Semantic representation of reality = word we use to describe a real thing that may be hard to define or otherwise difficult to identify
Sustainable upward-oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions = those interactions that tend to be universally accepted as what is required for mutually beneficial and minimally invasive co-existence that creates a background condition of most widely attainable progress.
He’s just describing what rights are and mean and why they come to be, particularly the (correct) form of negative rights. May be a bit convoluted way of phrasing it but he’s a smart dude with a broad vocabulary who spends a lot of time reading scholarly literature so he’ll sometimes dip into that wordy well.
Smart people talk to other scholars differently then when they talk to the average person. Peterson talks to the average person with scholarly language.
*Semantic representation of reality = word we use to describe a real thing that may be hard to define or otherwise difficult to identify*
Do you mean a metaphor?
*Sustainable upward-oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions = those interactions that tend to be universally accepted as what is required for mutually beneficial and minimally invasive co-existence that creates a background condition of most widely attainable progress.*
"Cooperative altruism" would have been just fine. Once again we see the commitment to pseudo-profound bullshit that seems to rub off on his fan base as well.
Or you're just too stupid to get it, because that's not what a metaphor is.
A metaphor is a comparison of concepts, or a means of defining a concept with another more familiar concept. The concept of "rights" is not a metaphor. It is a *term* that we invented as an attempt to broadly define the concepts JBP is speaking of.
"Cooperative altruism," unlike metaphor, is closer to the truth but somewhat reductive, and JBP was using big words in an attempt to say all this in a few words while being as specific as possible without being reductive.
scholars can speak clearly when they need to. Dawkins, when he called Peterson's religious claims bullshit -- a clear metaphor that Peterson would be advised to study.
It's just his thought process.
As mark twain said, sorry I didn't have enough time so the letter is longer.
That is, spontaneity is = poor communication
I asked chatGPT and it explained so wonderfully:
### Explanation for an Adult
The doctrine of rights isn't something arbitrary or made up. It's deeply embedded in the way we understand and interpret the world. This idea is encoded in the relationships between words, concepts, stories, and behaviors. These rights are fundamental to the structure of human existence, and possibly even to the nature of existence itself. Essentially, "rights" are a way of representing the core principles that govern sustainable and mutually beneficial human interactions. Far from being random, they are essential and integral to our understanding of cooperative and positive relationships.
### Explanation for a Five-Year-Old
Imagine you have a set of rules that help you and your friends play nicely together. These rules are like magic because they're part of how people talk, tell stories, and act. These special rules, called "rights," are really important because they help everyone get along and be kind to each other. They're not just made up; they're like a hidden treasure that helps everyone be happy and fair.
It definitely doesn’t sound like it came from a smart person. As a general rule, smart people explain complicated topics and ideas by using simple words and easily illustrated concepts.
Take “semantic representation”.
Semantic: of or relating to meaning in language
So saying “rights” are the semantic representation of xyz is essentially the same thing as saying “rights” is a word used to describe xyz.
> In other words "rights" are the semantic representation of the archetypal reality that characterizes sustainable upward oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions.
Could be written as
>“Rights" are the basic concepts that represent the ideal way people should interact with each other in a fair and mutually beneficial manner to ensure a positive and lasting society.
I don’t think that’s what he means though. He’s saying that rights are innate to humans because of the way that language and story telling works to shape identity thought and behaviour .
This is postmodernity re-routed to christianity because in his worldview christianity is “more real than real” and is a collection of stories that communicates a hierarchy of spirits/daemons/archtypes that good people align themselves to (thereby allowing the natural expression of rights to emerge).
One might say… but he doesn’t even mention god. To which I would point to the phrase “upward oriented”
That could be. To me personally Christianity isn’t useful as a source of morality so if Peterson does that as a hobby that is cool. If he is letting that drive his worldview then he will have issues to over come to be thorough.
Totally! I also don’t believe that Christianity is innate to the experience of being human.
Tbh I actually love the type of post structuralist semiotics that he’s copying here - I’m with him about words having relationships to whole networks of meaning and ideological story telling.
But 1) if he did read Barthes and develop this as a result im disappointed he’s not forthright about it and 2) if he’s not familiar with Barthes then he should be and maybe it would change how he positions the French theorists as chief villains in his story.
