I have moved on from following Jordan Peterson, but without any regret for the time I spent reading and viewing him. It’s important to know when you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. Because there is always is one.

(One of the smartest people I know is dead wrong about certain things and doesn’t care to take in new information or reconsider his view in the slightest. You could call him closed-minded. But here’s the thing: he’s only wrong about things that don’t directly impact him. Things he can afford to be wrong about.)

Why write out an opposing point of view when there are plenty of motivated people to do it for you? Better: read an opposing point of view.

Domain knowledge about cultural codes is plenty useful in and of itself, if the code is a culture you need to interact with.

Rhetoric is also a plenty useful domain.

If you want to become smarter, prove yourself wrong, and find out what how you generated the wrong belief so you don’t do it again. While writing out an opposing view may be part of such a thing, it is neither necessary nor a sufficient part of this complete breakfast.

Science. Literally nobody understands science. Falsification 101. Come on.

Listening to ‘difficult’ music is about as useful as watching someone else do a difficult lift.

Reading is not work unless you use it prove yourself wrong.

Doing Q&As like that will teach non-transferable domain knowledge about debate and rhetoric, not general processing ability.

Trying to crack cultural codes will give you domain knowledge about cultural codes.

Disagreeing with someone is useless unless they win sometimes, you change your mind, and you figure out how you made the mistake in a general sort of way.

Working on improving your memory absolutely works (most likely via chunking) and Cowen is absolutely below the necessary mind-strength to hold reality-like ideas in his mind.