Did Jordan Peterson Become Disenchanted After Leaving Academia?

00:00:00.000 | He's very curious if you think the crazy professor phenomenon happened to Jordan Peterson and

00:00:06.280 | Brett Weinstein.

00:00:07.280 | That's right.

00:00:08.280 | That's right.

00:00:09.280 | All right.

00:00:10.280 | So there's no way I'm going to get in trouble talking about this topic, right?

00:00:12.840 | No, you'll be fine.

00:00:14.960 | So first of all, I forgot that I had called this phenomenon crazy professor phenomenon.

00:00:19.360 | I don't know if that's a fair name, but for people who didn't hear me talk about that

00:00:22.000 | before, it was the idea that if you people like really smart people in academia, when

00:00:28.560 | they leave academia are more prone than the average person to end up in more eccentric

00:00:35.480 | or conspiratorial or like way out of the mainstream type of views.

00:00:39.900 | And my argument was is because the fact you're in academic academia in the first place means

00:00:44.440 | that they typically have high octane minds.

00:00:46.760 | They're used to this idea that they're smarter than a lot of people and can figure things

00:00:50.400 | out that other people can't.

00:00:52.440 | But in academia, you have so many other minds pushing back on you.

00:00:55.820 | It's hard to get too weird, right?

00:00:58.840 | Because people you also respect and fear intellectually are going to be like, that's nonsense.

00:01:02.200 | I'm not going to put all my money in the gold, et cetera.

00:01:05.440 | When you leave academia, you lose that feedback buffer.

00:01:07.440 | And so you're much more likely to end up in weird places because you're intellectually

00:01:10.640 | confident and you're intellectually curious, but you don't have the dampers.

00:01:14.620 | So Jeffrey's asking, do I think that happened to Jordan Peterson or Brett Weinstein?

00:01:22.800 | I think it's Weinstein, right?

00:01:23.800 | Or Weinstein.

00:01:24.800 | I think it's Weinstein, like Einstein.

00:01:26.800 | If I'm getting that wrong, Brett, big apologies.

00:01:32.120 | So in his case, I think some of that might have happened.

00:01:35.920 | So if people don't know, Brett and his wife, Heather Herring, I believe, they were in academia.

00:01:44.320 | They were biologists, did a lot of stuff on evolutionary theory.

00:01:49.440 | They're at Evergreen University, which is I think a state university, a public university

00:01:54.280 | in Oregon or Washington state.

00:01:56.520 | It's very progressive, has these very progressive educational models where you, I don't quite

00:02:01.240 | get how it works, but the classes are done in a sort of like really interesting kind

00:02:04.880 | of unusual way.

00:02:06.280 | And they got into like some sort of cancellation issue there.

00:02:10.960 | And it really got out of control where like students were roaming the campus looking for

00:02:15.040 | them and maybe even like physically threatening them.

00:02:17.320 | But long story short, they had to leave, they left academia.

00:02:22.440 | And so I think it's a mixed bag.

00:02:23.440 | Again, I don't know a ton about them.

00:02:24.600 | I know they have a new book out that sort of seems completely mainstream.

00:02:30.560 | It has to do about what you can learn from evolutionary theory and the history of our

00:02:34.600 | species about modern life, like sort of down the middle.

00:02:39.960 | But I do think Brett went to some weird places with COVID during the pandemic that felt a

00:02:46.200 | little bit like this phenomenon when I'd sample in a show here and there where there's just

00:02:49.680 | like a lot of confidence on something that was very much out of the mainstream and did

00:02:54.080 | not in the end turn out to be at all really kind of right.

00:02:57.720 | There was a lot of this sort of confident out of the mainstream, a couple of places

00:03:02.240 | like that he felt.

00:03:03.240 | So I think that's probably a great example of that effect in action is because it's this

00:03:07.120 | very smart guy and Heather's very smart.

00:03:09.620 | And so it completely makes sense in their minds that we can kind of see something that's

00:03:13.720 | not widely recognized now.

00:03:15.920 | So maybe that's an example of it.

00:03:18.440 | Jordan Peterson, I think it's a much harder case.

00:03:22.760 | It's much harder to assess here.

00:03:25.200 | So the Peterson had been on my radar for a long time before he became a big public figure,

00:03:31.080 | because again, when I would do student advice, I would occasionally hear from students who

00:03:35.760 | would talk about Dr. Peterson, especially students who were like first generation college

00:03:40.440 | students, students of color found a lot out of a lot good in his work.

00:03:47.680 | He's like a mentor like figure for a lot, a lot of people.

00:03:50.840 | And so it was kind of on my radar.

00:03:52.520 | He's a weird character.

