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Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'
- azinman2 2y agoSad to lose such an intellectual juggernaut’s voice. The world needs more Chomsky’s of all persuasions, and a culture that will elevate them.
- throw__away7391 2y ago[flagged]
- drekembe 2y agoHis view regarding the Bosnian genocide is really strange imo. I would correct you that the people perpetrating it weren't really communists, but serbian nationalists. However, his "USA bad" take is correct because it's true. Being anti-US, anti-NATO, anti-imperialism is the only moral view to have when you look at the history and current politics of the US.
- foobarqux 2y agoThey are not strange it's very easy to understand: He says that throwing around the word genocide for every atrocity cheapens the word and diminishes how bad the holocaust was. As for the parent the "fat man" he is referring to is the man in the back, not the man in the front. And the picture is pure propaganda: as he points out (and I believe was confirmed by the actual photographer) what is depicted and understood to show a prison isn't even fenced in. I would love to know what the "false claims about what the sources he cited said". I only know of one case were he mis-cited someone and it didn't change the meaning.
- StefanBatory 2y ago"Being anti-US, anti-NATO, anti-imperialism is the only moral view" And trade it for Russian imperialism? Chinese? As an Eastern European being pro-US and pro-NATO is the only moral view.
- where-group-by 2y agoI agree, but would reword it to "self determination on a state scale is the only moral view". And in most Eastern European cases that seems to be very much pro-US and pro-NATO. After all it is not like anyone is forced to join.
- collyw 2y agoNah, we need more Thomas Sowells.
- preisschild 2y agoNah, hes a useful idiot of the Kremlin. It would be good for the world if there would be less russian propaganda.
- 4gotunameagain 2y agoI wonder what sort of unfathomable idiocy it takes for someone to call Chomsky an idiot. Disagree with him or not about US foreign policy, the man was a genius. But oh wait you're probably just a propaganda bot yourself.
- preisschild 2y ago[flagged]
- 4gotunameagain 2y ago[flagged]
- fortran77 2y ago[flagged]
- biimugan 2y agoWhat's the implication of this comment?
- woodruffw 2y agoIt's an abbreviation meaning roughly "with the help of God." GP is either saying something neutral with respect to Chomsky's age or being snide. I'm not sure which.
- relaunched 2y agoMy first thought was snide / next level anti-Semitic trolling. But, then I reminded myself that you shouldn't infer tone to comments online.
- skissane 2y ago> My first thought was snide / next level anti-Semitic trolling Chomsky has been very critical of Israel, and as a result there are many pro-Israel people who strongly dislike him. So, while it isn’t impossible for Hebrew language trolling to be from an antisemite, my first thought would be it is from one of his pro-Israel critics
- euW3EeBe 2y agoTake a look at their comment history, and keep in mind that Chomsky has been openly critical of Israel for a long time.
- woodruffw 2y agoThat's why I wasn't sure which. Without that context, I could read it purely innocently (if a slightly weird choice). With it, it's probably snide, but who knows.
- cbanek 2y agoI actually emailed Noam Chomsky asking questions about Manufacturing Consent and actually got a reply. I always thought he was really cool for being so accessible to those who just had honest questions. I really hope he gets well soon.
- nomilk 2y agoDocumentary of the same title for anyone curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2m3rvsO0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2m3rvsO0I
- graphe 2y agoWhen did you ask him? I hope it was recently.
- cbanek 2y agoSeptember 2022
- llmblockchain 2y agoI emailed him in ~2012 and got a response as well. Keep in mind, I was not a student at his university and I emailed him out of the blue. Incredible guy!
- benbreen 2y agoSame. I emailed him about whether he'd ever met Margaret Mead, John C. Lilly, or Gregory Bateson in the 1960s while researching my book. I got this reply within hours: "Afraid I never met any of those you mention, though I’ve followed their work for many years. I’ve never been close to intellectual elite circles, including people I very much admire." The time stamp for my email was Tuesday, Nov 26, 2019 at 2:19 PM. It was answered by chomsky@mit.edu at Tuesday, Nov 26, 2019 at 9:29 PM. Pretty remarkable.
- xnx 2y agoThe full obituaries and reflections will come later, but the volume alone of papers, essays, books, articles, and interviews he's generated over his 95 year life is staggering.
