Since there’s already one of Friedman and Rand, I figured I would make one on Chomsky.
Chomsky’s libertarian ideas are awesome, I love the things he’s said about the Mass Media, Foreign Policy, and US History. However, he fell SO HARD to the Labor Theory of Value. How the hell could such a bright intellectual fall to such a mistake? I mean Libertarian Socialism, how the hell could he screw that up so bad?
btw I’ve thought of reading Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Is it any good?
It’s quite reasonable to call Chomsky the greatest linguist in the world. Do you actually have legitimate criticism of his contributions to that subject in mind, or are you simply taking a kneejerk anti-Chomsky stance because you oppose what he’s written on other topics? His anti-imperialism resonates with what the civil libertarians here should presumably advocate, so objections to his work on account of his anarchism should take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, particularly since advocacy of anarchism truly constitutes a small kernel among his greater work.
Well, basically his work is on syntax, but men are not mice, and syntax is not as important as Chomsky claims it is. My mother has a PhD in cognitive linguistics and briefly explained his stances to me, back then I wasn’t as libertarian as I am today. I am a computer programmer myself, and therefore I understand that the syntax of language is very hard to parse for a computer, so the idea that syntax isn’t that important resonated with me.
But, Generative Grammar isn’t taught anymore in Sweden as far as I know, and most people in Europe consider George Lakoff’s work to be more scientifically sound than Chomsky’s. For the record, I despise George Lakoff for his progressive political views, but I do think he’s a greater linguist than Chomsky, well, I also despise Lakoff for his arrogance, he’s a real d-bag, you should have seen his e-mails blaming the republicans in Berkeley for the cancellation of the biggest conference in the world for cognitive science. It was on his team, not on anybody else, they fucked it up. Anyway, there are some problems with Lakoff as well; some things are not as universal as he claims that they are.
Then there is Steven Pinker, a well-known name on the internet, he says that language is innate, which it is not, and it can be seen in “feral children” that language is not innate, but simply learned. Anyway, I don’t know much about linguistics, but in most parts of the world, Noam Chomsky’s work is largely discredited and discontinued, it’s only in the USA where he’s still being taken seriously.
I have not read much of Chomsky, but after reading one of his political articles someone sent me I really dont think I am going to.
The article basically was justifying collectivism saying that individualist ideas were promoted by the elite because they wanted the people to be alone so they could be easier to manipulate… How can someone be so manipulative with the language (but knowing what he worked on I understand where it is coming from). Individualism is not going alone in the world, individualism is that the individual has the right to associate and collaborate. Collectivism can not collaborate or associate, they are just forced to work together.
I usually spend some time on reddit, and I have come across some of Chomsky news. I agree with him in the war, but that is all. And all his articles are very manipulative, usually with the intention of making the peole feel superior if they agree with him. I dont like this kind of manipulative ideology.
Out of date or not, his contributions to psych were revolutionary and set the tone for modern psych. Many great academic studies get out dated/ absorbed/ disected fairly quickly (such as Keynes) it doesn’t lessen the initial revolutions / insights the original piece inspires.
The only reason chomsky is a superstar is because wannaba intellectual college students can swallow his message. He’s for all the fashionable causes. He’s just a PC thug in disguise. He doesn’t seriously contemplate the problems of government or the merits of freedom. He’s just less of a troll than Paul Krugman, but that isn’t saying much.
And as for being the greatest linguist? One of my friends is a linguistics major and has never mentioned chomsky. Even so… big fish - small pond.
As a European (Belgium), I can confirm this. I don’t study linguistics, but a good friend of mine does. When I asked him about Chomsky, he basicly said the same thing. Only the USA takes Chomsky still serious; most linguistics departments in the world study other guys.
Chomsky is a socialist. He thinks imperialism is more or less capitalism, and vice versa. Every time he writes essays on the subject, David Landes, who is unlike him a serious historian, has to refute his idiotic anti-industrial revolution and anti-western fallacies.
And his ideas on linguistics misuse Godel’s theorem. They say the human mind, also, has a consistent language, which is incomplete, and has finite expressions. Penrose retorted, more or less: But people do write mathematical proofs, formally or not, and there is no proof-checking algorithm. It is impossible for there to be an innate number of ideas people can know. (And Chomsky thinks he knows what this finite list of ideas, which he argues is the only possible, is: apparently he knows everything there is to know…)
Its because he takes the Marxist view of ideology that he tried to back his linguistic ideas (finite sphere of mental concept and and ideas per person) with that he attacks imperialism.
Apparently we’re advocates of tyranny. And if the clip linked above doesn’t convince people that he’s not an anarchist (insofar as he favors the state and the concept of majoritarian rule over a voluntary structure) then I don’t know what will.
Hmm, I couldn’t find my “source”, but I’m going to say it was most likely Alex Jones (just throwing that in the air). I looked up anything involving Chomsky supporting Obama and it’s debunking my statement, but to my memory I remember reading something along the lines of a list of anarcho-syndicalist who support Obama and Chomsky was on that list.
“The real Adam Smith opposed the division of labor.”
Who knows what this lunatic is talking about? The Wealth of Nations and his theory of absolute advantage are entirely based on the division of labor. He marveled at the productive powers of the division of labor and specialization–see his commentary on the pin factory.
That was painful to get through. I couldn’t even finish the second clip. What was he doing there? Was he trying to say that Soviet Russia was moving towards being a capitalist nation? Same with Cuba? What was he going on about?
