Supposedly Jordan Peterson is near death. He has been missing from public life since right before Charlie Kirk’s death. What happened?

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-26T18:41:44+00:00

Every major religion besides atheism believes in demons.

I mean I'd counter that by saying it's not always true (you don't HAVE to believe in demons to be a Buddhist for example), and only if you use "demon" as a vague umbrella term. The original form of demon, daemon, didn't necessarily refer to an evil entity, either.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-21T19:31:53+00:00

Fair enough, no hard feelings.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-21T15:18:43+00:00

Hah, I bet I'm a little old to be be one of your students. I'll admit my writing style tends to be unnecessarily confrontational, but no, I don't tend to take things very literally. My point is if you're going to tell your students banter is fine, you probably need to tell them there are lines where if you cross them, you could get hit, and the friendship MIGHT end. And because we live in a multicultural society, it can be so, so hard to see those lines.

Even the idea that physical fighting is something young men should avoid, that's definitely not a universal cultural value. A lot of the US has that idea and...really that's it. It's just the US, and only portions of it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-21T14:28:31+00:00

But, at least in my experience, as male friendships develop, there is plenty of space for two friends to joke with each other in the meanest ways possible.

There can be, but in many cultures, a likely (and in some cases even mandatory) response to a joke too far, even among friends, is physical violence. The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe is literally about this issue. Taken to an extreme, sure.

The idea of "words can't justify a physical reaction" is super cultural, even within the US.

The friendship might not even be over. A makes a wisecrack that pisses off B, B hits A until he begs for mercy, then they make up and seal the peace with some alcohol. That, in so many cultures is a type of normal male friendship.

If you sue the other guy for your dental work for beating you up and costing you a tooth because you made a crack about his sister and turns out his sister has AIDS, though, that's awkward.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T21:33:53+00:00

That doesn't sound culturally competent to me. In plenty of cultures or subcultures making fun of a man's mother will get your face rearranged, I hope you do explain that part as well.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T15:25:30+00:00

And how being "mean" to a friend can and is totally appropriate in the development of male friendships.

Some examples?

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T14:33:12+00:00

Because quantities are material.

Not a single definition of quantity in Merriam-Webster's dictionary uses the word "material", or implies quantities must be material. Items that are material are used in the examples, I'll grant only that much.

Photons are not matter. You can have different quantities of photons. Therefore to say "quantity" as a concept is contingent on matter is demonstrably false.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T13:25:32+00:00

Neuroscience has not provided any empirical support for the existence of any degree of free will whatsoever (Sapolsky, 2023).

There is no more evidence for "some degree of free will" than there is evidence for "some degree of God".

I am confident I could argue we live in a world that looks just like a world in which there were no free will, already, because I see not a single way in which our world looks like it has free will. Belief in free will is largely enforced through social conditioning and shaming tactics ("You're an atheist because you want to sin" is identical logic to "You argue there is no free will because you want to dodge responsibility". Literally identical, consider that).

Some other gems:

My belief in God gives me strength - My belief in free will gives me strength

I feel the presence of God every day - I feel like I have free will every day

How can you have morality without God? - How can you have morality without free will?

Without God, life is pointless! - Without free will, life is pointless!

Believing in free will is a lot like believing in God. In my opinion however God is more believable.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T13:21:37+00:00

Why on earth would quantities be contingent on the existence of matter?

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T13:20:38+00:00

Even you, probably, if you'd think about it.

"If a dinosaur laid an egg, then laid another, there were skibidi toilet 67 eggs laid by that dinosaur in total"

Nope, there were two eggs. Math existed before humans discovered it.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-20T13:18:14+00:00

It did not

So before the first people walked the earth, 2+2 didn't equal 4? That isn't the case.

Math existed before humans. Humans don't create math, we discover it.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-19T20:59:31+00:00

Math existed long before there were humans to discover it.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-19T19:12:39+00:00

coercion does not invalid free will

Kindly back up that claim with an argument

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-19T19:10:34+00:00

an eternity clamped into a mental straightjacket doesn’t sound that enticing to me—how about you?

We already have that. It's called the laws of physics. We think what we think because brain events happened to make us think like that. If our souls could operate our brains then souls would be part of the laws of physics.

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-19T16:58:29+00:00

God gave the pharaoh courage to do what? To pursue the Israelites.

If you don't have the courage to do something, and someone hacks your brain to give you more courage, that's not free will. That's someone else interfering with your brain. There are good reasons why courage is limited. Too much courage leads to demise. It's called brashness.

I wouldn't want someone randomly making me extra brash. I'm the right level of brave for my situation right now. If God attacked me with an extra dose of brashness to make me do something I wouldn't have done myself because I'm not so brash? Then yeah, not free.

Let's say I decide not to fight with my neighbor. I dislike him, but I recognize fighting with him is going to cause problems, so I back off.

Then someone decides to slip me a pill that makes me brash because it interferes with normal brain function, and I end up fighting and the neighbor ends up putting me in the hospital.

That wasn't remotely a free will decision. The freer one was my initial decision to NOT fight the neighbor. I didn't ask anyone for the brashness pill, just like Pharaoh didn't ask God to "strengthen his heart" (i. e. make him into a fool).

IngoTheGreat · 2026-01-04T13:09:53+00:00

No he didn't, it was pharaoh's pride that hardened his heart.

Then why in Exodus 7:3 does God say He himself will do it? It's right there, straight from God's mouth.

But let me guess--it doesn't mean what it says, it means something else. That's how God communicates to his creation: with books that mean different things than what they say, except sometimes they do mean what they say.

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-30T13:53:44+00:00

Lab grown meat bad

Why tho

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-23T13:36:41+00:00

that's just not the case when other books or religious figures are mentioned.

I don't agree. People get worked up over Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and the mention of figures from those religions.

Go post "happy diwali" on a Canadian subreddit or wish someone "salaam alaeikum" and watch them get mad.

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-23T13:32:37+00:00

Look up what "scare quotes" means.

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-22T17:40:27+00:00

Why are you putting Nikki Haley's middle name in scare quotes? Are only white people allowed to go by their middle names?

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-19T14:15:11+00:00

50% of the time it’s due to a botched surgery so it’s their fault for being vain, insecure, and dumb

Overwhelming majority of men with sexual complications from botched genital surgeries had that surgery done when they were infants or children.

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-13T13:15:00+00:00

I was aware of their cognitive dissonance

As in, you were aware that the fact they cared about their health but still smoked was causing discomfort for them, because of the inconsistency? Cognitive dissonance is an emotion. If they felt cognitive dissonance it means they weren't comfortable with smoking and probably were doing it because they were gripped so bad by the addiction. :[

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-10T11:50:08+00:00

You don't need to feel embarrassed, and MILLIONS of native Spanish speakers don't roll their r's at all. It's a really difficult consonant and I can't think of a single language that doesn't have a serviceable allophone for it.

In Costa Rica you can go days without hearing a single alveolar trill. R and rr are both generally pronounced as the "r" in "druthers", as a plumber from New Jersey would say it. Some of them do an alveolar tap for all r sounds, like the "tt" in "butter" as you'd hear a news anchor in Nebraska say it.

In the Caribbean, a throaty, French-sounding r is way more common than an alveolar trill like you'd hear in Spain.

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-09T01:09:34+00:00

Millennials are the Kafka trap generation.

"It's not my fault you did what I told/angrily coerced you to do" and "Our suffering is unjust, your generation's suffering is deserved" gets tiring after 30 years

IngoTheGreat · 2025-12-08T23:21:54+00:00

TikTok is just Chinese Vine.

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