WTW44: Junk Science and So Much Grift: The Jordan Peterson Story

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke, episode 44. Thomas, and that's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:49 Lydia: Good. How are you?

0:00:50 Thomas: Overwhelmed with everything. Okay, so this is the seventh time we've done an introduction.

0:00:56 Lydia: I was going to say we've done it.

0:00:58 Thomas: I don't know where we are. I don't know who I am. This not an exaggeration. This This is the fourth introduction, third or fourth, third

0:01:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, maybe we do a super cut and give it to patrons so they can, like, laugh about this.

0:01:10 Thomas: Or fourth introduction. We've recorded already five hours on this. Probably.

0:01:14 Lydia: At least, yeah.

0:01:16 Thomas: None of it's usable yet. This is why, this is why we haven't. Hi. Hi everybody. It's been a minute. I said that in one of the other five intros that you're not hearing. It's a while because this, okay. So here's, here's what happened. Long story short, except not, we started with a rap video. It all started with a rap video and we went to, we eventually got to, yeah, number one on the charts for some period of time. Then we got to this, the claim that Jordan Peterson made. And then we started researching that. And then that led us to the master's thesis by Christine Brophy under Jordan Peterson.

0:01:37 Lydia: Number one. Number one And now basketball coach. Bitch.

0:01:55 Thomas: Yeah. By person with maybe a master's, maybe not, but also is a basketball coach. We know she's a basketball coach and then that master's thesis. So here's, let me tell you where we got stuck. It's in a couple of places. First, I stuck killing myself just an insane asylum with the the padded whatever, in the straight jacket, with did they just fucking make shit up or was it from another mystery study that occupied my mind for a month. Month. How long has it been? It's almost a month. And it's driven me insane because either these people are just lying, like, just made up. Uh I mentioned it last episode, whenever that was. It, the number one predictor of being a PC liberal was having attended a single seminar

0:02:03 Lydia: This is insane.

0:02:25 Lydia: Yeah, a month.

0:02:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:02:47 Thomas: And the number on predictor being a PC authoritarian was if you had a mental illness or mental illness this in your family, or whatever. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a different one. So that's later.

0:02:52 Lydia: Or you're a woman. Oh, okay.

0:02:56 Thomas: We got, yeah, we got to keep it all straight. I graphed it out somewhere. I think I said some of that last time. So at the time when they were talking to Lauren Southern, those were the two claims made that out to me as like, that is fucking insane. To the point where I went back, I have memorized this master's thesis. I can't even tell. It is so long. I have read it so many many times, those two things, at least those two things, appear nowhere. Also it's very clear, and I'll just summarize, this is going to come later, but again, I'm summarizing where we got stuck, where I got stuck mainly.

Also a bunch of stuff they talk about that clearly is from that master's thesis. There's also evidence that I'll talk about, that there's some other mystery study. There'S actually like decent evidence that there'S some other mystery study, and so it was trying to figure out, did did they just lie and make up a thing? Or did they have a real thing in this master's thesis, but then they did some additional stuff and that might've been this stuff, but they're also kind of lying about that for reasons

0:03:02 Lydia: Yeah okay.

0:03:50 Thomas: I'll get to. And then where is it?

0:03:50 Lydia: And where is it? Yeah.

0:03:53 Thomas: And then so I got stuck on that. Then I wanted to become an expert in, I wanted to study the ways of psychological research and stats. Because I was so certain that Christine Brophy's master's thesis is the worst fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. It's so terrible. Of all the theses that I've every graded, it's the first one.

0:04:02 Lydia: Yep.

0:04:12 Lydia: This one is feces.

0:04:13 Thomas: Yeah. And it's, yeah, then we got stuck because I had to discipline Lydia for making that joke and fire her from the company. Then I had a rehire. That That took a while. Just the paperwork.

0:04:21 Lydia: And I had to go to a seminar and are

0:04:29 Thomas: Yeah. Making For jokes like that. It's, you know, it's been a whole thing. Then I was so certain that this master's thesis was such a pile of shit that I got to the point where I'm like, Like, all right, I will lightly criticize something as a non -expert. But if I'm going to come in here as someone who doesn't have a master's, doesn't have a degree in psychology, doesn't have even a science degree of any kind, and I'm gonna come in there and completely tear apart a master thesis, like I'm, maybe I'm missing something. Like maybe I am not an expert. Maybe I am wrong. An impulse I have. If I'm if I think something's batshit insane and I'm not an expert in it, I'm going to be like, I don't know. Oh, maybe I'm missing something.

0:04:44 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:05:09 Thomas: So we consulted an expert, an actual PhD who knows lot about this stuff. And no, it's even worse than I thought. Like it's Even stupider. This master's thesis is terrible. And it's so bad. Again, we're talking about a fucking master's Thesis. I know that sounds insane, but there's many reasons we're doing that. For one, it used in the video and in the rap video response response to make insane claims about the left.

0:05:35 Lydia: Yep.

0:05:36 Thomas: Still using it. He is still using it to make claims about left. It's fair game in that way. Here's the other thing. Despite it being a master's thesis, despite it being not peer reviewed, it's I've her scale, her PC scale that we're going to talk to you today about being being incoherent is being used in other research.

0:05:54 Thomas: And that research is being used in further research. And all that research combined is being cited by assholes on Twitter and in videos and whatnot to to pathologize the left and talk about how we're all insane. And we have the dark triad traits of blah, blah, blah. It, this is like a study in misinformation. It's like we have this epicenter, which is this fucking master's thesis from 2015. It has spiraled outward and outward to yield just an entire like ecosystem of misinformation.

Now, I don't don't want to go so far as to say like, it's not as though this was like the one thing that led to all that, but it's, it's a thing among many things and it traces back in some part to this master's thesis. And so I became obsessed by how terrible it is and it's hilariously terrible. And I want to talk about it for hours and hours. And I have, but then we're like, well, we can't just do seven hours on someone's master's thesis.

