9 Comments
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Kevan Hudson's avatar

I can categorically state that I have no ties to Epstein or Maxwell.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Excellent article.

Yasha Levine's avatar

you would say that

Cynthia's avatar

Just manufacturing more consent. Great piece, Yasha!

Bonnie Blodgett's avatar

Bravo, Sasha. I worshipped Chomsky in part because the very messiness you correctly ascribe to us mere mortals also makes us want to believe in immortals (superior beings) of the Chomsky type. We mortals may be confused and constantly contradicting ourselves, but Noam is God-like in his unfailing dedication to reason, logic, science. . . as illustrated in his calm, cool and collected demeanor. We mortals become slaves to our empathy, but Chomsky is like a computer. We rant and rave about injustice; he never rants or raves about anything. It's taken me seven decades to figure out that the best way to explain my political activism o others is not as a journalist (though I am one) or an intellectual (that too) or "high IQ" (yup, that's me) but as an artist who loves gardening and raises chickens.

Beedot's avatar

Very interesting, I had thought recently that his linguistic theory aligned with AI

Yasha Levine's avatar

From what I understand LLMs have no theory of mind or linguistics, other than just ingesting as much text and speech as possible to come up with patterns.

Beedot's avatar

Yeah, I guess I meant that our speech operates like it’s been coded but I get confused trying to understand his theories.

Yasha Levine's avatar

Me too. I think also he modified his theories so much over time to deal with challenges to them that they are not even the same theory anymore. That book Decoding Chomsky is really great. Not an easy read at times. But great.

Beedot's avatar

I’ll have to read that. Thanks for the recommendation.