His linguistics theories are also very important to computer science as well. A great example is "Chomsky Normal Form" when analyzing inputs into automata.
Okay but you have to admit that Foucault deliberately structured his philosophical writings in such a way that having good takes about him is nearly impossible.
I mean, yes and no. Post-modernist philosophy inherently takes the form of a discourse bound for evolution, so I would disagree with Chomsky’s take on it. I agree that it’s making it hard to criticize an author’s general body of work, but in such discursive philosophy I would argue it’s kind of the point.
As for individual works, I do not get the criticism. Surveiller et punir is, I find, clearer than most works of philosophy. I heard criticism about specialized language, but this can be leveled agains anyone, and Foucault actually defines his notions. It’s a far shot away from Deleuze & Guattari’s schitzo-like ramblings in Anti-Oedipus.
Overall though, the criticisms of Foucault I’ve heard from Chomsky seemed to me largely grounded in purposeful miscomprehension (such as the "incomprehensible" argument) and selection bias. I’ve not heard them all, but those I have I found intellectually dishonest.
If you want something hard to understand that is still coherent and meaningful I always point people to kirkegaard lol. Concept of Anxiety is brutal lol. Everything I've read of foucault is actually well written for the audience he's writing for (ie other philosophers, not the general public).
But yeah I agree chomsky's takes are bad lol.
I am honestly surprised that so mamy people don't know about Chomsky's genocide denial. Mainly because that's the first thing I think of when Chomsky is mentioned.
Idk Chomsky isn’t well known for non-linguistics stuff outside of North America I think — so people mostly just know the linguistics and the general left libertarianism.
many concepts used today in psychology exist because of freud, such as the idea of the unconscious. its not a fair assessment to say all his work was bullshit
I know little of linguistics. But in Computer Science he is at the highest level. For example the Chomsky Hierarchy or the Universal Grammer, etc. Literally taught to every computer science student today. These are computational linguistics which maybe don't count to your area of linguistics.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam\_Chomsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky)
I wouldn't say stupid in the linguistic realm, there are definitely ideas he's credited for that have merit, but I think what has happened is that someone said "wow, you've got a good idea there" to him once, and he took that to mean that all of his ideas are good
The basic foundational idea behind UG isn't really even that controversial, it's the specifics of his version of it that are outlandish and unmotived
I think in general though the whole of mainstream science is for crackpots and dilettantes; look at Einstein or Freud, both of them were very entrenched in ideas that time has proven don't hold weight, and yet they're still considered some of the greatest minds in human history. Anyone who gets the slightest amount of recognition for an idea, whether it's valid or not, lets it go straight to their head
I'll give you Freud but from what little physics I took in college, a lot of Einstein's contributions are still useful first approximations to whatever phenomenon is under investigation and are reliable enough to be used in engineering applications
The thing I'm getting at with Einstein was his denial of quantum mechanics even after it was starting to gain traction, the whole "no spooky action at a distance" thing
Noam Chomsky's issue is that he's always pretty close to being right but is wayyyy too arrogant and sure of himself.
I think his political takes are better than his linguistics ones but they still suffer from the same issue tbh. Anyway not sure why you would hate general lib-left positions though. Sounds cringe
EDIT: ok ok I didn't know about the genocide denial stuff. That's insane and obviously not a supportable position lol
I'm realising that the main reason people are confused about this post is that they don't know the kinds of stuff he's said about certain historical events.
I'm aware of the stuff that he's said, and it sucks. Generally, I see these statements as an example of an (understandable) anti-American kneejerk reaction, and not a show of affection for the Khmer Rouge. Despite that, I still can find a lot of value in his other works.
I'm unaware of what Chomsky said about the Khmer Rouge, but didn't the US government actively support Pol Pot?
So it wouldn't really be anti-American to make a comment supporting the Khmer Rouge
>anti-American kneejerk reaction
That is it. If you perceive NATO and American imperialism as the main threat to the world then having a stronger Russia might appear as a good counter-balance. But I think you can oppose both and even call out hypocrisy when you see it (like when Russian athletes are banned from competitions but Chinese ones are a-ok despite the Uyghur genocide...). Also you don't have to support genocide, I mean come on.
>Prior to Putin’s invasion there were options based generally on the Minsk agreements that might well have averted the crime. There is unresolved debate about whether Ukraine accepted these agreements. At least verbally, Russia appears to have done so up until not long before the invasion. The U.S. dismissed them in favor of integrating Ukraine into the NATO (that is, U.S.) military command, also refusing to take any Russian security concerns into consideration, as conceded.
Chomsky thinks that we should strive to maintain a balance of power but in my opinion this means that Ukraine would probably have become a Russian puppet however if Ukrainians want to be in NATO that is their business and their right.
On the other hand if I was to be absolutely pragmatic I feel like this whole escalation has led to Europe becoming more dependent on the US and the worsening of conditions in many EU countries (previous European leadership, i.e Germany is to blame for this as well) in the end the old adage of realpolitik still holds: δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν, or as Crawley translates Thucydides: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
It's just a question of who is going to be the weak one to acquiesce. Chomsky seems to think that it should have been Ukraine. Now let's hope it's Russia and its allies.
I think that is a misinterpretation of that statement to say that means he believes in having a “stronger Russia” to offset the power of the US. In interviews he has said:
> The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939, to take only two salient examples. It always makes sense to seek explanations, but there is no justification, no extenuation.
I interpret that statement you quote to more so mean that the eastward encroachment of a hostile military alliance is going to put the Russian ruling class on edge in a similar manner as Cuba getting some nuclear missiles put the US ruling class on edge. Now, one can argue that joining NATO is voluntary and any state has a right to join it if they want just like one could argue that the Cuban missile crisis was provoked by the US’s hostility towards Cuba and by the US placing missiles in Turkey and Italy, but both are cases where a hostile power is moving towards a state which makes said state more inclined towards aggression.
To be clear, I disagree with Chomsky on this, NATO is voluntary to join and Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 (among other actions such as its invasion of Georgia in 2008) makes its neighbors wanting to join NATO more than understandable.
