GftNC, if the totality of what Chomsky said was the quote ("I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.”), I would take the unambiguous meaning to be that he is perfectly comfortable spending time with the scum of the earth.
Looking up those links revealed a few more and this one was particularly interesting
https://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2019/3/30/my-response-to-chomskys-extraordinary-accusations-by-chris-knight
The most interesting section to me is the discussion of Chomsky working at MITRE, and the funding was a machine translation system that would allow "the possibility of translation of Russian language materials, particularly in scientific fields, into English by machine."
which is incredibly ironic, given chomsky's opinion on the development of LLMs
Nous, thanks for the full article. While the Cassandra envy is one reading, I see it as Chomsky being constitutional incapable of admitting he is/was in error. I'm most familiar with this pattern in linguistics and Geoff Pullum notes that it is not just that Chomsky is wrong, but that he creates a system (both with his rhetoric and his theory) that is immune to being proven wrong, even when core assumptions are proven wrong.
This is a recent article about this
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/hl.00186.pul
Pullum also had this more accessible article in the National Review about it
https://www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/xml_20220307_Pullum_BookReview-1.html
With the first splash he made, reviewing Skinner's Verbal Behavior, he had these traits, making me wonder if he ever changed.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2223153/
Chomsky is saying there that yes, he met with Epstein, and Chomsky places that in the context of institutional donors, noting that MIT has taken money from all sorts of horrible people, and that some have had buildings named after them (which Chomsky opines is worse than meeting with such a person because naming the building gives the person cultural prestige).
He appears to be saying something akin to the oft quoted "There is no ethical consumption under [late] capitalism."
True enough, but a dodge nonetheless.
Chomsky's relationship with Epstein went beyond that context of official meetings on campus. They were chummy in emails, and the substance of those emails gets pretty noxious. Not Lolita noxious, but more elitist Bond villain noxious - elites spreading their genes far and wide to improve society because they are genetically superior...that Bell Curve bullshit that Epstein and Musk and the rest of the insecure billionaire class eat up, and that the edgelord academic fringe love to dabble in whenever they want to prove how free-thinking and liberated from ideology they are.
Chomsky has always struck me as saying things that sound morally satisfying and have a kernel of truth, but doing precious little to try and effect any change. It's like he aspires to be Cassandra because that relieves him of the responsibility of actually being a change-maker.
On the Chomsky remark you quote, I think it is ambiguous.
I'd say that whether it's ambiguous depends a lot on what's in the (unquoted) rest of what he said. There might well be context that shows what he thinks of those people and their views. Good or ill.
But if the quote is the totality of his statement, it doesn't seem all that ambiguous. At least to me.
I tend to think that these problems are often defined as sexism or racism, but the underlying issue is the ability to rationalize.
lj, I think your point about rationalisation is a good and important one. It enables people that way talented and inclined to make a logical case for their behaviour or opinions. But I think that this is in the service of their urges, or their instincts, which can indeed be racist or sexist.
On the Chomsky remark you quote, I think it is ambiguous. For example, saying he has no regrets about meeting war criminals does not to me imply any endorsement of their actions. It might mean that he has learnt something about their character and motivation which is useful for understanding how such people come to do what they have done, or got into the positions of power they reached. It could be to do with psychological, sociological or criminological understanding. And of course, it also displays a lack of concern for how it makes him look, which is not in itself a bad thing. Distaste or disgust at being known to have met someone terrible is not necessarily a sign of virtue.
For the Economist, having Megan McArdle work for them is is not just one strike, it is more like striking out the entire side.
Certainly not a plus. On the other hand, is/was a detailed political philosophy exam part of the Economist's hiring process? I would also note that she no longer works there. I'd want to know a bit more about the history there before leaping to a conclusion.
