What's impressive to me about Dr. Peterson is his anti-nihilism. We live in a world where militant nihilism crowds in from the left ("neo-Marxism", casual sex culture) and right (global corporate capitalism). I think a lot of his charisma comes from the fact that, in a world where it's easier and more typical to "be professional" and "not get involved"– that is, become a coward at the first hint of controversy– this man actually stands for something. I give him kudos for that.

Dr. Peterson is brilliant. He probably has an IQ over 160; certainly, over 140. That doesn't make him right about everything. I've met astonishingly smart people who believe in all sorts of pseudoscience. I'd like to look, here, at some things that I think he gets wrong.

1: He asserts, on the topic of the gendered pay gap, that men out-earn women because (a) executive jobs are exceedingly stressful and (b) men want them more (we're less agreeable, we're broken, etc.) While it's true that the pay gap disappears when controlling for job titles– women are systematically underrated and under-promoted, but per title the pay gap is slight to nonexistent– Peterson's view of the corporate world is outdated and colored by his clinical experience.

Let me explain. Most organizations have an Effort Thermocline above which jobs become easier rather than harder with increasing rank. The top jobs are above this Thermocline; and it's a good-ol'-boy network like it always was. Peterson's clients, no doubt, whom he (due to his academic inexperience with corporate culture) mistakes for high-ranking executives, are actually the hardest-working people: managers just below the Thermocline. There is a clinical term for the sort of person who easily gets above a corporation's Effort Thermocline– psychopath– and psychopaths neither seek nor can be fixed by therapy. So he doesn't meet them.

The corporate world is deeply corrupt and nepotistic, and the jobs at the top of it are actually the easiest (although they're inaccessible to most people, including almost all women). Dr. Peterson misses that– and therefore reaches the mistaken conclusion that corporate executives actually work– because it never comes up in his clinical experience.

2: Dr. Peterson's charisma comes, I think, in large part from his focus on an internal locus of control. This is a place where what is useful diverges from what is true. The truth is that most peoples' lives are defined by forces they cannot influence (external locus of control). However, it is more useful from a clinical perspective to focus on what one can change (internal locus of control). An internal locus of control makes for good self-help, but bad politics. It is useful for an individual to focus internally; it is true in politics and economics that most people have desperately little control of where they end up. Keep in mind, again, his clinical biases. He does well by his clients to focus them on what they can personally change. But if you want to analyze social systems correctly, you have to accept the depressing realization that most people can improve their socioeconomic circumstances very little, just as one in a tsunami cannot fight the ocean.

3: He's said before (e.g. in his discussion with Camille Paglia) that male/male interactions have an undertone of physicality, e.g. "if you step out of line, I'll beat you to a pulp." This may be true in our 300-million-year-old hindbrains, but it's not true of us as civilized, intelligent humans. Dr. Peterson is correct that many interactions have threatening undertones: there is a reason why nightclub bouncers are big men, and why it is better in business to be 6-foot-4 than 5-foot-7. It is not true of all male/male interactions and, insofar as it comes from a pre-civilized part of us, it is likely not to be gendered.

4: Most importantly, Dr. Peterson perceives leftist militant nihilism– so-called neo-Marxism– as more of a threat to civilization than its right-wing (equally militant and nihilistic) counterpart: globalist corporate capitalism. I think this is his most dangerous miss.

This may be true from his vantage point, as an academic. There are quite a few militant, obnoxious leftists in the ivory tower. Most of us, however, are going to end up in corporate jobs where we take far more abuse from the militantly nihilistic right (executives) than from any "neo-Marxists" who have no power outside of academia.

Yes, Dr. Peterson's brilliant, but he's arguing about pronouns while average people live in fear of their bosses shipping their jobs overseas. If you think the militant nihilists on the left are more of a threat than those on the right, then either you're a professor– because, in academia, the nihilistic left actually has power– or you're completely out of touch. The nihilistic right has been more of a threat, in the English-speaking world, for at least 50 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3958262&forum_id=2#35907247)