WTW146: Jordan Peterson Has One (1) Study Proving Activists Are Psychopaths

Transcript

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

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:00:11 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:00:19 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M &M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:44 Lydia: Hello, I'm good, ready to get back into it.

0:00:47 Thomas: Yeah. What are we getting back into?

0:00:49 Lydia: Getting back into Jordan Peterson writing for The Telegraph about how any efforts to combat climate change is just a left-wing vanity project, essentially, and an effort to destroy capitalism. So we shouldn't. You know, that makes sense.

0:01:05 Thomas: We shouldn't destroy capitalism. Does he have any sources for that? I guess we'll grant him that for fun. We'll pretend we don't want to destroy capitalism and

0:01:17 Lydia: Obviously this article, as we mentioned in the previous episode, is so long. It's like quintessential Jordan Peterson. We've been sorting through it at a pace that does match what he has written. But I'm really trying to clue in on the really important parts that I wanted to debunk to address that we could laugh about in some cases too. And so today we're going to continue that journey a bit. Thing that we are going to be talking about quite a bit, I think today is related to a study that I actually had to message you and Jenessa because I was like, wait, we've talked about this. But here's the thing. We haven't talked about this study, we have talked about to and try track down when we talked about this. It's actually back in WTW 43, when we talking about Christine Brophy, her master's thesis.

0:02:10 Thomas: God, I'll never forget that.

0:02:11 Lydia: Yeah. And so some of those elements that we talked then are kind of popping up now, but I think in a different way. And this study is not a master's published in a peer -reviewed journal. And it's getting manipulated and kind of like weaponized by a lot of right -wing figures, Jordan Peterson just being one of them. So I'm excited to dig into that study a little bit more about what it says, what it doesn't say, and how it's being used in those spaces. So we can kind of keep an eye out for that too moving forward in the future.

0:02:12 Thomas: So stupid. Yeah, man. He managed to find a study that wasn't just a terrible master's thesis that remember when he, man, I, part of me is like, we covered so much.

0:02:49 Lydia: I want to re -listen to those episodes.

0:02:51 Thomas: Yeah. We've covered so many, so much stuff. That's like, Oh, we should do a revisit. We should start doing that segment. Uh, just remember when it was like, they kept saying, Oh we've got the, we haven't published it yet, but man. We've got this study that shows how shitty everyone I don't like is.

0:02:55 Lydia: Know. Yep, exactly.

0:03:10 Thomas: It's just, we're just finishing up just little touches, you know, here and there. Just, we got to print it. You know, we gotta, yeah.

0:03:17 Lydia: I swear. It's coming out. Coming

0:03:19 Thomas: So my printer ran out of ink, so I gotta do that. But it's, I mean, it's so close. It just never came out, right? Yeah.

0:03:20 Lydia: Out right away. Yeah. My dog ate the printer. Yeah, no,

0:03:28 Thomas: Good times.

0:03:28 Lydia: I mean, I've never seen it. I know. Is she still coaching basketball? I'm not sure. But I would love to do a revisit of some of these folks and, you know, where are they now kind of thing.

0:03:38 Thomas: Well, where are they now? That's what we're going to talk about today with Jordan Peterson. He's just on deathbed, maybe he's on his in his sickbed, trying as a last gasp to ruin the earth a little bit more. Just, you know, dedicated to that cause.

0:03:42 Lydia: Typing from his home in Florida. Yeah Yep.

0:03:54 Lydia: -hmm. Probably with his AC on as is his right.

0:03:59 Thomas: All right. No, Mom Donnie took all those rights away. Not just for New York. Everywhere. Yeah.

0:04:03 Lydia: Shoot yeah you're right everywhere yeah

0:04:04 Thomas: It's the jackbooted thugs.

0:04:06 Lydia: We should send the FBI to go remove his air conditioning unit you know since that's the law

0:04:11 Thomas: I say in my freezing room that again is freezing and I love it.

0:04:13 Lydia: You need a blanket oh

0:04:15 Thomas: My solar generating more power than we're using by quite a bit right now. So I'm cranking up that AC. If everybody did it, if we all had solar, we all anyway, I won't get on it again. But it's truly if we just it's that Onion article headline from. 20 years ago that was like scientists say all the renewable energy is ready like whenever or whatever something like that like just whenever everyone wants to do it yeah

0:04:19 Lydia: There you go whenever you want to pick it up yeah wow

0:04:41 Thomas: Even more true now but anyway well covered that we'll it more uh take a break and uh hey please support the show patreon .com where there's will get the bonuses get the uh ads and uh get the satisfaction of knowing you're supporting lydia's sexy voice

0:04:55 Lydia: Until until it heals and then it's gone wow geez you guys

0:04:57 Thomas: And then you're fired. No, I'm definitely fired before you. There's no no question. All right. We'll take a break and then we'll get to it.

