Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

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I don't like recent political spins and ramblings of Jordan Peterson (basically very pro-Putin and pro-Trump last time I checked, and stopped cold turkey with him after that), but as a psychologist he made tons of excellent and practical remarks before that.

One of them which sticks with me is about fighting addictions and habits - every time you win this internal fight (go do something unwanted, don't light up that cigarette or drink alcohol) you get a bit stronger and addiction gets slightly weaker. Same for habits and defeating procrastination.

The hardest part is the first step, when opposite side (in your own persona) is strongest and it feels its too high a mountain to overcome. With addictions you never chip it away to 0 - that's the unfortunate cold hard truth, but you can chip it away into something you can manage continuously. Good habits are often self-fueling after crossing some threshold, ie exercise and eating healthy.

He was so good when he stuck to psychology. It really sucks, all of these public intellectual types think once they become popular it gives them an easy opportunity to make money by speaking about domains they clearly have no expertise in. As soon as Peterson started talking about religion, philosophy, and various politics, it all went downhill very fast.

I do make an exception with all of that when all the pub science guys shit on religion though. Can't seem to get enough of that even though I'm out of my angsty atheist teenager phase by 20 years

It's just a character trait of pop psychology/motivators/influencers. It's not like 'successfully not doing x makes it easier to permanently stop doing x' is a profound or new idea.

These folks need to feel popular and build a brand and its really hard to just stick with one thing, as it limits your audience, so you grow in to other venues.

Telling people what they want to hear in a nice package that makes them feel smart is a business as old as time. Oprah built a whole empire off of it. The internet has just widened the reach.

This isn't a turn for Jordan Peterson. It's who he's always been, and a lot of people tried to warn you about it 5+ years ago. The only new thing is that he's not trying to dress it up in fake objectivity anymore.

Have you spent any time wondering how those people knew this was coming years ago, but you didn't see it?

Nope. For the same reason I know many people who voted for Trump, and then didn't after four years of him.

They just didn't care to spend more brainpower on the issue than they already had. Most people have better things to do than be the most well-informed voter or investigate the history of the people they see on YouTube.

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