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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'

#81

Post by defrost »

UberFly wrote: post #72

[flagged]

Context:

    Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial.

    Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire.

    Chomsky was widely condemned for defending Faurisson, and France's mainstream press accused Chomsky of being a Holocaust denier himself, refusing to publish his rebuttals to their accusations.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

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

#84

Post by nsingh2 »

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.

My comment was more of a response to

> We may as well do it the way LLMs do

We almost certainly don't learn the way LLMs do, it's just too data inefficient.

And I don't see what current LLMs can say about a universal grammar in the Human brain, unless there is proof that a LLM-style attention mechanism exists in the brain, and that it is somehow related to language understanding.

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

#87

Post by houseplant »

YZF wrote: post #65
yareal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[EDIT: ok, I'm gonna remove my appeal/preaching] I think the parent is referring to the situation before Oct 7th and likely going back to Israel's withdrawal in 2005. The detail I think he's trying to put forward is that before Israel's withdrawal the settlers in Gaza operated a flower export business of about that economic magnitude and that the greenhouses and infrastructure that was used for that business was left…

[flagged]

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

#88

Post by raverbashing »

defrost wrote: post #81
UberFly wrote: post #72

[flagged]

Context: Chomsky had long publicly criticized Nazism, and totalitarianism more generally, but his commitment to freedom of speech led him to defend the right of French historian Robert Faurisson to advocate a position widely characterized as Holocaust denial. Without Chomsky's knowledge, his plea for Faurisson's freedom of speech was published as the preface to the latter's 1980 book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qu…

This is a good reminder why everything should have boundaries, and everything should have a "surrounding frame"

In theory this sounds like "intellectual courage", in practice it's just apology and bootlicking

Camps and war and tanks were all too real. But of course you can waste time and space in your cushy western university seat

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

#89

Post by SequoiaHope »

cbanek wrote: post #11

I actually emailed Noam Chomsky asking questions about Manufacturing Consent and actually got a reply. I always thought he was really cool for being so accessible to those who just had honest questions. I really hope he gets well soon.

Same! I emailed him asking for his thoughts on robotics and anarcho-communism and he replied pretty promptly. He said it was an important subject and that he was moving offices (this was his move to Arizona), but I could ask again another time. I never quite had the time to prepare for what I would have asked for, some kind of discussion I could record, which he was doing a lot at the time, but I was very happy just to have gotten a supportive reply the first time.

For anyone curious, here is Chomsky in 1976 discussing the relevance of automation and anarcho syndicalism to modern productive economies: https://youtu.be/h_x0Y3FqkEI

I truly believe we can build a world where everyone benefits from automation, getting the freedom and time to do what we will that every person deserves. The reason I develop open source farming robots is to explore concepts of community ownership of the means of production and community oriented engineering. Noam Chomsky’s work heavily inspired the thinking that got me where I am today.

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

#90

Post by gklitz »

UberFly wrote: post #72

[flagged]

Independent of what people believe of him or his defense of Faurisson's freedom of speech one thing is clear, they have both been the target of extremely aggressive smearing campaigns by Israel.

I would defend the right to freedom of speech of people who believe the earth is flat, that does not mean “I support the flat-earth movement”

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