Ignorance, bubble isolation, and cool conniving all seem unlikely explanations. What's left?

Fascinating.


Double click to enlarge.

Jordan B. Peterson is the Canadian clinical psychologist who has been making waves recently by his steadfast defense of Age of Enlightement values (empiricism, rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, universalism, free speech, etc.). Things which are deeply incompatible with postmodernism, social justice, etc. He has attracted much attention and support from the general citizenry and much abuse from academia and the news media, primarily because of his empirical rejection of the nostrums of postmodernism and social justice activists.

This interview is conducted by Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in the UK. I have no idea what Newman's political affiliation or sympathies, if any, might be.

There are several striking things in the thirty minute interview, mostly related to Newman. Peterson is the polite, knowledgeable, articulate speaker which he usually is in such settings.

Newman, whether by inclination or simply because of scripting designed to increase viewership, demonstrates a range of behaviors and interviewing tactics that make her appear ignorant, bullying, doctrinaire, ideological and, frankly, stupid.

Which she almost certainly is not. She has a first from Oxford.

The catalyst for the interview is Peterson's new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. He makes many observations and, to some degree, claims which are incompatible with the belief structure of postmodernists.

Newman drives the interview and comes across as wedded to postmodernism. She is not a neutral, honestly inquisitive or sympathetic interviewer. She projects a determination to refute ideas with which she apparently disagrees. She is in entire control of the program and agenda. She has the upper hand. She reads statements from Peterson's book, decries the observation, interpretation, or claim and invites Peterson to address it.

What is striking is the dynamic that then occurs. Peterson will start his explication and then be interrupted by Newman before he has finished. Time and again, she recasts his words into a claim he has not made. It is clumsily done. Her twisting is clearly not what he said. Peterson points that out and returns to what he actually said. She again tries to create an inaccurate strawman for him to defend and he again brings her back to the actual claim and the actual evidence. Stymied by clear evidence, Newman moves on to the next mischaracterization.

Time and again, she will attempt to introduce an assertion of opinion/belief which is not actually true and will attempt to build her argument off the opinion until Peterson points out the absence of basis for the opinion.

For example, she offers as a statement of fact that women are paid 9% (from memory) less in Britain than men with the implication "for the same work." Peterson properly rebuts the longstanding postmodernist assertion. When you do a univariate analysis, indeed women are paid less than men. Newman's implication is that the differential is due to discrimination. Peterson points out that multivariate analysis of the wage gap across the countries of the OECD have repeatedly revealed that the nominal difference is always explained by differences in hours worked, duration in the job, choices about academic field, choices about field of endeavor, etc. A handful of variables explain the "gender wage gap" and none of them have to do with discrimination and all of them have to do with personal choices. This is common knowledge in the field but Newman keeps coming back to the long discredited assertion that there is a discriminatory wage gap as if it was true. What is going on? It is difficult to credit that she is simply unaware of this empirical evidence (findings produced and replicated by both male and female academics in multiple countries).

Again and again, he knocks back her attack without ever being allowed to complete the chain of argument.

At one point, she stalls in the interview, set back by her own logical inconsistency. She wants to make the argument that free speech should be suppressed in order to ensure people are not made to feel uncomfortable. Peterson points out that a free exchange of ideas is the predicate to intellectual progress. That she is conducting an interview designed to make him uncomfortable. His implication is, why are you allowed to express ideas intended to make someone uncomfortable while other people are to be punished for speaking freely? She has no answer for that, creating a striking pause in the sustained assault on Peterson. She is clearly adrift.

Selection of agenda. Interruption. Foreclosure. Strawmen characterizations. Misunderstanding. Ignorance of the data. Logical inconsistency. All are on display.

But why? I am quite confident Newman is not stupid. Why is she conducting an interview which makes her appear so? Now granted, Peterson is accustomed to vociferous, kinetic, and hostile interviews. But while he is very good, he is a deliberate thinker not noted for verbal repartee and dexterity. He figures out what needs to be said and says it as clearly as possible but Newman is not being made to look bad by Oscar Wilde levels of wit.

There seem to be three ready possibilities. One hypothesis might be that Newman is as stupid as she comes across. She doesn't know the arguments. She doesn't know the data. She is inexperienced at handling knowledgeable interviewees. Perhaps, but that seems extremely improbable to me.

Perhaps she is completely steeped in the quagmire of postmodernist false facts and does not know they are false. That seems extremely improbable as well. News Media have been under assault in both Britain and America for a number of years now for their unrepresentativeness of their respective countries. She has been around a good long while. She must be aware that there are alternative views of the world and that those views have strong grounding in empirical reality. It is theoretically possible that she is in such a bubble that she is unaware of the alternate views and their strength. But living in a cognitive bubble also seems improbable.

Is she playing a role to gain ratings? Creating an appearance of an amusingly foolish interview simply in order to boost ratings? Again, possible. Ratings are the life blood of the industry and who knows what the dynamics are around her ratings, career, and compensation. But people are intensely self-interested and respond to incentives. Perhaps this is all an act to drive ratings. Again, theoretically possible but it still seems improbable.

I simply do not have a plausible explanation for the dynamic of this interview but it was striking none-the-less.

UPDATE: The Peterson Principle: Intellectual Complexity and Journalistic Incompetence by Paul Benedetti tackles some of the same questions I had. Some interesting arguments:

Why don’t we get these nuanced conversations? Journalists are not stupid. Some of the smartest people I have ever met have been in newsrooms. So, what’s the problem?

Some are the same issues that have plagued mainstream media for decades: lack of time, lack of specific expertise, the decline of informed beat reporters and an unhealthy tendency toward the sensational and the spectacular. But there’s something new afoot, something more insidious.

Today’s mainstream reporting on difficult subjects is often bereft of most of the qualities that define journalism itself. Instead, it demonstrates a lack of respect for evidence; a penchant for conflict; a desire not to understand but to confront and perhaps most dangerously, a lack of nuance. Instead of inquiry and critique, we get knee-jerk adherence to whatever the current dogma happens to be. On topic after topic that folks like Sam Harris and Peterson meet head on with facts and studies, mainstream media falls in lock step with the zeitgeist of the day: gender is divorced from biology, any critique of Islam is bigotry, cultural appropriation is abhorrent, words are actual violence. And worse, when writers or editors dare to challenge these “truths”, or deign to suggest a real conversation is in order, they are banished, fired or called racists. On the other hand, authors who pander to the flavour-of- the-month outrage are given national platforms that their shallow, mean-spirited writings don’t deserve.

But is that what people really want? Increasingly, I’m convinced that mainstream media is on the wrong track and the only way to ensure its future is to change course, drastically. Right now.

The danger that people will abandon bad mainstream journalism is real and present. Kevin O’Rourke captures this fear in his piece, “The Curious Case of the Canadian Psychologist” when he says of the Cathy Newman interview: “This whole episode could turn out to be a watershed moment in the history of Britain’s relationship with the news. Why watch Cathy Newman act the clown in an expensive studio when you can get Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson on your phone? If you have something to say to the public, why let journalists filter it when you can talk to a camera and put it on YouTube?”