- vr46 2y agoThe man writes faster than I can realistically read, but I still have a full shelf that I have dipped into over the last 32 years. Linguistics to Gaza, one of my proudest moments was once having some wingnut include me on a public list of enemies alongside Chomsky.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoWithout a doubt. Manufacturing Consent and The Fateful Triangle* should be assigned reading to US high school students. * Today is in more-or-less the same predicament as 40 years ago Ralph Nader is also still out there at 90 producing content regularly. https://www.youtube.com/@RalphNaderRadioHour https://www.youtube.com/@RalphNaderRadioHour
- turndown 2y agoIntellectual giant whose shadow will be cast deep into the future. I don't need to review any of his work wrt to CS or linguistics to tell you that his legacy will be massive. I think Manufacturing Consent should go down as one of the most important books ever written in our culture. He was right about much, but wrong about much also. His beliefs on Cambodia strain credulity and I still have trouble separating that Chomsky, so bent on drawing an equivalence(however valid) between American actions and the Khmer Rouge that he missed the point entirely, and Chomsky the visionary philosopher who I admire deeply.
- feedforward 2y agoThe US began arming the "Khmer Rouge" (whatever that means) in 1979 as well as protecting them in the UN, so the equivalence seems pretty valid to me. Not to mention the US 1970 invasion of Cambodia and concurrent CIA-backed overthrow of the Cambodian government, which including shooting dead US students who protested against it at Kent State and Jackson State, or the US carpet bombing of Cambodia during and after Operation Freedom Deal.
- ein0p 2y agoI recall vehemently disagreeing with Chomsky on many things when I was much younger, but then I somehow stumbled upon Howard Zinn’s “People’s history of the United States” and realized the version of history I knew was basically concentrated propaganda I was brainwashed into believing. That opened the door to understanding Chomsky. “Manufacturing consent” explains our present state of affairs really well.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoNooooooooooooooo...... How will colorless green ideas sleep furiously? :'[ Will miss his interviews on various forums often posted on YT and appearances on Democracy Now. Classic: Yanis Varoufakis with Professor Noam Chomsky at NYPL, April 16, 2016 | DiEM25 https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc
- OfficeChad 2y ago[flagged]
- nashashmi 2y ago[flagged]
- grumple 2y ago[flagged]
- nashashmi 2y agoGlad someone said it. Hamas is not a terrorist because they terrorize. Hamas is a terrorist because they are a threat to western govt and world order. Similarly south africa post apartheid was a threat to western world order.
- teytra 2y agoHow is Hamas a threat to western governments? And S-A's apartheid government was actually boikotted by western governments. How do you explain that?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nashashmi 2y agohere is the voting record on the boycott of South Africa on apartheid: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/629398?ln=en https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/629398?ln=en Western govts either abstained or voted no.
- pydry 2y ago>And even verbally supported Hamas best I can remember. Did he say something controversial like "Gaza has a right to defend itself?"
- nailer 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SomeoneFromCA 2y agoSpeaking of non-political side of him: was not he wrong about "innate grammar" necessary to understand langage? LLM do not have such circuitry, yet they somehow work well...
- yareal 2y agoLLMs are an approximation of all the human media they consume. An LLM cannot exist with out human circuitry. It's at best an ersatz language user.
- SomeoneFromCA 2y agoUnrelated to what I said, with all due respect.
- sitkack 2y agoIt isn't tho, if you look at the bulk of tokens needed to train gen1 over LLMs and what is possible with better data and smaller models. The fact that LLMs trained on dumptrucks full of data cannot achieve what a middle schooler begrudgingly achieves using existence and snide remarks.
- flaminHotSpeedo 2y agoI'd consider it related, for two reasons: First and foremost (and what I think the parent comment is getting at) whether you could truly say an LLM "understands" language As a secondary quibble in the context of the parent post, though big overall, I would argue that the whole argument is moot since a human couldn't possibly learn the way an LLM does in a single lifetime
- gizmo686 2y agoNo. Innate grammar has always been about how humans aquire language, not how any possible system which understands human language must posses that innate grammar.
