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Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

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Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#121

Post by ajuc »

boppinz wrote: post #105
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

1 - His Ukraine stance is simply that we have had a Cold War paradox in our American minds since the 50s, Russia is both too strong a foe to ignore and a paper tiger working off of shoddy USSR tanks and being beat by some farmers with lock-on missiles. This article helps clarify his points, he absolutely calls Russia's invasion barbaric, but he has always vehemently stated the West's bloodlust and policing has never…

Ad 1. There's no paradox. Russia is a paper tiger that barely works. But it has nukes and enough conventional army to fuck up small countries in Eastern Europe. Hence they seek NATO membership. The war isn't about USA, the war is about deciding whether Russia can again occupy about 100 000 000 people living there. Chomsky arguing against west involvement is enabling Russia. This isn't rocket science. If Baltic States didn't join NATO they would be gone by now. Poland would be likely fighting a war as we speak.

Ad 2. I have a lot of people I respect tell me his linguistic ideas make some sense, but for me it's just wrong (see LLMs). It's not my specialty and it's his specialty so I usually resist the urge to speak about it. He doesn't seem to have any problems speaking about Eastern European politicis tho, without knowing much about it. I'd cry "colonialism" but that's cheap.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#123

Post by snowpid »

boppinz wrote: post #105
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

1 - His Ukraine stance is simply that we have had a Cold War paradox in our American minds since the 50s, Russia is both too strong a foe to ignore and a paper tiger working off of shoddy USSR tanks and being beat by some farmers with lock-on missiles. This article helps clarify his points, he absolutely calls Russia's invasion barbaric, but he has always vehemently stated the West's bloodlust and policing has never…

According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Noam_Ch...) ' In October 2022, he called on the U.S. to stop "undermining negotiations" between Ukraine and Russia.[137]

In an interview with New Statesman published in April 2023, Chomsky is quoted in saying that Russia was fighting more "humanely" in Ukraine than the U.S. did in Iraq, and that Russia was "acting with restraint and moderation" as Ukraine had not suffered "large-scale destruction of infrastructure" compared to Iraq.[138] Chomsky also asserted that Ukraine was not a free actor, that it was the U.S. and then United Kingdom which refused peace negotiations to further their own national interests, and that U.S. military aid to Ukraine is aimed at degrading Russian military forces.[138] Chomsky also argued that the applications to join NATO by Sweden and Finland had "nothing to do with fear of a Russian attack, which has never been even conceived", but instead was to give both countries new markets for their military industries and access to advanced equipment.[138] ' and that is copying Russian propaganda. Not all he says about the war is Russian propaganda but more than you claim. Chomsky fan boys just start to read the wikipedia articles and stop defending him.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#124

Post by boppinz »

tomjen3 wrote: post #114
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

I agree with you. I wish he was a banned subject on hn.

nah, I think a lot of armchair philosopher techies on here could use some alternate opinions and dialectics.

The primary reason for bringing him up (or any philosopher on this forum, really) is the nexus of ethics and AI. Although we haven't particularly let ethics stop us from a lot of high-tech atrocities throughout the past century, in the military field or otherwise (I'm thinking private equity and rampant credit use).

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#125

Post by snowpid »

johndhi wrote: post #119
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the Ukraine stuff is that it falls easily into the same crap position as Varoufakis and others on the left which is basically a) some kind of "realism" about what Ukraine should do [basically surrender] and b) gives credence to much of the crap that Lavrov has put out on the public stage about this war being somehow about American imperialism. Well, duh, everything is about imperialism, but what's mi…

Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?