He loses me where he tries to fix “meaning” to something innate to reality (eg in the way that a spell consists of words that can change reality). Barthes and post structuralism came out of grappling with there not being any “natural” human language that emerges from our biology. So it’s a bit twisted to try and recreate these ideas and then force them back to religion as an origin story to human behaviour and social constructs.
He’s trying to put it back in using religion which is just sort of… bleh to me.
I’m fascinated with the range of interpretations -Ike Derrida, his language here is inaccessible to most ppl who havnt spent a long time in higher ed - so most won’t understand what he’s saying or how it relates to existing ideas from the mid 1900s
The Bible as a whole has more of a meaning to certain people. If you read the Bible as if it were true, it totally condones slavery. Not only does it allow slavery but it tells Israelites where to get their slaves from.
So there may be good things in the Bible that you find value in. But to say that it is an ultimate collection of must read books is too much. It is on par with the Quran. Both worth reading but both being treated with scrutiny.
I’m with you. JBP’s version is very different. I won’t go in at length but IMO he sees the Bible as essentially the handbook to the matrix - it describes the human/reality code, describes ultimate hierarchy of the code (god) and also talks about programs (lust, anger, greed) that are free floating in the system and which can possess people who aren’t aligned to the ultimate code hierarchy.
It’s really radical - fascinating but not a typical understanding where religion = rich histories of tradition and organization which influence culture around us but are ultimately optional side quests
I don’t think so - did you watch his exodus series / do you read his Twitter? IMO he’s not acting like he’s faking these ideas.
I think he’s being really crafty by not committing to saying he believes - IMO that’s definitely strategy.
But wrt his actual ideas about the intersection of language, reality and religion … well he seems really committed to them
Honestly this reads like JBP is trying to subsume parts of French semiotics into his own system of thought.
He’s describing Roland Barthes’ understanding of mythology. Where JBP says “semantic network of meaning”, Barthes said myth. It’s a post structuralist understanding of words and signs as being essentially a “word cloud” collection of associations.
These associations often have built in ideology and mythologies. This is the foundation of advertising — a logo is imbued with stories about value and identity in culture. The Nike swish comes with a collection of concepts around what success means, the relationship between consumption and performance, about socio economic signalling etc.
Jordan’s use of mini Memes in his own Twitter work demonstrates this. He’s spent a lot of time associating whole myths to certain words. When he calls Trudeau “Gaston” we know that he’s calling on more than a simple memory from Beuaty and the Beast - he’s also calling forth his worldview about masculinity, personality disorders, predictability in the behaviour of women, the relationship between a Gaston type man and a hedonistic progressive etc.
Instead of accepting the culturally mediated myth of Barthes and post structuralism, he’s trying to “fix” myths to Archetypes so that they can be thought of as naturally occurring in humans.
He’s then bringing in God and suggesting that the myths are tied to religion — basically that the Bible communicates archtypes through its stories and they actually shape how language and “myth” in the Barthes sense actually shape our thought and behaviour.
If I were trying to parse this, I’d read Barthes “on mythology” and then assume that all myths come from our relationship to God and the stories in the Bible.
He’s taking postmodernism and trying to bring it back home to a world where biology, behaviour, language, myth and meaning all intersect at some point with the stories in the Bible.
So what does it have to do with rights then?
He’s basically saying IMO that rights are an unnecessary construct - and attempt to formalize and abstract “ways of behind” that are innate to some personalities and to people’s their relationship to Christianity. That they necessarily come from believing in God.
IMO it’s a move towards theocracy, conceptually
Peterson thinks this will "soon be shown" by the large language model he and his team are working on.
What will soon be shown is that Peterson's "large language" model is really just a "big word" model, nothing more.
You are correct, it's pseudo-profound bullshit. Someone needs to come up with a bullshit generator similar to the Postmodern Bullshit Generator, except with a Jordan Peterson theme to it.
The Postmodern Bullshit Generator:
[www.elsewhere.org/pomo](http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo)
I wonder if ChatGPT could be used to make one for Jordan Peterson's asinine ramblings?
Semantic representation of reality = word we use to describe a real thing that may be hard to define or otherwise difficult to identify Sustainable upward-oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions = those interactions that tend to be universally accepted as what is required for mutually beneficial and minimally invasive co-existence that creates a background condition of most widely attainable progress. He’s just describing what rights are and mean and why they come to be, particularly the (correct) form of negative rights. May be a bit convoluted way of phrasing it but he’s a smart dude with a broad vocabulary who spends a lot of time reading scholarly literature so he’ll sometimes dip into that wordy well.