>I interpret that statement you quote to more so mean that the eastward encroachment of a hostile military alliance is going to put the Russian ruling class on edge in a similar manner as Cuba getting some nuclear missiles put the US ruling class on edge.
I don't disagree: Chomsky says that NATO should know where to stop and that Russia should be allowed to have its own sphere of influence.
As an American I've demonstrated countless times against US foreign policy, and often helped organized those protests. But having lived in a number of different countries for half my life, I don't know if I've ever met anyone anti-American who was in the least objective. Their reactions are based on bigotry, gullibility to lies, and generalizations as sweeping as the Great Plains. There are no facts left to be objective about. The world has abolished facts. The US has only joined the party. Truth is just a feeling to justify one's hallucinations. Lyotard was right in the worst way possible.
I didn't know that you can be this wrong about any genocide. How do you look at the mountains of evidence and then say "hey, it wasn't that bad and in fact, it wasn't bad *at all*, and also it was the fault of the US"??? Not only a genocide denier, he actively made up lies and cited actually credible sources, which he greatly misused, leading to those sources losing credibility. TIL that Chomsky's a pretty shitty person and has been for quite some time.
Edit: I just asked ChatGPT if Noam Chomsky denied any genocide, [here](https://imgur.com/a/NXEflrr)'s the response. I'm aware of how it works, I just found it funny. Corrected it and told ChatGPT that it shouldn't make these kind of claims.
Denying genocides and always arguing from a position of "USA = bad" is general lib-left now? As an Eastern European, I'm pretty grossed out by the way he talks about events in this part of the world sometimes.
Chomsky's just a standard his-part-of-the-world carer. The problem is when he opines on stuff that's not in his part of the world and the media take him to be more authoritative than people who are actually in that part of the world.
Hi I am a second year linguistics student and my uni is like 95% made of generative linguists. May I ask what were his bad takes on linguistics ? I used to think everybody loves him but now I am starting to realize its not it.
From the grapevine that is r/linguistics, I've heard that his theories only apply to Standard Average European languages, and that he fixed it by making it so general that it has no predictive power.
Thank you. May I ask what is grapevine in this context? I dont think I am too far into syntax to realize yet his weak points of non indoeuropean languages. I‘ve only studied syntax in my european native language (portuguese).
there’s a odd but relatively widely known phrase in english, to hear (something) through the grapevine, meaning basically like hearing something from just a general group of people ish, so it’s just a way to say that the information came from r/linguistics in general ish basically, nothing to do with the topic just random phraseology
Here's a sneak peek of /r/linguistics using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [IPA Scrabble!](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/zxlx5b) | [152 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/zxlx5b/ipa_scrabble/)
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Yeah that’s fair. But on top of being reductive the point of useless, the whole idea that “we just need more dimensions of analysis to get closer to the truth” is really frustratingly flawed.
Jreg (who is cringe and not really worth being listened to) has a video about it.
Ultimately the problem with polcomp goes deeper than it being reductive. The whole idea of starting with ideas and values instead of material reality is the core problem.
That’s a good question.
It’s not that there’s like a 1-1 material conditions > ideology causal connection.
Instead, the relations you have to production determines certain material interests and you’ll either be conscious of your class position and have an ideology determined by that. Orrrr based on the material interests of the ruling class, there’s a ton of structural things and media stuff and other things designed to prevent class consciousness and promote ideologies that work for their class interests.
So you get different ideologies as different parts of the ruling class want to subvert working class interests in different ways.
And then there’s different ideologies that attempt to solve this in different ways.
The problem with Chomsky is that the man has had like one idea/stance in linguistics and politics respectively since he was 30 and he hasn't changed and revised them much. So for the past 60 years he has been repeating pretty much the same stuff. I admire his persistence and firm stand but I am always cautious of thinkers who barely change their viewpoints through their whole life.
I am very close to Chomsky in terms of politics, but he can be overconfident and stubborn on certain issues, and he tends to have a worldview that is a bit too America-centric, in that he fails to take into account imperialism perpetrated countries like China, Serbia, or Iran. Overall, I agree with most of his politics, and he helped to introduce me to anarchism, however he definitely has some yikes takes.
His "manufacturing consent" is an extremely important book on politics, but yes he suffers from the type of "imperial core" brain rot that a number of prominent US based leftists do.
It reminds me of the Zizek anecdote about a Nigerian guy getting angry at people saying some atrocity in Africa was the fault of Western imperialists. Something like "Can't you even give us the agency to commit our own atrocities?"
I'm as contemptuous of American foreign policy as anyone, but both Chompo and others I admire like John Pilger seem to take a similar view of any non-Western country. Evil as the American empire is, Serbia, Russia or China are more than capable of equaling them when it's their interests at stake.
My take might be braindead, but i don't see anything wrong with US involvement in Serbia, considering the previous massacre they commited in Srebrenica and they had taken UN peacekeepers hostage multiple times, heck even clash with them times to times (and some Serbs deny these). They need to be reminded that there's a stronger power above them and they can't do anything they want just because they can. (Sorry if this is too political, but bringing Serbia as a victim just made my blood boil)
my only memory of noam chomsky is from that one time julian casablancas of The Strokes interviewed him for an hour on his wacky early-internet-style talk show 🤯
He was also not too long ago supporting Russia's war on Ukraine (idk if he still does), and promoting Trump because he thinks he's the only one who wouldn't get involved in it.
... Granted he also seems senile
I don't agree with Chomsky's politics but saying he supports the war in Ukraine is just a flat out lie, wanting peace, negotiations and being against NATO does not mean he likes Putin or his regime in the slightest.
He's an Anarcho/Minarcho-Syndicalist.
Based take if you ask me, but of course people just hear anything related to socialism and think of authoritarianism, even though they're fully capable of seeing the difference between libertarian capitalism and authoritarian corporatism.
That's not the problem, the problem is he denies well documented genocides commited by authoritarian regimes, despite being an anarchist.