0:05:11 Thomas: I still have this article open. And, you know, I think we're skipping a bit because, like you said, I mean, there's no such thing. What do you think the world record for Jordan, the personal the PR personal record for Jordan Peterson shortest article is? Do you think he's ever written anything that's under? Just infuriating an amount of paragraphs. I don't even know what it would be.

0:05:30 Lydia: I do word count. I don't know how to approximate that. No, seriously I think that in the same way that he can just drone on and on and in an audio format, which we have subjected ourselves to time and time again, obviously he can do the exact same thing in the written word as this article demonstrates. So we are going to skip. Quite a bit. Sampling of what we're going to skip just because it's, this is, I mean, I talk about jack off motion for gavel gavel. This is jack off it merely coincidental that socialism in extreme forms appears to be precisely the system necessitated by the, quote, reality of industrial CO2 production? Or is it too cynical to suggest that such remarkable convenience might explain why interpretations other than, quote CO2 equals catastrophe might have been systematically marginalized? Even at the level of allowable facts. Let us be clear, this is not science. It is instead the subordination of science to ideology at every stage from data selection to conclusion. It the quote science justified derogation and persecution of dissenters from the claim that quote the realities of climate demand socialism.

0:06:38 Thomas: Okay, all right. This is all, sir, this is a Wendy's, or it's the...

0:06:43 Lydia: It is the willingness, and I'm not done, it is a willingness to wield the prestige of science as a cudgel while denying any motivation other than pure objectivity.

0:06:47 Thomas: Grandpa, I, uh... Well, I've got to go. If we, you know, get back home, got to...

0:06:54 Lydia: This holds, even if we assume they're interventionist catastrophism.

0:06:55 Thomas: Everything George Beardson does, we could just overdub someone in a home who's trying to, like, stop visiting Grandpa. Okay. Right, yeah. No, I... Uh -huh.

0:07:06 Lydia: So then the next part I want to say, though, is this, yes, that's a great question.

0:07:08 Thomas: Well, hold on. What did that even mean? Is it merely coincidental that socialism... Great

0:07:13 Lydia: That's the question we should ask for every Jordan Peterson piece ever.

0:07:14 Thomas: Question that no one's ever asked. That socialism in its extreme forms appears to be precisely the system necessitated by the quote -unquote reality of industrial CO2 production. Okay, so he's saying convenient that everyone thinks the solution to global warming is socialism.

0:07:24 Lydia: Like, oh, convenient. Exactly. About that?

0:07:33 Thomas: We... Look. Consenting I adults want to do, you could capitalism the hell out of climate change and still do well on climate change. Like it's think it's socialism would help.

0:07:43 Lydia: As long as there's programs, yeah, that kind leave poor people in the dust.

0:07:46 Thomas: Would love to have a bunch of people killed. That's fewer customers. It's just short -term thinking. Capitalism doesn't have an automatic mechanism that makes it take the long view. It only takes the long only as rational as the people in it. A lot of the economics theory, I did go to business school. I kind of almost remember it. But it's all based on the idea of a rational market, of an efficient, rational, informed market. And those are very powerful. It is really interesting. A lot it does. But again, if the oil companies have... purchased information or disinformation rather to

0:07:51 Lydia: Yeah. Reduce your customer base. Yeah.

0:08:31 Thomas: Where people don't understand. And are people who at the top making decisions who care way more about the short term health of their job and their shareholders and their profit than long term, then, yeah, like it's just not going to work. But I mean, I don't even think you need to say we have to get rid of capitalism to solve climate change. It's just capitalism is a big cause of climate change, it

0:08:41 Lydia: And their personal profit. But I think there's also an interesting impact of actually employing a lot of these measures, like we talked about with Australia, where there is a socialist aspect to what's happening in Australia, they have more power than they could ever want, basically, where they've just made it free. That is something that is not capitalist, but it's just a downstream impact that benefits everybody with no basically? What is the downside of that situation? Does Jordan Peterson think that, no, we should figure out a way to hoard that stored solar energy and then sell it back to the customers that are actually generating it? Or do they have a right to just have free power? Don' think that's a bad thing. So moving on to this willful blindness section. Situation looks even bleaker, however, when we abandon such naivete and consider the darker psychological elements inevitably at play. That's hyperlinked. So I followed that and I want to talk about it.

