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Comment by dpapathanasiou | Hacker News Reader

CHOMSKY: First of all, I'm usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isn't necessarily what's inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating.

Oh, the irony

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Only ironic if you take it out of context:

    BARSAMIAN: ....You're very patient with people,
    particularly people who ask the most inane kinds of
    questions. Is this something you've cultivated?

    CHOMSKY: First of all, I'm usually fuming inside, so
    what you see on the outside isn't necessarily what's
    inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever
    get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff
    they do I do find irritating. I shouldn't. I should
    expect it. But I do find it irritating. But on the
    other hand, what you're describing as inane questions
    usually strike me as perfectly honest questions. People
    have no reason to believe anything other than what
    they're saying. If you think about where the
    questioner is coming from, what the person has been
    exposed to, that's a very rational and intelligent
    question. It may sound inane from some other point of
    view, but it's not at all inane from within the
    framework in which it's being raised. It's usually
    quite reasonable. So there's nothing to be irritated
    about.

I basically read that as:

    Interviewer: Do you get angry when people ask you inane
    questions?

    Chomsky: Only when the person asking it should know
    better.

Whether or not Chomsky and the interviewer's idea of what constitutes an inane question is the same as mine or yours may be grounds for criticism. But just quoting the bit that you did out of context is dishonest, and definitely fits with my idea of what constitutes an inane comment.

I disagree with your interpretation: according to his reply, the inane questions come from the non-elites, people with "intellectual confinement", and so on.

I don't trust a scientist who's "usually fuming inside". People who fume inside are people who are already pretty sure they're right about everything, which is not an appropriate disposition for a scholar.

I passionately disagree that the intellectual must remain dispassionate. But what you are saying is in fact considered a rarely challenged truism in humanities departments. It is considered very distasteful for an academic to speak publicly about current events, politics, or really anything controversial. But I think, and I know there is a very strong anti-academic current here on HN, that the intellectual plays a similar role to the free press in a democratic society. He is morally obliged to speak out when he sees the society being duped, coerced by the powerful, or being robbed of its freedoms. The academic intellectuals repeatedly fail us in this in the United States, and I admire Chomsky because he is one of the very few with the integrity to perform his moral duty.

Being passionate != thinking you're right about everything.

Thinking you're right about one thing is more than enough.

I know there is a very strong anti-academic current here on HN...

You know. Really? How? What's the basis for your claim?

I confess I'm having a hard time giving you the benefit of the doubt here.

Three of YCombinator's founders have PhD's from Harvard. A number of other users are graduate students, professors, or researchers in industry, and I've never noticed any animus toward them. A significant fraction of the submissions to this site deal with new research, and generally cast it in a positive light. Doesn't all this suggest HN would be more than ordinarily sympathetic to academics, not less?

Sorry, but that's wrong. If two people have read a book and disagree about the meaning of a given section, then it's perfectly reasonable to expect both sides to be dispassionate as they dissect the passage in question. But what Chomsky is saying (in the context of this article) is that it makes him angry when people disagree with his interpretations of books they haven't read.

When you say scholars should be dispassionate about this, you're basically saying that a book review written by someone who hasn't read the book should be treated with equal respect as a book review written by someone who has. This seems profoundly anti-intellectual to me.

"People who fume inside are people who are already pretty sure they're right about everything"

How does that follow?

They're fuming because the rest of the word doesn't recognise that they're right.

Isn't that just an assumption? There are other reasons to fume.

Of course - I was just making a guess as to the most likely one.

Aside from the fact that you're isolating a quote out of context, I think you're wrong. I won't speak for Mr. Chomsky, but personally, I don't get angry with people because I'm pretty sure I'm right about everything (I know I'm not), but because I'm pretty sure that they're wrong. It's a very different reason, and I think it is wholly legitimate to be upset by people who are insistent about their ignorance and stupidity.

I'm sure he has his own definition, it's just that the interviewer never bothered to ask for a point of clarification.

He suffers as the protagonist in xkcd/386 does, except not just about the Internet.

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