So I came across this Jordan Peterson clip from some podcast where he says just the stupidest things imaginable. You don't have to watch it, I will be quoting it here.

A while back a Disney executive mentioned on video, she said "well, I have two children, five and seven, one is trans and the other is pansexual"

This is a lie, the executive in question seems to have five children who are at least in their teens. How unexpected that he would lie like this.

And I just thought mathematically right away, it's like the chance you have a trans kid is 1/3000. That is not a very high chance.

This, too, seems made up, the actual number from quick googling seems to be at least 1/200. Now here comes the good part.

And let's say the chance that you have a pansexual kid is the same, whatever pansexual means. But whatever that is, it is rarer than trans because no one ever even heard about it until 5 years ago.

Absolutely stunning display of logic and valuing facts. The actual number seems to be more than 1/100, btw.

So the joint probability that you have a trans kid and a pansexual kid is 1/9000000

This does not actually matter because of what he says next, but just so we are keeping track, I'll calculate the actual probability.

math

Of five children, the chance of at least one being trans is 1-(199/200)^5 ≈ 1/40. The same for at least one pan kid is 1-(99/100)^5 ≈ 1/20. Given the rough approximations in the probabilities and ignoring likely correlations, this is an order of magnitude calculation, and we will therefore ignore subtracting the probability that exactly one child is both trans and pan, mostly because I do not want to check my calculations (for the record I think it is about 1/5000). We get the total probability of (1-(199/200)5)*(1-(99/100)5) ≈ 1/1000

The probability is around 1/1000, three orders of magnitude more than Kermit's estimate. This is ignoring multiple factors that would make the actual probability significantly higher, most likely. Anyways, I lied before, this is the actual best part:

The odds that you are a pathological narcissist sacrificing you own children [...] is 8999999:1.

This is like saying that if you roll two dice and get two sixes, the chance that the dice are weighted to always roll sixes is 35:1. This is like saying that if you flip a coin and it lands heads, there is a 50 % chance that it actually landed tails and you are just delusional. This is like saying that if you get struck by lightning, the odds are 999999:1 that no you didn't.

The density of falsehoods and nonsense in the clip is just stunning. People unironically call this person a scientist and an intellectual!!

  • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The popularity of that guy truly feels like being gaslit. There has never been a time that he's been in the public eye and seemed like a healthy, sane individual. He's always been very clearly a man so crippled by his own inner demons that he projects them onto the world around him and it makes him say truly bugshit crazy things. I would even say the university and professors involved in his phd should be stripped of their certifications. Imagine thinking that broken man is equipped to help anyone else.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      There has never been a time that he’s been in the public eye and seemed like a healthy, sane individual.

      His break out appearance was simply "Owning the Canadian Libs On National TV". All his subsequent appearances were purely performative - debating Zizek on a book he didn't read, smoking DMT with Joe Rogan, playing cowboy dress-up with Ben Shapiro, doing a podcast in which he cries a lot - with the primary goal of selling his latest book.

      Dude doesn't exist save for the wide constellation of other conservative news outlets that promote him. He's purely a creature of marketing. Anyone could fill the role. Thirty years ago, it would have been Oral Roberts or Ted Haggard. Today, he's just the latest incarnation of Right Wing Traditionalist Mysticism.

      • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I've seen clips of his lectures that I think predate his anti-trans tirades and even then he seemed so troubled by his own demons he doesn't realize that's what he's talking about - like when he gets into his chaos dragon, ancient knowledge of dna stuff. The people in the faculty around him have to have known he's insane for years.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I believe he has a genuine appeal for a lot of reactionary men. AFAIK he does some basic psychology stuff but it is coded as not being woke/leftist/gay/feminine/etc. thereby making it acceptable to chuds.