Like that's stupid. But also I can't not, I can not, it's too terrible because here's the other thing. Maybe we can do seven horas on our master's theses because she's still out there talking about it. I found an interview from like recently that I didn't know

0:05:46 Lydia: Hmm. Yep, yeah.

0:06:49 Lydia: It's really silly. Yeah, jeez.

0:07:04 Thomas: What it was at first. I had to pay for this hunt. I felt there was no other option. I I had, I had to fucking idly Substack to get this bonus thing because I thought it was going to answer my question of, was there a mystery study or not? Because it seemed like, in the 17 minute preview I got, it seemed like she was going that direction.

0:07:03 Lydia: Oh my god. Claim it on our taxes.

0:07:25 Thomas: I was like, all right.

0:07:25 Lydia: What, the preview was 17 minutes? How long was the stupid video? Oh, yeah.

0:07:26 Thomas: Mm hmm. Yep. I was hoping it would only be like 30. It's not a video. It's a podcast. It's like an Hour and a half. I listened to the whole thing. And she has now a of another way that she's talking about. And I don't necessarily think that's nefarious. It's been eight years since her master's thesis. So like, sure, she's blended a few things in her mind, whatever. Talk about that later. It also gives us evidence about the missing study thing. So there's all that.

And so the point is Peterson and Brophy and others are still using this fucking master's thesis to talk about how the left is crazy and the woke or, you and all that. And furthermore, other people have used the scale, produced other crap research because the scale is useless. There's no way the scale's useful for anything. So, definitionally, the research that comes from it cannot be right. Like, it just can't. And people are using that to further pathologize us, and it's piled outward, as I talked about. About. Then there's the other component, which in the process of getting stuck on that and researching it forever, we've also stumbled on layers of grift and borderline

0:07:33 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah,

0:08:31 Thomas: Fraud that I still want to get to, or it might just be fraud. I don't know. Also some other just miscellaneous weirdness. And so it has been really hard to try to figure out how to organize this. Like that's been the main challenge in Crunch. I feel like I could take a year to do this, but it's like, we need to get this stuff out. It's been too long. It's like, how do we organize all that? And so the best we've settled on is we're going to talk about this master's thesis, because if I don't, I will die.

0:08:58 Lydia: Dr.

0:08:58 Thomas: So that's non -negotiable. Sorry. Apologies, audience. I not do that. So we're gonna talk about that. And we're also gonna learn along the way. Some amount of that I'll save for bonus content because I don't want to overwhelm the audience. We talked with our expert show, Jenessa Seymour, who you will hear eventually. She had some really cool stuff about the stats, some of which is like a little bit too in depth for this show. I fucking loved it.

0:09:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And so what I'll probably do is I'll just there will be a lot for the Patreon, patreon.com/wherethereswoke. there's going to be a lot of just bonus stuff that's like, it's just too much for the main show or it's too in depth, but tell you, it is all good because it's all really compelling reasons why this study is shit and some other stuff.

0:09:22 Lydia: It's a little SIO. Yeah mm

0:09:42 Thomas: The themes we're going to discuss are this fucking study sucks and and I'll die if I don't get to talk about it, then I'm going to tell you about the investigation. We're going to kind of transition to the investigation of the mystery study. So was there a mystery study? What happened there? Were they just lying? And that story leads into the potential fraud, which I'll talk about. And so there's also research grift there. All that then led to your research in a way. And it wasn't like a one to two to three, it was like kind of all at the same time, but you found a bunch of business -y weird stuff, grift stuff, maybe for, I don't know if any of that's fraudulent, but it's definitely weird and grifty.

0:09:41 Lydia: -hmm mm -hm crazy yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird.

0:10:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:19 Lydia: It's weird.

0:10:20 Thomas: And so the series is essentially Jordan Peterson, not only sucks at science, but is grifty and weird. And so it'll be as many parts as it fucking takes. Everybody sit down, shut up. And you're going to listen to me talk about this master's thesis. And that's from nine years ago that's still relevant, still being used.

0:10:36 Lydia: From nine years ago. Yep.

0:10:40 Thomas: Hey, lots of studies are old that are still, you know, discussed all the time. This one shouldn't be. It should never have seen the light of day. No one should know about this, except this master's thesis should have been between her and her thesis advisor and the garbage can. Then that's the three people that should have talked about it. And then she should have redone it to be a real thing after this commercial break that you don't, not only, there's a million reasons to get on Patreon, we have endless bonus stuff once we can edit it. Patreon.com/wherethereswoke, skip the ad you're about to hear and get all the bonus stuff, and uh, thank you so much to those who support us. This Peterson is so full that it's, amount of research into him spirals you out forever, so this is the result of that. Uh, we'll see you after the ad break, non-patrons. Oh, we're going to get on over to Jenessa who just gives us an absolutely expert breakdown of some of this stuff later. We're wanted to focus on mainly the stats with her, the stats weirdness.

0:10:42 Lydia: That's true. That's sure.

0:10:55 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Mm

0:11:39 Thomas: Inevitably, we also got into some other stuff, but I wanted to speak with you about how bad these questions are because they are fucking terrible.

0:11:44 Lydia: Hmm. They're really bad.

0:11:50 Thomas: And they're bad in a way that's so funny I can't wait to tell the audience because it's hilarious. And I've also gotten such a window into how these people are looking at the world. So you'll hear me talk about this later, but the the scales, the factors that she came up with to measure political correctness was PC egalitarianism or PC liberalism and PC authoritarianism. Note that those both have PC in them, which is weird. And we'll talk more about this with Jenessa.

0:11:50 Lydia: Mm hm. Yeah.