1.) Iraq was never annexed by USA. 2.) American govertment never claimed there is no Iraqi culture. 3.) There was no large kidnapping of Iraqi kids. 4.) There are no mass rapes made by the American military. 5.) Iraqis were never forced to forget Arab and learn only English. 6.) Hussein used poison gas on Kurdish people and used Zyklon B filled rockets (yes, same gas like in Ausschwitz) to attack Israel. Hussein occupied Kuwait and attacked Saudi - Arabia. There is no remotely similar thing the Ukraine goverment did in the past.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#126

Post by diegoeche »

boppinz wrote: post #105
ajuc wrote: post #7

I start to dislike Chomsky more and more. His work in linguistic is over my head, maybe it's true, I can't tell. But whenever I hear him speak outside his niche his points are stupid (like this one) or harmful (like his Ukrainian takes). Everybody sees faces in rocks because we have brains fine-tuned for seeing faces. Does it prove that there's something universal in looking like a face or even worse - being a face?…

1 - His Ukraine stance is simply that we have had a Cold War paradox in our American minds since the 50s, Russia is both too strong a foe to ignore and a paper tiger working off of shoddy USSR tanks and being beat by some farmers with lock-on missiles. This article helps clarify his points, he absolutely calls Russia's invasion barbaric, but he has always vehemently stated the West's bloodlust and policing has never…

The article is bullshit. He had interesting criticism for imperialist policy in the US, but after the 90s it becames a tiring "west is bad".

Not only he blames the victim with Ukraine, he did it with the Serbian ethnic cleansing and the Cambodian genocide.

Him: On the Cambodian genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

Him: On the Srebrenica massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#127

Post by hef19898 »

boppinz wrote: post #116
hef19898 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I have a peoblem with all those "intelectuals". Most of the time they were never top of the crop in their field to begin with, and then switched over to general intellectualism using top notch rethoric skills. Peterson is living, or already fell off, the extreme end of this spectrum. People like Chomsky occupy places on the same spectrum so. And spare me philosophers.

Laymen need people who can synthesize the works of academics/researchers. If someone like Chomsky wasn't talking about "faciness" and the ethics of ChatGPT, would anyone really bring that up? In an academic setting or otherwise. This again also discredits his work as an academic for coining and bringing to light topics like CFGs. Or in another similar vein: Bill Nye helps to distill scientific concepts for children (…

Bill Nye condenses scietific facts, true. And he does that very well. What he does not is selling his own ideas on everything.

ChatGPT, well, everybody brings those issues up. But who really cares about "faciness"?

Also, evolution is as much a fact as gravity. Pretending there needs to be a discussion being had, especially one not between biologists and other experts, just gives credit to opinions that don't deserve it. But since there are people denying gravity, well...

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#128

Post by benpacker »

mcv wrote: post #67
olalonde wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His editorial on ChatGPT definitely read like "sour grapes"[0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...

ChatGPT does feel a bit like a refutation of his life's work. Because whether or not ChatGPT can think, it certainly has a good command of language without starting out with an inborn sense of grammar. It learns grammar by copying. Just like kids do, I suspect.

Kids learn grammar by copying, but a group of kids with no language will invent one (see Nicaraguan sign language), and empty transformer models will not do this.

Kids raised hearing a mix of French and African languages will also invent a new language (Haitian creole) and a LLM will not do this, it would alternate speaking one or the other.

ChatGPT proves that language is not so complex that it can’t be modeled, but the core Chomsky arguments are unaffected.

I haven’t looked into the alternative perspectives (emergent grammar, etc) in the discipline since undergrad so I’m not saying Chomsky is right, just saying LLMs don’t disprove it.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#129

Post by ajuc »

johndhi wrote: post #119
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the Ukraine stuff is that it falls easily into the same crap position as Varoufakis and others on the left which is basically a) some kind of "realism" about what Ukraine should do [basically surrender] and b) gives credence to much of the crap that Lavrov has put out on the public stage about this war being somehow about American imperialism. Well, duh, everything is about imperialism, but what's mi…

Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr...

Let's also remember a few millions of Ukrainians were starved to death not 100 years ago by Russians. Ukraine is and was the most fertile soil in Europe. Russians sent soldiers to steal food and to ban people from leaving.

This is what happens when Russia invades you. People in the west have no comparison.

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