The Chomsky Puzzle

http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Chomsky-Puzzle-Piecing/237558

65 78 10 years ago

Allegations that Chompsky was unfair to Dan Everett?

Dan Everett is a primarily media-phenomena and fraud (in a whole variety of ways). His claims about the Pirahã has been debunked at this point. The main thing is that Everett used the tactic of presenting himself as an outsider challenging a "great" man (who naturally has many enemies). In considering Everett's dubious claims, take into account that Everett isn't an expert on tropical languages but a missionary who got an impression of one language and leverage this into an entire career.

k2xl6• 10 years ago

Where have you read that his claims were wrong and have been debunked?

pastProlog4• 10 years ago

Everett himself debunked Everett. Originally he said Piraha was recursive. Then he changed its mind and said it wasn't, thus, all of Chomsky's theories are wrong. He learned to speak Piraha training to be a Christian missionary, not as a linguist. His talk here was with a conservative author, not a linguist.

Khansike• 10 years ago

Up to you whether to accept the conclusions of this article, or Everett's reply, or the reply to the reply (all linked from this site): http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000411

daniel-cussen• 10 years ago

I know, by name and face-to-face, a serious university professor, a linguist and "expert on languages," as you put it, who does know Dan Everett and does not think he's a fraud. He was proud of knowing him, in fact.

mcguire• 10 years ago

"...presenting himself as an outsider challenging a "great" man (who naturally has many enemies)..."

Are you saying Chomsky is the underdog?

Tycho3• 10 years ago

"As a broad generalization, [my] stance in any controversy will be the opposite of Chomsky's" - Mencius Moldbug

Is Chomsky the archbishop of the Cathedral?

bbctol• 10 years ago

Only in a bizarre conspiracy world where everyone who disagrees with someone must be allied, even if a more logical explanation is just that your opinions are terrible. So, the Moldbuggery answer is yes, absolutely.

Tycho3• 10 years ago

Well, to be fair, here we have a neutral media source calling Chomsky the most important living intellectual. Seems to fit Moldbug's curious side-note.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 10 years ago

Who cares what Curtis Yarvin thinks?

sphinx65• 10 years ago

Am I supposed to care what some pimple covered idiot thinks of Noam Chomsky? I do not recall seeing anything in my life as sad as "Mencius Moldbug".

Now, HERE is a great article on "Moldbug" http://thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis

mikeash• 10 years ago

That's the best praise of Chomsky I've ever seen.

k2xl6• 10 years ago

Chomsky's personality reminds me Dijkstra - so full of themselves that they don't entertain anyone challenging their ideas.

Take a look at how Chomsky writes emails, see his correspondance with Sam Harris https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse - the arrogance in his reply to a genuine offer of conversation is staggering.

ep103• 10 years ago

I think that is extremely unfair. When I was in my early twenties, and trying to make a difference via NGOs and the like, one of the things that was always taken as a truism, was if you ever had a question, you could email Noam, and he'd get back to you. The man is famed for responding to almost everyone who writes to him, which considering his fame, is quite substantial, and for working tirelessly. As such, I think we could be forgiving for writing terse email responses, particularly to those who he believes misrepresent his views

k2xl6• 10 years ago

Just because he responds doesn't justify how he responds. There is a way to respond in ways that engage and there are ways to respond in ways that are dismissive.

coliveira• 10 years ago

Sam Harris is one of a few atheist activists who started to use denounces against religion in general as a tool against other racial groups, just in line with American foreign policy. From what I see Bill Maher is following on the same steps. It seems clear to me that Chomsky doesn't want to have anything to do with that.

k2xl6• 10 years ago

How has he denounced religion as a tool against other racial groups?

maxharris3• 10 years ago

Sam Harris is one of a few atheist activists who started to use denounces against religion in general as a tool against other racial groups

This is a flat-out lie. This interview between Sam Harris and Dave Rubin is very long, but it shows in detail how some people (who know better) are spreading this in an effort to shut down fair and honest discourse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQqxlzHJrU0

Edit: just to clarify, I'm not accusing you personally of dishonesty, just the people you heard this from.

99123120931• 10 years ago

Chomsky's style is quite normal and refreshing. The Internet faux-polite censorship has eradicated that style mostly, so public conversation has largely become unproductive and boring.

thieving_magpie• 10 years ago

Do you think it's fair to use this one interaction with someone he finds personally annoying to wholly declare that he can't "entertain anyone challenging his ideas"?

I don't and I'm a little tired of seeing this argument trotted out anytime Chomsky is mentioned. It's one email chain, not 60 years of activism and linguistics.

throwaway7293• 10 years ago

I don't really understand at all what that email exchange is supposed to indicate.

Chomsky starts the entire chain and every subsequent email with some equivalent of "we don't have enough common ground on these subjects to have a reasonable conversation, so let's not have a stupid back-and-forth in which we do nothing but loudly contradict each other's basically axiomatic interpretations".

