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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Well this makes my point. Let me look at the earliest ten.
That... seems like an odd choice, when the question is whether he's a celebrity now. He could have had no exposure until a few years ago and still be a celebrity, so I'm not sure why looking at his oldest media appearances is relevant.
Maybe you would prefer google trends?[1] For a real treat, change it from US to world wide. Chomsky is a global name, NGD is more of a US phenomenon. NGD has eclipsed Chomsky in recent times, but event at half or more of the current exposure NGD has, I think that points towards a celebrity status.
> 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.
That doesn't actually prove that Chomsky isn't a celebrity though, as it's still possible for NGD to be more famous and for Chomsky to be a celebrity. Also, I think you have a fairly narrow view of what "celebrity" is, if it's mostly informed by television exposure. Sure, television is a quick way to celebrity, but there are other ways (and those used to be the only ways). Einstein was a celebrity. Stephen King is a celebrity. Being well known is the definition, not being an entertainment personality.
You don't need to defend yourself, you're earlier post including Imdb links were sufficient. Chomsky is a celebrity scientist. Pretty much everyone who knows anything about him knows that.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Everett was chair of the dept of languages, literatures and cultures at Illinois State and former chair of the linguistics department at university of pittsburg...
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.
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.
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!"
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.
>...would generally be considered impolite in real life
1. Neither would insisting that someone have a public debate with you. The entire situation was not at all like "real life".
2. I've been on both sides of "we should stop talking about this because we'll never agree and won't learn anything". I've never felt uncomfortable or rude on either side of that conversation.
In real life, if you publicly proclaim controversial beliefs, people will probably publicly confront or question you about them. Most of them will not push a debate further if you say "I don't want to talk about this topic" or something similar. But if you say "We seem to disagree about some basic facts", it seems to imply you think they are making basic/obvious mistakes, but you aren't going even going to deign to explain those mistakes to them. In short, it could come off as condescending or rude, and it could easily be averted by being a bit more polite.
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.
> Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives
1. Your original charge was that Noam is arrogant, not that he is dismissive. Dismissiveness and arrogance are not the same thing.
2. Noam isn't dismissive in this particular. Refusing the reply to the email or replying only with terse non-acknowledgements would be dismissive. Spilling hundreds of words worth of ink to elucidate why you don't want to have a conversation is anything but dismissive.
3. Charging Noam with being dismissive toward his critics is a different claim with a different burden. It requires analyzing the preponderance of evidence, not one specific case. Just because Noam is dismissive of one particular critic doesn't mean that he's dismissive of his critics in general.
> A religious person telling a scientist that a debate about religion with him would be "pointless" is indeed dismissive
I fail to see how this is necessarily the case. For example, if the scientist's point is to change the religious person's mind, and the religious person is firm in their faith, then the religious person isn't being dismissive. On the contrary, the religious person is saving both parties from a fruitless and frustrating endeavor.
> It may end up being pointless to the people making the arguments but not necessarily for the listeners.
More analogous to Noam/Sam, if the scientist's point is to demonstrate the falseness of religious by disproving transubstantiation, and if the religious person explicitly said they do not believe in transubstantiation, then the religious person is well within reason to refuse an invitation, because regardless of the outcome of the conversation, the end result won't be informative to anyone.
3. If the Scientist pushes for a debate even though the religious person is not interested, he's most likely being a bit of jerk.
It's Sam Harris who refused to acknowledge pretty factual statements which Chomsky was making. Like the fact that the attack on the Sudanese pharmaceutical facility was an act of terrorism at least as bad, if not worse than 9/11.
It is. The 9/11 attacks were surely a horrific atrocity. The al-shifa bombing too. It destroyed much of the production of essential drugs for livestock and malaria in a country already on the brink. Werner Daum thinks "at least" tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.
I have no disagreement with you about the scale of fallout. I just have less certainty about whether it was an act of terrorism. i.e. I'm far from convinced it was an act intended to kill at that scale. Whereas with 9/11, it's almost a certainty they aimed to kill even more than they managed to.