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- alexnewman 2y agoFirst of all he's a hell of a linguist theorist. I disagree with about everything this guy wrote politically. I totally disagree with this guys perspective, it drives me up a wall frankly. But I have always have had incredible respect and think he played an important role in the dialogue. I read everything he wrote, and generally enjoy his writing. The very definition of the constant loyal opposition. Always getting people to think about things differently and with incredible moral courage. I wrote and argued with him and he always responded. We are all better off because of Chomsky.
- sitkack 2y agoI love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out. We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful, spared with the kid for awhile and then changed the subject slightly while destroying the libertarian kid's entire argument. You don't just debate Noam Chomsky. https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jpg https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jp... Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault - Dictatorship of the Proletariat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74
- pcthrowaway 2y ago> We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google Would have loved to be a fly on the wall had he been able to do a guest spot at Google recently. I'm willing to bet he would've gone off-script and given Google hell for their engagements with Israel and treatment of their own employees who protested.
- sitkack 2y agoNoam wouldn't be allowed to speak at NeuGoogle.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago[flagged]
- credit_guy 2y ago> I love Noam Chomsky so much. I don't. There are some things out there that are up for debate. But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side. Edit: To be sure, I wish him full recovery and many more happy years. https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chomsky-and-other-like-minded-intellectuals-on-the-russia-ukraine-war https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...
- UberFly 2y ago[flagged]
- defrost 2y agoContext: Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial. Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire. Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson, and France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, refusing to publish his rebuttals to their accusations. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
- raverbashing 2y agoThis is a good reminder why everything should have boundaries, and everything should have a "surrounding frame" In theory this sounds like "intellectual courage", in practice it's just apology and bootlicking Camps and war and tanks were all too real. But of course you can waste time and space in your cushy western university seat
- andrepd 2y agoAnd how do you know they are real? Because historians have been free to dig around and publish arguments and rebuttals and evidence. Not because anyone by decree or force declared it to be so.
- raverbashing 2y agoSome people (usually the too self-centered ones) only discover it when it's too late.
- tines 2y agoAnd the ACLU "supported" the Nazi movement in Skokie. Do you have any evidence that Chomsky himself denies the holocaust, or are you just slinging shit?
- aborsy 2y agoSad news. He was remarkably sharp even in old age.
- serial_dev 2y ago[flagged]
- jjeaff 2y agoRegardless of whether you think vaccines should be required or not, the mRNA COVID vaccines have objectively proven to be both safe and effective. Though not as effective as everyone would have liked at reducing spread, it certainly reduced severity of cases.
- therein 2y ago[flagged]
- KptMarchewa 2y agoNo.
- logicchains 2y ago>Regardless of whether you think vaccines should be required or not, the mRNA COVID vaccines have objectively proven to be both safe and effective. By all existing measures of safety they're by far the least safe vaccines on the market, and even their apparent effectiveness may have just been the result of their immune suppressive effect: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1336906/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.... . >In support of this hypothesis, Dr. Netea’s group reported dampened transcriptional reactivity of the immune cells and decreased type I interferon responses in vaccinated individuals to secondary viral stimulation (97), while our group described inhibition of adaptive immune responses and alteration in innate immune fitness in mice with this platform (99). The immune-tolerant environment induced by these vaccines is further supported by recent studies that have discovered a correlation between an increased number of prior mRNA vaccine doses and a higher risk of catching COVID-19 (100–102). Thus, these data suggest that these vaccines’ efficacy in decreasing disease severity and death might lie with their previously undiscovered immune suppressive characteristics.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- surfingdino 2y agoSad news. I do not agree with him on everything, but I found his work and arguments he made a good counterbalance to those who are followers of Edward Bernays and his "The Engineering of Consent".
- yakshaving_jgt 2y ago[flagged]
- ilikehurdles 2y ago[flagged]
- aszantu 2y agoLast time i heard him in an Interview he was already sluring and taking long times bevore he answered. I think there's metabolic problems and that he hasnt got much time left - sadly. I learned a lot from his lectures.
- escapecharacter 2y agoDoes this change his opinion on Sapir-Whorf? Is that even knowable?
