Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by NaiveEmpiricist on Friday November 06, 2026 @09:40AM (#50392861)

I haven't seen the evidence for "raped kids", but it's certainly true that Chomsky advised and benefitted from Epstein long after any sensible person would have realized that Epstein JUST MIGHT be a bad person.

Unfortunately, Chomsky's always had a problem pulling the ripcord in similar situations. As one of his colleagues once explained, "When most people step in dogshit on the sidewalk, they scrape it off their shoe and keep walking. Chomsky gets stubborn and just keeps stepping in it again and again."

Not that this is relevant to his intellectual contributions, unless it crosses your personal line where involvement becomes complicity.

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by rapnie on Friday November 06, 2026 @09:53AM (#50393034)

His Wikipedia article [0] gives a good summary of the connection they had.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#Friendship_with_J...

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by IncreasePosts on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:11PM (#50395175)

Chomsky is also somewhat unique in that he would communicate with literally anyone who wanted to talk to him. I remember seeing Manufacturing Consent for the first time in 9th grade in 1999, and I sent him an email, and he responded within the hour.

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by jibalt on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:48PM (#50406915)

I sent Chomsky an email on 9/11 asking about blowback, mentioning that I had once met him when a group I belonged to took him to breakfast before a speech he gave about Reagan and Nicaragua. He responded on 9/12, apologizing for the delay caused by so many people contacting him. The response was filled with salient information about blowback. I also have some very interesting emails from him criticizing Steven Pinker's depravity, among other rather personal statements.

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Re:Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning by jibalt on Saturday November 07, 2026 @01:41PM (#50406863)

> long after any sensible person

Chomsky is a sensible person, and many other sensible people also continued to engage with Epstein. Hindsight and not being personally involved make judgments easy.

Also, Chomsky was willing to talk to anybody, and I have the personal emails to prove it.

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