And then there's a lot of back-and-forth that's frustrating to everyone involved (and particularly to the third party reading the exchange). It's frustrating because Sam and Noam are talking past one another, and clearly don't have enough common understanding to take part in a productive discourse, and one party is trying the entire time to just get out of the damned stupid back-and-forth of nothing but mutual contradiction.

To me this reads like a very common occurrence at parties I attended in college: two people who disagree, with one person trying to avoid a public argument that's bound to be fruitless and irritating to all involved, and the other one insisting on having the argument anyways. I never had much sympathy for the Sam character when the Noam character finally snapped and told them to change the topic or fuck off.

so full of themselves that they don't entertain anyone challenging their ideas.

There's a HUGE difference between realizing a particular conversation is pointless and refusing to have any conversations with dissenters. The latter is arrogance, but the former is an important social skill.

to a genuine offer of conversation...

1. Noam's primary complaint is that he doesn't believe this is a genuine offer of conversation, and that even if it were, he doesn't think the conversation would be remotely productive.

2. Noam has far more patience in this thread than I or most people would've displayed. I probably wouldn't have replied beyond the second email with anything other than "We obviously disagree on some pretty basic facts. Any further conversation on this matter would therefore be fruitless to both of us. Have a great day!"

k2xl6• 10 years ago

Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives.

A religious person telling a scientist that a debate about religion with him would be "pointless" is indeed dismissive. It may end up being pointless to the people making the arguments but not necessarily for the listeners.

nikcheerla4• 10 years ago

Replying to someone trying to argue in good faith, "We obviously disagree on some pretty basic facts. Have a nice day!" would generally be considered impolite in real life, so I suspect most people are reacting to that. If he had just used some polite, meaningless social courtesy, like "I don't have time to discuss this right now", then it would be less controversial.

munificent• 10 years ago

There's something magical about that correspondence in that it seems to be a Rorschach test for the reader's own perspective. Everyone I've seen talk about it comes away feeling one of the participants was obviously totally wrong and awful.

It's just that readers tend to not agree on whether it was Chomsky or Harris who is the bad guy.

andrewingram3• 10 years ago

When I read this conversation a couple of months ago, I found it frustrating.

I'd recently endured the 3.5 hour trainwreck of a conversation Sam attempted to have Omar Aziz. Concluded that nobody could reasonably take Omar's side in it, and was sadly not surprised to see the crowds of people on Twitter concluding that Omar had "won" the conversation.

I sought out the Chomsky conversation because I even though i'd heard it was disappointed from Sam's perspective, I was expecting it to be more nuanced. Neither came off particularly well, but I was especially frustrated by Chomsky.

The source of my frustration was that I was constantly felt he would have been able to make a point that would give Sam pause for thought, to take the conversation down an interested road. But he wasn't willing to even briefly humour Sam's need to explore contrived thought experiments. If they'd just been able to get that out of the way, they could have gotten somewhere. I actually like Sam's thought experiments because they're a device to establish a dispassionate common ground on which to build the more nuanced (and challenging) conversations, but they seem to fall flat with the people who I'm most interested in him going head-to-head with.

Synaesthesia10• 10 years ago

The thought experiments were pretty unnecessary and illogical - their premise was flawed, namely that US intentions are noble, something Chomsky has spent a lifetime refuting.

RodericDay• 10 years ago

Chomsky had a very famous debate with Foucault where they discussed "Human Nature". It is quite enjoyable to watch.

The problem isn't with Chomsky, it's with Sam Harris.

steauengeglase2• 10 years ago

I put Chomsky on the same shelf that I put Richard Stallman on. They've both spent years building huge and sometimes impenetrable rhetorical castles. Yet there is a cost of staking out all of your moral high ground and putting out impaling spikes of a specially compiled lexicography of precise, barbed, and hand crafted definitions. Eventually you are left alone in that high castle and abandoned by future generations.

Sadly for Stallman it happened mostly in his own life and Chomsky will have at least a good decade after he passes.

the_af• 10 years ago

That's pretty dismissive of both men.

Neither of them have been "left alone in their high castles". Both have a large following, are well respected (and controversial), and people have built upon their philosophies or used them to better understand the world.

abalone3• 10 years ago

The whole premise of this article is flawed. There is nothing divisive or puzzling about pursing intellectual work and trying to make the world a better place. The only puzzle is how he finds the energy to do it all.

It also didn't really convey just how critical the scientific community is of Wolfe's take on linguistics. There's a pretty good takedown here: http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-sludge-a...

burkini• 10 years ago

"It also didn't really convey just how critical the scientific community is of Wolfe's take on linguistics."

Uh, the article literally has a link to the takedown you posted. I agree though, the premise of the article is flawed.

Kenji3• 10 years ago

Chomsky is a wonderful proof of the fact that it does not matter who the idea comes from, what matters is the idea itself. I.e. you can be an expert on some things and err on others. Nobody is an intellectual authority on all things. Many scientists are wiser than to meddle in political affairs with broad strokes and only stick to their topic of expertise.

dbingham• 10 years ago

So, you're the intellectual authority on politics then, capable of declaring with certainty that Noam's ideas in that arena are flawed?