Not to mention that, people change. It is my recollection that she was a lot less extreme in her views, at least in what she wrote, when she was there than she is now. When she left, I thought enough of her writing to read her stuff elsewhere. Definitely didn't last; it was like reading a differe
All of the major rating firms -- Fitch, Moody's, S&P, etc -- rated CDOs based on subprime mortgages as high-quality investment-grade paper. During hearings on the subprime crisis, the US Senate heard testimony from multiple experts recommending that none of those firms should ever be allowed to rate CDOs in the future. I am somewhat more vindictive -- send a serious message and just put them out of business entirely.
The Economist has stayed the course much better than some other major publications that have drifted from journalism to viewpoint advocacy.
I dropped my subscription when they went full cheerleader for the Iraq War. They were even more enthusiastic and optimistic than the Bush administration was.
it gives SciAm negative (aka left) scores for articles such as
"2024 Is Officially The Hottest Year On Record"
"The Ethics Of Sending Humans To Mars"
"Hawaii Has Permafrost And Scientists Are Racing To Study It Before It's Gone"
I put it to you that this just means you agree with the viewpoint they advocate.
Perhaps. But The Economist has higher ratings from various media rating services than does Scientific American, for example, a publication of a similar age and stature.
Some random thoughts. I don't know all of the gory details about the French cases mentioned here, but we have had all kinds of revelations about various groups who one would imagine would be more introspective to behave badly/act immorally. Those two phrases highlight the problem, either you assign behavior to an immature lapse in judgement or you make a claim about how it is going against all societal values. And given that Foucault was always identifying flaws in societal thinking, one can see how this can seem like society pushing back, which then engenders its own pushback, etc etc.
One thing that I think is operative in the issues in France is that academia and the elite are siloed there to a great extent, maybe much more than in other countries, and it creates structures that make misbehavior more likely. I'm thinking of the issues that have recently arisen in philosophy with McGinn, Searle and others, the issues in classics (we discussed this article about Peralta who has since moved from Princeton to ASU) as well as in other areas. I tend to think that these problems are often defined as sexism or racism, but the underlying issue is the ability to rationalize. The fact that Chomsky appears to be friends with Epstein (and his quote "I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.") seems like instantiations of that urge to rationalization.
I'm not sufficiently up on UK politics to describe their stance beyond "underwhelmed by the currently available options" among politicians and parties. They were appalled by Brexit, but then anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that would be the fiasco that it has indeed become.
As for the US, they have the same challenge everyone else does: selecting which of each week's insanities to even talk about. They still have a bit of a libertarian lean, but rather less than a couple of decades ago. More like "Surely we can simplify and rationalize the kludge that has grown up over the years."
The Economist does manage some nice turns of phrase.
Lol, I haven't read the Economist in ages. I was to annoyed by every article ending with some call for neo-liberal deregulation as the solution to all our problems. Also, the fawning coverage of US administrations (Bush, not sure about Obama) was getting a bit ridiculous.
That said, they have some of the smartest writers and if you want to know what's going on in, say, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan or Malaysia right now, it's the right address.
On “Perpwalk Imperial”
GftNC, if the totality of what Chomsky said was the quote ("I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.”), I would take the unambiguous meaning to be that he is perfectly comfortable spending time with the scum of the earth.
"
Looking up those links revealed a few more and this one was particularly interesting
https://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2019/3/30/my-response-to-chomskys-extraordinary-accusations-by-chris-knight
The most interesting section to me is the discussion of Chomsky working at MITRE, and the funding was a machine translation system that would allow "the possibility of translation of Russian language materials, particularly in scientific fields, into English by machine."
which is incredibly ironic, given chomsky's opinion on the development of LLMs
"
Nous, thanks for the full article. While the Cassandra envy is one reading, I see it as Chomsky being constitutional incapable of admitting he is/was in error. I'm most familiar with this pattern in linguistics and Geoff Pullum notes that it is not just that Chomsky is wrong, but that he creates a system (both with his rhetoric and his theory) that is immune to being proven wrong, even when core assumptions are proven wrong.