0:12:18 Thomas: For now, I want to say I out pretty strong last time that PC authoritarians were conservative or were more right wing. And what I've come to learn after hours of figuring this shit out is that it's not exactly true, but it's more just meaningless. So we'll give you the TLDL, too long, didn't listen. And then you can skip the next nine hours of content.

0:12:41 Thomas: The TLDR is when you do science this badly, the groups of people, like the factors that you're getting are basically meaningless. Meaningless. So the PC authoritarianism, I believe it contains a lot of conservatives and probably where a lot OF conservatives in her sample are, but it wasn't accurate of me to say it's just conservatives. And again, there's plenty of reasons why it did seem accurate to say that, like in her own study, she talks about their conservative beliefs. She talks about some other stuff that correlates with conservatism, but it's not as though she's right and that these are both left -wing types of people, because that's what she thinks.

0:12:41 Lydia: Mm hmm, right. Right.

0:13:20 Thomas: She and Jordan Peterson think we've found two components of the left-wing PC police in 2015. That's how they present it in the video. That is how they even talk about it in this paper. They are basically assuming that being politically correct means you're on the left. So their test, their study, their questions that that they did really reflect that worldview and causes them to get garbage data because if that's what you're going to do, it's not going to make sense. So she's not right that they're both left, but I wasn't entirely right to say that one was left and one was right. But it is true that like the PC liberals contain more liberals and the PC authoritarians contain more conservatives. Like that's just going to be true.

0:14:00 Lydia: However, I do want to also just reiterate the interpretability of a paper is the responsibility of the person putting the paper together and Not the reader. And so if we are unable to interpret what she is putting out, that's not your fault.

0:14:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's... there's plenty of reasons why like it sounded like they're conservative in the paper. Like it really did to the point where I know she knows that they just tried to like like What it comes down to again to TLDL a little bit is, wow, it's weird that there's so many right-wing beliefs in this definitely left-wing PC group. That's weird, huh? So anyway, I guess the conclusion that they draw, like if I'm uh Brophy or Jordan Peterson, is whoa, it's weird that there's some left-wing PC police that actually have right-wing views. That's weird, but anyway.

0:14:30 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:14:53 Thomas: They're they're fucking idiots because they're the left wing PC police and you're like no they're just on the right. Actually, you know, you can really classify them that, and as we'll talk about with Jenessa, it's not even accurate to talk about these as two different groups of people because they're not. The this study is fucking batshit and they're non-existent. It's just, it's nonsense. Talk about when she says that someone is a PC liberal or PC egalitarian or a PC authoritarian. Let us talk about what that could even fucking mean. I have gone through all her questions. I've categorized them. I've sorted them in my spreadsheet and it's very revealing to look at what with what. Don't we start with how she scores some of this stuff. Why don't you read this scoring system? Because we're going to do a little fun exercise, a little fun game show called, Can We Reproduce Her Scoring?

And what would we, two people who consider ourselves pretty, I don't know, politically correct or woke or whatever, like if she's talking about anyone, she's Talking About Us, plus some people that are probably more like left than us, right? So we thought, let's pick some of her questions, again, that she used to all these sweeping assumptions about us and pathologize us and all that. Let's pick some of the questions, see how we do. So why don't you tell us the very straightforward method of scoring

0:15:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:12 Thomas: She used?

0:16:13 Lydia: So this scoring is related specifically to her subset of language items. And this was, gosh, 70 different questions. And way that it's set up is each question is scored based off of its political correctness. Your response to it and the political correctness seems straightforward, right? However, this is how score it. Participants got a point for being politically correct, not only if they selected a politically correct response, But also if they did not select a politically incorrect response.

0:16:33 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:16:51 Thomas: Okay. So we'll pause you on that first part, hon. And I'll say like, okay, I think that kind of makes sense. If you had a simple question, so I'm going to modify one of hers. Hey, what do you call someone who's got like essentially a drug addiction, but she makes sure to use words around that. So she says long-term pathological Pathological useofdrugs characterized by daily intoxication, inability to reduce consumption and impairment in social or occupational function. Okay.

0:16:54 Lydia: Okay.

0:17:16 Thomas: She's trying to secret answer

0:17:15 Lydia: Jordan Peterson. Just kidding. Move that to the bloopers.

0:17:21 Thomas: Jordan Peterson. Now that's a, that's main show material. True, you're, you're officially out of probation with that joke on You're You're out of joke prison. You, now you're on joke probation. One, two more good ones you might be a functioning member of society again. We'll see, um, okay, she's essentially asking us, what do we call someone who is addicted to drugs? And you would expect, like, okay, the PC answer might be, uh, person with a substance use disorder, let's say.

0:17:26 Lydia: Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right.

0:17:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:17:47 Thomas: The non-PC answer would be like junkie, addict, dope fiend, we'll say. And so on one hand, you'd be like, all right, especially if there are only two answers, you could be like all right you get a point for picking the PC one or a minus point for the not PC one. I guess if there's only two and it was binary, you would score it differently. Let's say there's four. Okay, you pick some that are PC, you get points. You pick some that aren't PC, get minus points. That makes sense. But then if you keep going in her her description, it gets kind of weird.

0:18:17 Lydia: So they get a point for being politically incorrect if they selected a politically incorrect response, as well as if they didn't select a politically correct response.

0:18:29 Thomas: Yeah. Which seems like redundant to me. Like I literally, okay. I was so confused by this nonsense that I made a spreadsheet that had like the scoring.

0:18:38 Lydia: Like matrices.

0:18:39 Thomas: Yeah, like programmed in, not programmed, but like just equations for the scoring. Cause I was like, isn't that just going to be the inverse of the first thing? So you're doubling it. But the way it works out, it's like, it seems to not exactly be right. I don't know. But the point is this got really confusing. And

0:18:55 Lydia: Not just that. So then you are kind of right that it does sort of double things, right? Each language question therefore had two times its number of options in points. Then from there, she subtracted the politically incorrect total points from the politically correct total points to get the total score for that one question.

