Shout out to Noam!!`

SG member Chimpsky and the newly photoed Scylla have reminded me of just how much Noam Chomsky rocks!! What do you guys think of him? Genius? Quack? Really cool hair? I'm dying to know.

Genius. What I do would not exist if he had not done it first. Regardless of what later research revealed about his findings, methods, and rhetoric, he asked the important questions about language at the right time. Even linguists who do not work in a Chomskyan domain (the functionalists, etc.) have drawn from his work to define their own. Regardless of what you think about his foreign policy writing, Chomsky's contributions to the study of language and the mind are some of the most important in any of the social sciences.

his linguistics research is all fine and good but once starts pontificating about the media, he really annoys the fcuk out of me.

My sociology professor made me read Chomsky. I didn't understand it. I moved on to Bukowski.

His books are full of distortions or outright lies. I hate how he just glibly asserts that the United States is the worst country that has ever existed, that all our foreign policy has the malignant interests of the ruling class behind it.

I dislike his rank hypocrisy, these venomous attacks on his own country and making mountains out of molehills regarding the bad things the US has done....while he gives a complete uncritical pass to the crimes of states like Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, China, and the USSR. Then he'll claim that those nations are forced to restrict political freedom because they're under constant attack from capitalism and never had the chance to develop and fl;ourish. Whatever, Noam.

Likewise, he completely disqualifies the accomplishments of free market economics, describing them as "illusions" because the system is so inherently unfair. Unfair? Not being allowed to own private property seems to me to be a little more unfair, wouldn't you say?

He paints the wealthy as exploitive who made their money stripping resources from the third world and controlling the government to maintain unfair labor laws, corporate welfare, low taxes, etc. Seems to forget that the glorious thing about capitalism is that many of the greatest fortunes in the US were created in ONE GENERATION, and that they weren't created by stomping on the worker but by creating goods and services that society wants and needs.

I could go on about that lying motherfucker. Calls himself a "socialist libertarian". WTF? That's a complete oxymoron. And he has absolutely nothing to offer in the way of alternatives to this horrible democracy and capitalist economy we have. All he does is sit back in his ivory tower, harping and spewing hate towards America and everything it stands for. I saw his film "Power and Terror" where he says his ideal model for society were the anarchist collectives in Barcelona in the 1930's. That fell apart in a matter of months. But somehow, that's worthier and better than the US system that's lasted 220 years and created the wealthiest and most prosperous country the world has ever seen? Chomsky would probably assert that free markets and our government's charter had nothing to do with it.

It bothers me that he has legions of college students and academics who think he's preaching the gospel truth. All I can suggest is that when you hear Chomsky say something in his offhand, so-obvious-you-must-agree-it's-true (like that the US planned to starve the people of Afghanistan or commmit genocide in Iraq, or bombed Serbia to force it into the capitalist economy) read up from other sources on what actually happened. Chomsky gets it wrong with astonishing, discrediting regularity.

I disagree with all of what stockula said up there.

His politics are fascinating, and he's a cunning linguist to boot.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

(edited because I'm typing without my glasses)

[Edited on Sep 19, 2003 by minty]

isn't he a computer AI guy as well? I read somewhere that he did some cognitive science

I think a plurality of ideas and debate are good for a democracy, and necessary if that democracy is to advance and improve. i think noam brings up several valid policy criticisms, although i don't necessarily agree with all of them. in any event, no amount of convincing is going to change anyone's basic values or beliefs. and you should ALWAYS cross-check data sources to ensure accuracy.

For example I discovered recently that this quote has been mistakenly attributed to voltaire, when it was actually someone paraphrasing him.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
EBH

He's a formal linguist. However, since part of his research is in semantics and syntax, he's looking at mental systems of representation in language. Since much of AI also deals with how knowledge is represented, some of his work has been pretty informative for the AI field.

Where would computer science be without the Chomsky hierarchy? Still in the Dark Ages of compiler construction, that's where.

What can you say about a guy who revolutionized computer science, linguistics, *and* political science? I say, "Gotta love him." (Even though I don't always agree with him...)

I have yet to see a convincing debunking of any of the man's political arguments. People are always talking vaguely of his "distortions and lies," but nobody ever comes up with an actual example. They just engage in character assassinations and ad hominems and talk about how he hates America or that he's an anti-Semite or something absurd like that, and leave the meat of his arguments alone. All of the negative responses, in other words, are emotional.

To me, his credibility was cemented by the one part in "Manufacturing Consent" where he and Herman are going over all these figures and showing how they've been distorted. There's one number that they show is grossly exaggerated, even though it would support their argument. The argument, of course, is fully supported by other evidence, but the fact that they are more committed to the idea of accuracy than having another figure behind them really impressed me.

Genius,, quack,,,really cool hair...all of the above, I'd say. I wouldn't call myself an anarchist or even anything very near, but I know that No One in American political life is so routinely defamed as Noam Chomsky. People seem find it incomprehensible that someone could believe that all national governments are engines of war and repression.The Chorus and Cassandra

[Edited on Sep 20, 2003 by cagnazzo]

Well, he is a smart fellow, and he did revolutionize the field of linguistics as we know it, and he does have some valid sociopolitical criticisms, but I don't think anyone should follow him (or anyone else, for that matter) blindly without thinking over what he has to say. And those who attack ad hominem, or call him an anti-Semite (which seems to be true of anyone who expresses criticism of Israel's policies -- even if they, like Chomsky, are Jewish), should be ashamed of themselves and should know better.