The problem with Chomsky understading without proper context.

[maxbowman]

I'm a recent addition to this forum, and as I parse through the threads I notice more than one person posts a soundbite from one interview or another and starts heckling him and calling him wrong and bigoted without even bothering doing proper research to see if what he says has merit, or maybe in proper context he has a point, a point you might disagree with because of different intellectual motivations and interests. One fallacy I've noticed is just taking a soundbite that is a strawman by itself(a comment outside it's context is that), beating the crap out of that strawman and mentioning how you don't understand how this intellectual loser has all that prestige behind him.
The self serving aggrandizing theater doesn't really accomplish anything. This here website is geared towards those people who are interested in the ability of the intellect to parse through ******** towards some sense of truth, whatever it might be. So some context is necessary before taking on Chomsky on his positions and arguments. First is that he has a photographic memory and tends to retain encyclopedic amounts of information that he is very good at parsing through. Thus debating him is actually very very hard given how many facts and their many interconnections he sees at once, and is able to articulate them very concisely. Now if you're reading or listening to him and you're thinking well he didn't see this angle or he's wrong because... Well ninety nine times out of hundred you're most likely wrong. Why you ask, simply because he's considered what you're thinking and given his reference pool you're simply mistaken.
Now the point here is to contemplate before you react to what he says. The key here is you gotta do your homework. don't just listen to a snippet, watch a two hour lecture on the topic, sooner or later he's gonna say something suspect, someone in the audience will call him on it and he starts to respond. And his responses are very very well thought out, and it turns out he's right(given his motivations)
Now he takes a lot of controversial positions, and I can see how some of you given the culture we live in might be upset at what he says, but without proper context you're just getting mad at nothing in particular, no really you're mad over a misconception more than anything else.

 

[BobHaulk]

I don't think when you disagree with Norm that you'll likely be wrong. He's been wrong on most things in my opinion. Just look at the the way he gets Hitch slapped by the the greatest polemic alive (just) at the moment.
Chomsky is rubbish and since Christopher Hitchens turned on him he looks even more out of touch than ever.
I don't think i could suffer two hours of Chomsky. He's up there with truthers for sheer tedium.

 

[Gazpacho]

Max, good luck learning debate tactics and how to reply to existing threads.

 

[Gazpacho]

I don't think when you disagree with Norm that you'll likely be wrong. He's been wrong on most things in my opinion. Just look at the the way he gets Hitch slapped by the the greatest polemic alive (just) at the moment.

Hitchens' first denunciation of Chomsky was a response to an article, written on 9/12, in which he observed that the attacks played right into the militaristic policy establishment that they had been directed against. Seems like a pretty uncontroversial idea in retrospect, but who cares about that when you've got Hitchens' verbal fireworks to amuse you.

 

[maxbowman]

Well I want to concentrate on chomksy in general...

Instead of hijacking a thread with my intended focus. And I'm not trying to abuse anyone, just want to point out people don't really get it because of lack of context more than anything else.

 

[angrysoba]

Instead of hijacking a thread with my intended focus. And I'm not trying to abuse anyone, just want to point out people don't really get it because of lack of context more than anything else.

Max,

While I agree that for some posters Noam Chomsky is simply a hate figure and that declarations of hatred for Chomsky is better than an argument, it doesn't mean that you are making a sound point when you say, effectively, that Noam Chomsky can always counter any and every argument made against him because of his superior brain power and knowledge.

The behaviour you are annoyed with is the ad hominem attack which is of the form, "If Chomsky believes X then X is wrong because Chomsky is Khmer Rouge-supporting lover of Hizbullah and a way-too-comfortable rich professor with a massive ego and too many minions and fanboys and fangirls!" or variations thereof.

But your counter-argument is the argument from authority which is broadly of the form, "Chomsky is way smarter than you think you are because he already knows what you are going to say and if was here to defend himself and his views he would do it way better than I could but anyway, he's right and you're wrong even if I don't know why he's right!"

