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Comment by dotsam | Hacker News Reader

I respect Chomsky very much, and I have learned a lot from him. But I do wonder to what extent his views are based on a possibly over-optimistic view of the world's potential, and a refusal or inability to accept that the the universe might be fundamentally unjust and that life is not always dignified or sacred. I would like to share his hopeful outlook (hopeful in the sense that he seems to think there ought to be a counterfactual world where everyone behaves decently towards each other and the planet), but it seems to me that it is in the nature of life to want power, and it is in the nature of power to control anything that threatens it, and so conflict, struggle and might making right are intrinsic (but perhaps deplorable) features of the world.

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I think it's a bit weird to talk of the universe being just or unjust. The universe is what it is. To me, an action taken by a person can be just or unjust, and a person can be said to be just or unjust based on a sort of average of their actions.

As for the nature of life, I don't think that we can go from, say, a tree casting shade and thus making life harder for other plants being natural, or predators being natural, to saying that compassion and cooperation in humans is unnatural. Quite the opposite. Human beings are, from birth, naturally compassionate and cooperative as well as the opposite. We are "capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares". But a lone human is always a very fragile creature, in fact I'd even say that it is more unnatural than anything else. We are, most of us, social beings who not only benefit from but require the company and cooperation of others to function and flourish.

And of course, protecting yourself and your dependents from threats is natural. We are social, but also tribal. But when do we decide that another group is a threat? Why do we take from others, or harm them? To me, it seems the answer to that will usually be out of fear and or out of want. And while those might occur naturally, they can occur more or less, depending on circumstance and outlook.

> I would like to share his hopeful outlook (hopeful in the sense that he seems to think there ought to be a counterfactual world where everyone behaves decently towards each other and the planet)

You'd see the point if you think of 'Civilization' as a evolving process rather than an single point ideal.

The world today is factually more just and decent (IOW civilised) than the era of colonial imperialism and this change didn't just come about naturally. It happened because of people who question the injustice and challenged the world to be better. I think that's the role people like Noam Chomsky play. To expect the ideal so that we move towards it, however slowly.

> But I do wonder to what extent his views are based on a possibly over-optimistic view of the world's potential

They definitely are. Chomsky should forever be respected for his work in linguistics, his work on the media and his research into US power. Manufacturing consent was published in 1988 and it is more relevant then ever.

His personal political views are however completely unrealistic and ignore human nature entirely.

Are you familiar with Rutger Bregman and his book Humankind? That gives a fresh perspective into humanity. One that I believe to be true. We're just too deep into the illusion of evilness, that's mandatory for status quo.

i think some very small contingent of often-extraordinarily rich and powerful -- and, therefore, comparatively-loud -- people either believe or claim to believe that humans are selfish/evil.

the fact that someone would have to write a book to countervail that claim shows the incredible power of those few people.

then again, we have folks like Steven Pinker, who - i don't know what his actual views on human nature are - but he definitely seems to be convinced that everything is getting better all the time - despite what seems to me to be at best a mixed record, and from here on out is going to be...challenging.

There are reasons why you believe this if you disproportionally own more than thousands combined. Even just for yourself you need some justification. What better than to declare humanity evil, constrained by its nature? Makes you sleep better at night and can justify anything you have done. It was just your nature.

Honest question: did you read Pinker’s book?

no.

Thanks for Pinker, I'll add it to my list. Would the primary book be: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined?

i actually don't know his primary book - but that one sounds reasonable enough - that was definitely one of his reasons why he said the world was getting better.

Nature from the cellular level up is comprised out of struggles between parties. There is always a war in every level of biology.

There is an undeniable percentage of egotistical maniacs, psychopaths and narcissists in the human population. This ensures conflict will always be a part of human societies.

> There is always a war in every level of biology.

You assert this with no proof, when asked if you have read a book which presents a case for a different viewpoint: that there is (also) cooperation and interdependence.

It is, to me, so obviously absurd to state that humans - who invented cities, fire brigades, line dancing, and symphony orchestras - are defined by struggle and warfare. It's just nonsense. "We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower." - Marcus Aurelius.

> There is an undeniable percentage of egotistical maniacs, psychopaths and narcissists in the human population.

True. But first of all, where do they come from? Are they born as such? And second of all, should they define our societies? There are many ways in which people, who are neither psychopaths nor narcissists, are forced to act in self-serving ways simply because there is no alternative in this culture. And there are many ways of dealing with them that do not involve building everything on mistrust.

A lot of things are changing during evolution. For example the genes that were beneficial to human in ancient time give high diabetes risk in modern society.

