“Why would anyone try to sound dumb?”

“Try” implies intent, right?
Towards the professed goal… otherwise it makes no sense…

Which begets yet another question:
‘But how do we determine intention?’
‘The ‘perpetrator’ must have wished for it, given what they’ve done/said!’ ?!?

Let me give you something to chew on…

• Peterson: There’s this idea that hierarchical structures are a sociological construct of the Western patriarchy. And that is so untrue that it’s almost unbelievable. I use the lobster as an example: We diverged from lobsters evolutionarily history about 350 million years ago. And lobsters exist in hierarchies. They have a nervous system attuned to the hierarchy. And that nervous system runs on serotonin just like ours. The nervous system of the lobster and the human being is so similar that anti-depressants work on lobsters. And it’s part of my attempt to demonstrate that the idea of hierarchy has absolutely nothing to do with sociocultural construction, which it doesn’t.
• Newman: Let me get this straight. You’re saying that we should organize our societies along the lines of the lobsters?

Jordan Peterson, (12 Rules for Life, 2018) is a smart guy who has just published a rather controversial book – read ‘all about it’ here.
Cathy Newman, a “presenter for Channel 4 News” has recently become “a minor Internet phenomenon, thanks to the journalist’s extraordinary interviewing style.”
The excerpt above belongs to that interview but, unfortunately, proves that there is nothing extraordinary about this interviewer’s style. Oversimplification has become a pattern rather than an exception.

But why?
What’s going on here?
Why would seemingly sensible people, in pursuit of commendable goals, put themselves in such untenable positions? “A British broadcaster doggedly tried to put words into the academic’s mouth.” A rather harsh commentary, specially when published by the Atlantic, a magazine promoting more or less the same ideas as those ‘defended’ so passionately by Newman.

The “invisible gorilla” to the rescue.

Not familiar with the concept? Click on the link.

I won’t bother you with the details of this very modern experiment but I’m gone quote a ‘classic’ Romanian proverb
‘As soon as people gaze long/deep enough into a single spot/subject, their knowledge horizon becomes ‘their’ point of view’.
At this point, I have a confession to make. I don’t know how classic it is, nor whether it is actually a proverb. I was introduced to it by my 7-th grade history teacher, Mr. Bucataru. More than 40 years ago, at least 20 before the ‘invisible gorilla’ strolled across the basket ball court, ‘blissfully’ unnoticed by half of the people ‘present’ for the occasion.

So.
Was Newman really trying to sound dumb? As in ‘assuming the perceived dumbness as a cost towards a more valuable goal’?

Or was she so absorbed by the ‘more valuable goal’ – which ever that might be, I cannot pretend to know what she was after, that she wasn’t even aware that her very behavior was detrimental to whatever she attempted to achieve?

Could it be that sometimes we concentrate so much on whatever we consider to be  ‘the occasion’ that we fail to actually be there?

“Why Can’t People Hear What Jordan Peterson Is Saying?”

Conor Friedersdorf, the Atlantic, Jan 22, 2018

“If this book has a blind spot, it’s largely a function of the fact that Peterson is a professor. If you’re an academic, especially a Canadian academic, living in a real city, you rarely (if ever) meet right-wing crazies. But you’re exposed to left-wing crazies on a fairly regular basis. This tends to skew and distort your conception of where the crazies are to be found mightily….
.
.
I share Peterson’s deep discomfort with any mode of analysis that reduces individuals to the status of group representatives. But to say that this pernicious mode of analysis is solely a function of “Marxism” or “postmodernism” is a gross oversimplification. Among other things, it makes it seem like this is a uniquely left-wing problem—when clearly it’s not. Right-wing reactionary racists regularly reduce individuals to the status of group representatives. And they’re doing pretty well politically lately.”

John Faithful Hamer, Commiting Sociology, Feb 2, 2018.

““So you’re saying … we should live like lobsters?” or: Why does politics make us stupid?”

Pascal Boyer, Blog, Cognition and Culture, Feb 1, 2018

PS. I’ve just realized that the ‘Romanian proverb’ I mentioned above is somewhat related to Nietzsche’s: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss gazes also into you.”
And since ‘becoming a monster’ basically means loosing the ability/willingness to fit into the society where you have been born,  the logical conclusion of Nietzsche’s advice is ‘never attempt to fight monsters by yourself’. It’s easier to retain your humanity when belonging to a team and even more so when the teams involved in any competition behave fairly and respectfully to each other.