His work ethic is incredible, he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public- I've received a detailed response every time I've sent one. The amount of time he spends engaging with even terribly misinformed(but well meaning) people is truly astounding, and unparalleled amongst public figures as far as I can tell.
Here's an example(https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/6tz1xp/what_do_you...) of some random kid badgering Chomsky with emails, and he still takes the time out to respond to every one of his questions, even though he gets more than a hundred mails a day.
"Dear mr. chomsky i realize you've been an MIT professor for 60 years. you've made significant contributions to many fields of studies including linguistics, history, computer science, and philosophy and you've debated with towering figures such as Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Jean Piaget, etc... now can you please allow me to condescend to you while i quote Breitbart news about blacks?"
"The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MYCDVHH
Of course, there are some older well known books touching on this like Hofstadter, etc.
rms, another MIT "affiliate", is like this too, although many of his replies are brief. Whenever you see him cracking open his laptop while he's sitting on a panel waiting for his turn to speak, he's almost surely answering email.
Here are pictures of him answering email around the world:
I call this one, "The Birth of Emacs": http://stallman.org/photos/rms-working/pages/13.html
There's a great recording on Youtube of a biology grad student debating Kent Hovind on the broad subject of evolution. Even though Hovind is essentially a confidence man, the conversation is enlightening nonetheless because the grad student knows his shit and gives some surprising lucid explanations that I haven't heard in other general audience discussions of evolution.
Also, most people rely on a kind of "smell test" to keep from engaging with certain types of arguments. That can quickly create a moral hazard where the person being avoided misrepresents people's reluctance to engage as proof that he/she is a noble dissident with the courage to speak the truth.
When someone like Chomsky, Ken Miller, Glenn Greenwald, or another intellectual engages directly with such people it pushes them into a corner where they either have to deliver the goods, change the subject, or commit a fallacy.
In a debate, Greenwald forced one of the former NSA directors into such a situation when the response was, "Collect everything doesn't really mean collect everything." Trusting nature of most people being what it is, these forced errors have value.
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 the poster.
Poster:
1: By what mechanism do white supremacist elements impose American black culture on the American black community today?
2: For example, how is white supremacy responsible for single-parent families in the American black community? Allegedly single-parent rates have skyrocketed since the Civil Rights Movement.
Racism is quite extreme today, and by many measures increasing. I don’t know what cocoon you live in.
Perhaps you are completely unfamiliar with racism and its impact, in particular, the extreme racism experienced constantly by African-Americans. If so, I would suggest that you learn something about the world, and then you will understand the mechanisms very well. If you don’t want to have direct experience – which is not that hard –then at least look at the literature.
Again, try following your own logic. It’s not genes, so it is circumstances. Do you perceive any circumstances beyond the extreme white racism that it takes real effort to be oblivious to?
Hinting at ignorance is not helpful unless you show a path away from ignorance. Saying that something is obvious or trivial (as Mathematicians say) is not helpful. If it is truly obvious, just provide evidence.
Now this is not to criticize Chomsky, he is still replying rather than remaining silent. And with his limited time, it doesn't necessarily make sense for him to give a solid argument in that case, but his argument in that link wasn't convincing.
What you described is a lot better (read some pre-existing literature, to learn the opposing side's arguments and especially when corresponding with an academic, to read their prior writing). But usually even bad books are going to blow a DuckDuckGo search out of the water on quality. Especially for those who aren't astute enough to identify good and bad information.
I know he has lots of clout, and tremendous work ethic, but I really wouldn't say he's very sharp. If he is sharp, he doesn't seem all that wise; and if he is wise, he would be very cruel.
"In the 19th century, the US had emigration officials helping drive the native population off their lands, and immigration officials in Europe trying to bring in white settlers to replace them. White. Orientals were entirely excluded."
>he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public
Since I read Deep Work, I think these phrases contradict each other. You don't do original, interesting work when replying emails.