I'm still trying to work out for myself the extent to which intent matters when it comes to condemning an act, which is why I struggle to think of your statement as a fact.
Chomsky's position to the question of intention, cited in the letters above, as given me pause for thought (considering that the attack was openly acknowledged as a retaliation for the earlier attacks on US embassies[1]):
And of course they knew that there would be major casualties. They are not imbeciles, but rather adopt a stance that is arguably even more immoral than purposeful killing, which at least recognizes the human status of the victims, not just killing ants while walking down the street, who cares? (...)
It is inconceivable that in that brief interim period evidence was found that it was a chemical weapons factory, and properly evaluated to justify a bombing. And of course no evidence was ever found. Plainly, if there had been evidence, the bombing would not have (just by accident) taken place immediately after the Embassy bombings (along with bombings in Afghanistan at the same time, also clearly retaliation). There’s no rational way to explain this except by assuming that he intentionally bombed what was known to be Sudan’s major pharmaceutical plant, and of course he and his advisers knew that under severe sanctions, this poor African country could not replenish them (...)
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
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.
In their exchange, Sam Harris is tendentious and offensively impolite, and seems to lack basic reading comprehension skill. Chomsky shows him far more patience and courtesy than he deserves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I see that as Harris trying to get Chomsky to acknowledge that intentions can matter in moral judgment, using an extreme hypothetical example to force his hand.
Of course, this is unnecessary because it's arguing against a straw-man of Chomsky's position.
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.
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.
What should we do if the Islamic State gets nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them to their targets?
That's the context he's speaking of, and I think it's dishonest for you to make it appear as if he's talking about attacking a peaceful Islamic country such as Jordan.
>What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe.
I don't really find this objectionable. Maybe we have differing definitions of "Islamist regime"? If I imagine, say, the Taliban or ISIS in control of a country with nuclear weapons capability, I wouldn't blame our leaders for ordering a nuclear first strike.
Well they could be getting nuclear weapons to deter an American attack. I don't agree with any first strike with nuclear war. Every scenario that's been tried has, predictably escalated to a global nuclear war.
Well they could be getting nuclear weapons to deter an American attack.
The Soviets are very different from the Islamic State. The former at least claimed to be concerned with this world, while the latter explicitly does not (this is what their religion tells them).
Although there were instances where we came perilously close to nuclear war due to chance events, the fact is that no nuclear war took place. Thanks to mutually-assured destruction and good luck, there has been a lasting nuclear peace for seven decades.
This all goes right out the window when the other side believes that heaven is fundamentally real, and that blasting infidels with the biggest weapon they can get will get them to heaven fastest.
It is true that America has its own religious fundamentalists, and they are a growing long-term threat. But they are not yet anywhere near the point where the Islamic State is right now. Furthermore, America's religious fundamentalist have serious opposition (you and I, for example) and we can therefore expect that they will continue to be restrained in the future. In the Islamic State, there is no opposition to religious fundamentalism of any kind, and there is no prospect of it emerging from within.
I don't think Islamic fundamentalists would launch a nuclear attack for a very simple reason, they know that they would be instantly vaporized. They're fanatical but they want to spread their empire, not obliterate it.
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.
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.
People have built upon, but (at least in Stallman's case) also built around.
You can go back as far as the late 2000's and the GPL still had a huge following. With the mobile boom F/OSS was still embraced, but the GPL has steadily fallen to the wayside. You can only be so uncompromising when people need a means to eat.
Now we have an entire generation of CS grads who'll use MIT as their de facto license.
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.
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.
> The fact that his political ideas are barely backed up with data speaks for itself.
This is an objectively ridiculous assertion. His works are extensively cited with primary sources. He regularly has hundreds of footnotes per book. Manufacturing Consent and Necessary Illusions are just two examples of a scientific, ideology-free approach to political analysis. There he compares and contrasts how the U.S. media covers similar international events -- by state friends vs. foes -- and it is quite damning.
Chomsky's political writing is actually backed by tons of data (facts). He is clear about his ideology and does not try to hide it,but facts his quoting are facts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...