[RationalDino]

As other comments said, this is not just an appeal to authority. He really is an authority.

However, having established real authority, he then uses it to convey ideas which are less supported. https://youtu.be/eKwSDqJAum8?si=WKNMLmu8Y8OO7kwn&t=631 calls this a "science sandwich", and it is a good description. So, for instance, he'll have a series of lectures. Some are real science. Such as how the big 5 personality characteristics correlate with political alignment. Others are pseudoscience. Such as using Jungian archetypes to push his politics. He doesn't differentiate, and audiences who have accepted his authority ALSO don't differentiate.

[sroussey]

This is how we ended up think taking vitamin c helps with colds.

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling

[saurik]

I don't want to come off too hard as directly defending Jordan Peterson--I maybe watched a video or two on YouTube a while back with him talking about something... I liked one and hated the other--but this overall description of someone who is just saying a lot of stuff without any boundary between what they really actually know and where they are so far off the rails they might as well be on a psychedelic trip also sounds like it could apply to the likes of Plato... whom I'd 100% label as an intellectual.

[pchangr]

Plato studied “philosophy” which at the time aimed to provide a full explanation to everything in life. Later in history knowledge got more and more specialized. As time goes by, being able to do meaningful contributions to various fields becomes more difficult. It is considered for example, that Gauss was the last scientist to contribute to all branches of science and similarly John Von Neumann was the last mathematician who made meaningful contributions in all branches of sciences. So yeah, you could say for Plato there were no boundaries as the amount of knowledge that existed was small enough to be fully handled by a human .. and it’s likely not the case anymore.