Astral Codex Ten

Jordan Peterson

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Jordan Peterson

Article

Jordan Peterson is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 9 times across 9 issues between May 10, 2021 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “The second milestone was Jordan Peterson, who was an obvious step up in respectability beyond Milo”; “five years ago, it would have been Bitcoin, Jordan Peterson”; “There are lots of people in the US who have never heard of … Jordan Peterson”. It most often appears alongside Trump, Google, alt-right.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 9
  • Issue count: 9
  • First seen: May 10, 2021
  • Last seen: January 16, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars
May 10, 2021 · Original source
The first milestone on that path was Milo Yiannopoulos. As outrageous and offensive as he was, he was actually a step above everyone who had come before him in terms of visibility and respectability - at least nobody expected him to shoot up a school or anything. The second milestone was Jordan Peterson, who was an obvious step up in respectability beyond Milo. There was a really interesting period in 2016 when the media was trying to decide whether to unite in character-assassinating Peterson the same way it had character-assassinated all previous people in this space, or treat him as some sort of interesting and potentially sympathetic phenomenon, and it decided on the interesting phenomenon angle. After that, being anti-SJW lost about 90% of its stigma, to the point where people would roll their eyes instead of freaking out. This New York Times article on the Intellectual Dark Web essentially turned the semi-respectability of anti-SJWism into common knowledge, and makes a fascinating contrast with the TIME article on MRAs linked above.
Inline links: New York Times
Intellectual trends follow the laws of fashion. This isn't to say there's no underlying truth about which claims are right and important - just that some fields are "cool" at any given moment and others are "uncool". If you wanted to sound cool on Reddit ten years ago, you talked about atheism, Ron Paul, and the RIAA; five years ago, it would have been Bitcoin, Jordan Peterson, and "Drumpf" (I'm not cool enough to know what's cool today, sorry). Some of these trends seem to mirror obvious real-world changes in importance - distributors found better ways to sell media for affordable prices, so the RIAA has mostly left public consciousness. But they were broader than the change alone could explain - a moderate improvement in music distribution meant switching from talking about the RIAA all the time to basically not at all.
Highlights From The Comments On Culture Wars
May 18, 2021 · Original source
Yeah, was complicated to write. On the one hand, I wanted to focus on Internet culture wars in particular, and especially on a sort of vanguard of Internet culture warriors made of the most extremely online people. There are lots of people in the US who have never heard of Ibram X Kendi or Jordan Peterson, and they’re a valid and important part of the country, but this isn’t about them.
Contra Hoel On Aristocratic Tutoring
March 22, 2022 · Original source
I’ll give one even weirder example. A few years ago, I wrote a very political post, called Can Things Be Both Popular And Silenced? It touched on “guru” culture in politically incorrect discourse - the phenomenon of people like Jordan Peterson who became really famous by saying controversial things - and it asked: why aren’t there equally famous figures on the left? The social justice community is an order of magnitude bigger than the intellectual dark web, so how come it hasn’t produced proportionately greater celebrities? Ibram X Kendi, maybe. Ta-Nehisi Coates, ten years ago. But how come they aren’t bigger and more numerous.
Inline links: Can Things Be Both Popular And Silenced
Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures
August 19, 2022 · Original source
The NYT piece Meet The Renegades Of The Intellectual Dark Web is a great example of what it looks like when a movement is starting its growth phase. Newspapers write articles about how edgy and cool you are and how the establishment is afraid of your growing power. The couple of people who joined the movement out of genuine conviction when it was unpopular or made them look weird (eg Jordan Peterson, Eric Weinstein) get catapulted to superstardom.
Inline links: Meet The Renegades Of The Intellectual Dark Web
Another Bay Area House Party
October 19, 2022 · Original source
“So think about it. Myths aren’t just old stories. They’re methods for understanding and relating to the universe. Have you ever listened to Jordan Peterson’s lectures on Genesis? They’re life changing. Myths are our psychic motor, our source of inspiration, the way that we make sense of our world. Without them we’d be spiritually adrift. Well, it stands to reason that if we had more of them, we’d be more inspired, and we’d be able to make sense of our world better. So far we’ve been limited by the number the Greeks or Norse or whoever passed down to us. But if we could generate new myths on demand, man, we’d be unstoppable. That’s why I’m pitching this to corporations. Imagine if your competitor’s still working out of Bulfinch’s Mythology, but you can generate thousands of myths, on any topic, whenever you want. You’d be unstoppable!”
Links For December 2022
December 28, 2022 · Original source
6: Apparently there’s a video podcast with Jordan Peterson and Karl Friston, I haven’t seen it because I don’t watch videos, but it’s an interesting thing to have exist.
Inline links: a video podcast with Jordan Peterson and Karl Friston
Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023
February 20, 2023 · Original source
The culture wars will continue to be marked by both sides scoring an unrelenting series of own-goals, with the victory going to whoever can make their supporters shut up first. The best case scenario for the Right is that Jordan Peterson’s ability to not instantly get ostracized and destroyed signals a new era of basically decent people being able to speak out against social justice; this launches a cascade of people doing so, and the vague group consisting of Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, etc coalesces into a perfectly respectable force no more controversial than the gun lobby or the pro-life movement or something. With social justice no longer able to enforce its own sacredness values against blasphemy, it loses a lot of credibility and ends up no more powerful or religion-like than eg Christianity. The best case scenario for the Left is that the alt-right makes some more noise, the media is able to relentlessly keep everyone’s focus on the alt-right, the words ALT-RIGHT get seared into the public consciousness every single day on every single news website, and everyone is so afraid of being associated with the alt-right that they shut up about any disagreements with the consensus they might have. I predict both of these will happen, but the Right’s win-scenario will come together faster and they will score a minor victory.
Bayes For Everyone
May 30, 2025 · Original source
If this sounds like some sort of esoteric, speculative division, I’m doing a bad job explaining it. I mean to gesture at an idea that smart people have been pointing at for centuries. It’s at least similar to Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” vs. “Apollonian” modes, and to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”, and to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. It’s near the heart of what Iain McGilchrist is describing in The Master and His Emissary. I think it’s the same thing as Erik Hoel’s “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” perspectives? It overlaps a lot with Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” and with Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”. Heck, the lack of clarity on this divide is what makes Jordan Peterson’s dialogues with atheists so frustrating.
The Dilbert Afterlife
January 16, 2026 · Original source
There’s a passage in the intro to one of Adams books where he says that, given how he’s going to blow your mind and totally puncture everything you previously believed, perhaps the work is unsuitable for people above fifty-five, whose brains are comparatively sclerotic and might shatter at the strain. This is how I feel about post-2016 politics. Young people were mostly able to weather the damage. As for older people, I have seen public intellectual after public intellectual who I previously respected have their brains turn to puddles of partisan-flavored mush. Jordan Peterson, Ken White, Curtis Yarvin, Paul Krugman, Elon Musk, the Weinsteins, [various people close enough to me that it would be impolite to name them here]. Once, these people were lions of insightful debate. Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?