How to argue…
Last week I watched Jordan Peterson being interviewed on Channel 4 by Cathy Newman. I say “interview”, but “debate” was closer to the fact:
Peterson chose his words carefully and responded to his interviewer’s questions. Newman, on the other hand, repeatedly twisted his words and ignored the thrust of his arguments. This video is well worth a watch in its entirety, just to see how arguments should be constructed.
I’ve started listening to his podcast and it’s a really interesting listen. Check it out 🙂
I was just going to watch that video for a minute since I’ve not heard of him before and wanted to see what he was about. Then I got sucked in and wanted to reach through my phone and yell at the interviewer (if you can even call her one) as she intentionally provoked, showed her bias, and decided to say that because he wanted men to be men he obviously hates women. Why do people assume that because you want one group to be stronger everyone else has to be weaker? Can’t we all become stronger versions of what we were created to be and succeed?
I appreciated the way Mr. Peterson was able to stay on topic, retain significant amounts of material in ready memory without notes and resisted strong attempts to provoke him into making rash, or intuitive responses to the interviewer’s questions. I too wasn’t planning on watching all 30 min, but recognized the value in this man’s example. Thank you for the share.
That David Bates fellow…did you know he has a blog?!
I have listened to some of his stuff and he does a great job at defending his point and continually clearing up misconceptions the interviewer tried to put on him. Peterson recently appeared on the Patrick Coffin show podcast which was a good conversation.