If you could think of some specific examples of where Chomsky has been misrepresented then you should bring up those examples. State the arguments that have been made against Chomsky and show why those arguments are wrong.

So, let's have some examples...

 

[maxbowman]

Well...

I'm sorry maybe I wasn't clear with my post. What I meant was something similar to an appeal to authority but without the misdirection. There are two approaches at misdirection, appeal to authority and the appeal to no authority. But there is also the middle ground that an expert in his field will usually give a much better answer than a layman, and thus when dealing with an expert it wouldn't behoove you to see if your simple rebuttal that comes out instantly You know simple stuff that is almost inferred by the conversation is really a misunderstanding of sorts more than him being wrong. Yea I just tend to see a lot of that.

Well I can start on him calling America a third world nation. Now people started getting upset and wanting him harm because he insulted their favorite nation state in the whole wide world. And that he's an ungrateful snob who should be ashamed at himself. Things of that nature. OK! Two problems with that. First let me point out that people tend to attach themselves to this idealistic notion of this nation state that is almost intimate and nurturing in nature. Any slight against it is like a slight against one owns mother. Well let me point out that the Idea of the nation state is just shorthand for an alliance of institutions which are systems made up of people pursuing their own greedy agendas. Yes greed, and greed because greed is the lust for power and nothing attracts those individual more than actual power. So criticizing an entity like that is really a responsibility of someone capable, and Chomsky's critique here is that this particular entity has been quite inefficient compared to say Europe when it comes to improving public works. And that plays into his critique that the US is slowly devolving into a third world country. Well I guess you can say his fault is not explaining he's talking about economic development and the format of the power structure that most reflects a third world situation. He's not referring to the quality of life in the US which is pretty good. Just economic and political circumstances. Look at the example of the political make up of Great Britain versus what we have here. You know there is an actual labor party there that represents the working class. Here we have one party, the business party with two different factions Republicans and Democrats. The middle and working class don't get any substantial representation. Given how expensive campaigns are to run and only real way to win an election is to spend an enormous amount of money, so there are prices for senate and congressional seats and they get bought out by businesses as they are the only ones capable of doing so. This is largely an institutional problem, but it warps who gets listened to and the real majority have no real voice. Which is a problem if you're a democracy. So yea in "some" ways we do live in a third world country compared to more civilized countries. Valid point I say. And more important criticism is an important component of improving things, so yea we should strive towards something that improves our current situation. You know with it being so well.

 

[Virus]

Your posts don't make any sense. Ever heard of paragraphs?

 

[angrysoba]

I'm sorry maybe I wasn't clear with my post. What I meant was something similar to an appeal to authority but without the misdirection. There are two approaches at misdirection, appeal to authority and the appeal to no authority. But there is also the middle ground that an expert in his field will usually give a much better answer than a layman, and thus when dealing with an expert it wouldn't behoove you to see if your simple rebuttal that comes out instantly You know simple stuff that is almost inferred by the conversation is really a misunderstanding of sorts more than him being wrong. Yea I just tend to see a lot of that.

I understood pretty much none of that. Are you saying that Chomsky is an expert in his field and that he is mostly misunderstood?

Well I can start on him calling America a third world nation. Now people started getting upset and wanting him harm because he insulted their favorite nation state in the whole wide world. And that he's an ungrateful snob who should be ashamed at himself.

Okay, I agree that some people react emotionally rather than rationally to things that Chomsky says. But is Chomsky even factually right when he says that the US is a Third World nation? (Just for the sake of clarification did he explicitly say, "The United States/America is a Third World country"?)

Things of that nature. OK! Two problems with that. First let me point out that people tend to attach themselves to this idealistic notion of this nation state that is almost intimate and nurturing in nature. Any slight against it is like a slight against one owns mother. Well let me point out that the Idea of the nation state is just shorthand for an alliance of institutions which are systems made up of people pursuing their own greedy agendas.

