ArtiFact #23: Sciolism & Sciolists – Jordan B. Peterson, Christopher Langan, Athena Walker & Quora Experts | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider

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Just as television eventually gave way to mass adoption and lowest common denominator programming, the Internet, once niche, has given a means for narcissists, sciolists, and other bad actors to carve out an unsuspecting audience. Taken from the Latin “scius” (knowing) and its diminutive “sciolus” (little knower), the word “sciolist” refers to a pretender towards knowledge – conscious or not. Of course, this is a cross-cultural, cross-political phenomenon, for there is a basic, simian drive to not only “know”, but to pretend to know when one does not.
Over the past decade, pretenders such as Jordan B. Peterson, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, the latter-day Richard Dawkins, Christopher Langan, Ben Shapiro, as well as their liberal counterparts have taken attention away from those with genuine ideas to impart. In this video, Alex Sheremet and Dan Schneider comb through these sciolists’ aesthetics, their claims, their craving for an ever-expanding audience of know-nothings, and various intellectual traps they’ve laid for themselves in the quest for pelf.
You can also watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9e0sb886l1Y
ArtiFact #23: Sciolism & Sciolists – Jordan B. Peterson, Christopher Langan, Athena Walker & Quora Experts | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider
Timestamps:
0:18 – introduction to sciolism; Dan Schneider’s history with such, interpretation of the word, and the “wisdom of the common man”; Joe Rogan as a vector for sciolism; comparing the Intellectual Dark Web to Noam Chomsky
7:06 – Jordan B. Peterson; his evolution from trite academic to on-camera actor; Jordan Peterson’s audience capture; the Richard Dawkins / Jordan B. Peterson connection; the growth of the Internet as fuel for sciolism; how Ted Talks transformed from science shows to a Lowest Common Denominator money-grab
18:32 – Jordan Peterson as a malignant sciolist; critiquing Video 1- “One Of The Greatest Speeches Ever”: Jordan B. Peterson as Oprah for white men; Peterson’s superficial understanding of truth vs. reality; his terrible advice to “stop Auschwitz”; his total dearth of material analysis; the way his fans edit video montages of JBP reveal how much they crave cliché
50:00 – critiquing Video 2- “Jordan Peterson: His Finest Moment” – how malignant sciolism makes its way into questions of equality; Jordan B. Peterson’s “stand up at the funeral” hypocrisy; how JBP ends up a shill for mainstream status-quo thinking by obfuscating reality
01:18:16 – critiquing Video 3- “Truth About The Evil 1% Of Society” – Jordan B. Peterson obfuscates what it means to be “for” poverty; more hypocrisy about drug abuse and “laying face-down in a ditch” after his own addiction problems were ameliorated by huge personal wealth; the folly of comparing living standards in an attempt to stop history; why homelessness IS, in fact, a simple problem; Peterson’s willful misreading of the Matthew Effect; how Jordan Peterson confuses money with genuine value
02:07:46 – critiquing Video 4- Jordan B. Peterson is about to have another mental breakdown, this time over vaccination
02:24:45 – Christopher Langan; Dan Schneider’s experiences with Mensa & IQ tests, Alex Sheremet’s experiences with school, the SATs, graduating Valedictorian in college; emotional insecurities generating a wish to ‘succeed’; why don’t high IQ individuals produce things of value?; intelligence vs. accomplishment
02:54:06 – critiquing Erroll Morris’s short film on Christopher Langan; assessing Langan’s style of communication, obfuscation tactics, & extremist ideas
03:53:02 – Christopher Langan’s incoherent concept of “evil”; the CTMU & its language games; why non-artists try to use artistic language to cover up more “boring” ideas
04:02:20 – Christopher Langan’s totally insane social media presence; how can “the smartest man in the America” have such patently terrible ideas?; Langan’s incoherent quotes are poorly written, trite, and without a deeper purpose
04:13:34 – Quora sciolism; benign vs. malignant sciolism; the ‘types’ such websites can sometimes attract; introducing Eva Glasrud, a writer on various topics; TERFs, trans activism, & more; issues with meta-studies vs. individual studies
04:33:08 – more on trans rights activism; are lesbians being pressured into having sex with MtF transsexuals; Eva Glasrud’s white privilege re: black Americans & policing in the US; facts of day-to-day harassment that cannot make it into statistics; if Eva Glasrud believes she is entitled to send aggressive, boundary-setting texts to potential romantic partners on account of her vulnerabilities as a woman, why doesn’t she extend the same empathy to those outside of her own circle?
05:03:42 – Athena Walker as a malignant sciolist; false claims about the nature of psychopathy; why psychopaths DO ‘feel emotions’; Athena Walker’s narcissistic Quora posts; Athena Walker’s fascination with Jordan B. Peterson; how Athena Walker moves from medical misinformation to spiritual psychobabble; how Athena Walker plays up to an audience for the sake of money
05:41:13 – Closing remarks

Video thumbnail © Joel Parrish: https://poeticimport.com

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw
Read Dan Schneider’s essay on early 2000s Internet sciolism: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B184-DES128.htm
Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Tags: #JordanPeterson, #ChristopherLangan, #AthenaWalker, #ArtiFactPodcast