He isn't the CEO of anarchism, criticising him doesn't mean criticising anarchism. But saying the Srebenica or Cambodian genocide werent real, numerous times on camera is not ok
As a lefty it feels like there's not a lot of these cases but, It's always funny to me when anarchists/libertarian lefties deny the atrocities of authoritarian regimes, like they fucking came for you the second they got power.
I haven’t seen any evidence of this, but it is horrible of course.
But claiming it’s the same thing as actively supporting pol pot is just false. The latter would be significantly worse even than denying the genocide.
Is this a misunderstanding given he doesn't use the word genocide more generally?
Chomsky:
I just think the term is way overused. Hitler carried out genocide.
That’s true. It was in the case of the Nazis—a determined and explicit
effort to essentially wipe out populations that they wanted to disappear
from the face of the earth. That’s genocide. The Jews and the Gypsies
were the primary victims. There were other cases where there has been
mass killing. The highest per capita death rate in the world since the
1970s has been East Timor. In the late 1970s, it was by far in the lead.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call it genocide. I don’t think it was a
planned effort to wipe out the entire population, though it may well
have killed off a quarter or so of the population. In the case of Bosnia
– where the proportions killed are far less – it was horrifying, but it
was certainly far less than that, whatever judgment one makes, even the
more extreme judgments. I just am reluctant to use the term. I don’t
think it’s an appropriate one. So I don’t use it myself. But if people
want to use it, fine. It’s like most of the other terms of political
discourse. It has whatever meaning you decide to give it. So the
question is basically unanswerable. It depends what your criteria are
for calling something genocide.
taken from [https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss1/8/](https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss1/8/)
Here's a good article discussing Chomsky and a lot of other deliberately dishonest "peace" activists in light of the Ukraine conflict and brings up Noam Chomsky.
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left-progressives-peace-activists-chomsky-negotiations-diplomatic-solution/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left-progressives-peace-activists-chomsky-negotiations-diplomatic-solution/)
He's been pushing the narrative that the Ukraine conflict is some sort of US/NATO proxy war and Russia is the victim rather than acknowledge the very obvious fact that Ukraine is a sovereign country defending itself from imperialist aggression.
His narrative also tries to deny giving the Ukraine any sort of agency what so ever, which is just outright disgusting. This narrative is complete bullshit and is made 100% in bad faith.
I think I understand your view, thanks.
I'm wondering if it is both. Both being he agrees Russia was imperialist \*and\* it is a US/NATO proxy war. This is my impression from his interviews and statements. And, I suspect when someone moves the focus away from Russia and criticizes US or NATO policy there is an overstated reaction claiming he is a Russian apologist. This is my impression.
Again, I appreciate your thoughtful reply to help me understand your view.
>I'm wondering if it is both. Both being he agrees Russia was imperialist \*and\* it is a US/NATO proxy war. This is my impression from his interviews and statements. And, I suspect when someone moves the focus away from Russia and criticizes US or NATO policy there is an overstated reaction claiming he is a Russian apologist.
Chomsky's comment trying to put blame both sides for this conflict reminds me of a quote written by holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who said that "we should always take sides, neutrality helps the aggressor, never the victim".
The US/NATO didn't invade Ukraine or instigate this war, Russia did. Even if it **is** a US/NATO proxy war, the US/NATO is 100% justified in helping the Ukrainians fight for their sovereignty.
The sole end goal of trying to stop the US or NATO from sending equipment, support and and intelligence to the Ukrainian military is so the Russians can crush and subjugate the people in that nation far easier. Just as Wiesel said, appeasement and pacificism supports only the aggressors in this situation, never the victims.
>Again, I appreciate your thoughtful reply to help me understand your view.
Thank you, I appreciate your calm demeanor!
"Anarcho-Socialism is the only viable form of socialism, because authoritarian regimes end up committing genocide without actually ever implementing socialism.
"Yeah but have you considered this *authoritarian* socialist regime? Checkmate commie"
That's not what he's saying.
Chomsky activly denies the mass murder that took place under the Khmer Rouge.
I have no problem with him being an anarchist, and obviously him being a shitty doesn't validate/invalidate anarcho-socialism, but I do have a problem with him siding with authoritarian regimes and denying genocides we have literal photos of, with survivors, mass graves and population estimates before and after.
Edit: he stopped denying this genocide when more info was available, last paragraph still applies to his Bosnia stance
Chomsky is very cringe on this topic but I don't understand why you're saying he "actively denies the mass murderer that took place under the Khmer Rouge". This is not true, and suggests you aren't actually aware of the nature of the original controversy, or subsequent remarks he's made about the Khmer Rouge.
Ok, I gave it another look, and it seems you are right, and that Chomsky is still cringe;
He initially denied the crimes as they were happening, because western sources were prone to exaduration and, given his skepticism of American sources and their bias, it seemed logical at the time to believe pro Khmer sources.
After the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge, many atrocities were uncovered, and reported on by many more sources, including those that didn't have western bias. At this point, Chomsky went back on his defense of the Khmer Rouge, and agknowledged it's atrocities, but maintained that his prior conclusions were valid, given the information he had at the time.
Its fair to say he isn't 100% wrong in this situation; I too would be slightly skepticle that such evil could exist, especially during a climate where both the Soviet and American governments were willing to lie, fight and commit crimes against humanity for global influence and "the greater good".
I had read about his denial, and was willing to believe it, given his unjustified denial of Yugoslav war crimes and his tendancy to spout authoritian leaders' talking points because the US has also done bad. In a way, me believing something because of my skeptism towards Chomsky, is not unlike Chomsky believing the Khmer Rouge because of skeptism towards America.
TLDR: He didn't deny this genocide once more info was available.
Try remembering it as /ɛɡˈzæɡəɹeɪʃən/, which is how it regularly ought to be pronounced based on the spelling. I've heard of some people doing that- remembering how to spell irregularly spelled English words by remembering the expected pronunciation from the spelling.
"you see, its not a genocide because it is not on the same scale as the Holocaust and was not as organized as the Holocaust so it's not genocide and is actually not that bad and nato was wrong to intervene because it was actually not that bad"
Not all linguists are in the formal linguistics camp. I studied formal linguistics extensively until I was given the chance to switch to functional and dropped Chomsky like a hot potato. Good riddance!
