UKH

And he just happens to be Jewish 

youtube.com/watch?v=edicDsSwYpk&

But Norm is an anti-semite as he has criticised Israel......

Yet 15, until very recently, Labour MPs who've seen how the party has changed under Corbyn say don't vote for him.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/12/10/20...

Actually, you could probably add half the PLP to that list but they want to keep their jobs.

If I criticise Saudi does that make me Islamaphobic?  

I don't understand the left fascination with Noam Chomsky. Seems like just another pseudo-intellectual charlatan to me.

In reply to DaveHK:

Yeah. Unlike me - a few too many beers onboard last night!

Fair dos. Too many beers is something I can relate to.

I think (hope) Ed was being sarcastic!

How surprising that ecce and rom are so disparaging of Noam. 

Might that be because of your opposing political stances? He has been one of the most thoughtful and eloquent commentator of the last 70 years. Just because you disagree politically it doesn't make them a "charlatan"  or a "twat". Well reasoned criticism there, that seems to say more about you than it does about him. 

If we start going into every idea that he has been right or wrong on we are going to be here all day, but I can assure you he has been correct on a lot more than one. 

Compared to you, me and most politicians and political theorists discussed in recent threads he is an intellectual giant. Noam's résumé is below, makes mine look like a 5 year old child's homework. How does yours compare?

"Noam Chomsky[a] (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian,[b][c] social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics",[d] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism"

That would be Srebrenica genocide-denier Noam Chomsky? Greatest intellectual my *rse. 

I doubt that even the harshest critics of the theory of universal grammar would dismiss it as charlatanism. 

I'm pretty sure he got accused of this because he said (in an in depth intellectual discussion) that the massacre was overstated, he used the word massacre himself, he didn't deny it had happened. 

I’d agree that Chomsky is a towering intellectual, despite an aversion to the linguistics module of my degree. But I’d also warn of the exceptionally weak correlation between intellectualism and the art of the possible, also known as politics.

In other words, he isn’t qualified to comment any more the intellectual 1,000 places below him, and less than any CEO be that of a Hospital Trust or FTSE 100 company (the examples chosen for political balance).

Don't think he denied it, questioned the figures IIRC, it suited a lot of people to try and discredit Chomsky, as it still does, when he speaks about Israel, and AS.

"it was a refugee camp, I mean, people could leave if they wanted" - Chomsky

https://chomsky.info/20060425/

There's his book with Herman as well. Oh, and I forgot to mention his Khymer Rouge defence... 

I wondered when you'd turn up. See my last post. Anyway, if you want some light reading on Chomsky, here's some interesting stuff:

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

But Chomsky didn't say there was no massacre at Srebrenica.

And do you consider Falluja genocide? 

That will be ones who are lobbied (paid) by the billionaires. 

I've no interest in defending the Khmer Rouge.  But the situation was a bit more complex than that.

He, again, largely questioned the figures and reports at a point where very confused messages were being put out (pre-internet remember) and state-level misinformation was the norm.  In light of the flagrant lies that got us into Vietnam and Laos, and the covert bombing of Cambodia that gave rise to the Khmer Rouge, it is understandable he was reluctant to suddenly take official accounts of their crimes at face value.  The KR at the time, prior to April '75, were in many respects an attractive social justice movement that in the space of months turned into a totalitarian regime of the very worst kind.

Always had a lot of time for Chomsky.  He's provided a great counter-point to prevailing views and been a staunch supporter of open dialogue.

Chomsky wasn't just understandably reluctant. He actively promoted the idea that Khymer Rouge victims were only a thousandth of what was claimed. 

Supporter of open dialogue? No...

https://balkaninsight.com/2007/09/11/protest-to-the-guardian-over-correctio...

He disputed the figures and the methods.  It was entirely understandable in the circumstances and to say that is a "defense" of the Khmer Rouge misrepresents the information that was then available and his arguments.

Chomsky was quite clear when disputing the accounts of the deaths that the assumption these were occuring due to out-and-out slaughter may be inaccurate.  Most people, to this day, conflate Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields with the 1-2 million dead when we know full well that they were only a small proportion of the dead.  The vast majority were simply worked/starved to death.  Those are the points Chomsky was labouring from the moment Phnom Penh was evactuated onwards.  You have to also keep in mind that virtually none of the literature outside of Chomsky and Kiernan referenced the primary cause of the rise of the Khmer Rouge (illegal US bombing of the countryside) or the different behaviours of different cadres of the Khmer Rouge.  All of which earns them "holocaust denier" labels.   

