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Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

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Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#161

Post by RyanMcGreal »

grandalf wrote: post #121
neotek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Al Franken describes it best in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them : "They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do, but in a differenct way. You see, they love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. [We] love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old everything mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes mommy is bad. Grown-up love means understanding what you love, taking the good…

President Obama's war on whistleblowers is generally an attempt to silence the stories that present the US in an unflattering (though true) light. Just mentioning this in case anyone thinks that Franken's quote indicates that the mainstream left actually shares Chomsky's principled stance.

Obama is not "mainstream left" or any other kind of left. He's best characterized as a moderate conservative. In Canada, where I live, Obama's beliefs would be considered to the right of our Conservative Party, which is considerably to the right of the Canadian mainstream but managed to win the last election because the centre and centre-left votes were split among three or four parties.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#162

Post by flyinRyan »

podperson wrote: post #36

I love Manufacturing Consent (the documentary) and it inspired me to read some of Chomsky's books on politics and see him live. It didn't change my life though. In general, I think the fundamental problem with Chomsky's compelling and very well buttressed description of The Way Things Work [in the US(1)] is that it really doesn't offer much hope. (This actually comes up towards the end of the movie, and his answer --…

>In general, I think the fundamental problem... is that it really doesn't offer much hope.

Do you mean to say this is why some people so strongly dislike Chomsky?

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#163

Post by flyinRyan »

merinid wrote: post #66
Bud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably because you don't really know who Chomsky is or what the breadth of his work has been. Even if you choose to discard all his work in politics, he's a towering figure in linguistics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

I meant this in a positive way, ie, that the breadth is so enormous and he is so prolific that I am constantly impressed.

That's how I took it when I upvoted you.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#164

Post by flyinRyan »

gadders wrote: post #9
francesca wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Ironic that Chomsky still teaches at MIT

Not sure about his linguistics, but his politics is adolescent.

My CSS must be broken. I would expect such a useless, non-content-contributing comment to be greyed out by now.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#165

Post by flyinRyan »

xk_id wrote: post #96
roguecoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made a distinction between describing something well enough to correctly predict its behavior and understanding the common mechanisms leading to those behaviors. He then critiqued science for focusing exclusively on correct predictions, without also searching for insight into the underlying order. The problem with science focused exclusively on correct predictions is that it encodes implicit assumptions, and if th…

Thanks for your contribution. But, regarding the first paragraph, I need to ask – are you sure? I cannot sense the distinction you describe. As for the second paragraph, I completely do not understand what it means.

For the second paragraph: Imagine a man warped out of the past somewhere into the future. His clothes look funny and any interaction he makes with people draws an odd response. Some give him money, some people say "no thank you" for some reason, and so on. He can test this, he can see that nearly everyone behaves this way. So he assumes this is simply how people here behave.

Later on, something happens that forces him to wear clothes like everyone else is wearing. And how people react to him changes completely. All his testing proved that people react one certain way, but he didn't understand why so he didn't realize what his testing had showed was actually just a small subset of the actual behavior and was actually an extremely rare case.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#166

Post by flyinRyan »

anigbrowl wrote: post #74

It’s undoubtedly the best documentary I’ve seen, weaving together all sorts of clever tricks to enlighten and entertain. This is sadly ironic; since Chomsky is one of the most manipulative and dishonest writers I've had the displeasure of reading. I'm not going to engage in an exhaustive deconstruction of any of his work here, since I don't keep any of his books on my shelf. I'll just say that I think his mischaracte…

Thanks for your argument, I'm sure you've enlightened everyone who's had the pleasure of reading your post.

You're the whatever wing Sean Hanity, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#167

Post by roguecoder »

xk_id wrote: post #96
roguecoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He made a distinction between describing something well enough to correctly predict its behavior and understanding the common mechanisms leading to those behaviors. He then critiqued science for focusing exclusively on correct predictions, without also searching for insight into the underlying order. The problem with science focused exclusively on correct predictions is that it encodes implicit assumptions, and if th…

Thanks for your contribution. But, regarding the first paragraph, I need to ask – are you sure? I cannot sense the distinction you describe. As for the second paragraph, I completely do not understand what it means.