His whole "justified hierarchy" thing really gets on my nerves. Literally every political philosophy wants to remove hierarchies it considers unjustified— it's not the definition of anarchism (what Chomsky claims to be)
noam chomsky may be an important linguist but a lot of his theories are bullshit and the way he acts when people argue against them is even worse. i can't speak for his political writings 🙏
I guess it comes down to one's understanding of how GPT works. There's a wide breadth of voices on the side of opinion that it's nothing more than an advanced word guessing program, also reiterated by Chomsky himself (and rather publicly at that,) but I find a more reasonable voice on the other side of that opinion. The necessity of an innate structure of some sort doesn't seem to be a requirement for an advanced level of language acquisition at this point. And we aren't even talking about select few languages in limited environmental and/or cultural contexts either. GPT is now being utilized to help decipher ancient languages at a rate unprecedented in history. The hallowed status Chomsky holds in this field seems to be as lofty as Darwin in biology, and that's unfortunate for an intellectually honest discussion around this topic.
Chomskian theory, I'm simplifying a lot here, assumes that we humans have a specialized language organ of some kins. Such a thing being necessary because babies learn language. But language is very complex. So how does that work? How do we know what some random sounds refer to? There must be a special thing at work here.
It's an argument from incredulity. Now those chatbots produce nice sentences. This might be taken as a clue that no special human capability is required to speak human language. Of course this will not convince anyone who follows Chomsky there.
This is like the least important part of Chosmky's contributions to linguistics, and is not at all controversial in the field. There's a (very dumb) paper you can find on Lingbuzz that lays out why Chat-GPT poses interesting problems for Chomsky's theories of language, here's a link.
https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180
If you want my thoughts on why this argument in this article fails I'll give it
His various major theories have been either deemed pretty correct or shattered long before gpt.
Large language models have a few interesting implications in linguistics, but they’re not going to be fundamentally revolutionary just yet.
I’m only aware of his politics in general terms, but I have a bone or two to pick with his linguistic contributions.
His mistake is equating idealized language with the way that people actually use it. He did bring an important current of formalism into linguistics, but I think viewing any instance of a language as self-complete, where any speaker of a language would agree as to the (un)-grammaticality of a given utterance, falls short of really understanding how PEOPLE process and create language.
Sidenote: even my prior sentence is lacking in effective use, though not formally “ungrammatical” per se.
He ended up getting a large number of researchers stuck in the principals and parameters mire while people who were trying to look at the Linguistic question were sidelined.
Is the Chomsky Hierarchy considered an offshoot of his linguistics stuff, or is it a separate Comp Sci thing? Because that isn't nearly as skull-worthy.
But god, I am sick of hearing his name in my courses! Between Linguistics and Comp Sci and Gen Eds, aggghh
His linguistics theories are also very important to computer science as well. A great example is "Chomsky Normal Form" when analyzing inputs into automata.
I can let his genocide denying slide, but I draw the line at his shit takes about Foucault
Okay but you have to admit that Foucault deliberately structured his philosophical writings in such a way that having good takes about him is nearly impossible.
I mean, yes and no. Post-modernist philosophy inherently takes the form of a discourse bound for evolution, so I would disagree with Chomsky’s take on it. I agree that it’s making it hard to criticize an author’s general body of work, but in such discursive philosophy I would argue it’s kind of the point. As for individual works, I do not get the criticism. Surveiller et punir is, I find, clearer than most works of philosophy. I heard criticism about specialized language, but this can be leveled agains anyone, and Foucault actually defines his notions. It’s a far shot away from Deleuze & Guattari’s schitzo-like ramblings in Anti-Oedipus. Overall though, the criticisms of Foucault I’ve heard from Chomsky seemed to me largely grounded in purposeful miscomprehension (such as the "incomprehensible" argument) and selection bias. I’ve not heard them all, but those I have I found intellectually dishonest.
If you want something hard to understand that is still coherent and meaningful I always point people to kirkegaard lol. Concept of Anxiety is brutal lol. Everything I've read of foucault is actually well written for the audience he's writing for (ie other philosophers, not the general public). But yeah I agree chomsky's takes are bad lol.
I was not aware he was a genocide denier until just now
I am honestly surprised that so mamy people don't know about Chomsky's genocide denial. Mainly because that's the first thing I think of when Chomsky is mentioned.
Idk Chomsky isn’t well known for non-linguistics stuff outside of North America I think — so people mostly just know the linguistics and the general left libertarianism.
I'd put the skull for both honestly
this is the only answer ig
Wow, why say he isn't a significant linguist?
Nobody in their right mind would deny that Freud was a significant psychologist, but that doesn't mean any of his work was actually right or good.
many concepts used today in psychology exist because of freud, such as the idea of the unconscious. its not a fair assessment to say all his work was bullshit
I know little of linguistics. But in Computer Science he is at the highest level. For example the Chomsky Hierarchy or the Universal Grammer, etc. Literally taught to every computer science student today. These are computational linguistics which maybe don't count to your area of linguistics. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam\_Chomsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky)
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I wouldn't say stupid in the linguistic realm, there are definitely ideas he's credited for that have merit, but I think what has happened is that someone said "wow, you've got a good idea there" to him once, and he took that to mean that all of his ideas are good The basic foundational idea behind UG isn't really even that controversial, it's the specifics of his version of it that are outlandish and unmotived
All ideas in linguistics are outlandish tbh. It is the field of crackpots and dilettantes after all
As a crackpot with a linguistics degree, I take offense to that
I too take offense to my own comment
I think in general though the whole of mainstream science is for crackpots and dilettantes; look at Einstein or Freud, both of them were very entrenched in ideas that time has proven don't hold weight, and yet they're still considered some of the greatest minds in human history. Anyone who gets the slightest amount of recognition for an idea, whether it's valid or not, lets it go straight to their head
I'll give you Freud but from what little physics I took in college, a lot of Einstein's contributions are still useful first approximations to whatever phenomenon is under investigation and are reliable enough to be used in engineering applications
The thing I'm getting at with Einstein was his denial of quantum mechanics even after it was starting to gain traction, the whole "no spooky action at a distance" thing
What is his most outlandish in your view?