Well, that is merely an assertion. I think if you look at various nations and nationalist movements you may see that some people imbue more meaning in a nation state than a group of institutions pursuing their own greedy agendas. I doubt if even Chomsky would endorse such a reduction in all cases.

Yes greed, and greed because greed is the lust for power and nothing attracts those individual more than actual power. So criticizing an entity like that is really a responsibility of someone capable, and Chomsky's critique here is that this particular entity has been quite inefficient compared to say Europe when it comes to improving public works.

Yes, but the question at hand is whether or not the US is a Third World Country. Presumably European states are just as much collections of greedy institutions according to your definition so what makes the US a special case?

And that plays into his critique that the US is slowly devolving into a third world country. Well I guess you can say his fault is not explaining he's talking about economic development and the format of the power structure that most reflects a third world situation.

This is very vague. I think you could probably be more specific.

He's not referring to the quality of life in the US which is pretty good.

Low quality of life is something that is often seen as an indicator of a Third World country. If that is not an indicator in the US then what is?

Just economic and political circumstances. Look at the example of the political make up of Great Britain versus what we have here. You know there is an actual labor party there that represents the working class.

That is ostensibly what it does although I think many people will disagree, particularly in recent years.

Here we have one party, the business party with two different factions Republicans and Democrats. The middle and working class don't get any substantial representation.

This is a Chomskian assertion, to be sure. But it is something of a hyperbolic assertion. The fact is that the US is not a one-party state. Only by redefining your terms to mean something that is plainly at odds with their traditional meanings can you say there is only one party.

Given how expensive campaigns are to run and only real way to win an election is to spend an enormous amount of money, so there are prices for senate and congressional seats and they get bought out by businesses as they are the only ones capable of doing so. This is largely an institutional problem, but it warps who gets listened to and the real majority have no real voice. Which is a problem if you're a democracy. So yea in "some" ways we do live in a third world country compared to more civilized countries. Valid point I say. And more important criticism is an important component of improving things, so yea we should strive towards something that improves our current situation. You know with it being so well.

You are concluding with a far more conservative opinion than the statement "US is a Third World country".

 

[Cain]

since Christopher Hitchens turned on him he looks even more out of touch than ever.

Yeah, Chomsky's the one who looks out of touch, not that indefatigable warmonger Hitchens.

 

[Checkmite]

Okay, I agree that some people react emotionally rather than rationally to things that Chomsky says. But is Chomsky even factually right when he says that the US is a Third World nation? (Just for the sake of clarification did he explicitly say, "The United States/America is a Third World country"?)

His quote was "[Americans] happen to be living in a third-world country, from the point of view of economic and social development." As an example he points out that the speed of passenger trains in the US has only increased by a nominal percentage (like 40%) compared to those in Europe. The problem firstly is that his metric is ridiculous and much too incidental: Europe concentrated on developing train transportation and so excelled at it; while the US did not focus on train travel, they didn't abandon spending on transportation altogether - they simply redirected it toward personal motor transportation and air travel, and thus has managed to excel technologically in these areas.

Of course even the US's lackadaisical progress in train transportation is vastly superior to that of any country currently considered to be third world. And surely Chomsky's vast, photographic mental storehouse must've run across the fact that "third world" denotes a nation that is not expressly politically-aligned with US or Russian/Chinese interests, no matter what the state of its economy or social development, making his use of the term "third world country" loaded and contextually inappropriate.

 

[maxbowman]

I understood pretty much none of that. Are you saying that Chomsky is an expert in his field and that he is mostly misunderstood?

I should have edited that, OK what I was trying to say was there is a rhetorical trick called appeal to authority, which states that an expert is an unquestionable authority on the subject and just by rank should have his message taken as fact. Of course that's a fallacy, but you should still listen to experts in a given field, and if you're going to be critical of one, at least do your do diligence and do some homework. The reason is an expert spends an inordinate amount of time on his specific topic, so if you as a layman are going to be critical you should at least be cognizant there might be a good reason for what this expert says so. That's all.