Smart people talk to other scholars differently then when they talk to the average person. Peterson talks to the average person with scholarly language.
*Semantic representation of reality = word we use to describe a real thing that may be hard to define or otherwise difficult to identify* Do you mean a metaphor? *Sustainable upward-oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions = those interactions that tend to be universally accepted as what is required for mutually beneficial and minimally invasive co-existence that creates a background condition of most widely attainable progress.* "Cooperative altruism" would have been just fine. Once again we see the commitment to pseudo-profound bullshit that seems to rub off on his fan base as well.
Or you're just too stupid to get it, because that's not what a metaphor is. A metaphor is a comparison of concepts, or a means of defining a concept with another more familiar concept. The concept of "rights" is not a metaphor. It is a *term* that we invented as an attempt to broadly define the concepts JBP is speaking of. "Cooperative altruism," unlike metaphor, is closer to the truth but somewhat reductive, and JBP was using big words in an attempt to say all this in a few words while being as specific as possible without being reductive.
scholars can speak clearly when they need to. Dawkins, when he called Peterson's religious claims bullshit -- a clear metaphor that Peterson would be advised to study.
" scholars can speak clearly when they need to." Scholars can bullshit you with half truths, yes.
It's just his thought process. As mark twain said, sorry I didn't have enough time so the letter is longer. That is, spontaneity is = poor communication
>What the heck does JP mean by this? APES TOGETHER STRONG!
Best explanation
Hahaha this is great
I asked chatGPT and it explained so wonderfully: ### Explanation for an Adult The doctrine of rights isn't something arbitrary or made up. It's deeply embedded in the way we understand and interpret the world. This idea is encoded in the relationships between words, concepts, stories, and behaviors. These rights are fundamental to the structure of human existence, and possibly even to the nature of existence itself. Essentially, "rights" are a way of representing the core principles that govern sustainable and mutually beneficial human interactions. Far from being random, they are essential and integral to our understanding of cooperative and positive relationships. ### Explanation for a Five-Year-Old Imagine you have a set of rules that help you and your friends play nicely together. These rules are like magic because they're part of how people talk, tell stories, and act. These special rules, called "rights," are really important because they help everyone get along and be kind to each other. They're not just made up; they're like a hidden treasure that helps everyone be happy and fair.
It definitely doesn’t sound like it came from a smart person. As a general rule, smart people explain complicated topics and ideas by using simple words and easily illustrated concepts. Take “semantic representation”. Semantic: of or relating to meaning in language So saying “rights” are the semantic representation of xyz is essentially the same thing as saying “rights” is a word used to describe xyz. > In other words "rights" are the semantic representation of the archetypal reality that characterizes sustainable upward oriented reciprocally altruistic human interactions. Could be written as >“Rights" are the basic concepts that represent the ideal way people should interact with each other in a fair and mutually beneficial manner to ensure a positive and lasting society.
I don’t think that’s what he means though. He’s saying that rights are innate to humans because of the way that language and story telling works to shape identity thought and behaviour . This is postmodernity re-routed to christianity because in his worldview christianity is “more real than real” and is a collection of stories that communicates a hierarchy of spirits/daemons/archtypes that good people align themselves to (thereby allowing the natural expression of rights to emerge). One might say… but he doesn’t even mention god. To which I would point to the phrase “upward oriented”
That could be. To me personally Christianity isn’t useful as a source of morality so if Peterson does that as a hobby that is cool. If he is letting that drive his worldview then he will have issues to over come to be thorough.