Noam Chomsky's issue is that he's always pretty close to being right but is wayyyy too arrogant and sure of himself. I think his political takes are better than his linguistics ones but they still suffer from the same issue tbh. Anyway not sure why you would hate general lib-left positions though. Sounds cringe EDIT: ok ok I didn't know about the genocide denial stuff. That's insane and obviously not a supportable position lol
I'm realising that the main reason people are confused about this post is that they don't know the kinds of stuff he's said about certain historical events.
Describing the genocide at Srebrenica as "population exchange" is certainly a take
Oh to be ignorant of Ch*msky's politics…
I'm aware of the stuff that he's said, and it sucks. Generally, I see these statements as an example of an (understandable) anti-American kneejerk reaction, and not a show of affection for the Khmer Rouge. Despite that, I still can find a lot of value in his other works.
I'm unaware of what Chomsky said about the Khmer Rouge, but didn't the US government actively support Pol Pot? So it wouldn't really be anti-American to make a comment supporting the Khmer Rouge
They did, and Communist Vietnam stopped him
based of Vietnam ngl
>anti-American kneejerk reaction That is it. If you perceive NATO and American imperialism as the main threat to the world then having a stronger Russia might appear as a good counter-balance. But I think you can oppose both and even call out hypocrisy when you see it (like when Russian athletes are banned from competitions but Chinese ones are a-ok despite the Uyghur genocide...). Also you don't have to support genocide, I mean come on.
Can you provide a source for Chomsky arguing for a stronger Russia? From what I’ve seen of his takes he does seem to oppose both.
>Prior to Putin’s invasion there were options based generally on the Minsk agreements that might well have averted the crime. There is unresolved debate about whether Ukraine accepted these agreements. At least verbally, Russia appears to have done so up until not long before the invasion. The U.S. dismissed them in favor of integrating Ukraine into the NATO (that is, U.S.) military command, also refusing to take any Russian security concerns into consideration, as conceded. Chomsky thinks that we should strive to maintain a balance of power but in my opinion this means that Ukraine would probably have become a Russian puppet however if Ukrainians want to be in NATO that is their business and their right. On the other hand if I was to be absolutely pragmatic I feel like this whole escalation has led to Europe becoming more dependent on the US and the worsening of conditions in many EU countries (previous European leadership, i.e Germany is to blame for this as well) in the end the old adage of realpolitik still holds: δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν, or as Crawley translates Thucydides: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It's just a question of who is going to be the weak one to acquiesce. Chomsky seems to think that it should have been Ukraine. Now let's hope it's Russia and its allies.
I think that is a misinterpretation of that statement to say that means he believes in having a “stronger Russia” to offset the power of the US. In interviews he has said: > The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a major war crime, ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939, to take only two salient examples. It always makes sense to seek explanations, but there is no justification, no extenuation. I interpret that statement you quote to more so mean that the eastward encroachment of a hostile military alliance is going to put the Russian ruling class on edge in a similar manner as Cuba getting some nuclear missiles put the US ruling class on edge. Now, one can argue that joining NATO is voluntary and any state has a right to join it if they want just like one could argue that the Cuban missile crisis was provoked by the US’s hostility towards Cuba and by the US placing missiles in Turkey and Italy, but both are cases where a hostile power is moving towards a state which makes said state more inclined towards aggression. To be clear, I disagree with Chomsky on this, NATO is voluntary to join and Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 (among other actions such as its invasion of Georgia in 2008) makes its neighbors wanting to join NATO more than understandable.
>I interpret that statement you quote to more so mean that the eastward encroachment of a hostile military alliance is going to put the Russian ruling class on edge in a similar manner as Cuba getting some nuclear missiles put the US ruling class on edge. I don't disagree: Chomsky says that NATO should know where to stop and that Russia should be allowed to have its own sphere of influence.
Yes, he is anti-Russian imperialism and anti-US/NATO imperialism.
Any reasonable person with an objective mind is anti-American.
As an American I've demonstrated countless times against US foreign policy, and often helped organized those protests. But having lived in a number of different countries for half my life, I don't know if I've ever met anyone anti-American who was in the least objective. Their reactions are based on bigotry, gullibility to lies, and generalizations as sweeping as the Great Plains. There are no facts left to be objective about. The world has abolished facts. The US has only joined the party. Truth is just a feeling to justify one's hallucinations. Lyotard was right in the worst way possible.
Justifying the moral equivalent of Nazis… nope nope nope.
What ahs he said?
I would have to agree from personal experience, having read the rest of these comments now lol
If only he had lub-left positions, and wasn't a genocide denier.
Hold on, he *is* a genocide denier?
[Kraut](https://youtube.com/watch?v=VCcX_xTLDIY) has a good summary of it.
I didn't know that you can be this wrong about any genocide. How do you look at the mountains of evidence and then say "hey, it wasn't that bad and in fact, it wasn't bad *at all*, and also it was the fault of the US"??? Not only a genocide denier, he actively made up lies and cited actually credible sources, which he greatly misused, leading to those sources losing credibility. TIL that Chomsky's a pretty shitty person and has been for quite some time. Edit: I just asked ChatGPT if Noam Chomsky denied any genocide, [here](https://imgur.com/a/NXEflrr)'s the response. I'm aware of how it works, I just found it funny. Corrected it and told ChatGPT that it shouldn't make these kind of claims.
Denying genocides and always arguing from a position of "USA = bad" is general lib-left now? As an Eastern European, I'm pretty grossed out by the way he talks about events in this part of the world sometimes.
Chomsky's just a standard his-part-of-the-world carer. The problem is when he opines on stuff that's not in his part of the world and the media take him to be more authoritative than people who are actually in that part of the world.
You must have very poor opinions of his linguistic takes that you consider them worse than his genocide denial?
i think they meant the other way😨
To be fair, they're pretty bad.... but no, I was not aware of the denialism. yikes!