This essay of his is the closest I've found to a summing up of his perspective: http://bostonreview.net/BR30.3/chomsky.php

The second paragraph was me trying to, very briefly, sum up the consequences of positivist epistomology. The alternative that Chomsky proposes is that observational knowledge can only describe the things that are true given the process that generates the interactive behaviors we observe. This applies to everything from humanities and linguistics to physical interactions (which is why people have such difficulty explaining quantum physics). Consider, for example, the idea that computers think in zeros and ones: it is usually plenty accurate, even though it is really an abstraction of high/low voltage signal. But if we encounter random bit flips it may be helpful to know that actually we are working with high/low signal and so a cosmic ray interacting with our RAM could produce a flip. Equally, we write programs in higher level languages without worrying that loops aren't an inherent property of the computer. "Loops" aren't a lie, but they also aren't a fact: they are useful knowledge.

Most knowledge falls into this area, of being the product of current, generative interactions. In this world it is possible to say that some statement isn't supported by evidence, so we can still have science based on falsifiablity. We can even fully describe the observed behavior of some system under a set of conditions. That knowledge is likely to be useful, even. But it is incomplete, and shouldn't be elevated to a place of infallible "fact" lest we miss the additional capabilities we might acquire by manipulating those assumptions.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#168

Post by Zimahl »

david927 wrote: post #150
Zimahl wrote: post #48

I remember vividly clutching at the door to my room, trying to hold on to something while the world spun around. Maybe I'm a bit too simple or pragmatic but I sincerely hope that this was simply hyperbole. If not, I think we might have an early glimpse into a special, yet troubled, mind. From a lot of things I've read about Mr. Swartz since his suicide, it doesn't seem like he was all that mentally stable.

Are you really stating that his feeling physically dizzy at comprehending something that changed his world view is a "glimpse into troubled mind"? Seriously? Please, for all that is holy, unless you have a background in mental health, please avoid making armchair diagnoses. (Those that have that background are loathe to jump to conclusions, for example.) It's neither your place, nor your field. Don't do it.

I'll stand by what I said, he seemed very troubled and it is clear that he was since he killed himself. Suicide typically doesn't happen overnight so I'll assume he's had issues long before the DOJ decided to target him.

I'm not getting this from one single blog post. Others have posted how he had trouble communicating personally. There was another blog where he was sympathetic to the Joker from 'The Dark Knight'. If his blog was a personal one I bet there are probably hundreds of other examples.

If you hear something that is so profound that the you get physically dizzy at the thought, enough to require you to hold onto something, there's nothing else to say but you should get help. Like I said, if it was just hyperbole, fine, but I don't get the feeling it was.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#169

Post by grandalf »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #161
grandalf wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

President Obama's war on whistleblowers is generally an attempt to silence the stories that present the US in an unflattering (though true) light. Just mentioning this in case anyone thinks that Franken's quote indicates that the mainstream left actually shares Chomsky's principled stance.

Obama is not "mainstream left" or any other kind of left. He's best characterized as a moderate conservative. In Canada, where I live, Obama's beliefs would be considered to the right of our Conservative Party, which is considerably to the right of the Canadian mainstream but managed to win the last election because the centre and centre-left votes were split among three or four parties.

No disagreement here. I used that term b/c in the US the mainstream left broadly supports Obama and many consider him to be part of it.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#170

Post by grandalf »

mistermumble wrote: post #159
ap22213 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 'mainstream lefty', I feel pretty safe in saying that Obama has generally been considered by many of us as right of center.

Agree. In another time, he would be a moderate Republican, in the time when the Republican party allowed moderates.

Well this may be true, but the mainstream left gives Obama a TON of slack on many of his worst policies.
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