0:19:17 Thomas: Yeah. So this seemed a little weird to me. So the point where I literally had to make a spreadsheet and chart it out. And It also seemed to me, okay, the double point seems like it doesn't, I feel like it would be more useful to just ask binary questions. Like, Like, yeah, yeah.

0:19:24 Lydia: Yeah.

0:19:33 Lydia: There's got to be a more parsimonious way to do this, right? Like this is more complicated.

0:19:37 Thomas: Like, which would you pick ones that are like, pick ones that are closer calls because it's not going to work if you're like, do you call him a fucking fuckwit, dumb shit, fucking dot or the normal one? But pick some ones that like kind of close calls, but are binary to keep it simple, you know, just be like, which would you, how would you refer to this person? And then you don't need this like plus minus double score thing.

0:19:45 Lydia: Right. Yeah, And I think the other piece that's really important here too is that there are no options according to her in her paper that are neutral. Every single word in here is either politically correct or politically incorrect, and as we're looking through these were like, well, I don't know. Like, that doesn't seem to carry like either way. Here's an example. 43 from her, you know, total scale, referring to a group of men and women, and the options are guys, friends, folks, and group.

0:20:05 Thomas: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. I'm

0:20:34 Lydia: What in that?

0:20:35 Thomas: And keep in mind, actually, we should read the prompt. So the prompt for all this is for each definition, select the statement or statements. So you can select multiple or none, maybe. You prefer to use in your everyday in bold language. Please be as honest as possible. There's no right or wrong answer. So, referring to a group of men and women: guys, friends, folks, group.

0:20:38 Lydia: Yes. Yeah.

0:20:58 Thomas: All Of them, literally.

0:20:57 Lydia: I say all of those things. Right.

0:20:59 Thomas: All of him, yeah. I was just gonna say the same thing. Like, the the only PC thing I could think of is some people like don't like when you say guys now. Um, sure. Okay, like maybe. And honestly, that might be a place where I'm like, yeah, I don't really care, so I wouldn't be the PC police. But

0:21:06 Lydia: Right. But Then are all the other three politically correct, group?

0:21:16 Thomas: Like friends, what if you're not friends with them? What if it's a group of people over there? Hey, look at that group of friends. Like what? No, that doesn't. But if they were your friends, then whether or not you are PC or not PC, you would say friends. Or folks is a good one. Like I use folks to try to avoid guys, but sometimes I slip up. Group.

0:21:24 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I Tend to folks, say

0:21:40 Thomas: Group.

0:21:41 Lydia: Also, I know, group.

0:21:42 Thomas: What the fuck is group? So group has to be either PC or non -PC. I don't know.

0:21:42 Lydia: Yes. How, that is Like One Of the most neutral Words I Could ever think Of.

0:21:50 Thomas: No. And I just want to make absolutely clear, even though I've read this front to back 1500 times, are we absolutely sure there aren't ones that are just neutral?

0:21:59 Lydia: I See absolutely nothing anywhere. And there's no way for me to give her any more benefit of the doubt than what she put in the narrative here, because she never discloses her scoring. So I don't know how she assigned these things. And if some of these were neutral, that would have been evident in her scoring, if not evident already in her narrative. And it's not there.

0:22:20 Thomas: Yeah, she would have mentioned it.

0:22:22 Lydia: Yeah, it's not there, there's nothing. Mm-mm.

0:22:23 Thomas: Not there. So of referring to a group of men and women, guys, friends, folks, or group, some amount of those are PC and some amount OF those are anti -PC essentially. There's no neutral and about what that does. And because of the doubled coupled scoring, one slight variation is going to make wildly different stuff. So what we decided to do is do some of these questions and not only pick what we think she's trying to score, but also pick what we would say. And the results, I haven't shared all the results with Lydia yet.

0:22:32 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Mm -hm.

0:22:58 Lydia: No.

0:22:58 Thomas: The results are stunning. The results would suggest that maybe this is a fucking pile of dog shit study that, you Dr. Dr. Jordan Peterson not only should have used a red marker on extensively, also should never discuss again. Like than be still to this day in the year of our Lord 2024, referring to these results as like why the left is so insane and all that.

0:23:11 Lydia: Yeah.

0:23:21 Lydia: And Like Remarkable Right. Like He's always like, it's stunning, you know, these things are correlated, these high correlations. Yeah.

0:23:22 Thomas: Yep. Yep. And when you think about this double scoring system, the more options you have, the More Crazy this is going to get. Yeah. So let's take question 44, hun.

0:23:35 Lydia: Yeah. Invalid.

0:23:38 Thomas: This is, again, in your everyday language, and you can select as many as you want, or you can not select them. What would you call someone who has a condition that markedly restricts their ability to function physically? Our possible answers are A, handicapped, B, crippled, C, disabled, D, invalid or an invalid, I guess.

0:23:56 Lydia: I think it's invalid, yeah.

0:23:58 Thomas: Yeah, it could be invalid, E, person with a disability, F, physically challenged, G, differently abled, or H, special needs. And again, you can select as many as you want. So we did the exercise of, let's try to guess what she is doing for the grading system. And I hope this won't break up our marriage. Cause we're, this is going to, I feel like this is going to be, this has got to be contentious. This will be something that Heath and I would argue about for four years. If this was a game where you wanted to get a high score, like we wouldn't be able to play. There would no, it'd be

0:24:16 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, can I call in Heath to sit in for me.

0:24:30 Thomas: No way. So, uh, this one, I'll tell you our results. Scoring system, only, wow, our scoring system varies by three. I'm actually kind of surprised, but we were both trying to guess what she would say. So for handicap, and keep in mind, these have to be either PC or not PC. For For handicapped, I put PC.