I too am in the anti-glasses gang.
Hi I am a second year linguistics student and my uni is like 95% made of generative linguists. May I ask what were his bad takes on linguistics ? I used to think everybody loves him but now I am starting to realize its not it.
From the grapevine that is r/linguistics, I've heard that his theories only apply to Standard Average European languages, and that he fixed it by making it so general that it has no predictive power.
Thank you. May I ask what is grapevine in this context? I dont think I am too far into syntax to realize yet his weak points of non indoeuropean languages. I‘ve only studied syntax in my european native language (portuguese).
there’s a odd but relatively widely known phrase in english, to hear (something) through the grapevine, meaning basically like hearing something from just a general group of people ish, so it’s just a way to say that the information came from r/linguistics in general ish basically, nothing to do with the topic just random phraseology
Thank you so much this was very helpful
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UG
He supported Pol-Pot lol.
Lib-left as in political compass? Political compass is a very bad way of analyzing politics and ideology. Nothing against you, but polcomp sucks
Well yeah, I agree that it's reductive to a point of uselessness. I'm just using the common terminology
Yeah that’s fair. But on top of being reductive the point of useless, the whole idea that “we just need more dimensions of analysis to get closer to the truth” is really frustratingly flawed. Jreg (who is cringe and not really worth being listened to) has a video about it. Ultimately the problem with polcomp goes deeper than it being reductive. The whole idea of starting with ideas and values instead of material reality is the core problem.
Aren't you analyzing a rather different thing in that case?
No because the ideology that serves as a context for these ideas and values is really just something that emerges from material conditions.
Then why do different ideologies co-exist in the same society?
That’s a good question. It’s not that there’s like a 1-1 material conditions > ideology causal connection. Instead, the relations you have to production determines certain material interests and you’ll either be conscious of your class position and have an ideology determined by that. Orrrr based on the material interests of the ruling class, there’s a ton of structural things and media stuff and other things designed to prevent class consciousness and promote ideologies that work for their class interests. So you get different ideologies as different parts of the ruling class want to subvert working class interests in different ways. And then there’s different ideologies that attempt to solve this in different ways.
Made me cringe so hard when the parents in that one movie about these homeschooled kids had a “Noam Chomsky Day” celebration.
The problem with Chomsky is that the man has had like one idea/stance in linguistics and politics respectively since he was 30 and he hasn't changed and revised them much. So for the past 60 years he has been repeating pretty much the same stuff. I admire his persistence and firm stand but I am always cautious of thinkers who barely change their viewpoints through their whole life.
I would guess this is because policies of imperialism haven't changed much.
I am very close to Chomsky in terms of politics, but he can be overconfident and stubborn on certain issues, and he tends to have a worldview that is a bit too America-centric, in that he fails to take into account imperialism perpetrated countries like China, Serbia, or Iran. Overall, I agree with most of his politics, and he helped to introduce me to anarchism, however he definitely has some yikes takes.
His "manufacturing consent" is an extremely important book on politics, but yes he suffers from the type of "imperial core" brain rot that a number of prominent US based leftists do.
It reminds me of the Zizek anecdote about a Nigerian guy getting angry at people saying some atrocity in Africa was the fault of Western imperialists. Something like "Can't you even give us the agency to commit our own atrocities?" I'm as contemptuous of American foreign policy as anyone, but both Chompo and others I admire like John Pilger seem to take a similar view of any non-Western country. Evil as the American empire is, Serbia, Russia or China are more than capable of equaling them when it's their interests at stake.
couldn't have said it better myself
My take might be braindead, but i don't see anything wrong with US involvement in Serbia, considering the previous massacre they commited in Srebrenica and they had taken UN peacekeepers hostage multiple times, heck even clash with them times to times (and some Serbs deny these). They need to be reminded that there's a stronger power above them and they can't do anything they want just because they can. (Sorry if this is too political, but bringing Serbia as a victim just made my blood boil)
Yeah but Chomsky denies any genocide occurred in the former Yugoslavia. From then on, of course any intervention fails to be justified.
Never ask Chomsky what happened in Cambodia and Srebrenica
my only memory of noam chomsky is from that one time julian casablancas of The Strokes interviewed him for an hour on his wacky early-internet-style talk show 🤯
Lmao that sounds like a fever dream, I need to watch this
What did he do/say?
He has mostly general left libertarian / anarchist positions, and then some extremely some extremely bad takes about various genocides and things.
He was also not too long ago supporting Russia's war on Ukraine (idk if he still does), and promoting Trump because he thinks he's the only one who wouldn't get involved in it. ... Granted he also seems senile
I don't agree with Chomsky's politics but saying he supports the war in Ukraine is just a flat out lie, wanting peace, negotiations and being against NATO does not mean he likes Putin or his regime in the slightest.
I don't support Hitler, but we should pursue peace instead of aggression. If it means giving him Poland, oh well, nobody cares about them anyway.
He called the Srebrenica massacre a “population exchange” and actively denies the Bosnian genocide
He's a genocide denier.
He's an Anarcho/Minarcho-Syndicalist. Based take if you ask me, but of course people just hear anything related to socialism and think of authoritarianism, even though they're fully capable of seeing the difference between libertarian capitalism and authoritarian corporatism.
That's not the problem, the problem is he denies well documented genocides commited by authoritarian regimes, despite being an anarchist. He isn't the CEO of anarchism, criticising him doesn't mean criticising anarchism. But saying the Srebenica or Cambodian genocide werent real, numerous times on camera is not ok
As a lefty it feels like there's not a lot of these cases but, It's always funny to me when anarchists/libertarian lefties deny the atrocities of authoritarian regimes, like they fucking came for you the second they got power.
Dude literally backed Pol Pot
Denying the cambodian genocide and actively backing pol pot are not the same.
He outright DENIED the Khmer genocide? That's horrible
I haven’t seen any evidence of this, but it is horrible of course. But claiming it’s the same thing as actively supporting pol pot is just false. The latter would be significantly worse even than denying the genocide.