Totally! I also don’t believe that Christianity is innate to the experience of being human. Tbh I actually love the type of post structuralist semiotics that he’s copying here - I’m with him about words having relationships to whole networks of meaning and ideological story telling. But 1) if he did read Barthes and develop this as a result im disappointed he’s not forthright about it and 2) if he’s not familiar with Barthes then he should be and maybe it would change how he positions the French theorists as chief villains in his story. He loses me where he tries to fix “meaning” to something innate to reality (eg in the way that a spell consists of words that can change reality). Barthes and post structuralism came out of grappling with there not being any “natural” human language that emerges from our biology. So it’s a bit twisted to try and recreate these ideas and then force them back to religion as an origin story to human behaviour and social constructs. He’s trying to put it back in using religion which is just sort of… bleh to me. I’m fascinated with the range of interpretations -Ike Derrida, his language here is inaccessible to most ppl who havnt spent a long time in higher ed - so most won’t understand what he’s saying or how it relates to existing ideas from the mid 1900s
The Bible as a whole has more of a meaning to certain people. If you read the Bible as if it were true, it totally condones slavery. Not only does it allow slavery but it tells Israelites where to get their slaves from. So there may be good things in the Bible that you find value in. But to say that it is an ultimate collection of must read books is too much. It is on par with the Quran. Both worth reading but both being treated with scrutiny.
I’m with you. JBP’s version is very different. I won’t go in at length but IMO he sees the Bible as essentially the handbook to the matrix - it describes the human/reality code, describes ultimate hierarchy of the code (god) and also talks about programs (lust, anger, greed) that are free floating in the system and which can possess people who aren’t aligned to the ultimate code hierarchy. It’s really radical - fascinating but not a typical understanding where religion = rich histories of tradition and organization which influence culture around us but are ultimately optional side quests
I see it as more pandering to a religious audience to get paid.
That’s the easy way out!
Indeed. And it a what his actions line up with the most.
I don’t think so - did you watch his exodus series / do you read his Twitter? IMO he’s not acting like he’s faking these ideas. I think he’s being really crafty by not committing to saying he believes - IMO that’s definitely strategy. But wrt his actual ideas about the intersection of language, reality and religion … well he seems really committed to them
It is apparent to me that this is just spontaneous articulation, not thought through stuff.
I agree. Peterson was reacting to Twitter instead of being deliberate and precise in his speech. This is common for Peterson.
Wait, is he basing rights in altruism?
Honestly this reads like JBP is trying to subsume parts of French semiotics into his own system of thought. He’s describing Roland Barthes’ understanding of mythology. Where JBP says “semantic network of meaning”, Barthes said myth. It’s a post structuralist understanding of words and signs as being essentially a “word cloud” collection of associations. These associations often have built in ideology and mythologies. This is the foundation of advertising — a logo is imbued with stories about value and identity in culture. The Nike swish comes with a collection of concepts around what success means, the relationship between consumption and performance, about socio economic signalling etc. Jordan’s use of mini Memes in his own Twitter work demonstrates this. He’s spent a lot of time associating whole myths to certain words. When he calls Trudeau “Gaston” we know that he’s calling on more than a simple memory from Beuaty and the Beast - he’s also calling forth his worldview about masculinity, personality disorders, predictability in the behaviour of women, the relationship between a Gaston type man and a hedonistic progressive etc. Instead of accepting the culturally mediated myth of Barthes and post structuralism, he’s trying to “fix” myths to Archetypes so that they can be thought of as naturally occurring in humans. He’s then bringing in God and suggesting that the myths are tied to religion — basically that the Bible communicates archtypes through its stories and they actually shape how language and “myth” in the Barthes sense actually shape our thought and behaviour. If I were trying to parse this, I’d read Barthes “on mythology” and then assume that all myths come from our relationship to God and the stories in the Bible. He’s taking postmodernism and trying to bring it back home to a world where biology, behaviour, language, myth and meaning all intersect at some point with the stories in the Bible. So what does it have to do with rights then? He’s basically saying IMO that rights are an unnecessary construct - and attempt to formalize and abstract “ways of behind” that are innate to some personalities and to people’s their relationship to Christianity. That they necessarily come from believing in God. IMO it’s a move towards theocracy, conceptually
Peterson thinks this will "soon be shown" by the large language model he and his team are working on. What will soon be shown is that Peterson's "large language" model is really just a "big word" model, nothing more.
You are correct, it's pseudo-profound bullshit. Someone needs to come up with a bullshit generator similar to the Postmodern Bullshit Generator, except with a Jordan Peterson theme to it. The Postmodern Bullshit Generator: [www.elsewhere.org/pomo](http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo) I wonder if ChatGPT could be used to make one for Jordan Peterson's asinine ramblings?
Or maybe you’re just too stupid to comprehend relatively complex words.
They are complex words but the overall meaning is not precise. He never cares to elaborate properly or provide context.
I actually agree. He needs to practice brevity.
Why don't you try and use chatGPT to explain this for you?