He gets evidence that those damned Leftists are corrupting the purity of STEM, and shares it with the world. It’s embarrassing. He doesn’t understand anything he’s talking about.

A warning to those who think the STEM disciplines are inviolable. They're not. pic.twitter.com/tvUemBzkZO — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 8, 2019

Well, I’m just going to have to spit out what went through my mind as I read it.

I would like to inform you that your assertion about post modernism bastardizing the sciences is an accurate one.

Anyone want to take any bets on whether either of these bozos understand what “post modernism” is?

I am taking a Big Data certificate program at York University. We are, for no apparent reason, being forced to read a book about how data analytics is creating inequality and discrimination in our society.

If you bet that he did, you lose. Post modernism is not the same as recognizing structural inequities in society. Expecting students to understand the consequences of their work is not outside the bounds of a course.

Oh, but he is being FORCED to read a textbook for no apparent reason. I would think that a fellow academic colleague would know about this bad attitude: a student comes into a class, thinking they already know it all, and anything the professor assigns is a priori deemed irrelevant. They why are you taking the class, bucko? Did you forget that you’re here to learn new things?

I think there is an apparent reason the student is assigned that book. It’s because Big Data fucking matters. It has an impact on society. You need to be conscious of that fact, here’s a book that is going to make you think about what you are doing.

Unless, of course, you’re a cocky Peterast who thinks actions don’t have material outcomes.

This seems wholly inappropriate for a course that is fundamentally structured around learning computer programming.

Where you, the student, know better than the instructor what is “appropriate” in a subject you haven’t learned about yet.

The specific author we are being forced to read is Cathy O’Neal

FORCED!!! Wait, wait. Cathy O’Neil? MathBabe? @mathbabedotorg? She’s brilliant. Your course sounds like it must be very good, sharing interesting perspectives.

who is part of occupy wall street, black lives matter, and who is a blue haired third wave feminist who uses her credentials to push her ideology.

Yeah, credentials! Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard, taught at MIT, left academia to make money in the financial industry, left that after discovering how soulless it is, has written several well-received books on data science, you know, that subject you claim to be studying. But she has blue hair.

Here’s a short video in which O’Neil explains how data science algorithms are not intrinsically objective.

That sounds like an important perspective, to me. Maybe you ought to pay attention in class, Big Data Person.

She has written about how all university admissions are biased, not just Harvard’s, and this is primarily because the SATs and other intelligence testing is correlated to income, and without proof, concludes that this necessitates bias towards privileged people.

If you find in your data analysis that rich people are preferentially getting into college, then that is evidence of a bias. If your hypothesis is that rich people are more intelligent, you need to provide independent evidence that that is the case. (I know what to expect: the circular argument that well, rich people are admitted to college, therefore they must be smart. I got into college, therefore I am smart enough to spot a logical fallacy at a thousand paces.)

It is actual insanity that this woman is regarded with high enough esteem to be teaching her perspective to people who are learning data analytics techniques.

Why is it insane? Because she has blue hair and is a woman, therefore everything is ideological? Read her book. Learn to analyze the information she presents, because that’s what she does. It is, supposedly, what you are taking a class to learn more about.

It appears they want to instantiate an ideological motivation into our purpose for analyzing data.

I know this one, too. You want to pretend that your ideology that data is totally objective and unbiased is not an ideology. You cannot simply “analyze data” without awareness of the assumptions and hypotheses that surround that analysis.

I see this sentiment at my job as well where we have employees who are PHD level social psychologists conducting research projects around the concept of implicit bias testing even though they claim a comprehensive understanding of quantitative analytics.

I don’t get it. This clown is writing to Peterson, a PHD [sic] level psychologist, implying that PHD [sic] level psychologists can’t possibly have a comprehensive understanding of quantitative analytics? I know a few psychologists. Many of them have a better understanding of statistics and mathematics in general than I do. Yet Peterson considers this a valid complaint? Much confusion here.

Also, that understanding of implicit bias comes from a quantitative analysis of data. Try reading the literature…which is what your instructor is trying to get you to do, while you run crying and screaming to Jordan Peterson to get the bad blue-haired lady to stop making you think.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to take my place in this realm with confidence when I am being force fed this propaganda on all fronts.

FORCE FED!! How dare teachers make you aware of what you don’t know. It might hurt your self-esteem. Where’s the hug box for aspiring data scientists who don’t want to be FORCED to think about the meaning of their work?

It is hard to move forward with this constant bombardment of counter factual forces that we are being obliged to follow or be termed unqualified for the position.

FORCES! If you refuse to consider the effects of and reasoning behind the algorithms you use, then it’s true: you’re unqualified for the position. You want to be a mindless coder. That is not what a data scientist does.

Man, that was painful. That Jordan Peterson thinks it was persuasive in any way, rather than just the entitled whine of a selfish child who doesn’t want to learn, should tell us that he is just another know-nothing anti-intellectual.