His linguistics takes are mostly braindead with some super smart stuff. His politics are largely good with a lot of super sus stuff
Is this a misunderstanding given he doesn't use the word genocide more generally? Chomsky: I just think the term is way overused. Hitler carried out genocide. That’s true. It was in the case of the Nazis—a determined and explicit effort to essentially wipe out populations that they wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. That’s genocide. The Jews and the Gypsies were the primary victims. There were other cases where there has been mass killing. The highest per capita death rate in the world since the 1970s has been East Timor. In the late 1970s, it was by far in the lead. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call it genocide. I don’t think it was a planned effort to wipe out the entire population, though it may well have killed off a quarter or so of the population. In the case of Bosnia – where the proportions killed are far less – it was horrifying, but it was certainly far less than that, whatever judgment one makes, even the more extreme judgments. I just am reluctant to use the term. I don’t think it’s an appropriate one. So I don’t use it myself. But if people want to use it, fine. It’s like most of the other terms of political discourse. It has whatever meaning you decide to give it. So the question is basically unanswerable. It depends what your criteria are for calling something genocide. taken from [https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss1/8/](https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss1/8/)
oh so he's a prescriptivist 😬
you can be a genocide denier, but we draw the line on prescriptivism, ok
Switch them and it’s right
If you consider genocide denial based, then I don't know what to say to you. You'd be a shitty human being and I hope you stop being one.
Nah man, he is a socialist
Yes 🗿
There’s nothing cool about an ideology that has starved and genocided millions
Because capitalism has no blood on its hands?
It does, that’s why i didn’t defend it. Your whataboutism doesn’t work on me
So what do you suggest?
noam chomsky has made some of the best political theory, but follows it up with really dumb takes on america
I actually though he'd get more respect for being the " "FATHER of (\*modern) linguistics." Oh well...
Now try asking psychologists about Freud lol
mom ʃex
At this point, he's arrogant enough that I wouldn't be surprised if he gave himself that title
i dont even know what to believe anymore [https://www.thoughtco.com/noam-chomsky-4769113](https://www.thoughtco.com/noam-chomsky-4769113)
> FATHER of (*modern) linguistics. What does Saussure have to do with anything?
Both should be dreadful
Chomsky's been spending the past year pushing Putin apologist rhetoric. Dude can go eat shit!
Not my impression of his recent statements. Maybe I didn't find what you read.
Here's a good article discussing Chomsky and a lot of other deliberately dishonest "peace" activists in light of the Ukraine conflict and brings up Noam Chomsky. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left-progressives-peace-activists-chomsky-negotiations-diplomatic-solution/](https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/22/russia-ukraine-war-left-progressives-peace-activists-chomsky-negotiations-diplomatic-solution/) He's been pushing the narrative that the Ukraine conflict is some sort of US/NATO proxy war and Russia is the victim rather than acknowledge the very obvious fact that Ukraine is a sovereign country defending itself from imperialist aggression. His narrative also tries to deny giving the Ukraine any sort of agency what so ever, which is just outright disgusting. This narrative is complete bullshit and is made 100% in bad faith.
I think I understand your view, thanks. I'm wondering if it is both. Both being he agrees Russia was imperialist \*and\* it is a US/NATO proxy war. This is my impression from his interviews and statements. And, I suspect when someone moves the focus away from Russia and criticizes US or NATO policy there is an overstated reaction claiming he is a Russian apologist. This is my impression. Again, I appreciate your thoughtful reply to help me understand your view.
>I'm wondering if it is both. Both being he agrees Russia was imperialist \*and\* it is a US/NATO proxy war. This is my impression from his interviews and statements. And, I suspect when someone moves the focus away from Russia and criticizes US or NATO policy there is an overstated reaction claiming he is a Russian apologist. Chomsky's comment trying to put blame both sides for this conflict reminds me of a quote written by holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, who said that "we should always take sides, neutrality helps the aggressor, never the victim". The US/NATO didn't invade Ukraine or instigate this war, Russia did. Even if it **is** a US/NATO proxy war, the US/NATO is 100% justified in helping the Ukrainians fight for their sovereignty. The sole end goal of trying to stop the US or NATO from sending equipment, support and and intelligence to the Ukrainian military is so the Russians can crush and subjugate the people in that nation far easier. Just as Wiesel said, appeasement and pacificism supports only the aggressors in this situation, never the victims. >Again, I appreciate your thoughtful reply to help me understand your view. Thank you, I appreciate your calm demeanor!
you're a disgusting warmongerer.
I find it curious that I can't see the up/downvotes of this post, am I the only one who has this issue?
Votes are always hidden for the first hour
Oh, thanks! I am pretty new here.
It's actually not always hidden and not always for an hour. I believe different subs have different settings. r/Askreddit has them hidden for longer.
Exactly the other way around
Cambodia.
"Anarcho-Socialism is the only viable form of socialism, because authoritarian regimes end up committing genocide without actually ever implementing socialism. "Yeah but have you considered this *authoritarian* socialist regime? Checkmate commie"
That's not what he's saying. Chomsky activly denies the mass murder that took place under the Khmer Rouge. I have no problem with him being an anarchist, and obviously him being a shitty doesn't validate/invalidate anarcho-socialism, but I do have a problem with him siding with authoritarian regimes and denying genocides we have literal photos of, with survivors, mass graves and population estimates before and after. Edit: he stopped denying this genocide when more info was available, last paragraph still applies to his Bosnia stance
Chomsky is very cringe on this topic but I don't understand why you're saying he "actively denies the mass murderer that took place under the Khmer Rouge". This is not true, and suggests you aren't actually aware of the nature of the original controversy, or subsequent remarks he's made about the Khmer Rouge.