0:09:48 Thomas: Sounds like the dark triad.

0:09:50 Lydia: It's George Orwell who infamously posed the key question, is the typical socialist motivated by genuine concern for the oppressed and working class or by resentment of order and envious hatred of the productive and successful? In other words, is socialism still insisted upon by the CO2 warriors, a movement of love or of hate? So I clicked on this darker psychological elements thing, and it's a link to something he wrote in the Telegraph back in. 2025 so just last year I guess um it's titled net zero alarmism is a mental illness I was like wow that sounds really reasonable climate hysteria and policies to quote cure it are the work of a cabal of ill -informed narcissistic worshipers of fear and force no he started off with sob story again, because it's Jordan Peterson. In 2023, I was sentenced in Canada by the Ontario College.

0:10:26 Thomas: Zero alarmism oh who was slightly warm this time who was uncomfortably warm and then without ac this time

0:10:48 Lydia: He said he was sentenced to a period of professional re -education, in quotes, for what has been deemed my unprofessional conduct. And it's like, again? I'm sorry. You keep doing this to yourself. But he said part of my unprofessionalism was apparently illustrated in the submission of the entire transcript by a random complainant to said college of a conversation I had with Joe Rogan on his podcast, accompanied by the allegation that I had stepped out of my lane as a psychologist. How? By daring to share my opinion that the economic models purporting to indicate catastrophic future danger caused by the apparently impending climate change apocalypse were false and unreliable and by implying something yada, yada.

0:10:55 Thomas: Man yeah that that is that is out of your lane what are you talking about Oh, they say I went out of my lane as a psychologist. How? By claiming To know how to run this nuclear Power plant. Put on the hat I'm in charge now and they're saying I'm out of My lane. Yeah, that's what Happened.

0:11:37 Lydia: So, So this is just a sob piece about how he wanted to talk about climate change and purported to be an expert on a podcast on a very highly consumed podcast to a large number of people. So they could rest on his laurels as you know, PhD and

0:11:55 Thomas: His whole narcissistic shtick, he's incapable of speaking as though he's not the expert on whatever he's saying. Like anything he's you know, and he knows that his sycophants are going to think it's the God's delivered truth because he's such a fucking genius.

0:12:10 Lydia: He goes on and on again. This is another article that is so freaking long. So I'm not going to get into it because that's of what I wanted to do was to end up in another article by Jordan Peterson from a year ago where he just complains about net zero and of the people that believe that that is something we should be working towards or any sort of climate change improvements at all. That was just the first piece of it where I was like, oh, what's he going to get into here? And it's not just that he thinks that the left is out to destroy capitalism. He it a cabal in that article I just read, right? He thinks people who are pushing towards this of change are evil. He truly, truly thinks that these people are evil, and so skipping along in the same section back into the willful blindness, yeah,

0:12:57 Thomas: So can we talk about that, part that now? For one, I want to say everybody who's not Jordan Peterson is a cabal to Jordan Peterson. I think it's just you're a cabale until proven otherwise from him. Yeah, this idea, this is something I was thinking about after recording the first part of this. And it's something I I remember back to as a young conservative, which is this obsession with everyone's motives all the time. Because Like you don't really have. Else to stand on you know so it's always about oh well they don't even care about those people why are they holding the signs and protesting that's dumb it's not even going to do anything like it's just an obsession with the minute stuff so like this george orwell thing which I've never heard of this before but him asking is the typical socialist motivated by genuine concern for the oppressed or by resentment blah blah who cares I could not care less What a typical socialist, by the way, in George Orwell's time cared about. Or there are pure motives

0:13:54 Lydia: It results

0:13:55 Thomas: Or not. I don't give a shit. Do the motives of the capitalists are pure? What does that matter? Like, just tell me the arguments. Give me your argument. But it's this obsession with like trying to find hypocrisy and trying to look into the motives you to everything else to just focus in on like oh one person might be hypocritical and you they don't really believe in their socialism I don't care it doesn't matter sorry

0:13:55 Lydia: In benefits for everybody, yeah. It's funny that you bring that up because that's really going to be a aspect of this study that I think he's referencing. He doesn't directly link to it, but based off of my research, I'm pretty sure and where this is talked about elsewhere in media, pretty sure he specifically is talking about this study. So let me scroll down a little bit further to an alternative world in this section. Are we then to conclude that much of the science and quotes surrounding industrial CO2 has been corrupted by self -serving obfuscation, if not outright deception, that the errors of anti -industrial activists have been driven by motives far removed from, indeed, often antithetical to genuine concern for the planet or poor. By championing catastrophe, they have justified their preferred economic theories, played at moral heroism, squandered a fortune and achieved next to nothing for the environment and the world's most vulnerable. This self -anointed sainthood has enabled the demonization of those who built the energy systems that powered western prosperity while I yeah