00:03:53.520 | Like the thing to understand about Jordan Peterson that I think not a lot of people

00:03:56.600 | in just the non-academic world understand is that he's a, he's an unusual character.

00:04:01.520 | He came out of what was like essentially the Canadian version of like West Texas, right?

00:04:08.480 | The sort of ranch country in the middle of Canada, a very cold kind of rough place comes

00:04:14.720 | out of there.

00:04:15.720 | So with no really a leader academic background and is like a, an incandescent star within

00:04:21.440 | academia.

00:04:22.440 | I mean, he goes, he ends up at Harvard as a young professor where he's tenured in the

00:04:27.480 | psychology department.

00:04:28.840 | Harvard does not tenure from within very often in psychology.

00:04:31.520 | I mean, he was like a, this guy was seen as this bright star, you Toronto bottom away,

00:04:37.720 | right?

00:04:38.720 | Like, come, we're going to make you an offer.

00:04:40.200 | You can't refuse.

00:04:41.200 | So he was like a superstar academic who had came out of nowhere, like not at all of an

00:04:46.760 | environment where you would expect to have, have a mind like that.

00:04:50.360 | So he was sort of this, I think that's often missed.

00:04:52.800 | I think for those who dislike him, it's more comfortable, this idea that he's, it's sort

00:04:57.080 | of like a grifter type guy.

00:04:58.480 | That's the sort of like spouting off wisdom and, and you know, like obviously me as a

00:05:01.880 | reporter, much smarter than this guy.

00:05:02.880 | No, he was an incandescent star, like sort of out of the ranches of Canada.

00:05:07.560 | But from what I understand, it's, it's hard to talk about this phenomenon with him because

00:05:11.280 | he always was sort of a loner and a little bit eccentric, even when he was in academia.

00:05:17.720 | I think because of this unusual background, he came, got out of, and this is secondhand,

00:05:22.680 | but I think he was again, already didn't really care about what the feedback was from colleagues

00:05:29.480 | or whatever.

00:05:30.480 | I don't know if that's true, but I I've heard some things like that.

00:05:32.680 | So it's hard to say, you know, when he left academia and then, then of course you have

00:05:36.600 | this other confusing factor, confounding factor of the huge celebrity and the huge detraction

00:05:43.120 | that occurred when he became a public figure, the warping effect of that on someone has

00:05:48.000 | to be so powerful that it's going to swamp out any signal we're going to get about just,

00:05:52.560 | well, when he left academia, he may be without this type of cognitive structure and feedback,

00:05:59.560 | maybe got a little bit more eccentric.

00:06:02.080 | How could we separate that signal from the crushing, completely unbearable, completely

00:06:10.640 | unusual worldwide phenomenon and attacks?

00:06:13.600 | I mean, that had to have such a bigger impact on his life, his mental life than the changing

00:06:19.960 | his context of being academia or not that, that, that must swamp out that signal.

00:06:23.800 | So because of those two confounding factors, I can't tell what change leaving academia

00:06:28.820 | had on Peterson.

00:06:29.820 | So to summarize, he already was really iconoclastic and eccentric when he was in academia.

00:06:34.160 | And two, there's too many other things happened to him right when he left the, I can't pull

00:06:39.000 | apart.

00:06:40.000 | I can't pull apart those pieces.

00:06:42.840 | So there you go.

00:06:43.840 | Though I don't like crazy professor phenomenon.

00:06:45.640 | I don't think that's a good title.

00:06:46.640 | I should, I didn't realize I called it that before.

00:06:48.840 | I'll have to come up with a better title, but again, it's very consistent though.

00:06:55.840 | Folks who leave academia, they usually have a lot of medical breakthroughs.

00:06:59.900 | They get become masters of finances.

00:07:02.800 | Like I can understand the financial system.

00:07:06.280 | And to get, and I don't want to go off on this, but like also like media criticism becomes

00:07:10.200 | a big thing.

00:07:11.200 | Because again, if you're like Brett Weinstein, you're a really smart guy and you get kind

00:07:14.720 | of resentful against some reporters.

00:07:16.400 | You're like, I'm just smarter than you and you annoy me.

00:07:19.320 | And like, then you get really angry at the media and it's a, it's a whole interesting

00:07:23.080 | thing.

00:07:24.080 | So if I ever left Georgetown, Jesse, you'd have to stop me from becoming like very conspiratorial

00:07:28.640 | and offering a lot of medical advice and financial advice and just attacking the media all the

00:07:35.200 | time.

00:07:36.200 | Though we'd probably get more subscribers.

00:07:38.320 | So

00:07:39.320 | [inaudible]

00:07:40.320 | [inaudible]

00:07:45.320 | [inaudible]

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Did Jordan Peterson Become Disenchanted After Leaving Academia?

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