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Comment by sashahart | Hacker News Reader

Chomsky is being a polemicist, which has always been his greatest skill.

He has been off on politics rather than linguistics for some time now. E.g. check out http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm (this is a similar pattern to many old scientists)

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Your "many old scientists" parenthetical comment neglects several strong biases. You've likely never heard of most of the old scientists who don't get into politics because you don't know about their work at all. Older people tend to be more interested in politics than younger. It's hard to be trained/have experience in one field and then switch to another, so few young scientists would also be known for their politics. (For example, Margaret Thatcher's research chemistry impact is much less well known than her political impact.)

And yet, Chomsky is one of those few, having become one of the leading opponents to the Vietnam War while in his late 30s - as your link itself implies - and so doesn't fall under the premise of your comment.

You don't seem to understand what I said.

Dawkins is another example of the old scientist pattern - many successful and famous scientists do the work they're academically known for early, then shift into topics outside of their original area. It's quite natural.

The link was from fans of Chomsky's and simply illustrates that he has shifted his attention away from linguistics for many decades now. This is not uncommon in science and it isn't some kind of slam on Chomsky.

But Chomsky didn't change when he was old. He became well-known for his politics when he was in his 30s. Dawkins was 35 when his "The Selfish Gene" was published, and 45 when "The Blind Watchmaker" was published. Both are involved in areas that interested them when they were under 40 years old.

My point is that neither Chomsky (and now neither Dawkins) fits your description ... unless you say that people 30-40 of age are already old?

My other point is that most successful scientists don't shift into topics drastically outside their interests when they were young. Dirac? No. Erdős? No. Barbara McClintock? No. Von Braun? No. Karl Sharpless? No. Jocelyn Bell Burnell? No. Just take the list of Nobel prize winners for science and see how few of them got into politics later in life, or for that matter moved into topics markedly outside of their original area.

Yes, of course some do. But car dealership owners, and chefs (Samak Sundaravej, PM of Thailand, was a television chef for 7 years), and priests and singers also get into politics. So my last point was that there's nothing of note about a few scientists getting into politics as they get older, because people of all sorts of different fields go into politics as they get older.

Hence, my comment that there are strong biases which affect your parenthetical observation.

And Dawkins was probably an atheist when he was young too. So what?

I have never made a generalized claim about all scientists so you are beating a straw man. I have mentioned a certain pattern which you will see recurring if you have any significant awareness of the famous scientists in a particular field... that pattern is not "getting into politics" but rather "moving well beyond the scientific area where they made their name"

And I'm saying that that pattern doesn't exist, at least no more for scientists than for any other field. (If you broaden your field to other than politics, then think about all the other people who have switched careers. President Obama was a law professor earlier in life. Sting was a schoolteacher.)

I gave a list of famous scientists who did not move well beyond the scientific area where they made their name. I'll add more: Cyrus Levinthal, Dorothy Hodgkin, Hermann Weyl, Edsger Dijkstra, Maria Mitchell, Abraham Maslow, John Wheeler. The list goes on and on. Again, consult a list of Nobel Prize winners and see how it's no more common for "famous scientists in a particular field" to do what you say they do than for any other profession.

I posit that you have sampling error, in that you've mostly only heard of scientists who are known in their field and are also known for work outside their field.

I'm aware of Chomsky's political proclivities, but this is purely a debate over the definition of "email". The nature of the actual systems invented is not in dispute, merely what to call them.

You said he was a linguist. I said that he hasn't done a lot in linguistics for many years now, which is true. I wasn't picking on Chomsky for being political.

Even much of his work in linguistics was polemics - the famous review of Verbal Behavior is pure polemics.

edit: and in interviews Chomsky has said that he felt a lot of this work had an essentially political purpose - talking about some nexus between Continental-style rationalism and opposition to totalitarianism, with which he associated the behaviorists

I don't know what you mean by old, but Chomsky has been an activist for over 40 years now.

Chomsky is old in the same sense that Dawkins is old and many others are old, namely that they are retired famous scientists who made their name a long time ago and now mostly focus on other topics.

lolwhat? you're not fit to tie his shoe laces. but then again, weak ad-hominems are a pattern to those who aren't, and/or are admiring the clothes of naked emperors, right?

"old scientist" -- chomsky got dragged into this by paying attention ever since the vietnam war, when not many people did. you irresponsible, ungrateful little fuck! (mod that down, ban me -- it's worth saying something that actually matters)

I don't have to be grateful to Chomsky for expressing his opinion, that's his right. I don't know what the Vietnam war has to do with the invention of email.

edit: nor did I ever say anything to run interference for the Vietnam War. Or Pol Pot, or Hugo Chavez...

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