- Jean-Papoulos 2y agoHere's your monthly reminder that despite the large place he occupies in the "sciency" cultural landscape, a lot of his work has been debunked and he has not gone back on his genocide-denying claims about Serbia. His anti US imperialism views blind him.
- ilikehurdles 2y ago[flagged]
- nsingh2 2y agoI've been following this post for a while. Most of the flagged comments were inflammatory or in some instances even celebrating.
- foobarqux 2y agoUniversal grammar has not been "debunked", despite evidence-free claims otherwise.
- lz400 2y agoChomsky was doing so many podcasts up to the moment he disappeared from the radar presumably due to medical issues. I've seen him going for 2 hours with some nobody with 5K followers, being asked juvenile and stupid questions and answering with the patient of a Saint. He looked quite diminished physically, elderly and frail but mentally he's always sharp and his recall and memory is scary. I feel that in his later years he made a conscious effort to talk to young people and made them aware of the history and depth of the problems the world is facing, and he used very modern avenues to do so, like podcast interviews. I will always have the highest degree of respect for this man and an admiration for his integrity, sensitivity and scholarship.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bbor 2y agoI’ve spent so much time watching this kind of content (plus the older lectures that are available) over almost a year of chores, lunches, and walks that it’s honestly bordering on parasocial. I of course don’t regret a minute; if you check these recent videos out it’s clear that he reiterates the same points over and over, but it never quite gets tiresome. Rather it gives the impression of someone who has truly glimpsed the structure of the universe, and thus is consistently going back to those same principles. Of course, I would recommend choosing “one half of his brain” (his terms) and not mixing the politics interviews with the cognitive science / philosophy ones lol. I haven’t looked for many linguistics talks of his from recent years, but I had the impression he was working on seriously technical stuff there right up until he couldn’t, too. I don’t know how I hope to sleep after this comment… I guess I’ll do him the honor of trying to rationalize my emotional/ethical interests, and care less about the passing of a world-renowned twice-(happily-)married scholar than the passing of children from war and famine. I hope he believes in us to finish his life’s work, answering the most fundamental question: “What kind of creatures are we?” He was never able to see his theories in the recent LLM breakthroughs, but we’re in the early stages of the Chomskian era of AI, philosophy, and human endeavors writ large, I think… the ChatGPT outage from earlier this year couldn’t have supported him any better without having said “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” outright!
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- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago[flagged]
- burrish 2y agolol not a chance, we are talking about hn here, anything they don't like will be flagged and downvoted to hell
- lajosbacs 2y agoTo contrast a bit with other comments, he is very much disliked in eastern Europe. He was always pushing his multipolar worldview and not respecting that the Poles, Czechs etc. do not want to live under the Soviet/Russian 'pole'. My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I do not think I will be.
- bantunes 2y ago> My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism. He doesn't hate the US. He hates that the US has been captured by warmongering elites and hates its poor. And he'd probably school you on the USSR's state authoritarian capitalism not being a good example of socialism.
- lajosbacs 2y agoWhat would then be a good example of socialism?
- Malcolmlisk 2y agoThe DDR
- IsTom 2y agoIt was so good that to this day there is an economic rift between former west and east Germany.
- iamawacko 2y agoThat economic rift is not the fault of the DDR. 1. The West of Germany, particularly the Rhine, had large amounts of natural resources and much industrial capacity. This was true long before Germany was split. Take the steel production of Germany in 1944, for example. 59% of Steel production was in the West, 18% was in the East, and 16% was in the areas outside of Germany. This is not only more production, but more production per capita. 2. Like most of the former Easter bloc, the privatization of state companies resulted in economic downturn in that region. Especially since many of these state industries were simply closed and cashed out on. Jörg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg, is quoted as saying "Some 70 per cent of East German industry disappeared".
- ronhav3 2y ago[flagged]
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- ImAnAmateur 2y agoCould anyone recommend a Noam Chomsky talk about language? I'm curious about his work but have never read or listened to anything from the man.
