Chomsky was doing so many podcasts up to the moment he disappeared from the radar presumably due to medical issues. I've seen him going for 2 hours with some nobody with 5K followers, being asked juvenile and stupid questions and answering with the patient of a Saint. He looked quite diminished physically, elderly and frail but mentally he's always sharp and his recall and memory is scary.<p>I feel that in his later years he made a conscious effort to talk to young people and made them aware of the history and depth of the problems the world is facing, and he used very modern avenues to do so, like podcast interviews. I will always have the highest degree of respect for this man and an admiration for his integrity, sensitivity and scholarship.
I love Noam Chomsky so much. To me he is epitome of what a rational caring intellectual should be. Number one, he strives for the truth and while can have intellectual blind spots, isn't afraid of calling them out.<p>We had him has a guest speaker for an internal presentation at Google and of course we had some hyper-rational libertarian eastern block swe kid who was going to take him down and Noam was super respectful, spared with the kid for awhile and then changed the subject slightly while destroying the libertarian kid's entire argument.<p>You don't just debate Noam Chomsky.<p><a href="https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200304/df20030409.jp...</a><p>Noam Chomsky vs. Michel Foucault - Dictatorship of the Proletariat <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpoLLAJ1t74</a>
I actually emailed Noam Chomsky asking questions about Manufacturing Consent and actually got a reply. I always thought he was really cool for being so accessible to those who just had honest questions. I really hope he gets well soon.
The full obituaries and reflections will come later, but the volume alone of papers, essays, books, articles, and interviews he's generated over his 95 year life is staggering.
Sad news. I do not agree with him on everything, but I found his work and arguments he made a good counterbalance to those who are followers of Edward Bernays and his "The Engineering of Consent".
Speaking of non-political side of him: was not he wrong about "innate grammar" necessary to understand langage? LLM do not have such circuitry, yet they somehow work well...
Nooooooooooooooo...... How will colorless green ideas sleep furiously? :'[<p>Will miss his interviews on various forums often posted on YT and appearances on Democracy Now.<p>Classic: <i>Yanis Varoufakis with Professor Noam Chomsky at NYPL, April 16, 2016 | DiEM25</i><p><a href="https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc</a>
At first I thought he said interesting things<p>But with time, I also realized he is a linguist, not an historian or political scientist.<p>He is controversial.
Intellectual giant whose shadow will be cast deep into the future. I don't need to review any of his work wrt to CS or linguistics to tell you that his legacy will be massive.<p>I think Manufacturing Consent should go down as one of the most important books ever written in our culture. He was right about much, but wrong about much also.<p>His beliefs on Cambodia strain credulity and I still have trouble separating that Chomsky, so bent on drawing an equivalence(however valid) between American actions and the Khmer Rouge that he missed the point entirely, and Chomsky the visionary philosopher who I admire deeply.
All that had to be said, was said. All that had to be said about saying, has been said. If the language of of said, is to be taken as a context free gramar defined by a tuple Y and the ruleset X, then the pumping lema for cf languages applies. Sayer said sad. [Mic Drop]
I still love his debate with Foucault from ages ago. Chomsky speaking English, Foucault speaking French! The subject didn't matter much to me, but the ease they were debating each other is something else.
I watched some of the documentaries such as the ine about manufacturing consent.<p>What I don’t understand is this: the news agencies don’t report to the government. Then why would they work together with the government to mislead the people? Does anyone know?<p>Noam is so amazingly smart, he is probably one a billion. Sometimes I am not sure he is right but can’t really formulate why or what is it that I don’t agree.
A legendary man.<p>A friend of mine has a low-power FM radio station, that I wrote the software for, that endlessly downloads and replays Noam Chomsky's podcasts.
First of all he's a hell of a linguist theorist.<p>I disagree with about everything this guy wrote politically. I totally disagree with this guys perspective, it drives me up a wall frankly. But I have always have had incredible respect and think he played an important role in the dialogue. I read everything he wrote, and generally enjoy his writing. The very definition of the constant loyal opposition. Always getting people to think about things differently and with incredible moral courage. I wrote and argued with him and he always responded. We are all better off because of Chomsky.
To contrast a bit with other comments, he is very much disliked in eastern Europe. He was always pushing his multipolar worldview and not respecting that the Poles, Czechs etc. do not want to live under the Soviet/Russian 'pole'.<p>My personal opinion is that he 1) hates the US 2) hates eastern Europe because it defeated socialism.<p>I'd love to be proven wrong, but I do not think I will be.
I am a huge fan both of his technical contributions, healthy AI skepticism, and also a good friend earned her PhD with Chomsky. I hope he is comfortable and surrounded by people who love him.<p>EDIT: and, of course, he had an accurate view of the world geopolitically, media manipulation, etc.
> she explained why the usually responsive academic “hasn’t been returning emails, or interviewing”.<p>I was amazed when he replied to my email, asking a polical history question, with a thoughtful and personal reply.<p>The only other person I could think of even being close to his stature is Howard Zinn.<p>It may be a long shot, but I'm still hoping for his recovery.<p>This man has done more for humanity than a billion billionaire-bills could ever aquire...
I can't speak to his opinions on other topics, but since the full-scale Russian invasion started a few years ago, his frequent opinion pieces on world politics started popping up a lot. They were some of the most batshit insane, genocide-apologist takes on the situation that I've ever read.
Here's your monthly reminder that despite the large place he occupies in the "sciency" cultural landscape, a lot of his work has been debunked and he has not gone back on his genocide-denying claims about Serbia.<p>His anti US imperialism views blind him.
Last time i heard him in an Interview he was already sluring and taking long times bevore he answered. I think there's metabolic problems and that he hasnt got much time left - sadly. I learned a lot from his lectures.
> The Russia-Ukraine crisis continues unabated as the United States ignores all of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s security demands and spreads a frenzy of fear by claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent.<p>> February 4, 2022<p><a href="https://chomsky.info/20220204/" rel="nofollow">https://chomsky.info/20220204/</a><p>Questions of human conflict are incredibly complex, but occasionally life gives you a freebie. Occasionally, things actually <i>are</i> black and white, there <i>are</i> good guys and bad guys and you should <i>not</i> support the bad guys. If you had trouble getting this one absolutely dead simple case right, maybe you should not bother having an opinion on these matters at all.
Damn, this topic got downvoted onto the 3rd page by the HN hive mind in no time. Right after:
SQLSync – collaborative offline-first wrapper around SQLite, 16 points, 20 hours old<p>..must have a hell of a lot of downvotes.