I only skim read the Balkan article, but I fail to see how, against all the other evidence of Noam Chomsky's stance on freedom of speech (him being profoundly against no-platforming and suchlike) that incident pits him against open dialogue.

I'm indifferent to Chomsky's political stances. Besides I also agree that you should vote labour unless the Lib Dem’s or SNP have a chance, not because I like Corbyn but because the tories are now a grave threat to democracy and freedom. 
 

Corbyn is mostly incompetent which is less of an issue.

Very fraudulent argument. Being a prolific author and having received awards and praise from peers isn't a sign of having produced anything useful. It is however a sure sign of being very good at capturing attention and selling oneself to the intelligentzia. 

AFAIK there is close to zero scientific or empirical evidence of his universal grammar theory, if anything it has been pretty much debunked.

I don't doubt he is a very clever guy, but being able to come up with nice theories and publishing good books isn't the same as being in touch with reality

He's in favour of freedom of speech when it suits him but in that case he was quick to complain, and the Guardian cravenly acquiesced. 

Loads of quotes and links to documents here:

http://balkanwitness.glypx.com/chomskydenial.htm

Also in the link I posted earlier. 

I replied to this thread this morning and it's disappeared. Is it because there were 'swears' in the post I replied to?

I think it's prima facie evidence that you might have.  It's a start.

Yes, but his key theory about the evolution of language is blatant bullshit. 

This leaves the following as the pinnacle of his output:

youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro&

CB

PS: I do have a lot of time for his politics and activism, just not his science.

Actually this could well be evidence that you have not. In fact I find it quite typical, the more a field of study or work is total BS the more it is driven by "awards" and "peer review". The less BS it is the more it is driven by survival/selection mechanism.
 

I tend to agree.  I just thought Rom's attitude smacked a bit of Farage's attitude to experts - that he must be wrong because he was well-known and widely published.

The language stuff had been remarkably useful in comp Sci for development of programming (and other computing) languages though. 

Possibly, but it does not give a reliable account of the evolution of language (which is what he started out to do). 

No problem with this, hypotheses are put out to be shot down, and even wrong ideas can have useful spin off benefits.

CB

Wrong. Being well known and widely published doesn't make him wrong, but it doesn't make him right either.
What makes him wrong is that is stuff doesn't work.

Right.  Believe it or not I do understand that.

I also know a lot of pretty decent scientists who have picked up a variety of awards, all of whose work is always peer reviewed (as opposed to being "peer reviewed").  I don't see the inverse correlation you seem to believe.

Also, as cb294 says, there's no shame in proposing a plausible hypothesis that subsequent work suggests isn't correct.

I see the inverse correlation in pseudo scientific fields. Psychology, sociology, economy etc etc.

in fact you often see people with totally contradictory theories being given an award at the same time.

I completely disagree. There SHOULD be shame attached to being wrong, especially if it has consequences on others. Shame acts as a natural selection mechanism. 

 

If you form a reasonable explanation for a set of data, but future tests show that your theory was wrong, I fail to see why shame should be attached.

Making being wrong shameful is a sure fire way to diminish science and medicine.

It depends how it was wrong. Inaccurate models that don’t capture the entire phenomenon are totally fine. Bullshit explanations are not.

No, it’s a sure fire way to improve it. Those who are wrong exit the pool and leave space for others.

Every single paper I have published in my field since my first publication in 1999 contains, to varying extents, data*, interpretations, hypotheses or models that I now simply consider wrong. Of course, all these papers also contain more stuff that I will still stand by.  

Every other scientist who works at the cutting edge of their field, or simply studies stuff that is genuinely not understood in any other system will confirm this. The only way to never be wrong is to stick to established and boring stuff. 

Making informed, inspired, theoretically well founded, but also creative guesses about how things may work is one essential part of the art of science, and the one I enjoy most. Scrutinizing, improving, or rejecting the ideas and models (your own and those of the competition) with the help of cleverly designed experiments is the other half.

Fields that overdo the former tend to be generally shit from a scientific POV, psychology being the foremost example (see e.g. the comments in this weeks Nature issue(

CB

* the data differences are largely because microscopes back then were not remotely comparable to today. We now simply see stuff we missed even five or ten years ago.

edited to cut out some unintended rudeness.

That’s absolutely fine by me.

I’m not saying you should never be wrong or stick to boring and established stuff. I’m simply saying there has to be a price to pay to get it wrong. The greater the impact of the mistake on society the greater the price should be.

Scientists have to own their risk and take responsibility for their work.

As I’ve said, all fine by me, but there has to be consequences for being wrong  I’m afraid, otherwise there is no incentive to get it right, instead what is left is incentive to publish stuff that will attract attention, further one’s career, etc etc.

We agree