This is a recent article about this
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/hl.00186.pul
Pullum also had this more accessible article in the National Review about it
https://www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/xml_20220307_Pullum_BookReview-1.html
With the first splash he made, reviewing Skinner's Verbal Behavior, he had these traits, making me wonder if he ever changed.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2223153/
"
wj, if that is the totality of what Chomsky said, what do you take to be the unambiguous meaning (or implication) of it?
On “Open Thread”
Or rather in 2024.
"
My girlfriend had a poem published in Scientific American last year.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poem-an-ars-poetica/
Hope everyone here is healthy.
On “Perpwalk Imperial”
>It’s like he aspires to be Cassandra because that relieves him of the responsibility of actually being a change-maker.
a common affliction.
"
If any of y'all are interested in the larger context in which Chomsky said that, it's at The Harvard Crimson:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/3/epstein-nowak-chomsky-meeting-2015/
Chomsky is saying there that yes, he met with Epstein, and Chomsky places that in the context of institutional donors, noting that MIT has taken money from all sorts of horrible people, and that some have had buildings named after them (which Chomsky opines is worse than meeting with such a person because naming the building gives the person cultural prestige).
He appears to be saying something akin to the oft quoted "There is no ethical consumption under [late] capitalism."
True enough, but a dodge nonetheless.
Chomsky's relationship with Epstein went beyond that context of official meetings on campus. They were chummy in emails, and the substance of those emails gets pretty noxious. Not Lolita noxious, but more elitist Bond villain noxious - elites spreading their genes far and wide to improve society because they are genetically superior...that Bell Curve bullshit that Epstein and Musk and the rest of the insecure billionaire class eat up, and that the edgelord academic fringe love to dabble in whenever they want to prove how free-thinking and liberated from ideology they are.
Chomsky has always struck me as saying things that sound morally satisfying and have a kernel of truth, but doing precious little to try and effect any change. It's like he aspires to be Cassandra because that relieves him of the responsibility of actually being a change-maker.
"
I'd say that whether it's ambiguous depends a lot on what's in the (unquoted) rest of what he said. There might well be context that shows what he thinks of those people and their views. Good or ill.
But if the quote is the totality of his statement, it doesn't seem all that ambiguous. At least to me.
"
I tend to think that these problems are often defined as sexism or racism, but the underlying issue is the ability to rationalize.
lj, I think your point about rationalisation is a good and important one. It enables people that way talented and inclined to make a logical case for their behaviour or opinions. But I think that this is in the service of their urges, or their instincts, which can indeed be racist or sexist.
On the Chomsky remark you quote, I think it is ambiguous. For example, saying he has no regrets about meeting war criminals does not to me imply any endorsement of their actions. It might mean that he has learnt something about their character and motivation which is useful for understanding how such people come to do what they have done, or got into the positions of power they reached. It could be to do with psychological, sociological or criminological understanding. And of course, it also displays a lack of concern for how it makes him look, which is not in itself a bad thing. Distaste or disgust at being known to have met someone terrible is not necessarily a sign of virtue.
On “Open Thread”
Certainly not a plus. On the other hand, is/was a detailed political philosophy exam part of the Economist's hiring process? I would also note that she no longer works there. I'd want to know a bit more about the history there before leaping to a conclusion.
Not to mention that, people change. It is my recollection that she was a lot less extreme in her views, at least in what she wrote, when she was there than she is now. When she left, I thought enough of her writing to read her stuff elsewhere. Definitely didn't last; it was like reading a differe
"
Care to share names?
What's the meme? All of them, Katie.
All of the major rating firms -- Fitch, Moody's, S&P, etc -- rated CDOs based on subprime mortgages as high-quality investment-grade paper. During hearings on the subprime crisis, the US Senate heard testimony from multiple experts recommending that none of those firms should ever be allowed to rate CDOs in the future. I am somewhat more vindictive -- send a serious message and just put them out of business entirely.