0:15:22 Thomas: Will think of the poor a cold oil barons

0:15:26 Lydia: Also um aggrandizing activists whose record of economic failure and authoritarian excess is a matter of history. Research sharpens the portrait, linking the revolutionary strain of leftist activism to antagonistic narcissism and outright psychopathy, and notably to no measurable commitment to social justice whatsoever.

0:15:42 Thomas: Up oh okay so are you committed to social justice or oh

0:15:49 Lydia: So let's talk about this. Is, from what I can gather, this is An a article published in Current Psychology back in 2023 by.

0:15:58 Thomas: Yeah he doesn't link anything

0:15:59 Lydia: Nope, he does not. This is kind of a lot of the right wing folks have been talking about this study. Definitely these researchers just based off of their. Of work that I've seen. Are two affiliated with the University of Bern, Anne Crispins and Alexander Bertrams. And this is titled Understanding Left -Wing Authoritarianism, Relations to the Dark Personality Traits, Altruism and Social Justice Commitment. The study right. But I don't think we've talked about this. I've dug around in the archives, you guys. And so forgive me if I've missed it. The very least, we're going to spend some time talking about it because I want to talk about how the right -wing media has characterized it, how Jordan Peterson has characterized what it actually says, and some other interesting things here. The first thing that you know is the... study was done through basically two different panels, and it focused on the United States. The first study was about 390 people, and the second study was

0:16:25 Thomas: We have for sure talked about like almost exactly this hmm

0:17:03 Lydia: A left-wing authoritarianism scale it's not leftist activism climate activism like these are all specific things right like let's talk about what we're talking about um the scale is specifically this idea of left wing authoritarianism. They getting samples of climate activists. They waren't getting examples of people just on the left. They warn't getting sample. You know what I mean? Like like

0:17:26 Thomas: Because I do remember part of Brophy's thing was like, oh, she's either or the left -wing authoritarianism scale. They have one for the right, but nobody's made one forthe left because it barely exists. And there's maybe some elements you can point to. So they're using a left -wing authoritarianism scale, and then they're doing what with it? Like,

0:17:46 Lydia: And in the study, they used narcissism from the five factor narcissism inventory. And then they also measured altruism using self -report altruisms scale that's been developed. Self -report questionnaires, single point in time, right? Like there's nothing that was really experimental done here. There are three sub -dimensions of this LWA index. -conventionalism, top -down censorship. So the anti -conventionism is this rigid... refer to it as progressive moralizing, but just kind of going against the grain, right?

0:18:21 Thomas: That's interesting. I don' t remember that element, so maybe this is a different scale.

0:18:26 Lydia: Top -down censorship, you know, using institutions to monitor speech.

0:18:30 Thomas: Already a problem if you aren't filtering for actual people on the left versus right, because actually people on

0:18:38 Lydia: And anti-hierarchical aggression, that violent revolution against existing hierarchies within country or whatever, that that is justified.

0:18:49 Thomas: And no libertarians have ever been mad at

0:18:52 Lydia: Exactly. So study one, they that the total score on the LWA index correlated with narcissism, kind of weekly, but they said, oh, there's a correlation there, but it is weekly. .178 was the R -score there. Then it correlated more meaningfully with, you broke it down into the subscales of things, with the neuroticism subscale of narcissism specifically.

0:19:07 Thomas: That's not much. Huh. That doesn't really make sense to me. But OK.

0:19:21 Lydia: So grandiosity, extroversion, those elements of narcissism had nothing to do with the LWA score. You know, if you were higher LWA, the only like the most meaningful relationship was that you were a higher on the neuroticism subscale of narcissists. You controlled for age, gender and social desirability bias that they measured, that link disappeared completely. So then there was like there's no. correlation now between narcissism, any of the subscales, and left -wing authoritarian index. The only relationship that actually survived the controls was a specific subscale within the LWA, anti -hierarchical aggression, and that was predicted by antagonistic narcissism. And they say that this is a trait cluster defined by entitlement, manipulativeness, and lack of empathy.

0:20:08 Thomas: I would completely predict this. Yeah. A I So mean, my dad was very anti -authority, like in certain ways.

0:20:20 Lydia: And he was not left -wing.