Okay, I agree that some people react emotionally rather than rationally to things that Chomsky says. But is Chomsky even factually right when he says that the US is a Third World nation? (Just for the sake of clarification did he explicitly say, "The United States/America is a Third World country"?)

Well this isn't a case of simple logic when you say US=Third Word Country. This is more of a point of view from an economic and social development front more than an wholesale devaluing the whole of nation as third world. And his exact words were "from the point of view of economic and social development the US is like a third world country."

Well, that is merely an assertion. I think if you look at various nations and nationalist movements you may see that some people imbue more meaning in a nation state than a group of institutions pursuing their own greedy agendas. I doubt if even Chomsky would endorse such a reduction in all cases.

Yes people attach all sorts of meanings to nation state and all that. All I am pointing out is that most labels are just shorthand for a more complicated reality. Lets look at a power structure that this particular label implies. There are military and gov't and economic institutions that make up the power structure of a country. These are systems which have a social contract with it's people to provide a service. But by being power structures they are of immense value to bureaucratic entrepreneurs who are looking to exploit the system because it affords them power. And this happens everywhere, but there are ways to stop this corruption or at least limit it. One is political activism and generally having strong media institutions that point out these exploits. Now Chomksy's point is that our institutions have been compromised to the point that you can now compare us to a third world country on this merit. Now you say that even chomsky wouldn't reduce a notion of nation state to simply a collection of greedy opportunists, well he would and has. He's an anarcho-syndicalist and has no
love for what the nation state is. And this all comes down to weather you share his particular political sensibilities. I don't fully for the record agree with him on this accord.


Yes, but the question at hand is whether or not the US is a Third World Country. Presumably European states are just as much collections of greedy institutions according to your definition so what makes the US a special case?

Well thats the funny thing, Europe is in a much better state than the US when it comes to this, and this is because they seem to be more educated and politically engaged than we are. As I mentioned before their political parties better reflect their populaces. The labor party is a good example of something that died in the early nineteen hundreds in the US, but thrives in Europe. So the working class has been disenfranchised here in the US for a long time. And in order for democracy to work the majority must have someone to represent their interests in the legislative institutions. The problem here is that US is more of a capitalist country than a democratic one. The real problem starts somewhere after the sixties where there was social and political upheaval, America used to be more politically active with a focus on local politics. But then political divide of the sixties happened and most local political organizations dissolved because of differences of opinion among the members. Ever since then the only organized(well seriously organized) group that votes in blocks and had an agenda is the religious right, that's why they have so much power with the republican establishment. So yes the kooks have out organized us. Well the AARP is also politically affluent, but that's pretty much it for the majority. By the way there is a book called Bowling Alone which is about this particular phenomenon of Americans loosing political interest and the effects of all that apathy.

Now on the economic front things aren't much better. America's wages have stagnated for the past thirty years while corporate profits have skyrocketed. And even thought the US is the richest country in the world most of the wealth and growth for the past 30 years has been for the extremely wealthy, at the price of everyone else. And given that the political situation favors deep pockets this isn't going to change any time soon.

This is a Chomskian assertion, to be sure. But it is something of a hyperbolic assertion. The fact is that the US is not a one-party state. Only by redefining your terms to mean something that is plainly at odds with their traditional meanings can you say there is only one party

Well he's using hyperbole to assert that in practical terms both parties kowtow to the moneyed elite which happens to be business. While there are real differences between republicans and democrats I do feel the democrats give a lot of lip to liberal causes, but act like republicans lite when it comes actually looking at public liberal opinion and setting their agenda on that. They more kowtow to lobbyists than their democratic ideals.

You are concluding with a far more conservative opinion than the statement "US is a Third World country".

I am sorry I don't follow.

PS how do you quote with the lighter colored boxes, I am unfamiliar with how to do that.

 

[Spindrift]

PS how do you quote with the lighter colored boxes, I am unfamiliar with how to do that.

