Ask HN: What do you think about Noam Chomsky? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think about Noam Chomsky?

4 pointswsieroci13 comments

Hi,

Simple question: what do you think about Noam Chomsky?

Best, Wiktor

I have yet to see Chomsky's arguments disproved on the facts. When you parse his detractors' criticisms, they can always be paraphrased not as: "your conclusions are wrong because your facts are wrong," but as "your conclusions are wrong because their implications are unthinkable."

A friend of mine, working towards a Ph.D. in linguistics, told me that she witnessed a lecture where Chomsky claimed, on the basis of his theories, that no human language could possibly do X. (For some complicated, technical X.)

A hand from the audience: "Estonian does X."

I googled just now and believe the following PPT elaborates, but I make no claim to understand the details.

math.ut.ee/~heli_u/ettekanne/Koke.ppt‎

What's your views on Chomsky's defense of the Khmer Rouge, and his argument that the evidence for the Cambodian genocide was "third-rate propaganda"?

If you took my comment to mean that I think Chomsky is always right, then you have misunderstood. I have simply noted that the enthusiastic "debunkings" of Chomsky that I have come across have been of very low quality, and often include explicit pleading to trust those in power, instead of pointing out where he has actually gone wrong in his arguments.

As to your specific question, a few seconds googling produced this: bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2010/07/chomskys-views-on-khmer-rouge-distorted.html?m=1

Myself, I take no position. Let the debate continue. Let the facts be known.

I phrased it poorly - I was in a rush to get to dinner with friends, and didn't think my response all the way through.

I was thinking more of the detractors of Chomsky's views in this instance. As I understand it, Chomsky's view is that, based on the facts available at the time, there wasn't enough information to make the conclusion that genocide had occurred. His detractors insisted that there was.

That's why this isn't really an issue of "letting the facts be known", but of the evaluation of the reliability of the evidence available at the time.

The link you pointed to is consistent with my analysis. Consider the full quote starting "If a serious study of the impact of Western imperialism on Cambodian peasant life is someday undertaken...". I take it to imply either that the published work about the genocide, based on interviews with refugees, was 1) not "serious", or 2) not relevant because it didn't take into account the 'impact of Western imperialism' in its analysis. Overall he's saying that at that time we don't really know enough to draw a conclusion different than the current international consensus.

You can see in the later quote that Chomsky, observes that international experts had "concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands" and of the "extreme unreliability of refugee reports." "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments."

He's saying there wasn't enough to be able to determine the "facts."

While his detractors at the time judged there was enough believable evidence to show that the numbers of murders was much higher, and that the refugee reports were sufficiently reliable.

I therefore can't categorize his detractors in this case as asserting "[Chomsky's] conclusions are wrong because their implications are unthinkable", so offer it as a counter-example to your original, broad statement.

Thanks for your clarification. I admit my statement was made broadly, for rhetorical purposes.

But in this instance, his detractors are not criticizing his interpretation of available evidence, they brand him, despite his words, as an apologist for Pol Pot and an excuser of genocide.

I think this is consistent with my larger point that the arguments made against him are of low quality and not fact-based.

You are right in that I'm reacting to your broad statements, made for rhetorical purposes. I'll point out though that you've changed the topic. His detractors in the 1970s, who argued that Chomsky minimized the extent of the Cambodian massacre, did not justify their "low quality arguments" (as you term them now) by saying that the implications of Chomsky being right were unthinkable.

What is "unthinkable" about the idea that there were only a few thousand murders, rather that a genocide of 1-3 million people?

I am not referring to detractors who claim he is/was an apologist for the Khmer Rouge. I am only referring to those detractors who in the 1970s argued that Chomsky was wrong in greatly discounting the information from Ponchaud's "Cambodia: Year Zero" and Barron and Paul's "Murder of a Gentle Land".

When I was a kid the internet wasn't available so I would always try and seek out weird ideas on my own. I discovered Chomsky's views reading a Rolling Stone issue that featured an interview with him.

I think his pointing out of government and corporate cultural assumptions are fine and generally true but his underline philosophy of 'libertarian socialism' I think is just divorced from the real world.

I used to have one of his interviews with David Barsamian on a cassette tape ( I'm not sure of the date ), but I remember Chomsky saying in response to a question about his societal vision that he believed "skills shouldn't confer power". In short if you have a special talent or skill it shouldn't give you any social leverage. I don't disagree with that but I will tell you one thing. The world will never, and I mean never ever "work" like that short of the personable interactions between close friends and family. To that regard I simply don't see any utility in Chomsky's social philosophy other than it being a foundation to see the corruption of those he critiques a bit more clearly.

So that's my only disagreement with him. I do think muckrakers do the world a service and he has played his role well in unveiling the ideological assumptions of a figure-head and pundit driven media world.

Beyond that, to me he's just another privileged academic who has had the pleasure of traveling the world and saying a bunch of smart things.

I recently watched his movie "manufacturing consent" and was surprisingly disappointed. It seemed kind of disjoint with no solid message and unfortunately it was boring to watch to boot.

I really think corporate control of media, and media bias, and how it affects our society is a really important topic that needs its own easy to digest documentary, like black fish, or an inconvenient truth. Something that will popularize the issue, and explain the problems to people who normally wouldn't be interested.

Fwiw, it's not his movie. It's named after a book he wrote with Edward Herman. The documentary was made by two Canadians, presumably as an attempt to communicate the ideas from the book via film.

That's a simple question with many complex answers, including those with very strong opinions both for and against.

Personally, I'm philosophically inclined towards emergent models of linguistics rather than Chomsky's universal grammar, but I have barely the ability to write Pirahã, much less go into a detailed discussion of the current naturist/nurturist debate.

So your question might be a bit more specific in order to get the answers you're looking for.

I hold him in high regard for the clarity of his thinking. He is a breath of fresh air when it comes to pundits.

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.

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