0:20:21 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah, it's like narcissists are the ones who don't like anyone telling them what to do.

0:20:27 Lydia: Exactly. And so this anti -hierarchical aggression is not something that exists only on the left. It can exist on the right. It's like this idea that antagonistic narcissism, that entitlement, manipulativeness, of empathy, and you being left, like those things don't go together. Not necessarily like they're not unique to each other they can exist regardless yeah

0:20:54 Thomas: That plus like left -wing politics, you mean? Yeah.

0:20:58 Lydia: Then we had study two with 377 people, completely different sample, and they were looking at the short, dark triad, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, very like Jordan Peterson wheelhouse stuff, right? The anti -hierarchical aggression subscale, so cluing into that, and social justice commitment. Study two, again, we should expect that anti - hierarchical aggression, subscale. To to the narcissism of the short dark triad. They couldn't replicate it. So it just completely disappeared. However, what did predict the anti -hierarchical aggression was psychopathy and Machiavellianism, which also makes sense, right? They did a full regression model to kind of like further, you what they were seeing here. And psychopathy remained significant. Narcissism dropped out. So like, it's just this thing where this is pretty early stuff. And the researchers were honest about that, too. Of all, the pattern that they found here, which also fell apart in so many ways, they were like, what we did find, it's not unique to the left. Individuals, regardless of political background, will use activism to satisfy their own ego

0:21:42 Thomas: Whatever. Yeah,

0:22:18 Lydia: Rather than having genuine belief in the cause. I think that's interesting because it's like, well, if it furthers the cause, then what does that matter?

0:22:27 Thomas: Also don't even know, I don't know what they're basing that on, but I don' even know that that's any part of what the results you just told me are.

0:22:34 Lydia: There was one other thing where it was that social justice commitment was positively correlated with anti -hierarchical aggression. So if you are committed to social justice causes, you're more likely to endorse that.

0:22:41 Thomas: That's nothing. Yeah. Probably mad at the people at the top who are making shitty happen.

0:22:50 Lydia: And that whatever is necessary is necessary kind of thing. Yeah.

0:22:54 Thomas: I have seen, I mean, there was, I don't know if this is it, but there was a study somewhat recently, uh, probably a couple of years by now that I remember making headlines that was like, oh, there's, there are, you know, some amount of the leftist activists or whatever. Like it's, actually narcissists. And it's like, yeah, of course there's they're everywhere. Here's the funny thing. They also might actually want better outcomes. Things to Like be better for people.

0:23:22 Lydia: Exactly. Exactly. I think the question is, do you then follow that person like as leader? If that person's a leader, you know, like being a little more aware of that. I don't think that that's a bad thing necessarily. Like that's probably good knowledge to have. That's how you end up with cults. But in terms of like if you are rallying behind a cause, yeah, I don' know. Like there are going to be people who are narcissists regardless of the cause, I think, no matter what. Yeah. The authors, they've done, as I said, this is a little bit their wheelhouse. This

0:23:46 Thomas: This is worthless. Trying to find a way to prove that leftists are evil or whatever?

0:23:55 Lydia: I don't think that's necessarily it, because they did another study where they found this similar pattern with pro -life, you know, anti -abortion people also. So, again, they're. Their credit, they have evidence there too where they're trying to indicate, hey, this is not a left wing. We're not trying to take down the left with this research. We are trying to say this might be something to keep an eye out for, which I think we all kind of know. A problem just in leadership generally anyway.

0:24:24 Thomas: Yeah. What percentage of CEOs are narcissists? I mean, I feel like that one, I'm not sure. I don't remember if that was a myth or not, but it's And it's also, once again, who cares? You are trying so hard to link up some bad trait you think that people will be scared of to like the... times removed part of what could be arguably left -wing authoritarianism. It's nowhere near. That's what we found with Jordan Peterson. Back when we did that at the time, which is he'll take the most bare semblance of some kind of result that has a tiny statistical significance. And in his mind, because he's such a binary person or something, or he's a liar or both, that just goes down as leftists are evil. It's like you

0:24:28 Lydia: Politicians. Yeah.

