First, Canada. Now, Australia?
Hi Professor Peterson, I will try and be succinct but will certainly fail. I am a doctoral candidate from Australia, researching the impacts of transgender hormone use on metabolic and cardiac pathologies. I would love the opportunity to discuss with you my findings once completed and my experience as a student and staff in one of the major Universities in Australia. Onto my question. Australia has employed the 'vaccinate the entire population by force' mandate. If you do not have proof of vaccination on your person at the entrance of any venue whatsoever, you cannot gain entry. The policing and violent restrictions as seen in Melbourne - publicised internationally - highlight to what degree of force the Australian Government are willing to use. It was clear that the majority of businesses and their staff held zero regards for the mandates, casually leaving their mask hanging off one ear or below their chin. Most of the time, people would just walk into venues without checking in or presenting vaccination proof. We are also subject to the same left-leaning ideologies that ripped through Canada and the US, however, it would appear they are being unopposed for the most part. I sat in an influential position in the University structure, where I provided feedback to the University academic plan where quotas dictated student entry. These quotas aimed to increase the percentage of total student load to 'oppressed populations' as opposed to merit-based selection. We have pride groups, rainbows painted roads, and 'safe spaces' all over campus. A university that argues for the empowerment of women, describing them as underpaid and undervalued. The irony is the executive team on unfathomable salaries are 80% female. The professorship selection has been predominantly female for a decade and I could go on but I wont. I won't make the error of taking the example of the university and extrapolating or generalising it to the nation. My friends who work in schools are sitting through hours of LGBTIQIAP+ education sessions for the school children. My white-male police officer friend waited nearly 18 months to get into the police force, whilst females were being sworn in after 3 months. Businesses are currently being assessed for their equity index, having their staff's immutable characteristics quantified and given a tick of approval if it is equitable enough. It is safe to say the left agendas are succeeding in Australia. We have two political parties that are ever really considered, both of which are left-leaning. The liberal party, ironically the more conservative choice and the labour party. The political party currently in power is the liberal party. It seems that in Australia we are currently living under an inescapably left-leaning authoritarian government that is pro-taxation and public domains such as education and healthcare. Considering the democratic process, do you think these types of governments and governmental service takeovers manifest when the population is - on average - high in agreeableness and low in conscientiousness? Australian's are considered 'laid-back'. If ever I try to discuss these political matters with friends, they exhibit body language that matches their response "why do you care?", even though they are negatively impacted by the governance and policies. I want to know what you think about this concept: For the governments that go too far, how much cause might be attributed to the nation's average behavioural trait profile? If so, does this mean that the cure to the toxic governmental structures remains democratic discourse? Lastly, if behavioural traits are more-or-less unchangeable, does this mean democratic discourse will never begin? leaving Australia left-leaning and authoritarian until a generational shift in behavioural traits skews in the opposite direction. Considering the heritability of behavioural traits, how likely do you think this even is?
The Great Reset
A number of western politicians including Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Angela Merkel, Jacinda Ardern (plus others in Trudeau’s cabinet) were referred to by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, as part of his “Young Leaders” group. A video promoting the WEF’s “Agenda 2030” promises a world where “you will own nothing. And you will be happy”. Global lockdowns, vaccine mandates, economic instability could all contribute to the success of this plan. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you.
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal
Jordan, I watched your recent interview with Joe Rogan. You spoke of your battle withdrawing from benzodiazepines. I went back and watched some of your various previous interviews, particularly the one with your daughter specifically about your battle with illness. I took clonazepam and alprazolam for years, but stopped in July 2021. I am very ill and I now believe that it is due to withdrawal. I have numbness and tingling in my feet, legs, the inside of my mouth. I have lost most of my hair I noticed your hair was thinner in the interview with Joe Rogan than in the past. I do not have restless legs but must constantly move around to be comfortable. I cannot sleep at all. Can you possibly suggest what steps I should take to address this? I am in fear of going to the hospital and 'doctors' do the same tests over and over and get the same results and send me home even though I am still sick.I feel I am being punished for something but I don't know what.
The Shameful Decline Of Scientific AmericanScientific research is under threat and scientists are being dragged through the mud.