As to cooperation and competition, war is part of evolution that leads to the formation of modern human. But with invention of nuclear weapon the original rules that benefit to whole specie (but not individuals) are not applied any more. So Chomsky's view might just happened to match a modified better pattern then the politically incorrect but factually correct "fundamentally unjust universe" view that I partially agree with

Somethimes it isn't "modern society" and just the gallons of coke you can buy in super markets to the price of water. Well, on the other hand that isn't too different to classical evolutional processes that rely on chance.

I don't buy this honestly. Even when nobody can live up to utopian expectations, to better yourself you might want to strive for more.

We heard about necessity of mass online surveillance and prisons outside of the rule of law. All because they are allegedly necessary. Of course they are not. But I guess there are Chinese and Russians preying on us and this is a geopolitical reality?

These are excuses, nothing more and fatalism because of humanities apparent weakness is not conductive to positive development nor very realistic.

I think you are onto something here. Most people grown in the better parts of the world really don't understand how much hard is life in the poorest corners, how much human rights + moral views are completely absent from the education and life experiences of some of the most powerful people in the world, just a few decades later after being that kid, that girl who grown in the living hells that are many parts of the worlds today.

These people are hardly different from Ghenghis Khan or have a different approach to conflicts if they have the upper hand with any advantage at their hand. So, many "western" "human" ways to engage and solve problems are for them, in fact, chances to get away with their objectives.

This is the world as it really is, not the world as we would like it to be.

That's the people you're gonna face with maybe a gun and few spare magazines, but the technology is nothing, they have the upper hand: no morals, no human rights to respect. They just have to win a game respecting no rules at all, those which you'd have to respect.

Nature might be like this, but we can maybe build an artificial system which is not.

It is interesting to wonder what this might look like. There are still limits to what is physically possible, we only have finite resources. I also personally value having a diversity of people and views. I wonder if at least from the points of view of some of the inhabitants the world will be unfair. That said, we should always try and do better.

Chomsky does not disagree with that take on the nature of the universe.

He disagrees it must be a feature of our social life.

Clearly we have the capacity to move beyond blunt conquest of each other literally. Why not socially?

To him it’s a matter of how we instigate each other to solve problems.

I can prove a lot of math itself with an R Pi. Is the industrial churn to sell new iPhones each year necessary to humanity or the Ferengi Alliance?

What would society look like if we forced austerity on capitalists and put all our smart people on equality of condition? My bet is it looks more like 1950s-60s economically.

What we do instead is focus on semantics of abstract rules of trade originating from the Bible (40 shekels and 12 goats for a daughter please), repackaged by aristocrats into economics models the normies were too ignorant to understand are just a description of what happens normally in math not English.

We don’t need to LARP a physics textbook.

Why make music or anything if the goal is to RP we’re just animals? Be an animal.

I think Chomsky is saying the opposite; that we should resist and thwart this will to dominate things in the world. It’s easy to forget he’s basically an anarcho-communist (and not in the pejorative context that label is often used, but as an intellectual school of thought). And before anyone calls it Marxism, ancom as a philosophical tradition derives from Kropotkin rather than Marx.

Leftist politics in general assume that most people are actually good, and society to the extent it exists is there to protect the majority of good people from the few baddies who want to hoard all the resources. Even if we take that will go power as an intrinsic feature of the world, those displaying antisocial behavior should be cast aside.

Not saying I’m 100% agreeing with this, but that optimism in the general goodness of people is a core tenet of leftist political views. And Chomsky is and has been a thought leader on the American left for the last 50 years.

> a philosophical tradition derives from Kropotkin rather than Marx.

Bakunin, another early anarchist, at a conference of the First Internationale in about 1870, said to Karl Marx something like "If you take the most convinced revolutionary, and give them absolute power, within a year they will be worse than the tsar himself." I think that has to qualify as one of the biggest "I told you so"s in history.

I think I agree with Chomsky that humans can create a much less hierarchical society. Most of what he advocates for (reducing American imperialism) is a pragmatic step towards giving people in the countries of the world more direct control over their lives. Would you say this is not possible? I don't think there's going to be a global revolution, but I do think we should strive to question hierarchy and increase human freedom wherever possible. I don't think we'll ever have a perfect society, but I do think we can create a much better society. Just look at all the progress made in the last decades.

Problem is that there are other countries that would use the vacuum left behind to further their ambitions. In a way colonization is still relevant in all developing countries.

An informed and empowered populace is a check against imperialism/colonization. Look at the opposition to the Vietnam war, for example. With the existence of the global internet, it has become much easier for citizens to track what their governments are doing. I think that we can decrease inter-country domination over time by pushing for more democracy and education worldwide.

Think about how powerful it would be to make people believe that, though. Then, by deduction, since power desires to increase its capacity, necessarily its power must be overblown :^) semi-/s

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