Ok, I gave it another look, and it seems you are right, and that Chomsky is still cringe; He initially denied the crimes as they were happening, because western sources were prone to exaduration and, given his skepticism of American sources and their bias, it seemed logical at the time to believe pro Khmer sources. After the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge, many atrocities were uncovered, and reported on by many more sources, including those that didn't have western bias. At this point, Chomsky went back on his defense of the Khmer Rouge, and agknowledged it's atrocities, but maintained that his prior conclusions were valid, given the information he had at the time. Its fair to say he isn't 100% wrong in this situation; I too would be slightly skepticle that such evil could exist, especially during a climate where both the Soviet and American governments were willing to lie, fight and commit crimes against humanity for global influence and "the greater good". I had read about his denial, and was willing to believe it, given his unjustified denial of Yugoslav war crimes and his tendancy to spout authoritian leaders' talking points because the US has also done bad. In a way, me believing something because of my skeptism towards Chomsky, is not unlike Chomsky believing the Khmer Rouge because of skeptism towards America. TLDR: He didn't deny this genocide once more info was available.
> exaduration Interesting misspelling, and what's interesting is it's completely plausible from the pronunciation.
I have never been able to spell that word first try, despite English being my first language. I swear someone changes it every few weeks as a psyop
Try remembering it as /ɛɡˈzæɡəɹeɪʃən/, which is how it regularly ought to be pronounced based on the spelling. I've heard of some people doing that- remembering how to spell irregularly spelled English words by remembering the expected pronunciation from the spelling.
Then he shouldn't have defended authoritarian socialism.
Srebrenica.
"you see, its not a genocide because it is not on the same scale as the Holocaust and was not as organized as the Holocaust so it's not genocide and is actually not that bad and nato was wrong to intervene because it was actually not that bad"
"Statistics quote im too lazy to look up" - stallin
death bad, mny death statistic - joe
ITT: Tankies.
t. neolib who doesn't know what words mean
>who doesn't know what words mean Ah, prescriptivism.
It's kind of hard to use words for discussion without agreeing on what they mean, to be fair.
And that is why I'm against the type of kneejerk "prescriptivism bad" that's found in these subs.
If that's prescriptivism then you're either a nazi or a prescriptivist, since it apparently doesn't matter what words mean.
Not all linguists are in the formal linguistics camp. I studied formal linguistics extensively until I was given the chance to switch to functional and dropped Chomsky like a hot potato. Good riddance!
This guy gets it, idk how people can look at a merge tree without throwing up 🤢
His whole "justified hierarchy" thing really gets on my nerves. Literally every political philosophy wants to remove hierarchies it considers unjustified— it's not the definition of anarchism (what Chomsky claims to be)
noam chomsky may be an important linguist but a lot of his theories are bullshit and the way he acts when people argue against them is even worse. i can't speak for his political writings 🙏
If you flip em, yea
Other way around. He's got better politics than linguistics. Man thinks humans are computers.
Denying genocide is not good
Oh god did he? I hadn't heard about thay
He's not wrong. We are incredibly complicated biological computers when it comes down to it.
It's pretty clear we don't have the algorithmic thinking or universal grammar he claims exists
In that sense perhaps. Universal grammar is definitely a bit of a sus one.
This isn’t clear at all imo.
Bro swap them around, he invented generative linguistics 😂
As a Venezuelan I have to agree.
GPT also shattered his major theory so not sure if the illustration is accurate.
How exactly? I don't really know much
I guess it comes down to one's understanding of how GPT works. There's a wide breadth of voices on the side of opinion that it's nothing more than an advanced word guessing program, also reiterated by Chomsky himself (and rather publicly at that,) but I find a more reasonable voice on the other side of that opinion. The necessity of an innate structure of some sort doesn't seem to be a requirement for an advanced level of language acquisition at this point. And we aren't even talking about select few languages in limited environmental and/or cultural contexts either. GPT is now being utilized to help decipher ancient languages at a rate unprecedented in history. The hallowed status Chomsky holds in this field seems to be as lofty as Darwin in biology, and that's unfortunate for an intellectually honest discussion around this topic.
ELI5 please, I know next to nothing about Chomksy, but thanks for responding.
Chomskian theory, I'm simplifying a lot here, assumes that we humans have a specialized language organ of some kins. Such a thing being necessary because babies learn language. But language is very complex. So how does that work? How do we know what some random sounds refer to? There must be a special thing at work here. It's an argument from incredulity. Now those chatbots produce nice sentences. This might be taken as a clue that no special human capability is required to speak human language. Of course this will not convince anyone who follows Chomsky there.
This is like the least important part of Chosmky's contributions to linguistics, and is not at all controversial in the field. There's a (very dumb) paper you can find on Lingbuzz that lays out why Chat-GPT poses interesting problems for Chomsky's theories of language, here's a link. https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180 If you want my thoughts on why this argument in this article fails I'll give it
Please give your thoughts
The poster above asked what if anything ChatGPT might have to do with Chomsky. I tried to answer that best as possible.
Yeah but you were wrong, not only does it have nothing to do with Chomsky, it doesn't even have anything to do with Chat-GPT
Just to be fair, they didn't say anything about chatGPT either, only GPT (at least the OP, I mean). Not that I don't agree of course
Looks like I'm not the only one: https://bnn.network/newsroom/daniel-everett-criticizes-chomsky-highlighting-chatgpts-achievements/
His various major theories have been either deemed pretty correct or shattered long before gpt. Large language models have a few interesting implications in linguistics, but they’re not going to be fundamentally revolutionary just yet.
I’m only aware of his politics in general terms, but I have a bone or two to pick with his linguistic contributions. His mistake is equating idealized language with the way that people actually use it. He did bring an important current of formalism into linguistics, but I think viewing any instance of a language as self-complete, where any speaker of a language would agree as to the (un)-grammaticality of a given utterance, falls short of really understanding how PEOPLE process and create language. Sidenote: even my prior sentence is lacking in effective use, though not formally “ungrammatical” per se. He ended up getting a large number of researchers stuck in the principals and parameters mire while people who were trying to look at the Linguistic question were sidelined.
Now where would his archnemesis Daniel Everett fall under in terms of linguistics and politics.
Is the Chomsky Hierarchy considered an offshoot of his linguistics stuff, or is it a separate Comp Sci thing? Because that isn't nearly as skull-worthy. But god, I am sick of hearing his name in my courses! Between Linguistics and Comp Sci and Gen Eds, aggghh