Being first a scientist than a medical doctor, I have developed an ever increasing concern of the dangerous trend of previous 'apolitical' Scientific fields, their publications and even their focus of endeavors to be dangerously changing under attack by political and social extremes. I believe this shackling of these scientific fields is leading to the declension of these fields of study and ultimately of human progress. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind further commenting on or off podcast regarding the following article subject: The Shameful Decline Of Scientific American Scientific research is under threat and scientists are being dragged through the mud. Peter Burns Scientific American just did a hit job on one of America’s leading biologists and conservationists. All that, right after his passing. This marks a shameful low point in a steep decline of the magazine in recent years. Scientific American is the oldest magazine in the US dealing with science. Continuously in print since 1845, it is known for being full of articles by world-class scientists on different topics. According to its About page, over 200 Nobel Prize winners have contributed to it. One guy who wrote articles for them was Edward O. Wilson, an American biologist often touted as Darwin’s natural heir. Unfortunately, this great mind passed away on the 26th of December, 2021. His ideas have greatly influenced my thinking on the world. Learning of his death, I decided to Google around the internet a bit, trying to find some summaries of his life’s work. The almighty algorithms suggested one particular article. The title was “The complicated legacy of E. O. Wilson.” Subtitled “We must reckon with his and other scientists’ racist ideas if we want an equitable future”, it dragged this important scientist through the mud. I was surprised to find who published this ominous piece. It was none other than Scientific American! Accusations of racism are a serious charge Basically, the article accused Wilson of being a racist. Since he died a few days ago, there is no way for him to defend himself. Yet, this type of a piece published in one of the most renowned scientific magazines can seriously smear a person’s reputation and legacy. What proof did the author present to support this accusation? None. There was not a single quotation from Wilson showing any racist speech. In fact, on her Twitter, the writer of the piece wrote: “I purposively didn’t quote his work so you could read it for yourself.” Seriously? Let’s dig a bit deeper into the non-sense that was published in Scientific American. Strap in. It will be a bumpy ride! The author started off by saying Wilson’s field is fraught with racism. “Wilson was hardly alone in his problematic beliefs. His predecessors — mathematician Karl Pearson, anthropologist Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel and others — also published works and spoke of theories fraught with racist ideas.” Granted Karl Pearson and Francis Galton were proponents of eugenics, however Charles Darwin never advocated anything related to what later came to be called Social Darwinism. While Darwin is a stretch, the name from the list that really struck me was Gregor Mendel. Seriously, how was Gregor Mendel a racist? This guy spent his entire life in a monastery in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic) observing peas grow. Unless he wrote somewhere that yellow peas are racially superior to green peas, I don’t see why his name was on the list. However, his inclusion shows the real target of the author’s rant: genetics. Wilson wrote several books on sociobiology, a field which aims to explain social behavior based on evolution and genetics. He applied it not only to the analysis of various types of animals, but also humans. The author of the hit-piece of course isn’t really a big fan of one of his most influential works. “His influential text “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” contributed to the false dichotomy of nature versus nurture and spawned an entire field of behavioral psychology grounded in the notion that differences among humans could be explained by genetics, inheritance and other biological mechanisms.” So basically the crux of the author’s argument why Wilson is racist is because he came down on the nature side of the debate. Why is stating that genes play a role in a person’s behavior even controversial nowadays? Sure, you can argue the extent to which genes contribute, but even Wilson himself wrote numerous treatises examining the intricate interplay between genes and culture in determining behavior. The author apparently didn’t care that her arguments didn’t make sense. She went on to cite geneticist J. Craig Venter in order to make some sort of a point on racism being inherent in the discipline. “Even modern geneticists and genome scientists struggle with inherent racism in the way they gather and analyze data. In his memoir “A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life”, geneticist J. Craig Venter writes, “The complex provenance of ideas means their origin is often open to interpretation.”” Yes, but what does the complex provenance of ideas and their origins being open to interpretation have to do with racism, especially with the accusation that E. O. Wilson was racist? Fun with statistics and other stuff The author of the text goes on to make another interesting statement. “First, the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against. The fact that we don’t adequately take into account differences between experimental and reference group determinants of risk and resilience, particularly in the health sciences, has been a hallmark of inadequate scientific methods based on theoretical underpinnings of a superior subject and an inferior one.” No, that is not what the normal distribution is. The normal distribution is not about default humans. It’s about the fact that in many statistical studies, the characteristics of the population tend to cluster around a mean. So if the average height of the human population is 5 foot 7, then most individuals will be around that height. The outliers, the very tall or very short people, will be just a tiny minority. The author then points to other pearls of wisdom. “Other scholars have pointed out that feminist standpoint theory is helpful in