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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'

#71

Post by sitkack »

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, spared with the kid for awhile and then changed the subject slightly while destroying the libertarian kid's entire argument.

You don't just debate Noam Chomsky.

https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jp...

Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault - Dictatorship of the Proletariat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74

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

#73

Post by flaminHotSpeedo »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #60
yareal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are an approximation of all the human media they consume. An LLM cannot exist with out human circuitry. It's at best an ersatz language user.

Unrelated to what I said, with all due respect.

I'd consider it related, for two reasons:

First and foremost (and what I think the parent comment is getting at) whether you could truly say an LLM "understands" language

As a secondary quibble in the context of the parent post, though big overall, I would argue that the whole argument is moot since a human couldn't possibly learn the way an LLM does in a single lifetime

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

#74

Post by codeflo »

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...

Compared to an LLM, how many hundreds of gigabytes of text do humans need to acquire a language? And isn’t that disparity already proof that some sort of innate structure must be going on?

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

#75

Post by arresin »

exe34 wrote: post #36
arresin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve never been close to intellectual elite circles That is very humble

is this sarcasm? I read it as "I'm not welcome to parties because I don't toe the line"

No, no sarcasm and that's how I read it too.

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

#76

Post by codeflo »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #69
nsingh2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are universal approximators and can pick up patterns in sequences that are very different from Human languages. Sure, they don't have many inductive biases and can understand language, but as a consequence require a tremendous amount of data to work. Humans don't, which implies a certain bias towards Human language built into our heads. A bias is also implied by the similarities across Human languages, though wh…

It still does not proof anything, as claiming that "there is certain bias for Human Language built into our heads" is quite different thing that saying there is some universal grammar in the brain structures, as much we do not have innate abilities to comprehend calculus or play chess, yet we still able to learn it, with a lot less training information than LLMs. In fact 2 books will suffice for the both.

We don’t learn language from textbooks though.

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

#77

Post by zo1 »

yareal wrote: post #54
nailer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I checked sources, turns out literally tens of millions of people vocally and loudly disagree with you. I think it's not helpful to anyone to come in here and be so resolute and so black and white. Especially in the face of an event that has drawn the eye of the international community as a potential genocide. I'm not telling you what to believe, just that like, posting like you did is not engaging in any meaningful…

Not OP. Sometimes it's good to have a lack of nuance and come with absolute black/white thoughts. At some point, we all internally, draw our own lines in the sand about how we think on a topic (that is hopefully until we encounter new information that necessitates a change). I know for a fact that my opinion on this topic is not accepted, likely won't be accepted by either prominent side, but I stick with it because it conforms to my internal thoughts, priorities and problem-solving properties.

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

#78

Post by ein0p »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #62
ein0p wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall vehemently disagreeing with Chomsky on many things when I was much younger, but then I somehow stumbled upon Howard Zinn’s “People’s history of the United States” and realized the version of history I knew was basically concentrated propaganda I was brainwashed into believing. That opened the door to understanding Chomsky. “Manufacturing consent” explains our present state of affairs really well.

I was more-or-less a free-market, atheist libertarian until about age 16 because I didn't know any better and it seemed so righteous and freedom flag-waving. Then, I learned a few things decades since then (but kept the atheism), especially about the dark origins of libertarianism. The truth is that America is a neocolonial power that flirts authoritarianism where one can live an easy life if they're moderately rich,…

I’m starting to waver on atheism also. I’m not likely to start believing in god this far in my life, of course, but I now see why a lot of people feel the need to believe, and I no longer judge them for it. I do however judge religious organizations for shamelessly exploiting that need.

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

#79

Post by tgv »

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...

There have been many attempts to model and emulate human syntactic acquisition and processing, but the general consensus is that it cannot be done without presupposing some mechanism that enables hierarchical structure. The number of tokens a child needs to learn syntax is the tiniest fraction of the amount of tokens an LLM is trained on.

Humans can also lose parts of their language processing capabilities, without losing others (start at e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_disorder), which is highly suggestive of modular language development. The only question on which there isn't much consensus concerns the origin of that modularity. And humans can lose knowledge while still being able to speak and understand, or lose language while retaining knowledge.

LLMs don't have that at all: they predict the next token.

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

#80

Post by vintermann »

lamontcg wrote: post #67
turndown wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worded that part poorly, and did not bring up what really bothers me about it, that he tried to deny that there was a genocide in Cambodia. I agree with what you said. The idea that the US is innocent in Cambodia or really anything going on in that part of the world at that time is beyond false.

His point was always that the most inflated estimates of deaths in Cambodia were uncritically accepted by Western media and widely broadcast, while atrocities committed by friendly nations always leaned towards the very low estimates and the stories were buried.

Yes, the accusation that he denied the Cambodian genocide is false, and a tactical smear.
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