ball. He is a turn around CEO. How farking hard is that to understand? Peterson sounds stupid to me, and often his conversations throw up flags for me, as I’ve been saying. I also don’t like Glenn Beck, who is stuck on cataclysm no matter what, and is a vociferous anti-Trumper. Alex Jones is a hoot, but much of his bullshit is specious. Breitbart (not Andrew; he was excellent!) as a media network barfed their soup with their stance against Trump in the election, and their rock-ribbed ideology.
This present group has a variety of beliefs, but I think some spark of thought goes into what is said.
@ghost :
roflmao ” You just wanna clip em from behind, and when they hit the floor land on their trachea with your elbow, full force.” Holy guacamole!
Keep it comin’. Damn right, when things were simpler during my youth (70’s) I remember all of it because we had nothing. You were forced to be creative and imaginative. As a kid if you wanted something it had to wait for an entire year and if you were lucky you got it during Christmas. Plaid pants and sneakers for little league. Nothing was as disposable as it is today. Maybe a single television with rabbit ears and foil. A single family car with no air. Now we surround ourselves with cheap Chinese crap just to numb us from the reality of our destruction.
I could destroy all 5 televisions I have today along with the work cellphone. It’s all soul sucking.
It is exhausting to step out of the cave now and then. You can’t wait to get back.
Agreed, we’re complacent and lazy because we’ve had it too good for too long. We’ve forgotten struggle, not that I like it or want it, but it is a great motivator.
What a fascinating topic thread!
However much Jordan Peterson makes on his lecture circuit, he’s worth every penny. His ideas, correct or not, have generated more commentary than any 10 others put together!
His encounter with an empty-headed left wing female on Britain’s Channel 4, where she attempted over and over to put words in his mouth, was the first time I saw Peterson; he demolished her in no uncertain terms and left her literally speechless. It was, and still is, a joy to behold.
For some reason many people seem determined to do exactly the same thing as that hapless talking head: put words in Peterson’s mouth that he has not said. Thus the straw-man is constructed, and then demolished, with great satisfaction; Don Quixote was victorious in many a bout with windmills, too.
For my part, I admire Jordan Peterson’s dogged attempt to resist mandated speech, and for his attempt to point out that those who cannot even keep their own room tidy may not be the best advocates for public policy. Put your own affairs in order before you tell others how to take care of theirs, is my understanding.
Peterson is not afraid to go mano-a-mano with all comers. Those hiding in the dark, who are afraid that they may be misrepresented by the media so refuse all encounters, are cowards. Peterson, right or wrong, stands up and fights like a man! I admire that, too, though the cowards in the dark do not.
In this clip, Peterson is pointing out that many people are not capable of some common tasks in our high-tech society; this hardly seems controversial, yet it apparently is. 100 years ago there were plenty of jobs involving manual labor: farm work, picking crops, digging ditches, etc. Now to dig ditches the laborer uses a machine, which he has to know how to operate. It isn’t just swinging a pick and knowing which end of the shovel goes into the dirt, it’s become technological. Some people will never learn to operate that machine, and it will be dangerous to others when they try. Watch some of the funny “driving a forklift” videos on YouTube if you don’t believe this obvious point.
As to the statistics… whether it was Disraeli or Twain, “lies, damned lies, and statistics” still rings true to me. Some people say that there’s a measurable, discernable difference between an IQ of 83 and one of 84: I say Poppycock! Show me. Perhaps in large quantities of people that is true, but not individually. Still, look at sub-Saharan Africa: vast areas of sub-85 IQs, where no civilizations ever existed. (Except for Wakanda, of course.) Those are people who may have any number of wonderful attributes, but intelligence isn’t one of them.
I meant to finish with a link to a video called “Empire of Dust,” about the Chinese difficulty in finding intelligentt workers in Africa; but that’s been disappeared from YouTube, along with a frightening number of other videos I’ve liked. This is all I could find: https://youtu.be/mtsa0MT2H4I
Remember what Peterson said. He didn’t say that the ASVAB was the perfect test. He said the US armed forces needed a way to pick out those who could learn from those who could not, and accomplish this quickly. After a lot of research they settled on IQ tests. In the process, they learned that anyone who tested 83 or lower–10 percent of the population–was pretty much unsuitable for military service in any capacity.
And that’s another thing. Even an infantryman needs to be able to operate and maintain a rifle, and to employ it in a way that minimizes risk to himself and his buddies. He’s got to be able to operate within the squad, and perform some tasks without direction. And some people are simply not smart enough to do this.
J Peterson’s more complete description of IQ, human value, and the unexplained variance around the IQ vs. “Performane’ correlations,
https://youtu.be/9MJUhDQKJcY
Terribly sorry, but IQ is real. IQ tests are reproducible and reliable across nations and cultures. They measure something real. Something that affects more than just your ability to hold down a technical job:
https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2708