0:24:45 Lydia: Oh, Interesting. I put not PC.

0:24:54 Thomas: We have literally handicapped spots, like parking spots. I don't know. Like, yeah, you know what?

0:24:58 Lydia: Yeah, but I I don't think it fits her caricature of you. Know what? I mean,

0:25:04 Thomas: You're right. I think you're right on that one. She would probably say that's not PC, handicapped. B, crippled, I'd put not BC. So we agree on there. C, disabled is obviously PC, but you're saying she would have put not PC?

0:25:04 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I think she, she would say it's not PC, again, because it's

0:25:20 Thomas: Oh, because it's not person with a disability.

0:25:22 Lydia: Not. Yeah.

0:25:22 Thomas: Okay. Okay, I think what's happened here is you're right and I'm wrong. But the point is, like, I've tried to do this right. Like, I don't know, you know, and one slight difference in the scale makes a huge difference in your scoring. I thought disabled would be PC because like, yeah, you know, disability rights, you know, but like you're right. Now I see there's also a person with a disability. So that's clearly PC physically challenged.

0:25:23 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm hmm. I would say that she would say that's PC.

0:25:50 Thomas: But I could, I don't know, because that's nobody's

0:25:53 Lydia: But I'll tell you, I would never say that because I don't think that is appropriate. I don't t like that phrase personally. And, you know, but

0:25:53 Thomas: No, physically challenged, yeah, yeah, I would say not PC if it were me, but I agree with you that maybe she said PC differently, abled, I would never say that because it's stupid, but that, I bet she thinks it's PC and then special needs, though. I put PC and you put not PC, yeah,

0:26:05 Lydia: I think she thinks it is. I woul d never say that that either. Yep. Agreed. Yeah, I wasn't sure on that one, to be perfectly honest.

0:26:18 Thomas: I I think that might be one where, where special needs, I think she would, would say that's PC, but I don't know. Don't, we'll keep the, we'll keep the scales how they are, just now it's going to get to the real, to the real part. How would you have answered? Pretend, pretend you're just taking this test randomly. Someone called you or you did it on the internet. You're doing the survey And someone asks you, which of these words do you prefer to use in everyday language? I would say, well, handicap, we have handicap spots and we have handicap accessible bathrooms. So yes, I would absolutely use handicap.

0:26:23 Lydia: Okay. Yep, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would probably use that in my everyday language.

0:26:52 Thomas: I answered, I Would Not Use Crippled.

0:26:55 Lydia: Agreed?

0:26:55 Thomas: Answered that I would use disabled.

0:26:57 Lydia: I don't really use disabled.

0:26:59 Thomas: Yeah, now let's see someone.

0:27:02 Lydia: To refer to a person, I don't really refer to it.

0:27:03 Thomas: Yeah, to refer to a person, that's a good point. Yeah, maybe I wouldn't. Yeah, maybe I, but like, also that's the thing about these surveys. I don't know. Like you could be different day to day and it depends on how you're thinking about it. And it sounds like if I had the benefit of talking to you about this, which I do now, you're right. Like I wouldn't, I probably, well, no, I might say, oh, he's disabled. Like, let's say somebody was unable to work and was on disability. Might say like, oh, is he working anymore? No, he is disabled. He's not, you know, like I could see saying that, like, it's not that wouldn't mean I'm like anti it.

0:27:05 Lydia: Yeah... Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:35 Lydia: No, I agree. I just for me, it's probably not something I use in my everyday.

0:27:40 Thomas: That makes sense. Um, invalid or invalid, probably invalid. I would never say that.

0:27:46 Lydia: No.

0:27:46 Thomas: Uh, with a disability. Yeah, I'd say that, sure. Um, challenged, I would never say that. That's insane. Differently abled, wouldn't say that. Special needs, yes, I would say so. I noticed you didn't answer. Answer. Special needs, I, I think, um, I, when you, when you're saying, oh, he has a child with special needs, I would say that. Oh,

0:27:47 Lydia: I say that. Nope. Yeah, okay. Okay, I think that's fair. And a phrase like that, if it's specific to children, I think what got me caught up in this is that special needs is is so broad where it, you know, this question particularly was about physical challenges for individuals and special needs, for me, I was like, well, I don't know if I would refer to someone who, you know, needs a wheelchair as being special needs necessarily because that's such like a broad brush, but I don't know, and maybe I would in a day-to-day, and and I think you're right too, though, that when we're talking about children that is probably a phrase that's appropriate, yeah.

0:28:16 Thomas: You're right, physically. Physically. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, but but when you say physically, yeah, so here's another thing this is illustrating. People like you might think very accurately and deeply about this stuff. Some people like me try to do that sometimes, but sometimes I lose focus. And so I don't do it. And then I did. And other people answering these surveys would just like you're scrolling through. Oh yeah, that's a bad word. And do use that. Don't use that do use Is that like the reliability of this data is not going to be great. So here's what I did when I did the, what I thought her scoring would be.

And then I did my answers. I scored a four and reminder, an eight is max PC and Cause you get a not PC point for not selecting the PC one. Honestly, that might be why she did it this way. And now it kind of makes sense. So okay. So the reason she did this way is if you are not PC perfectly, you get a negative eight. If you're PC perfectly you get plus eight and the eight is how many items there are. So that kind of make sense, but downside is how wildly the scoring can fluctuate.

0:28:58 Lydia: Mm -hmm, okay. Negative Mm

0:29:35 Thomas: Wait. So I told you that I scored a four. That's under my Rubric. Now I'll go to your Rubric, I'll plug that in. Of a sudden I score a negative two. So, I'm like, I like toward the un -PC just by switching the Rubrik. And you and I agree on like pretty much all this stuff. Like not wildly different. And yet if I take my rubric, I got a four. So I'm reasonably PC. If I take your rubric I got to negative two. So, I'm closer. Closer to Trump than I am to me, I guess, like by that scale. Now, just for fun, if I your answers, now we'll do a switcheroo.

