22 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2023
  2. Jun 2023
    1. Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control

      Media control is actually a definition/term (that has been coined by Noam Chomsky)

  3. May 2023
    1. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it.

      Noam Chomsky on Alan Greenspan's ideas on 'worker insecurity'.

  4. Dec 2022
    1. You can train a rat to run pretty complicated mazes. You’re never going to train a rat to run a prime number maze — a maze that says, “turn right at every prime number.” The reason is that the rat just doesn’t have that concept. And there’s no way to give it that concept. It’s out of the conceptual range of the rat. That’s true of every organism. Why shouldn’t it be true of us? I mean, are we some kind of angels? Why shouldn’t we have the same basic nature as other organisms? In fact, it’s very hard to think how we cannot be like them. Take our physical capacities. I mean, take our capacity to run 100 meters. We have that capacity because we cannot fly. The ability to do something entails the lack of ability to do something else. I mean, we have the ability because we are somehow constructed so that we can do it. But that same design that’s enabling us to do one thing is preventing us from doing something else. That’s true of every domain of existence. Why shouldn’t it be true of cognition?

      !- limitations : human - Chomsky points out something very simple but profound - It is the same thing taught by Nagarjuna - A thing or process once named or positively defined by observable properties, is also negatively defined - once we have one ability, it also rules out countless other abilities

    2. Noam Chomsky and Andrea Moro on the Limits of Our ComprehensionAn excerpt from Chomsky and Moro’s new book “The Secrets of Words.”

      !- book title : The Secrets of Words" - authors : Moro and Chomsky

  5. Oct 2022
    1. There are huge efforts that do go into making people, to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase, “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be.” A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think about it, it’s designed for obedience and passivity. From childhood, a lot of it is designed to prevent people from being independent and creative. If you’re independent-minded in school, you’re probably going to get into trouble very early on. That’s not the trait that’s being preferred or cultivated. When people live through all this stuff, plus corporate propaganda, plus television, plus the press and the whole mass, the deluge of ideological distortion that goes on, they ask questions that from another point of view are completely reasonable….

      Noam Chomsky Based

  6. Aug 2022
    1. in terms of the new perspectives provided by cybernetics and thecommunication sciences,

      Did Chomsky get onto the cybernetics craze aka "The Bandwagon"?

    2. The experts have the responsibility of making clear the actuallimits of their understanding and of the results they have so far achieved,
    3. Chomsky, Noam. Language and Mind. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791222.

  7. Dec 2020
    1. Many linguistics books have used Genie's case study as an example to illustrate principles of language acquisition, frequently citing it as support of Chomsky's hypothesis of language being innate to humans and of a modified version of Lenneberg's critical period hypothesis, and her work with Genie provided the impetus for several additional case studies.
  8. Aug 2020
  9. Feb 2020
  10. Aug 2019
  11. Jul 2019
    1. Noam Chomsky

      Political dissident and linguist extraordinaire. His Wikipedia page is here.

    1. Iwasbeingsarcastic.Yeah.WhatIwastalkingabout,yeah,notonlysarcas·tic,butalsowrong

      Seen just here in this video.

    2. MayIsaysomething
    3. Butdon'tyourealizethatinyourbook,andelsewhere,BU:youtrenotwillingtobeconsistentincarryingoutthis,argument.
    4. FIRINGLINE-#143-page26
    5. Bu:tI,asamatterofprinciple,almost,XHXP~RXXrestrictmyselftothediscussionofAmericanterror.
    1. Noam Chomsky: One of the most appropriate comments I’ve seen on Trump’s foreign policy appeared in an article in The New Republic written by David Roth, the editor of a sports blog: “The spectacle of expert analysts and thought leaders parsing the actions of a man with no expertise or capacity for analysis is the purest acid satire — but less because of how badly that expert analysis has failed than because of how sincerely misplaced it is … there is nothing here to parse, no hidden meanings or tactical elisions or slow-rolled strategic campaign.” That seems generally accurate. This is a man, after all, who dismisses the information and analyses of his massive intelligence system in favor of what was said this morning on “Fox and Friends,” where everyone tells him how much they love him. With all due skepticism about the quality of intelligence, this is sheer madness considering the stakes.
  12. Apr 2019
    1. April 15, the day when you pay your taxes, gives you a good index of how democracy is functioning. If democracy were functioning effectively, April 15 would be a day of celebration. That’s a day on which we get together to contribute to implementing the policies that we’ve decided on. That’s what April 15 ought to be. Here it’s a day of mourning. This alien force is coming to steal your hard-earned money from you. That indicates an extreme contempt for democracy. And it’s natural that a business-run society and doctrinal system should try to inculcate that belief.
    1. He watched an hour-long lecture by Dr. Joy DeGruy on what she called “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.” He listened to the work of Tim Wise, an activist who speaks on college campuses and with corporations on fighting racism. He watched Morgan Freeman’s National Geographic series, The Story of Us. He watched Noam Chomsky’s documentary on American wealth distribution, Requiem for the American Dream. He watched Ava DuVernay’s examination of incarceration, the Netflix documentary, 13th. “13th turned the light bulb on,” Stills says.

      This is lovely to read. Kenny Stills, American-football player, finds his viewing and reading material.

      Everybody should see "Requiem for the American Dream", available on Netflix.