"
Charles, do you really think that Grok is a media rating service?
For the Economist, having Megan McArdle work for them is is not just one strike, it is more like striking out the entire side.
"
Care to share names?
These evaluations have text and tables listing media rating services.
The Economist: Reputation and Bias
Scientific American: Legacy and Modern Controversy
"
The Economist has stayed the course much better than some other major publications that have drifted from journalism to viewpoint advocacy.
I dropped my subscription when they went full cheerleader for the Iraq War. They were even more enthusiastic and optimistic than the Bush administration was.
"
intrigued by the idea of someone rating magazines for left/right bias, i found:
https://adfontesmedia.com/scientific-american-bias-and-reliability/
it gives SciAm negative (aka left) scores for articles such as
"2024 Is Officially The Hottest Year On Record"
"The Ethics Of Sending Humans To Mars"
"Hawaii Has Permafrost And Scientists Are Racing To Study It Before It's Gone"
"
various media rating services
Care to share names?
"
I put it to you that this just means you agree with the viewpoint they advocate.
Perhaps. But The Economist has higher ratings from various media rating services than does Scientific American, for example, a publication of a similar age and stature.
"
The Economist has stayed the course much better than some other major publications that have drifted from journalism to viewpoint advocacy.
I put it to you that this just means you agree with the viewpoint they advocate.
On “Perpwalk Imperial”
Some random thoughts. I don't know all of the gory details about the French cases mentioned here, but we have had all kinds of revelations about various groups who one would imagine would be more introspective to behave badly/act immorally. Those two phrases highlight the problem, either you assign behavior to an immature lapse in judgement or you make a claim about how it is going against all societal values. And given that Foucault was always identifying flaws in societal thinking, one can see how this can seem like society pushing back, which then engenders its own pushback, etc etc.
One thing that I think is operative in the issues in France is that academia and the elite are siloed there to a great extent, maybe much more than in other countries, and it creates structures that make misbehavior more likely. I'm thinking of the issues that have recently arisen in philosophy with McGinn, Searle and others, the issues in classics (we discussed this article about Peralta who has since moved from Princeton to ASU) as well as in other areas. I tend to think that these problems are often defined as sexism or racism, but the underlying issue is the ability to rationalize. The fact that Chomsky appears to be friends with Epstein (and his quote "I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.") seems like instantiations of that urge to rationalization.
On “Open Thread”
"They still have a bit of a libertarian lean, but rather less than a couple of decades ago."
Decades ago, I subscribed to The Economist when, for me at least, subscribing to magazines was a thing.
The Economist has stayed the course much better than some other major publications that have drifted from journalism to viewpoint advocacy.
"
I'm not sufficiently up on UK politics to describe their stance beyond "underwhelmed by the currently available options" among politicians and parties. They were appalled by Brexit, but then anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see that would be the fiasco that it has indeed become.
As for the US, they have the same challenge everyone else does: selecting which of each week's insanities to even talk about. They still have a bit of a libertarian lean, but rather less than a couple of decades ago. More like "Surely we can simplify and rationalize the kludge that has grown up over the years."
"
novacant, like you I haven't read The Economist in ages.
At least, back then, they were tots for "gun control".
"
The Economist does manage some nice turns of phrase.
Lol, I haven't read the Economist in ages. I was to annoyed by every article ending with some call for neo-liberal deregulation as the solution to all our problems. Also, the fawning coverage of US administrations (Bush, not sure about Obama) was getting a bit ridiculous.
That said, they have some of the smartest writers and if you want to know what's going on in, say, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan or Malaysia right now, it's the right address.
What is their editorial stance now?
"
O brave new world, that has such leaders (and past leaders) in’t.
Trump is, no doubt inadvertently, accomplishing one thing: a lot of previously covert misbehavior is moving into the open.
Where, down the line, the perpetrators can be dealt with. Probably an improvement over them remaining in the shadows.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.