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Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

independent.co.uk

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Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#371

Post by [deleted] »

objektif wrote: post #335
tim333 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the problem. He should have been trying to understand it from the Ukrainians side more than seeing the thing as US vs Russia. It seems a bit of a historical change - in the 19th century view it would be ok for the Russians to get pissed off with the US trying to steal their Ukrainian peasants and associated property. These days you're supposed to let sovereign democracies do their own thing even if the…

Is that how it works? How about letting your ally wipe out a sovereign nation in the ME? Does that count as these days? Or casually kill 2+ mln civilians in Iraq. “These days” also apply to us and our allies and it is an unfortunate part of how things run.

[deleted]

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#373

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

foobarqux wrote: post #240
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is unfortunately a staggering amount of evidence of genocide in Ukraine committed by russia. To suggest otherwise, or to suggest that russia is "acting with restraint and moderation" as Chomsky said, is tantamount to Holocaust denial. https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-interview/2023/04/n...

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> Russia did not target (initially, now they are) major essential civilian infrastructure like power plants

The russians targeted major essential civilian infrastructure right from the outset of the full scale invasion. This included hospitals, airports, train stations, bridges, information infrastructure, fuel facilities, etc. They also launched wave after wave of cruise missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure all across the country from the autumn of 2022.

I would know, because I was there.

So, what you are saying here is utter horseshit.

> there is not a "staggering amount of evidence"

There is, but clearly you don't want to see it.

> unless your definition of genocide is so broad as to include a large proportion of armed conflicts.

The definition of genocide I am using is the one provided by the UN.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml#:~:t...

This is something the russian military at all levels — all the way to the top — is guilty of.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...

It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal.

Read it.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#374

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

foobarqux wrote: post #329
dragonwriter wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia did not target (initially, now they are) major essential civilian infrastructure like power plants. Initially, Russia was planning a decapitation strike and to take Ukraine relatively whole afterwards, either by annexation or installation of a puppet regime or a mix of the two. They started heavily hitting civilian concentration with no military value as a terror tactic pretty quickly when the swift decapita…

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You are either disastrously wrong, or are intentionally lying.

Which is it, and why?

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#375

Post by roenxi »

_djo_ wrote: post #364
roenxi wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, point 1 is NATO and the EU are almost the same entity. Difference of sets and there are only a couple of countries left. The non-EU NATO countries are generally involved in the war (maybe not Turkey? I don't keep an eye on the Turks). Point 2 is more an observation. Russia is currently taking significant casualties - we don't really know how many - from Ukrainian forces armed with NATO weapons, NATO ammo, NATO…

NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation. The US could only green light strikes on Russian territory with American-made weapons like ATACMs, it had no authority over those supplied by others or produced by Ukraine. This is clearly shown by the fact that Ukr…

Alright. So just jumping back to "why is there an active land war in Eastern Europe?"; is it fair to characterise your position with these 3 points?

1) Russia was worried about EU expansion into Ukraine [0].

2) They've invaded Ukraine and are encountering heavy resistance from the EU.

3) The US is barely involved in either of the other 2 points.

Because it doesn't look like an EU war effort to me. It looks like a NATO effort. Russia seem to be talking about the NATO-ish aspects of the struggle when they try to justify themselves and the bulk of the materiel seems to be being directed by the US if the stats are to be believed. The US aren't bit players in this one [1].

I'm not seeing a strong counter to my basic understanding of the situation (which is pretty close to what Chomsky seems to have come to). It looks like a "Russia were worried about NATO expansion in Ukraine and discovered their worst fears being realised when they tried to resist said expansion militarily" situation. I'm not seeing a strong argument here for why Chomsky should have come to a different opinion, it seems to rely on the EU having an independent military presence that they just don't have.

> NATO isn’t the only supplier to Ukraine, and NATO has no command authority over Ukraine and its forces. The idea that this is a ‘NATO’ proxy war is ridiculous and denies the agency of a democratic nation.

Why would Ukraine's form of government have anything to do whether this is a proxy war? They are democratic, they have agency, and this is still a NATO proxy war. If NATO wasn't involved Ukraine would have folded in the first month and the conflict would have ceased years ago.

[0] Although I am still a bit confused about why this is supposed to be a misread by Chomsky or myself; the only major difference I see between the EU and NATO is whether the US is involved. And I obviously think the US is involved.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218 - BBC thinks the US supplied 5x the amount of stuff as the next biggest supporter of Ukraine, for example.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#376

Post by panick21_ »

me_me_me wrote: post #243
sickofparadox wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is such a terrible person he has his own section on the Wikipedia page for "Cambodian Genocide Denial"[1] and is heavily featured in the page for "Bosnian Genocide Denial"[2]. Chomsky is a disgusting hack who runs cover for any genocidal freak that pays lip service to the hammer and sickle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide_denial…

oh wow, its the same dead horse being beaten again and again and again. The whole thing is more semantical argument than ideological. Chomsky is not 100% right on everything and his world views are more black and white than the world they describe. But he is an excellent linchpin to validate your own views against. People who hate him always attack him based on few things from the past, while following/praising peopl…

Its like people always go after Nazi and right wingers about the same kind of stuff. Like let it go people.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#377

Post by bux93 »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #46

Speaking of non-political side of him: was not he wrong about "innate grammar" necessary to understand langage? LLM do not have such circuitry, yet they somehow work well...

Somehow the transformer architecture does pretty well at this task, and other architectures do not. You could say a transformer has "innate grammar", while other architectures do not.

That an LLM does well at grammar doesn't prove or disprove this possibility. A more poignant criticism of "innate grammar" would be that it's not a hypothesis that can be disproven, and as such not really a scientific statement.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#378

Post by johnisgood »

credit_guy wrote: post #193
sitkack wrote: post #71

I love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out. We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful…

> I love Noam Chomsky so much. I don't. There are some things out there that are up for debate. But not Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side. Edit: To be sure, I wish him full recovery and many more happy years. https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-chom...

It is probably needless to say, but you do not have to agree with someone on everything, especially to admire someone's knowledge or contributions in specific fields.

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#379

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

crazygringo wrote: post #274
slantedview wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chomsky, for some weird reason, chose to take Russia's side. This is a mischaracterization. He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so. That's different than endorsing the invasion, which he did not.

The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and…

>> So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)

Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?

That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684

Full transcript here:

https://lexfridman.com/john-mearsheimer-transcript/

Re: Noam Chomsky 'no longer able to talk' after 'medical event'

#380

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #379
crazygringo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that's a false narrative. There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO. Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and…

>> So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.) Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would…

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