0:29:35 Lydia: Hmm. Mm-hmm, mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:13 Thomas: So, if take your answers and I put them in my rubrics, now let's see how you fare. Okay, you got a perfect zero. You're exactly in the middle on my rubric. But if I take your score on your rubric, a two.

0:30:25 Lydia: Centrist, baby.

0:30:32 Thomas: And again, that was your guess of what she's saying, I guess. So like if we were to guess our own rubrics, then it would always be, we would probably be max PC because that's what we're scoring.

0:30:34 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah, if we get to decide the rules.

0:30:43 Thomas: But exactly. No, so that's why I just want to clarify. We're grading based on what we thought her rubric would be. And we got numbers ranging from four to two to zero to negative two. That's all with like a good faith effort. We were not trying to illustrate a point like I genuinely believe Furthermore, something, something, I think ist really funny. Noted that in the group of words, there are definitely some that are like, boy, that's really bad, right?

0:30:43 Lydia: Right. Yeah Yeah.

0:30:59 Lydia: Honest about this. Yeah mm

0:31:08 Thomas: Crippled, invalid, whatever. By score scoring, if I were to just tick all of them off, what do you think I would get? Would get negative two. So if you just ticked them all off, and then why don't you guess what happens if you selected none of them? Do you think you'd get? That's right. OK, so you got that, but it's kind of counterintuitive.

0:31:08 Lydia: Hmm Mm-hmm I don't know. I just thought it was the inverse.

0:31:29 Thomas: Yeah, you're right, it's always the inverse, but if I select all of mine, I get a four, which is funny because that's what I scored and if I select none of mine, I get a negative four, but leads this me to my point, uh, many about Why this sucks, her way of doing this doesn't account for the fact that if you are not PC, what likely happens is you use more words. You probably probably use not PC ones, but you probably also use the PC ones. It's not as though someone who's anti-PC or not really PC would be like, "Well, I'm going to call them crippleds, but I'm never going to say they're disabled." It's like, no, you'd probably say both, or you'd Probably say handicapped or you you'd say like, yeah, person with a disability. Sure. Maybe I say that sometimes. What talk about this a lot with Jenessa, but if you were trying to do a good faith effort to measure something, what I think it would be is a consciousness of language. Even say like a tolerance or intolerance for other people's bad use of language.

0:31:29 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm hmm.

0:32:23 Thomas: And so that would mean that the people who are PC are probably going to be very careful. And I think that it would make sense to say they're, they're mostly going to choose the PC ones and avoid the non -PC ones, but the people who are not PC are not going to do the opposite. They're about it this way. If you were super racist, you might probably in private, hopefully nowadays, but maybe not so much in private and on the internet, you Might use the N word to describe black people, but you would also say black people. Like, there's no way you wouldn't say that. You wouldn't answer like, well, no, I never say that.

0:32:37 Lydia: Yeah yeah. Yeah. Well, Yeah, that word doesn't get moved out of your brain To never be utilized in any situation ever as long as you live.

0:32:57 Thomas: Exactly. And so that kind of makes the scale. I mean, again, this is just one of a million reasons that makes the scale not make a whole lot of sense. Like you should have done a scoring that accounts for that. The maximum person like David Duke, if you did this scoring with black people, because he's fucking KKK racist against black people. Just to use an example, you would want David Duke to score the max score, you know, or the minimum score, I guess, whatever. Like you him to be the least PC possible. And by this rubric, that's not what would happen because he's also going to say, well, yeah, African -American, black. Yeah, sure. Also, if he answers honestly, he might answer the N word. I don't know.

0:33:16 Lydia: -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:36 Lydia: Because The difference is the carelessness of language, Not the absence of particular words, yeah.

0:33:40 Thomas: Yes. Yes, and further illustrate this, if I take your rubric, I think I already say this. If I said I used all these words, and again, that means you're pretty not PC. Like if you're going to be like, well, yeah, I used physical challenge, but I also use crippled and I also used, you know, that means you're not PC, you would score a negative two.

0:33:46 Lydia: Mm. Wow.

0:34:03 Thomas: If you used all of them, if you just ticked all of which means that's was what I got on yours. So my answers on your scale. Yeah, this is amazing. My answers on scale are the same as if I had answered all of them.

0:34:04 Lydia: Yeah. You Asshole. Crazy.

0:34:16 Thomas: Yep.

0:34:16 Lydia: Well.

0:34:17 Thomas: So this test sucks. That was question 44 and it had eight answers. It seems like it's a fucking mess. But then we also noticed that like, oh, she took a lot of them out of the thing. Cause she started with 200 something questions. And she ended with 32 or something, 30, whatever. And so we were thinking, okay, well, maybe she took out all these shit ones. Like that would be a fair counter argument.

0:34:38 Lydia: Right?

0:34:38 Thomas: If she, if she started with a thing, some of which were confusing and she took out all the bad ones, then, you know, that'd be a good counter argument to us. It'd be like, yeah, okay. Messed up on those questions, but I only kept the ones that worked.

0:34:39 Lydia: Yeah.

0:34:51 Lydia: Yeah. So then we decided, okay, let's look at the final scale and identify a question, a language item from that, and do the same exercise with the question that made it in the final scale for measuring PC. And so this is question 51. And again, just to level set, the prompt is for each definition, select the statement statements you prefer to use in your everyday language. Please be as honest as possible. There's no right or wrong answer. And this one says, someone who is well above one's normal, and then in parentheses, or healthy, weight.

0:35:25 Thomas: Okay.