- alexarnesen 2y agoThe ghost in the machine and the limits of understanding . A bit wider than linguistics but a great talk and intro to his style of prose
- jcul 2y agoI love this old interview. If you skip to the very last question at 26:50, it is a little bit poignant, considering this news. https://youtu.be/hdUbIlwHRkY?si=cRpz8f9m7YDh_6G- https://youtu.be/hdUbIlwHRkY?si=cRpz8f9m7YDh_6G-
- throwaway81523 2y agoLook for "Language and problems of knowledge : the Managua lectures" which are about Plato's problem. It's reasonably introductory and accessible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_problem
- jokoon 2y agoAt first I thought he said interesting things But with time, I also realized he is a linguist, not an historian or political scientist. He is controversial.
- akaij 2y agoI think you mean that he is mainly a linguist.
- adastra22 2y agoI think he's saying that he should stick to his lane.
- rand846633 2y agoI often find controversial to correlate with interesting.
- Zanfa 2y agoI can't speak to his opinions on other topics, but since the full-scale Russian invasion started a few years ago, his frequent opinion pieces on world politics started popping up a lot. They were some of the most batshit insane, genocide-apologist takes on the situation that I've ever read.
- _aaed 2y ago[flagged]
- collyw 2y ago[flagged]
- chipotle_coyote 2y agoIf you believe that "vaccinations protect us against disease" is propaganda, I have very bad news about whatever information sources you've been following.
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoWe're quite fortunate the internet wasn't a thing when polio was still around.
- beaeglebeachedd 2y agoPolio measures did not focus on sacrificing the children for the elderly. COVID school and social/learning activity shutdowns did.
- collyw 2y agoPolio got reclassifed and the vaccines claimed a success. But keep the faith.
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- pvaldes 2y agoBy the description provided, I assume that "medical event" here is a synonym of ictus
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Garvi 2y agoDamn, this topic got downvoted onto the 3rd page by the HN hive mind in no time. Right after: SQLSync – collaborative offline-first wrapper around SQLite, 16 points, 20 hours old ..must have a hell of a lot of downvotes.
- martythemaniak 2y ago> The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores all of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s security demands and spreads a frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. > February 4, 2022 https://chomsky.info/20220204/ https://chomsky.info/20220204/ Questions of human conflict are incredibly complex, but occasionally life gives you a freebie. Occasionally, things actually are black and white, there are good guys and bad guys and you should not support the bad guys. If you had trouble getting this one absolutely dead simple case right, maybe you should not bother having an opinion on these matters at all.
- beryilma 2y agoI still love his debate with Foucault from ages ago. Chomsky speaking English, Foucault speaking French! The subject didn't matter much to me, but the ease they were debating each other is something else.
- carabiner 2y agoCalling chatgpt "plagiarism software" was an incredibly succinct quip.
- Log_out_ 2y agoAll that had to be said, was said. All that had to be said about saying, has been said. If the language of of said, is to be taken as a context free gramar defined by a tuple Y and the ruleset X, then the pumping lema for cf languages applies. Sayer said sad. [Mic Drop]
- isntbilly 2y agoCan't think of anyone I regard higher. Stick in there Noam
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y agohttps://archive.ph/FzGtl https://archive.ph/FzGtl
- plasticeagle 2y agoA legendary man. A friend of mine has a low-power FM radio station, that I wrote the software for, that endlessly downloads and replays Noam Chomsky's podcasts.
- mark_l_watson 2y agoI am a huge fan both of his technical contributions, healthy AI skepticism, and also a good friend earned her PhD with Chomsky. I hope he is comfortable and surrounded by people who love him. EDIT: and, of course, he had an accurate view of the world geopolitically, media manipulation, etc.
- hi41 2y agoI watched some of the documentaries such as the ine about manufacturing consent. What I don’t understand is this: the news agencies don’t report to the government. Then why would they work together with the government to mislead the people? Does anyone know? Noam is so amazingly smart, he is probably one a billion. Sometimes I am not sure he is right but can’t really formulate why or what is it that I don’t agree.
- johnea 2y ago> she explained why the usually responsive academic “hasn’t been returning emails, or interviewing”. I was amazed when he replied to my email, asking a polical history question, with a thoughtful and personal reply. The only other person I could think of even being close to his stature is Howard Zinn. It may be a long shot, but I'm still hoping for his recovery. This man has done more for humanity than a billion billionaire-bills could ever aquire...
- mmaniac 2y agoHe had it coming. The funniest part is that everyone has a different reason to think that.