0:25:09 Thomas: Mean because there was like a point one correlation of like narcissism, some. Element of dark triad something that kind of correlated with some element of some element it's stupid it's fucking it's just dishonest and lying yeah

0:25:25 Lydia: And he uses research that's done in this space, including this article, to try and say that, you know, the left is going too far, that the left has an unchecked authoritarian streak. Uses like a different correlational coefficient from a uncontrolled correlation in a different paper. Even though like they have controlled models within this, right, like they tried to control for age, gender, all of those things that I mentioned, social desirability bias. There is a related paper that looks into this, too, where they don't control for those factors. And so the correlation is higher. He'll use that a lot. Other like right wing outlets will take this paper. They have taken this paper and then they start. Like interchanging narcissism and left -wing authoritarianism, saying that like they're the same thing because of, you know, they're related. And so, you left people are narcissists, etc., etc. any sort of activism that might be left coded in like the tiniest way, they'll use the study to say like, there they go again, those narcissists.

0:26:10 Thomas: There's truly nothing here Again, all I care about is tell me the merit. You know, let's go over the merits of the fucking arguments, dude. I don't care if you can try to prove that some people within something might be slightly correlated to have maybe bad motives. That's nothing.

0:26:42 Lydia: Yep. This idea also, like, like you have this and he has been looking at similar, you know related stuff for the last 10 years plus, right? Again, with that Brophy master's thesis and the little PR stunt that they did there with Lauren Southern and, you is going anything that I bet you he has Google Alerts set for this, like anything that is going to pop up in this way. Yeah, true. Well, Michaela Peterson probably set it up for him.

0:27:08 Thomas: He He doesn't know how to do a Google. Yeah. Yeah,

0:27:17 Lydia: I actually happened in this study? Not a lot, right? Authors have been very honest about it, that they've specifically said within that study, it's not only for the left, that shouldn't be surprising when you think about, okay, what kind of people are drawn to activism, people that are not happy with the status quo. And you're going to get a range of people that aren't happy with status quo and what they think is reasonable to do when they are going against the status That is just so unsurprising to me that sometimes you will have people who believe anything is up for grabs, right? You should be able to do anything. If you are upset, if you feel injustice has been committed or something is being done to a group of people that are being oppressed, there are going to be people that I can do anything, whatever I can think of in my power to address that. Why is that surprising? These researchers have been really interested in what they call the dark ego vehicle principle. And when I was looking up a little bit more on this, I Dark ego. Yeah, exactly.

0:28:34 Thomas: The Cybertruck, right? The Dark

0:28:39 Lydia: Was a similar article that they did that came out. It was titled Higher Narcissism is Associated with Greater Involvement in Feminist Activism. And I was like, OK. And when I clicked on some of the comments here, people did a great job, you kind of tearing this a little bit apart anyway. Know, one of the pieces of the article is that. Individuals with the so-called dark personalities are attracted to political and social activism, not for the achievement of pro-social goals, but to repurpose the activism to satisfy their specific ego a user said, doesn't sound particularly controversial. A depressingly significant aspect of participating in activism is identifying the people who are only there to feed their own egos and trying to the minimize harm that they cause. What the study does not show and doesn't ever try to show is that this correlation is more common in progressive or feminist activism.

0:29:30 Lydia: But if this correlation is a real thing, then a similar study aimed at conservative activists would likely have similar results. If the study is accurate, it only shows that narcissistic people are drawn to activism, not which types of activism they are drawn in particular.

0:29:43 Thomas: And it says nothing about the activism itself and what the important arguments are, whether it's good or not. Doesn't matter.

0:29:51 Lydia: A similar posting, someone had said, you know, we did this already. We already talked about this. Here's the link to it. And their response was, they don't report the number or percentage of people, and this is this particular study about the feminism, they large, this study has zero bearing on the real world outside their lab. The way they report their results makes it impossible to draw any meaningful inferences. I see this kind of stuff. Especially And if you see Jordan Peterson sharing anything like this, you say what he thinks it says, what he's trying to make it say. And I won't even say like what he

0:30:34 Thomas: Yeah, I don't know. Who knows? I mean, we wrestled over that before where it's like, is he this dumb or a liar? It's just hard to know. One or the other.

0:30:44 Lydia: Now keep in mind, like we just did this entire deep dive on something that he didn't bother to link in the article. Me me read this again, just how he phrased this. Recent research sharpens the portrait, linking the revolutionary strain of leftist activism to antagonistic narcissism and outright psychopathy, and notably to no measurable commitment to social justice whatsoever.

0:31:09 Thomas: That's not anything of what that was.

0:31:11 Lydia: No, and it's the left. It's not leftist activism. Like, first of all, no to all these linkings that you're saying anyway, because they disappeared half the time.

0:31:20 Thomas: Of that was true in any way.

0:31:22 Lydia: That And not just assigning it to leftists, but now framing it in this incredibly long piece specific to climate activism. Now he's trying to like pull it out, tease it, you know, take this thing and put on his expert hat. You know, I'm a PhD and I look at psychology papers all the time. And recent research has said this about leftist activism.