0:35:26 Lydia: A, fat. B, obese. C, overweight. D, plus size. E, curvy. F, chunky. G, large. H, ample figure. I, person with a portion control problem. And J, person avec a weight problem.

0:35:47 Thomas: Okay. So is one again. She kept this in her scale. Um, we did the same exercise. First, we both picked what we thought she would score. So let's go through it. Fat, I thought she would say that's not PC. Okay.

0:35:55 Lydia: Yep. I agree.

0:36:00 Thomas: Obese, same. Overweight, that's close, but I thought she would think that's not PC, okay. Um, size, I think she thinks that's pc PC. Curvy, same.

0:36:01 Lydia: Yep. I agree. I agree, yes.

0:36:13 Thomas: Chunky, I think not PC. Large, not PC for me.

0:36:14 Lydia: Yes, that's what I put as well. I agree. You

0:36:20 Thomas: Figure, I think she thinks that's PC. Person with a portion control problem, I think she think that's pc.

0:36:29 Lydia: No, you're probably right. I put not PC, but reading through it again, yeah, yeah, no, I agree, yeah, it really really is.

0:36:32 Thomas: Oh, no. I agree with you. In my mind, that's fucking insane. That's the most insulting way you could possibly refer to an an overweight person. I think she thinks that's PC, but

0:36:42 Lydia: I think you're right. And I think I should have done it differently, but there's no way to know.

0:36:44 Thomas: I don't know. No, I don't actually know. Yeah. So we'll keep it the same. Keep it where it is. Person with a weight problem. Put not PC, but I'm not sure. I Think you might be right that that's pc.

0:36:46 Lydia: Yep. I I put PC. So you and I switched

0:36:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:56 Lydia: Those two.

0:36:57 Thomas: Because person with a weight problem, yeah, no, that's, no. I think that's not PC because it, so it does have the person language, which is, you know, in general, that is a thing that PC people or people who just want to be respectful tend to do person forward kind of language. But when you say it's person who fucking sucks or something, that's not going to still be PC. You know what I mean? So like person with a weight problem, I think in her mind, weight problem is like, oh, it's not a problem. They think it's great. You Know, so I don't

0:36:57 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah I

0:37:28 Thomas: Like, but this is why it's so fucking impossible to know. I could see arguments for almost all of these going either way.

0:37:28 Lydia: Don't know. Mm-hmm.

0:37:36 Thomas: That one, we only disagreed on like two, right?

0:37:38 Lydia: Yeah the last two.

0:37:39 Thomas: Yeah, let's see the difference that makes. So now let's talk about what we would say. And again, this is what you might say in your everyday language. Fat, I would say that.

0:37:46 Lydia: Yep I would say that.

0:37:49 Thomas: Obese, I would say that.

0:37:51 Lydia: I probably would not say that yet.

0:37:53 Thomas: Obese, just because in a medical sense, they still say obesity. So I might.

0:37:57 Lydia: Yeah I'm not here to judge you know language choices or anything. It's just not a word I really say, I don't think.

0:38:02 Thomas: Sure, sure. Overweight, for sure. I'd say that I would.

0:38:03 Lydia: Yeah, I would say that.

0:38:06 Thomas: Yeah. Plus size. Absolutely. Curvy. Sure.

0:38:07 Lydia: Yep. I that as well.

0:38:10 Thomas: Chunky. No, I wouldn't say chunky. Large. I think I might say large. I think if you're trying to refer to some person in particular in a group of people, People are like, yeah, that large person over there. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. I could go either way on that. I said I would, but I don't.

0:38:11 Lydia: Nope. I don't think I say large. Yeah. I think I would use one of the other words. Yeah I

0:38:29 Thomas: Ample figure.

0:38:30 Lydia: Would not use that.

0:38:32 Thomas: Put yes, just because I like, maybe I would. But now that, now that you say it's probably not in my everyday language. So I probably should have said no on that, but you know, like again, take a survey, you answer what you think in the moment.

0:38:42 Lydia: Point in time, yeah.

0:38:43 Thomas: Person with a portion control problem is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life.

0:38:45 Lydia: I would never say that,

0:38:46 Thomas: I would never say that. Person with weight problem. I might say that, you know?

0:38:46 Lydia: Yeah I don't really say that either.

0:38:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, so I put, I might. And so, oh, sorry.

0:38:54 Lydia: That wasn't a, that, so like you said

0:38:56 Thomas: I answered

0:38:56 Lydia: That you would because you might oh

0:38:56 Thomas: Yes, because I might use that. Yeah. Sorry. I should have been clarified. So that's quite different. So now we can apply these different possibilities. Now my answers on what I thought her scale was, I'd score a negative two. So I'm, I'm not PC.

0:38:59 Lydia: Okay I see

0:39:13 Thomas: Your your answers on your scale, what do you think you got?

0:39:16 Lydia: Gosh, I... Okay.

0:39:17 Thomas: You got a two. So, we're kind of, again, we are hovering in the middle. I'm apparently, I'm a bad boy. I'm over on the not PC. Now if I take your answers and apply my rubric, you also got a a two. So your score didn't change on my rubric, but if I take mine and I apply your rubric. Got a two.

0:39:30 Lydia: Okay.

0:39:42 Lydia: What?

0:39:43 Thomas: Yeah. That's why it's so dumb. There's so many different combinations of ways you can get stuff that like you can switch them around. You can switch one here and there, and it could be a significant one. So like I could think that chunky is fine. Oh, chunky. That's great. That seems pretty not PC to me. But if I didn't select one of the other ones that's like closer, we'll end up with the same answer because we just switched one out. So those were like all twos, except for my first one by my own standard was a negative two. This is so fucking bad.

0:39:46 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:40:15 Thomas: It's just terrible. And once again, if you said all of them just for fun, we're looking at what that is. Now, either of our scale, it'll be negative two. Yeah. That's a sign of not a good questionnaire.