understanding white empiricism and who is eligible to be a worthy observer of the human condition and our world.” Now this is the first time I heard of “white empiricism”, and so I clicked on the linked study. I was hit with more instant classics. “White empiricism undermines a significant theory of twentieth-century physics: General Relativity. Albert Einstein’s monumental contribution to our empirical understanding of gravity is rooted in the principle of covariance, which is the simple idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other. All frames of reference, all observers, are equally competent and capable of observing the universal laws that underlie the workings of our physical universe.” And this: “Why are string theorists calling for an end to empiricism rather than an end to racial hegemony? I believe the answer is that knowledge production in physics is contingent on the ascribed identities of the physicists.” And this: “Through the recognition of white empiricism, a bifurcated logic that serves white supremacist traditions in science while deontologizing marginalized Black women physicists, I propose that the Black feminist theory intersectionality should change physics — and not just through who becomes a physicist but through the actual outcomes of what we come to know.” WTF? Can someone please give me a translation from woke speak? Now, I support the promotion of diversity in the science field, but the laws of the universe don’t change according to your gender or color of your skin. Reading that, I immediately wondered whether this was some sort of a hoax. Back in 1996, Alan Sokal, a physics professor got fed up with post-modernist discussions. He decided to show how non-sensical they were by submitting a totally made up essay to one of the most prestigious post-modernist publications. To his surprise, the piece was accepted. Its title? “Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity”. Unfortunately, unlike the Sokal article, all the previous stuff I quoted is real! Learning from history: Lysenkoism and the downfall of genetics under Stalin Early on in the 1930's, the Soviet Union was at the forefront of genetics research in the world. Its smart scientists were making very important contributions to understanding heredity and how genes influence behavior. Not only that, it even attracted talented researchers from abroad such as American scientist Hermann J. Muller, who moved to Leningrad in 1933 with his family. Unfortunately, this was also the time of growing repression under Stalin, marked with the rise of what has been termed as Lysenkoism, or the one true explanation of human behavior. Muller left the Soviet Union in 1937, but many Soviet scientists were not so lucky. In 1948, genetics was put on the black list and declared a “a bourgeois pseudoscience”. The scientists who opposed this did not fare so well. Many were dismissed from their posts. Some were imprisoned. Some even killed. Only after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953, was this ban on genetics reversed and the scientists freed. What can be learned from this horrific episode? The fact that science should not be put under shackles by any political ideology, whether from the right or left. University of Kansas professor Charles A. Leone put it best in one of his essays. “Science cannot long remain unfettered in a social system which seeks to exercise control over the whole spiritual and intellectual life of a nation. The correctness of a scientific theory can never be adjudged by its readiness to give the answers desired by political leadership.” Unfortunately, the US is not heeding this lesson. Science is under attack from ideologues on the far right, with their climate change denialism, creationism, and other quackery. It is also increasingly under attack from the far left as well. Particularly concerned here are the fields of biology, genetics, but also many social sciences. Self-censorship is becoming rampant. This is a dangerous path to embark upon. We can see that increasingly many previously apolitical scientific journals and magazines are adopting woke ideology as the standard to follow. This could impede important discussions to take place, and even shackle many fields from studying certain questions. Science, and human progress will be impacted. The real legacy of E. O. Wilson It doesn’t do justice to any marginalized community to drag E. O. Wilson through the mud like this. Wilson was not only an expert in biology, but he made great contributions in the fight to save the planet. “Darwin’s heir” was not his only label. He has also often been called the “father of biodiversity”, helping popularize the term biodiversity. Increasingly, we are starting to realize how harmful the loss of biodiversity can be for our planet. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, biodiversity is “essential to the existence and proper functioning of all ecosystems”. With the rapid spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and other such events, we are learning how interconnected everything really is. The EPA lists many other benefits of biodiversity, including in medicine, food security, and mental health. E. O. Wilson fought tooth and nail to reverse this loss. He founded the Half-Earth Project, whose aim is to reserve half the planet for wildlife. Smithsonian Magazine quotes him as saying: “It’s been in my mind for years, that people haven’t been thinking big enough — even conservationists. Half Earth is the goal, but it’s how we get there, and whether we can come up with a system of wild landscapes we can hang onto. I see a chain of uninterrupted corridors forming, with twists and turns, some of them opening up to become wide enough to accommodate national biodiversity parks, a new kind of park that won’t let species vanish.” We must protect the planet. In an interviewwith Vox, Wilson had this as his main message: “If we want to know what is on this planet and why it is a live planet — what contributes to that life and what it all means, ultimately, for human existence — we should try to save it all.” This is the real legacy of E. O. Wilson. This is what we should be fighting for. We will never get there if we start censoring science in order to promote some sort of an ideology. See you in April Dr Peterson! Regards, Craig Harris Vacaville, CA