A) Use the QUOTE button at bottom right of the post you want to quote.

or

B) Use [ QUOTE ] [/ QUOTE ] tags. (Without the spaces before and after the word QUOTE.

 

[maxbowman]

His quote was "[Americans] happen to be living in a third-world country, from the point of view of economic and social development." As an example he points out that the speed of passenger trains in the US has only increased by a nominal percentage (like 40%) compared to those in Europe. The problem firstly is that his metric is ridiculous and much too incidental: Europe concentrated on developing train transportation and so excelled at it; while the US did not focus on train travel, they didn't abandon spending on transportation altogether - they simply redirected it toward personal motor transportation and air travel, and thus has managed to excel technologically in these areas.

Of course even the US's lackadaisical progress in train transportation is vastly superior to that of any country currently considered to be third world. And surely Chomsky's vast, photographic mental storehouse must've run across the fact that "third world" denotes a nation that is not expressly politically-aligned with US or Russian/Chinese interests, no matter what the state of its economy or social development, making his use of the term "third world country" loaded and contextually inappropriate.

Well this an interesting topic. Back in the fifties there was a major push to modernize the US through either a highway system or a train transportation.
Both options were considered and the train system seemed a better economic alternative. Better meaning savings on gas and cheapness of travel overall a better system if you weight both systems side by side. Now the gas companies lobbied the train alternative out of existence because the highway system benefited them more. So it really comes down to if you're a civilian your interests are in having the train system, if you're an oil executive then your interests are obviously in the system that expends the most gas. So yea that's what it was.
So given that context one can understand Chomsky's disdain with our of lack proper train system development is a little more than just nitpicking for douchebags sake.

As for the third world comment, I really don't follow, I've reread your entry and it's still mystifying to me, can you please elaborate.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Well this an interesting topic. Back in the fifties there was a major push to modernize the US through either a highway system or a train transportation.
Both options were considered and the train system seemed a better economic alternative. Better meaning savings on gas and cheapness of travel overall a better system if you weight both systems side by side. Now the gas companies lobbied the train alternative out of existence because the highway system benefited them more. So it really comes down to if you're a civilian your interests are in having the train system, if you're an oil executive then your interests are obviously in the system that expends the most gas. So yea that's what it was.
So given that context one can understand Chomsky's disdain with our of lack proper train system development is a little more than just nitpicking for douchebags sake.

As for the third world comment, I really don't follow, I've reread your entry and it's still mystifying to me, can you please elaborate.

As an individual, I prefer having a CAR and using it to go places. I'm sorry, but the people won on this one.

 

[Brainster]

Well I can start on him calling America a third world nation. Now people started getting upset and wanting him harm because he insulted their favorite nation state in the whole wide world.

The value of Noam Chomsky is that he gets young people off the reflexive, jingoistic support of America that is mindless. The negative is he replaces it with a reflexive anti-Americanism that is equally mindless and less true.

I mean, seriously, America is a third-world nation? Noam hasn't traveled enough if he believes that, even if he was just talking about mass transit systems.

 

[Checkmite]

Well this an interesting topic. Back in the fifties there was a major push to modernize the US through either a highway system or a train transportation.
Both options were considered and the train system seemed a better economic alternative. Better meaning savings on gas and cheapness of travel overall a better system if you weight both systems side by side. Now the gas companies lobbied the train alternative out of existence because the highway system benefited them more. So it really comes down to if you're a civilian your interests are in having the train system, if you're an oil executive then your interests are obviously in the system that expends the most gas. So yea that's what it was.
So given that context one can understand Chomsky's disdain with our of lack proper train system development is a little more than just nitpicking for douchebags sake.

As for the third world comment, I really don't follow, I've reread your entry and it's still mystifying to me, can you please elaborate.