(I didn't down vote you)
My theory derives from these sources: https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21695371-theor... (Chomsky's recent theory of how language evolved has not been accepted favorably), and
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21788 (this happens a lot)
Note that the economist article is very badly informed. Since another poster didn't link directly to the relevant article on the 'facultyoflanguage' blog, here is a link:
http://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/it-never-end...
This is obvious if you look at other field "champions" such as Claude Lévi-Strauss in cultural anthropology. His admittedly invaluable contributions were followed by 50 years of stagnation. Granted I only studied it for a year but it was one of my reasons for not sticking with it.
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 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.
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.
I don't know how Chomsky "has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela". Do you think these two reactions he had to events in Venezuela were incorrect?
Insofar as human rights, Chomsky saw respect for them beginning to dip six years ago, and reacted accordingly. I should note that eight years ago, Honduras had its first left-leaning president in living memory ousted by a coup from US-trained, US-funded military officers, after which, the US stood alone being supportive of the coup against virtually all other Latin American nations. Actually Wikileaks cables show the US knew what was going on and how they supported this. Elections were scheduled for 2013 and dozens of candidates and supporters were killed. The murder rate of Honduras has exploded, as has immigration from it. You never hear it in the US news though, unless unaccompanied Honduran chidlren appear at the border, and then you never hear why, just arguments between the Trumpites and anti-Trumpites about what to do with them.
Insofar as Venezuela's economy, it has been similar to other economies heavily dependent on energy. Including the energy-dependent areas of the US economy that voted heavily for Trump. It is why Venezuelan minister Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo helped found OPEC in 1960. Venezuela had decades of an up and down economy along with the price of oil before Chavez came along.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/5/chomsky_leftist_latin_...
-Preventing markets and prices from working and substituting with centralized economic planning.
https://fee.org/articles/you-cant-deny-that-venezuela-is-a-s...
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.
Doesn't the problems with state socialism result from being attack by state capitalism which tend to be much stronger nations?
The US and europe attacking venezuela and blaming their failures on state socialism is like blaming democracy for ukraine's loss of crimea. When larger nations bully smaller nations, smaller nations suffer.
We can never truly ascertain the merits of socialism, capitalism or any other ism really because it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
The chinese and their state socialism has been the most successful nation the past 40 years after the US decided to play nice with them.
Venezuela has nearly 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, so I think it makes sense to ask why they have done so much worse than other countries. It can't just be due to US meddling.
Speaking as a Venezuelan, what the bloody hell are you talking about?
"...and blaming their failures on state socialism..."
Venezuela's failures are the failure of state socialism. Price controls, capital controls, expropriations, redistribution policies, central planning, disregard for property rights, and other insane economic policies tanked the country. High oil prices were the only thing hiding the structural damage these policies were creating for years.
Chomsky is intelligent and points real problems in USA and capitalism, but he is not infinitely intelligent and should not put the weight of his name in things that he does not have any first-hand experience, because it is damaging. Already some hard-left local people cite Chomsky and call it a day, along with the young lefties that think that Brazil was a paradise until the 1980s.
On the aspect of privatization, some of that was necessary, but the main criticism is not about the privatization per se, but the way it was handled, giving strategic companies for almost nothing.
If you want to criticize the left, please don't resort to lies just because most of the HN aren't brazilians.
He praises the Venezuela's state socialist policies, but manages to blame the problems on private capital.
The fact that social democratic countries in Latin America have overall had better development than extreme free market societies like haiti or pre-socialist Brazil is pretty widely accepted, dutch disease inflicted Venezuela notwithstanding.
a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guyGreat man.
If everywhere south of the Gila River (i.e., the Gadsden Purchase) became its own state, it would be deep blue.
http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/77779/hugo-chav...
Like I don't think either would have the guts to say that in front of a black person.
So they are low-key, patient, and make thorough, very detailed responses when debating?