zlacker

>>mef+(OP)
I confess my opinion of Noam Chomsky dropped a lot from reading this interview. The way he set up a "Tom Jones" strawman and kept dismissing positions using language like "we'd laugh", "total absurdity", etc. was really disappointing. I always assumed that academics were only like that on reddit, and in real life they actually made a serious effort at rigorous argument, avoiding logical fallacies and the like. Yet here is Chomsky addressing a lay audience that has no linguistics background, and instead of even attempting to summarize the arguments for his position, he simply asserts that opposing views are risible with little supporting argument. I expected much more from a big-name scholar.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."

>>0xDEAF+g6
"Tom Jones" isn't a strawman, Chomsky is addressing an actual argument in a published paper from Steven Piantadosi. He's using a pseudonym to be polite and not call him out by name.

> instead of even attempting to summarize the arguments for his position..

He makes a very clear, simple argument, accessible to any layperson who can read. If you are studying insects what you are interested in is how insects do it not what other mechanisms you can come up with to "beat" insects. This isn't complicated.

>>foobar+Tb
>The systems work just as well with impossible languages that infants cannot acquire as with those they acquire quickly and virtually reflexively.

Where is the research on impossible language that infants can't acquire? A good popsci article would give me leads here.

Even assuming Chomsky's claim is true, all it shows is that LLMs aren't an exact match for human language learning. But even an inexact model can still be a useful research tool.

>That’s highly unlikely for reasons long understood, but it’s not relevant to our concerns here, so we can put it aside. Plainly there is a biological endowment for the human faculty of language. The merest truism.

Again, a good popsci article would actually support these claims instead of simply asserting them and implying that anyone who disagrees is a simpleton.

I agree with Chomsky that the postmodern critique of science sucks, and I agree that AI is a threat to the human race.

>>0xDEAF+AD
> Where is the research on impossible language that infants can't acquire? A good popsci article would give me leads here.

It's not infants, it's adults but Moro "Secrets of Words" is a book that describes the experiments and is aimed at lay people.

> Even assuming Chomsky's claim is true, all it shows is that LLMs aren't an exact match for human language learning. But even an inexact model can still be a useful research tool.

If it is it needs to be shown, not assumed. Just as you wouldn't by default assume that GPS navigation tells you about insect navigation (though it might somehow).

> Again, a good popsci article would actually support these claims instead of simply asserting them and implying that anyone who disagrees is a simpleton.

He justifies the statement in the previous sentence (which you don't quote) where he says that it is self-evident by virtue of the fact that something exists at the beginning (i.e. it's not empty space). That's the "merest truism". No popsci article is going to help understand that if you don't already.