0:31:45 Lydia: And here's a left activism. Yeah. Yeah, it's. Mean, we've called before from him. This is another level to me. Like, I don't think he's necessarily like profiting off of this. It's almost like the reality in his head, like this to me is like a window into what he's created.

0:31:44 Thomas: Yeah, I can't link it, but... Well, is not printable. Like, whoever's publishing this, this This is garbage.

0:32:06 Lydia: Yes, it is garbage. It is garbage Why can't you ask for a link here? Oh because it probably would demonstrate Here's the thing though. No one clicks on the links only we click on the links and our amazing listeners, but Yeah. But for whatever reason, let me not put a link here. And let me just tell you recent what research, not even crediting authors or anything like that. So someone could track it down. You have have to to put in a lot of work to try and figure out what the heck he's talking about. It doesn't even say what he says it says. And wants to apply it to the specific group so he can keep tearing down climate activists because that's aligned with the telegraph. Their agenda because of their connection with the organizations that are you know the climate denial groups so on to this so we can just kind of hear how he wants to wrap up this article an inconvenient truth stands not as a noble wake -up call but as one of the most influential works of propaganda in modern history it demoralized generation crippled energy production

0:32:16 Thomas: There are lots of other links. Did

0:33:05 Lydia: And in claiming its mantle compromised the moral authority of science itself man we could have chosen a different path clean affordable abundant energy and with it widespread I know we're on the same side then that's the path we want and with widespread prosperity and genuine environmental progress instead we embraced radical leftist lies, subsidized inferior alternatives, paraded our false virtue, and radically extended state control over what should have remained a matter of private choice, all while insisting that our only motivation was the pursuit of objective truth. Guys remember this started about ACs, AC units.

0:33:05 Thomas: It? Sure Sure didn't. What? That's what they want? That what... Sorry. Yeah.

0:33:48 Lydia: How did we get here?

0:33:49 Thomas: Geez.

0:33:50 Lydia: Jesus Christ. A movement of genuine love builds. It measures itself by what the impoverished gain. A moment of resentment and hate, by contrast, wishes to tear down, obstruct, and punish whatever the cost. The result is a poorer, more desperate world. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full because it wouldn't be a Jordan Peterson piece unless we could cite the Bible. Here's a parting shot at those who, despite all this, remain committed to the apocalyptic CO2 narrative and its call for a green revolution. Let's say that we had managed to divert just $7 trillion or $8 trillion of all the trillions that have been funneled into so -called energy, quote, transition, harvested from taxpayers and energy consumers.

0:34:13 Thomas: Harvested from taxpayers. Okay.

0:34:39 Lydia: That money is coming from taxpayers anyway.

0:34:40 Thomas: Don't know about that No,

0:34:42 Lydia: It was just being assigned to a particular thing.

0:34:43 Thomas: It's like energy companies are using money to build infrastructure. I don't even know how much. I mean, maybe there's subsidies, but there's also oil subsidies, or there were. I would need more detail than just his overall worldwide number of how world spent on renewables for that time period.

0:35:02 Lydia: So then he asks, what could we have done instead?

0:35:04 Thomas: -hmm.

0:35:05 Lydia: His first option here is consider nuclear power, which I is is contentious. I mean, like like that is something that I think the left is split on. Some people on the left are for it. Some you've done some some regarding nuclear power. So you're more well versed in it than I am.

0:35:20 Thomas: I'm pro nuclear. That's something the climate movement, I disagreed mostly on them. It was kind of mixed. Think a lot of people wanted to build more nuclear, but it's also like, it's not even that the right is pro nuclear necessarily. Like that's just a it's a nimby thing. It's like not easy to get that built. Like already starting at this idiot sentence of let's say that we could just divert the seven trillion. Yeah. OK, if you or I get to control where seven or eight trillion goes, I'm pretty sure we could do like really good stuff that by our definitions. But that's just not how that works. Like the complicated. These are you're talking about hundreds of different potential like countries and entities and what they spent. How how would you possibly do that? It doesn't make any sense.

0:36:05 Lydia: He thinks like that is primarily what we should have done because the cost would have been five five, and a half billion for each nuclear reactor to address this and that, you know, here's all the things that could have happened. It would have also helped water security because then you can use that to power desalination plants, which tend to be a little more costly. If the electricity costs less, that would also slash those prices, et cetera, et he closes it with tens of trillions of kilowatt hours from an expanded nuclear fleet. We could desalinate hundreds of billions of cubic meters annually, enough to irrigate dry lands and grow even more crops, reverse aquifer depletion, and eliminate drought as a civilizational threat. That's where he ends it. And it's like this idea that the left doesn't agree with those goals.