Kenji3• 10 years ago

As you may have noticed, I precisely did not go into any details about Chomsky's politics because I know how the large majority of HN thinks and it's pretty much useless to reason about this here. The fact that his political ideas are barely backed up with data speaks for itself. If you look at what he writes, it is obvious that his view on history is strongly influenced by the lens of his ideology. This is very unlike his work on grammars, which I greatly appreciate. That is all I'm going to say about this. Judge for yourself.

pastProlog4• 10 years ago

their topic of expertise

Who is the expert on how the pie should be divided up?

Kenji3• 10 years ago

There are objectively better or worse solutions for this problem. Some lead to human flourishing, others prevent it. It is definitely possible to have more or less expertise in this topic.

readymade• 10 years ago

As the foundational figure in modern Linguistics Chomsky has had an outsized role in shaping the field, some of it good and some bad. IMHO the usefulness of mainstream generative grammar has waned since the 70s or so in terms of its applicability to engineering and empirical rigor. But it remains dominant, in part due to his influence and the logical conclusions one draws from a strong interpretation of Universal Grammar. Since much of that foundation is ultimately philosophical, there are bound to be challenges from the field now and again, and acolytes of the Chomskyan school are likely to attack them ferociously. It will probably be a few decades before there's a major shift.

pastProlog4• 10 years ago

The subtitle is "Piecing together a celebrity scientist".

A celebrity?

I've seen him interviewed once on Charlie Rose.

In May 2002 CNN put him on with Bill Bennett.

In 1986 he debated Boston university president John Silber on local Boston TV.

How is he a celebrity?

He mentioned in a speech once how someone on NPR wanted to talk to him, and how the higher-ups at NPR canceled and then limited his appearance, as he was apparently banned.

He also was prevented by the IDF from attending a talk at Birzeit university in the West bank, something he said hadn't happened (being refused admittance to a country he was to give a unievrsity talk to) since he tried to enter Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Even The Nation has spiked positive reviews of his books.

Someone with so little exposure on US airwaves over the decades is not a celebrity.

kbenson2• 10 years ago

Perhaps this[1] is what you are looking for. 165 credits as himself on different programs. 155 in the last 20 years. Currently in no less than 8 documentary productions that are in stages from post-production to nearing release. For comparison, Neil deGrasse Tyson only has 83 credits as himself[2]. I think that makes a good case that he's a "celebrity" scientist, as I certainly consider Tyson one. Both are on the short list of active scientists that I would expect random people to have at least heard of, even if they aren't sure who they are or where they heard of them.

1: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0159008/

2: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1183205/

pastProlog4• 10 years ago

> Someone with so little exposure on US airwaves over the decades is not a celebrity.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0159008/ 165 credits as himself on different programs. 155 in the last 20 years.

Well this makes my point. Let me look at the earliest ten.

Third from bottom is UK. Fourth from the bottom is a Canadian documentary. Sixth and seventh from the bottom are Canadian. Eighth from bottom is Australian. Ninth from bottom is the UK. Tenth from bottom is UK.

Second and fifth from bottom appear to be musical programs, not sure of the country.

Which leaves the earliest, Chomsky's 1969 discussion with William F. Buckley. So 1969 to 1996 that's one credit.

If you look at the other credits, many of them are for non-American programs, or very independently made films (not on the US airwaves as I said).

More recent documentaries like "Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?" are made by Europeans.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has been on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN etc. much more than Chomsky has in the past decade. He is much more of a US celebrity.

woodandsteel• 10 years ago

Many years ago I read a New Yorker profile of Chomsky. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/noam-chomsky I got the strong impression he has autism, or at least is on the asperger's spectrum.

I think that's a real problem for his political views. Political philosophy is about how you design a good society, and that means a society in which people treat each other well. To do that you have to have a good understanding of human psychology.

But people with Asperger's are very low in their psychological understanding skills. With Chomsky, I get the impression that leads him to fall into a simplistic moralism for explaining why people behave in good or bad ways.

Synaesthesia10• 10 years ago

I think you should read more Chomsky or watch some of his talks. His political views are all based on pretty much common sense, and widely accepted moral principles. He doesn't give any simplistic moralism for explaining why people behave in good or bad ways. He acknowledges that human behaviour is very complex and poorly understood. Actually be usually avoids explaining why people act a certain way and instead just describes their actions.

I do think he has a powerful analytical brain and is very dry in his descriptions, they are consciously unemotional and descriptive in nature. However he has a real deep sympathy with the sufferer of his fellow man.

abalone3• 10 years ago

This is character assassination and has no place here.

Chomsky is actually an extremely pleasant and kind person, not (detectably) autistic, and has written extensively on the topic of organizing societies where people treat each other well -- see his countless works on Anarchism and Libertarian Socialism, extraordinarily well-researched critiques of foreign and domestic policy, and even-handed application of the principle of universality in human affairs.

dmh2000• 10 years ago

Whenever I encounter the Chomsky Language Hierarchy in programming or Noam Chomsky talking politics on TV, radio, or print, I always ask myself 'is it the same guy?'. Only because the topics are usually so disparate.

The Chomsky Puzzle

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