🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <PS7k4.71076$905.1440039@news5.giganews.com>,
Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@hex.net> wrote:
>Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Peter Seebach would say:
>>In article <388F8509.FE9A7456@home.com>, Richard  <2prometheus@home.com> wrote:
>>Ah-hah!  It's our buddy who believes that there's no such thing as whole-wheat
>>bread, and that Bertrand Russel's attempt to define mathematics revolutionized
>>the study of math.

>Ah.  It looks like this may be a "reincarnation" of Richard Kulitz
>(sp?)  who was a plague on gnu.misc.discuss some time ago.

Kulisz, I believe, and it certainly is.  He even emails me long blathers about
how stupid I am (I think they're just cc's of posts), and then responds to
anything I send him with "I just emailed you out of habit, don't bother
sending anything to me, I won't read it."

>>If memory serves, he believes that Godel's work does *NOT* show that there
>>are, within a given system, true statements which cannot be derived from the
>>premises, because he believes that "true" and "is a theorem" are equivalent
>>in this context.

>Probably hasn't actually *read* Godel's paper...

No, he's mis-read _Godel, Escher, Bach_.  Or, more likely, he read it, saw
that it was interesting, and then got given a new interpretation of it by
someone for whom he has set the "authority" bit.

>Ah, but Chomsky isn't mostly a linguist anymore; his field is
>political economy these days, right?

In a way.  However, keep in mind the principle of self-reference.  Look at
all the stuff Chomsky has written about how entities make people believe
things.  Now, remember, he's *smart*.  He's playing the same game; he says
things because he believes that, if he says these things, the resulting belief
systems and values will be the ones he wants to see.

This is completely orthogonal to any concept of "truth".  It's propaganda,
and well-done propaganda, but you have to evaluate his goals independant of
his reasons for them, because the reasons themselves are manufactured to
"support" the goals.

That said, if you *study* Chomsky's work in the field, it's excellent - as
long as you realize that he can and will lie to you if he thinks it's
expedient, because that, after all, is his underlying thesis of how
communication works these days.  :)

-s
p.s.:  The most fascinating thing about his linguistic work is that, from a
*patently* false premise ("there is no meaning in language that you cannot
derive from studying sentences without their context", which is given the
lie by the many meanings of "It's hot in here"), he managed to draw a number
of interesting, non-trivial, fundemental theories about human knowledge and
learning.  They may not all be right, but it's still brilliant work.
-- 
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