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Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

uanews.arizona.edu

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Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#41

Post by RobertoG »

phowat wrote: post #18
otalp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venezuela is very far from the government he prefers. In fact it's close to the exact opposite, since he's an an anarchist and vocal critic of Lenin and Stalin. He however supports the rights of Latin American countries to elect their own government over CIA backed dictators who privatise resources and funnel out a country's wealth. The fact that social democratic countries in Latin America have overall had better de…

Which social democracy is doing well here in south america? We are currently paying the price for all the post-socialist economical measures here in Brazil.It's not pretty.

As I have some Brazilian friends that disagree with you I went to the statistic data and it doesn't look so bad.

For instance,the poverty headcount:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC?locations=BR

Specially against this one, a growing population:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=BR

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#42

Post by BjoernKW »

foldr wrote: post #39
BjoernKW wrote: post #35

World-renowned linguist and all people are talking about is his political views (mostly by his own design). Make no mistake, Chomsky's work was significant to both linguistics proper (X-bar theory, generative grammar, universal grammar) and computer science (Chomsky hierarchy). In recent years though he more often than not comes across as a grumpy old man who can't seem to accept the fact that linguistic theory has m…

> linguistic theory has moved on to often simpler, more elegant approaches. As a linguist, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. There have always been alternative approaches. But we have not recently been blessed with any that are clear winners in terms of simplicity and elegance.

HPSG or statistical approaches in computational linguistics, for instance.

Now, of course one can argue - as Chomsky himself has done - that statistical approaches are not as elegant as rule-based ones but as human language faculty quite likely behaves statistically to some degree, statistical methods for describing language do have some merit.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#43

Post by RobertoG »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #20
azaras wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is a libertarian socialist therefore he doesn't like state socialism.

Nevertheless, he praises state-socialist policies.

Or, maybe, he just praise reduction of poverty. That it's something that actually happened in Venezuela when Chomsky showed his support, by the way.

From then he has criticised them frequently.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#45

Post by foldr »

BjoernKW wrote: post #42
foldr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> linguistic theory has moved on to often simpler, more elegant approaches. As a linguist, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. There have always been alternative approaches. But we have not recently been blessed with any that are clear winners in terms of simplicity and elegance.

HPSG or statistical approaches in computational linguistics, for instance. Now, of course one can argue - as Chomsky himself has done - that statistical approaches are not as elegant as rule-based ones but as human language faculty quite likely behaves statistically to some degree, statistical methods for describing language do have some merit.

Linguistic theory has not "moved on" to HPSG. HPSG originated in the early 90s and remains a minority pursuit.

The term "statistical approaches" could mean almost anything. There have always been people who are more interested in building, say, practical machine translation systems than in figuring out how kids acquire grammatical knowledge. But again, the field has not "moved on". There are just different groups of researchers working on different problems.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#46

Post by galacticpony2 »

Hasknewbie wrote: post #21
klarrimore wrote: post #3

As a UofA grad I can tell you the hippies down there are going to go absolutely apeshit. The university is half Rob Gronkowski and half Cesar Chavez. The Gronks all leave after school but the Cesar's all stick around the university and think, act, and look like Noam. He'll fit right in.

>> and think, act, and look like Noam So they are low-key, patient, and make thorough, very detailed responses when debating?

If you disregard his halo of authority for a moment, you'll find that most of what he says is usually very laboriously articulated whataboutery. It is "thorough and detailed", but that doesn't make it convincing.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#47

Post by galacticpony2 »

RobertoG wrote: post #32
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that was the first video on Google search, which I quickly looked over, and had the necessary quotes from Chomsky to validate my point.

Chomsky opinion about Venezuela is not so difficult to understand if we make a honest effort. Unfortunately a honest effort, as reflected by your link, is not very common. Chomsky supported initially Chavez, (who, by the way, and not as your link insinuate, was democratically elected), because his government initially improved the conditions of the most humble people in the country. People that lived in misery in one…

> As frequently happen, the new elite was incompetent, and get corrupted fast. Consequently, Chomsky criticized them.

That doesn't just happen "frequently", it has happened in 100% of socialist countries after the "revolution". The "critics" then get silenced or killed, unless they happen to (ironically) be sitting in a comfortable chair in an imperialist capitalist country such as the USA, like Chomsky.

You'd think that with this track record, a smart guy like Chomsky would begin to see that there must be something fundamentally wrong with socialist political theory. Yet, he keeps retreating into the "No True Scotsman" fallacy whenever the next socialist experiment fails.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#48

Post by geezerjay »

thethirdone wrote: post #13
cooper12 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit that link you shared was so frustrating to read. To think of all the productive things a great intellectual like Chomsky could be doing with his time. Instead he generously chose to engage someone who had already made their conclusion and just wanted to "debate" without actually ceding to any points (take a shot any time OP says "liberal" or "PC"). He even hints at OP's "intentional ignorance" many times to…

> Instead he generously chose to engage someone who had already made their conclusion and just wanted to "debate" without actually ceding to any points (take a shot any time OP says "liberal" or "PC"). Chomsky was not prepared to cede any points either. In many places, he does not respond to the probing questions asked of him at all (this is assuming the poster didn't add them in afterwards) instead opting to insult…

> Chomsky was not prepared to cede any points either.

That was patently clear from the thread. His followers also showed a complete lack of intellectual honesty, by trying to avoid any of the points made in the thread and instead trying to dismiss with paternalistic non-sequiturs such as "Why should Chomsky waste time shoring up your self-imposed ignorance?"

When a cult-like following forms, they do behave like a cult.

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#49

Post by geezerjay »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #11
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5

Chomsky is a great critic of social issues like imperialism, manufactured consent, and state capitalism. However he has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela and as of today won't admit the problems with state socialism. I hope his new students realize this.

Is there some crucial factor in Venezuela's woes which clearly arises from socialism? It seems likely that the US will soon become the latest demonstration that corruption can damage a country with any form of government. Chomsky identifies that as the problem in Venezuela, which I find plausible. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/5/chomsky_leftist_latin_...

> Is there some crucial factor in Venezuela's woes which clearly arises from socialism?

Ah, the never-ending cycle of socialist revolution, followed by establishing socialism, and finally followed by a string of desperate attempts to pin the effects of socialism because no true socialists would ever do any wrong.

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

Re: Noam Chomsky Joins Faculty at University of Arizona

#50

Post by RobertoG »

galacticpony2 wrote: post #47
RobertoG wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky opinion about Venezuela is not so difficult to understand if we make a honest effort. Unfortunately a honest effort, as reflected by your link, is not very common. Chomsky supported initially Chavez, (who, by the way, and not as your link insinuate, was democratically elected), because his government initially improved the conditions of the most humble people in the country. People that lived in misery in one…

> As frequently happen, the new elite was incompetent, and get corrupted fast. Consequently, Chomsky criticized them. That doesn't just happen "frequently", it has happened in 100% of socialist countries after the "revolution". The "critics" then get silenced or killed, unless they happen to (ironically) be sitting in a comfortable chair in an imperialist capitalist country such as the USA, like Chomsky. You'd think…

It's not just in socialist countries that the critics get silenced or killed, or that they are incompetent or get corrupted, but, normally, there are a more "laissez faire" attitude to those countries from the press and the political class, as Chomsky have pointed repetitively.

If you care about the welfare of people is fair to ask why a minority live like kings when the vast majority live in misery in a resource rich country. And, I think, is fair to ask for changes and try to support those changes even if you know that probably you will get disappointed finally or you will get mixed results.

The true is that, unsurprisingly, and independently of how you call those policies, spending resources in the poor improve the life of the poor.

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