The terms "n-world" were coined to describe nations' geopolitical status during the Cold War. The US and its allies were the First World. The Soviet Union (in modern times, this can be replaced with the Russia/China political partnership) and its allies comprised the Second World; and any nation that was nonaligned and thus did not qualify as either of the above were collectively the Third World. This was true regardless of how "poor" or "undeveloped" those nations were. Mexico, for instance, is a First World country; while Iran is a Second World country and Egypt is (at the moment) a Third World country. As many (but not all) small nations that have developed did so with the help of one of the superpowers, many Third World nations can be described as generally undeveloped - but that's not true of all of them and not a defining characteristic of "Third World".

However it came to pass that the US never focused on upgrading its rail transportation system, the fact that it didn't has no bearing on whether the US is a "Third World country"; the US by definition is the anchor of the First World. It has nothing to do with "patriotism" or "rage at someone denouncing the great US"; it's simply about what the terms First World and Third World actually mean. It would be like my saying, "we happen to be living on a pulsar, from the point of view of the amount of radio signals Earth emits." The word "pulsar" has a definition which excludes it from being used in this context.

 

[maxbowman]

As an individual, I prefer having a CAR and using it to go places. I'm sorry, but the people won on this one.

Well I think you misunderstood what I meant. It wasn't a choice of either car or train. There would still be a highway system, albeit a smaller one. Most of the traffic though would be train based, because it makes economic sense. Think of this in terms of public policy. Overall for tourism and commercial transportation the train system would have been a better choice, because of the highway system we have a much higher overhead when it comes to transportation costs, especially with the volatile price of oil.(you know one of the reasons we got into the recession and a contributor to the current one we might have.) So in terms of public policy the train solution was a better alternative irregardless of personal transportation preference.

 

[angrysoba]

His quote was "[Americans] happen to be living in a third-world country, from the point of view of economic and social development." As an example he points out that the speed of passenger trains in the US has only increased by a nominal percentage (like 40%) compared to those in Europe. The problem firstly is that his metric is ridiculous and much too incidental: Europe concentrated on developing train transportation and so excelled at it; while the US did not focus on train travel, they didn't abandon spending on transportation altogether - they simply redirected it toward personal motor transportation and air travel, and thus has managed to excel technologically in these areas.

Of course even the US's lackadaisical progress in train transportation is vastly superior to that of any country currently considered to be third world. And surely Chomsky's vast, photographic mental storehouse must've run across the fact that "third world" denotes a nation that is not expressly politically-aligned with US or Russian/Chinese interests, no matter what the state of its economy or social development, making his use of the term "third world country" loaded and contextually inappropriate.

Ah yes, I have just gone back to the thread in which this comes up. I think when I first listened to the clip I had the sound down so I missed the first few seconds where he says, "We happen to live in a Third World country from the point of view of..."

Indeed, as you say, Third World country itself means a country not allied to either the capitalist West or the Soviet bloc and only became thought of as poor because most of those countries which happened to be Third World were poor. So in a literal sense Chomsky is talking nonsense.

Now, perhaps what he meant, if we're feeling charitable is that the relative lack of advanced high-speed trains is indicative of a much broader falling behind into irrelevance of US technology in general. Yet that seems somewhat absurd if you look at the areas in which the US is still clearly at the very forefront. Japan, Europe, Israel and even China can give the US a run for its money in certain fields such as car manufacturing, high-speed computers, medicine etc... but the US is nowhere near the level of say, Sudan, Cambodia, Angola or other countries which are commonly thought of as Third World.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Well I think you misunderstood what I meant. It wasn't a choice of either car or train. There would still be a highway system, albeit a smaller one. Most of the traffic though would be train based, because it makes economic sense. Think of this in terms of public policy. Overall for tourism and commercial transportation the train system would have been a better choice, because of the highway system we have a much higher overhead when it comes to transportation costs, especially with the volatile price of oil.(you know one of the reasons we got into the recession and a contributor to the current one we might have.) So in terms of public policy the train solution was a better alternative irregardless of personal transportation preference.

Why does it make more economical sense? I'm looking for actual numbers here.