I’ll be pretty sad when the big man goes. He turned me from socdem into actual leftist
If you send him an email thanking him he will see it and respond
I know this because about a year ago I emailed him to own a lib on twitter and he got back to me in less than an hour
but he literally replied to me explicitly asking for help dunking on someone who quoted chomsky to defend kaitlyn bennet on twitter. It really can't get lower stakes than that
If Noam is anything like I think he is, emails like the one OP is describing mean more to him than any other
I emailed him once about whether he had read some book, and he emailed me back in 5 minutes. TBH, I think he thinks that if he stops answering emails he'll probably just die.
From what I've heard you could email him about what he had for lunch a week ago and he will get back to you with a thorough answer.
I seriously doubt he replies to all the emails, especially ones not about theory. Wouldn’t be surprised if his team did it or something. Dude’s 92.
Email him and ask
now im imagining noah chomsky just sitting at like a old dell desktop answering emails all day
Dude, that's what his life is at this point, it's gotta be
I can't help but love em
life can't be better than that, getting emails thanking you for your work, helping people dunk on some libs :comfy:
I still like Chomsky tbh. He's got shit opinions, but he's consistently the only guy who is easy to pick up for all manner of people because he knows how to simplify concepts and his writing is clear. People say it's dry but I feel like that's a shitlib argument because they can't pretend to be bigheaded while reading him.
It's also a con with him because he shits on some of the writers I like to read.
Honestly, take what's good from these individuals and leave the shitty stuff. I would never wholesale just cast them off.
He speaks American. We speak Marxist. We can take quite a few lessons from him.
I'll always admire him for his contribution to computer science.
Seriously on the computer science. Without him computers as we know him wouldn't be the same. I wish I understood his contributions more.
Honestly the math surrounding computability theory was hard as fuck
him and noami klein are by far the easiest to read for me and were fat entry point. that and embassingly the chapo shilled book “peoples republic of wallmart “ but those kinda are kinda wonkier
and of course the chapo guide was amazing
Shock Doctrine is definitely one of the best books you could recommend to radlibs
He’s done that for many people. Turned them from simply some progressive socdem into actual socialists
He has created a positive number of marxists, even if he's an anarchist.
He's clearly a nice man, all politics aside.
I think that's part of the reason why people in this thread are saying the things they are.
Yeah Chomsky's principle problem is that he never sat down and engaged and read a lot of Marx or Marxists, which really isn't so much as a problem as he's never claimed otherwise but it leads to some whack stuff sometimes (like calling Lenin a right wing deviation from Marxism which while I would say Lenin fundamentally departs from Marx like the rest of the SPD theorists, and has a conception of the workplace I think departs from Marx's republicanism, I would not call him a right wing deviation lol).
I've cooled on him over the years, but reading him when I was a teenager was some mind-blowing shit
Manufacturing Consent was a big one for me. It's still the lens through which I view most media. Really can't understate the impact he's had on me.
he's very firmly in the analytic tradition, so i'm not all that surprised and idk if it's a strong mark against him
If Noam Chomsky didn't exist, It would be necessary to invent him.
If chomsky didnt exist we wouldnt have language and wouldnt be able to coordinate a way to invent him
I admire him for making it through the worst time to be a left winger in the US. Basically from the 80's until Occupy. That time from all the people I've talked to was lonely and full of doubt.
He's good. He's not leading the revolution or anything, but he has produced some genuinely useful analysis. I love linking libs to the Wikipedia article on the Propaganda Model whenever I can.
Youtube videos of Chomsky criticizing US Imperialism was honestly such a blessing for me (a second gen Iraqi immigrant) growing up, that at least there was one person who publically stood up for the oppressed. Didn't even realise he was an anarchist till years later.
Bless him.
I was introduced to him through linguistics. He came up with a really good model for computer programming, but I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions that it’s how language is processed between two humans.