0:36:39 Thomas: Dude. Yeah. Are you doing that? What are you doing for that?

0:36:51 Lydia: I'm sorry, like why in the world are you framing this that like climate activists don't think that those are, we're aligned. We're aligned, aren't we? On the things that we want. We do want to address all of those things.

0:37:04 Thomas: It's cuz he's an idiot or a liar or both God, it's just fundamentally. It's just a Rush Limbaugh conservative like that's all it's all this is No

0:37:07 Lydia: Ridiculous. Man. And, you know, and folks, if you want to read more from Jordan Peterson exclusively for The Telegraph, here's some headlines for you. Eco extremists are leading the world towards despair, poverty and starvation.

0:37:20 Thomas: Didn't we just read that?

0:37:27 Lydia: We are sacrificing our children on the altar of a brutal far left ideology. Trans activism is sexist and delusional and why I love Great Britain.

0:37:35 Thomas: That one's just like tourism.

0:37:45 Lydia: Just like took me for a ride, though, you guys. You know, thankfully, we're not the only people that have been kind of tearing this apart. Article went live, there have been a number of different people that have committed themselves to going through this. Some of the things that we talked about, too, like that warm medieval period and sort of tackling debunking Jordan Peterson's idea that we should be focusing on that. Will Self has a piece that goes well into that. Does not deny that atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen. He does quite deny that human activity has caused the warming. Instead, he suspends the observed increase inside a vaguely specified, quote, epic of natural warming, as if the planet were turning within some immense geophysical gyre whose rotations conveniently absolve the internal combustion engine of any wrongdoing. Has some good pieces there. Maybe I'll link that so folks can this out. There's also a that was posted just very quickly. It's funny. User Garwufu. Don't know what that is. The Telegraph is getting desperate if they are letting Jordan Peterson write articles for them. He is, of course, utterly, utterly wrong and quite mad with it. You know, the of the piece. Here's the thing, though, you guys. The Telegraph has been letting Jordan

0:39:03 Lydia: Utterly, utterly wrong and quite mad with all of them if we were to go piece by piece. This is just an of who he is as a person, as we have said in previous episodes where we've covered Jordan Peterson and some of the nutty things that he says.

0:39:16 Thomas: I well in the meantime. If you want to look at the 11 warmest years on record, it's tricky remembering them. Now, they're not necessarily in order, but it's just the last 11 years. It's literally just the 11 prior years. Those are the 11 warmest years ever on record.

0:39:34 Lydia: Worldwide.

0:39:35 Thomas: Right now, yeah, let's go down. I think 2026 will, I'm pretty sure it's on pace to top this.

0:39:38 Lydia: Tell me. Really?

0:39:42 Thomas: Yes. Uh but right now for now 2024 is number one 2023 is number two 2025 2016 was a warm one 2020 2019 2017 2015 2022 2018 those are all the warmest in the history of our records during the modern era yeah it's weird isn't that weird what a coincidence uh

0:39:56 Lydia: It's like something's happening. Yeah? A socialist would say, though.

0:40:04 Thomas: Yeah meanwhile uh uh flood today, as we're recording, that killed a whole bunch of people might have been caused by a melting glacier.

0:40:13 Lydia: There's a flood today?

0:40:14 Thomas: Yeah. You didn't see that?

0:40:15 Lydia: I didn't even see that. No.

0:40:16 Thomas: Oh, yeah. It's a pretty hundreds missing in Nepal, at least 160 killed. As of right now, it just happened pretty recently, so there'll probably be more. I saw it might have been caused by a melting glacier. Uh, uh, also the heat wave has killed a whole bunch of people and El Nino is going to be insane. I, that's going to I heard the daily podcast on it the other day. That's kind of scary how bad that could be. That kind of cause a number of different, um, I guess, you know, famine, huge storm. So, you now, I'm sure Jordan Peterson is on the right track. He's doing the Lord's work over there. Good stuff, man.

0:40:17 Lydia: Awful.

0:40:53 Thomas: Yeah. Thanks for your service.

0:40:53 Lydia: For, you know, coming out of your way to share with us this very, very important thought you had.

0:41:00 Thomas: Stupid old asshole. Got this study that shows how shitty everyone I don't like is.

0:41:31 Lydia: Guys remember this started about ACs, AC

0:41:36 Thomas: A cabal until proven otherwise from