0:40:27 Lydia: So, Any language that you use to describe a person is politically incorrect for that, uh, characteristic if

0:40:34 Thomas: No, it's if, if, you are willing to know if you're willing to use any of them, we think you should be like negative eight.

0:40:36 Lydia: To use any Any Of It Right. Exactly.

0:40:41 Thomas: I not if it's some of the super PC ones. So like the max PC score should be, you'd use most of them, but not like, oh, person with a something, something, you know, like those ones. To answer all of them and get a negative two, if you answer none of them you get a two. If you just skip the question, you get a two.

0:40:41 Lydia: Yeah.

0:40:50 Lydia: Man, After.

0:40:58 Thomas: Yeah, this is garbage. It's an absolutely garbage survey with meaningless results. And it gets worse in 700 different ways. So right. So we've gone through some of these questions and they're absolutely terrible. The results have incredible variability and we only went through two. There's like 200 of these fucking things. Some of them are absolutely stupid. Some of whom I think are literally the opposite of what she wants to show. Like, because me give you another one. 42. Referring to someone when you do not know their name. A, that guy. B, that person.

0:41:33 Thomas: Yep. I'd use both of them because if it was a guy, I'd say it was a guy. If it was not a guy I'd probably say that girl but I don't see that girl as an option so that person.

0:41:33 Lydia: Those, I'd Also Use Other things Too. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:42 Thomas: You're supposed to select as many as you want that you would use in your everyday language. If it's a guy, I would say, yeah, that guy. I'm not going to not say that, what, guess maybe the ultra PC would be like, I would never ever say, and by the way, it's "someone when you do not know their name." That doesn't even make sense. That should be when you don't know their gender identity. Because then if it was referring to someone when you, well, no, but they're trying to find us PC people.

0:41:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, But That Doesn't exist according To these people, so yeah, oh, That's True, all right, yeah.

0:42:13 Thomas: When you don'T know their name, I could absolutely, someone could literally have a giant sign that says he, him on them, but I don't know their name so I can be like, wow, that dude, that guy over there says he, him, they use he, them, that's a bit, whatever. And to call him that person would be kind of weird. Like, well, you've, you told me you want me to use your pronouns, that, dude, hey, dude man, what's up, dude. And that would be the maximum PC thing. But if she had asked referring to someone when you don't their gender identity, then I would just say probably them. I'd say they, them that, you know, Oh, them over there, that person, that individual, maybe. I don't know. And not PC people, they wouldn't say that guy, you wouldn't make any sense. They wouldn't see that girl. Like, if you ask that question, it have to asked, how do you refer to someone someone who presents differently than what their pronouns are, according to them.

0:42:13 Lydia: Fair enough, retract. Yeah.

0:42:23 Lydia: Yeah.

0:43:04 Thomas: And then assholes would say, oh, I use how they present. And anyone with a heart and a brain would use the pronouns that they want you to use.

0:43:13 Lydia: I I think you touched on this in one of our million other hours of recording, that a really good way that this could have been accomplished was with building scenarios And presenting the scenario in front of the person and saying, like, what would you call this person? What, who is this in This Picture, or in this video, or something, like you could, you could approach this in a way that I think would be meaningful and interpretable. And instead, we just ended up with nonsense.

0:43:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, and by the way, that is on MTurk. I've poked around on MTURK. You can, like, maybe it's a different kind of MTURk, but you you can absolutely have people identify what's in an image. That's actually not very hard too. So like you could plug in an image. I don't know if maybe that doesn't work with the survey, but I don't know why I wouldn't. Like you should be able to do that.

0:43:57 Lydia: Yeah. But but then, Like you don't have to, you know, come up with this explanation at the beginning

0:44:01 Thomas: Yeah, that would be way easier. Then you could have all the fucking PC nightmare stuff that you think is ruining the world. You could put a guy with a beard in a dress and be like, what would you call that person? You know? And then the PC people would be like, well, actually, I still don't know for sure because it might be a dude who likes to wear dresses or a woman who has a beard. It could be either of those two things.

0:44:22 Thomas: And it's funny because here's thing she says over and over, and it now because I probably won't end up playing it, but even in the latest interview she did, she talks about to no end, hey, here's the reason people on the left are so wrong. They can't even understand our mindset. So they keep using their mindset to to interpret what we are, and it just gets it all wrong. And she's like, I'm competitive and I like to try to win. That doesn't mean I'm like dumb. And she has some random thing that's like a terrible example because it doesn't even, that never comes up on, only example is terrible, but she talks about it all the time. And she is 1 million percent guilty of the exact same thing, but worse, because she's not able to even get in the mindset of someone who is quote-unquote woke or PC enough to like ask questions that would actually find that out and

0:44:02 Lydia: Yep, Yeah, Yep, Yeah, You mean You don't call an elderly person chronologically advantaged, it Says Advantaged, I guess, because Because they have more years to them.

0:45:17 Thomas: Advantage, disadvantage, right? Wait, What? Yeah, No, I don't call it all reversing chronologically advantaged. Oh man, okay, that's, believe it or not, we're only just beginning on how stupid this fucking study is. And I'm excited because next episode we're going to be speaking with an expert to get even more critique of this. And don't, I even think people are prepared for how bad this is, how bad it's science. Jordan Peterson and Christine Brophy are. It's nonsense. Nonsense, and episode, expert, Dr. take us through why. So excited for that, and we'll see you then.

0:45:49 Lydia: See you then!

0:46:22 Thomas: Hold on. I'm unzipping my thing. Just my sweat. I got hot under the collar. I can't even believe how bad this is. Oh, my God. Now that I've drawn attention to it, I'm going to take it all the way up. Okay.

0:46:23 Lydia: You unzipping your pants. Oh, man. Centrist, baby.