Jordan Peterson’s lesson from lobsters

Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Peterson has become a darling of the Youtube alt-right crowd as a result of his refusal to refer to individuals by their preferred gender pronouns, especially new gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘Ze’ (1). Many people claim that Peterson’s position is ‘backed by science’ but an examination of some of his claims, especially regarding our evolutionary heritage, shows he is more adept in pseudoscience.

Peterson recently made headlines across the globe when a rather spiky interview with channel four news host Cathy Newman, resulted in her being inundated with threatening and misogynistic messages.

What caught my attention during this exchange was Peterson’s attempt to suggest that human hierarchies are a result of evolution. In particular, Peterson points to the lobster as an example, and in doing so demonstrates the kind of knowledge of evolution we’d normally associate with a creationist.

Peterson attempted to suggest that human hierarchies aren’t socially created, but are effects of human evolution. His evidence for this is the fact that lobsters also have hierarchies(3).

Human lineage diverged from arthropods long before lobsters evolved, so lobster hierarchy clearly developed independently of any human societal structures.