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Commentary Videos on 12 Rules for Life

I made videos where I read Jordan Peterson's new best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, and share my thoughts in detail. I went in blind and edited out the silences from reading; it's my raw thoughts as I read, which show you one of my processes for how I think things through and analyze them.

12 Rules Screencast part 1 talks most about whether animals are intelligent (I disagree with the book and explain my view). I also talk about writing techniques.

12 Rules Screencast part 2 discusses a wider variety of issues, many of which I believe are important criticisms of the book.

Scholarly Criticism: Jordan Peterson’s Sloppy Cite (+quotes, research) changes format. I made slides and focused on criticizing one cite about serotonin and the brain. It's shorter and more organized.

12 Rules Screencast part 4 finishes discussing rule 1 at a faster pace using notes and quotes instead of the book text.

Elliot Temple on January 29, 2018

Comments (2)

The game theory optimal strategy in the ultimatum game is interesting (player A gets $N and offers some money to player B. Player B accepts and they both get paid, or rejects and they both get nothing).

Consider the repeated game. You might think rejecting money will help you get paid more later.

Let's say there's 100 iterations. On the *last* iteration, player B should accept anything above zero b/c he can either get something or nothing. There is no hope that rejecting this offer will get him higher offers later.

If you know that player A is going to offer 1 cent on the last iteration, no matter what happens previously, then player B should accept the 2nd to last iteration no matter what happened previously. Rejecting in game 99 won't do any good b/c the offer in game 100 will be a penny regardless.

But if player B is going to accept in game 99 no matter what (because he will accept in game 100 no matter what, and player A knows that) then the logic keeps going backwards. Since game 99 is decided in advance as accepting, then 98 is the last undetermined game, and player B should accept in it, since nothing he does can affect any later game.

So even in the repeated play version of the ultimatum game, there is a game theory argument for offering the minimum amount of money every time.

Player B could bluff though. They could violate game theory on purpose in hopes of convincing player A they are playing non-optimally and getting A to play differently. The real world is really complicated but at least the initial analysis is simple enough I worked something non-obvious out.

curi at 7:43 PM on January 29, 2018 | #9483 | reply | quote

This commentary video on the book is pretty good (and is part of a series):


Anonymous at 3:14 PM on March 3, 2019 | #11952 | reply | quote

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