Noam Chomsky pops up a fair bit in that article, which is unfortunate since any attempt to construct a theory of language based on his principles is likely to fail. The basic issue is that he failed to recognize how Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem applied to linguistics.
Godel's, as well as Alfred Korzybski's work, was available at the time Chomsky was studying, but he apparently wasn't aware of them, or of the fatal blow Godel's theorem dealt to Russell & Whitehead's program as expressed in 'Principia Mathematica.' The only place I've actually read about this crisis is in Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 work Gödel, Escher, Bach. The rest of academia, save Marshal McLuhan and a few others, seem oblivious to their work, which defined the boundary conditions for what we can actually know with any certainty.
That aside, I also see Chomsky as yet another victim of Expert Syndrome.
In a nutshell, it's the tendency of people who are experts in one field to assume they have competency in others. The house I lived which was designed by a doctor who thought he was an architect is a good example. No less than 9 revisions to the plan until the builder apparently gave up. Now read this and tell me if you don't see it:
The guy displays a stunning lack of knowledge on the subject, not to mention a complete lack of empathy for the people affected by the policies he endorses. He apparently missed a part of his own history where Jews in Nazi Germany were accused of spreading typhus, following a long tradition of such accusations going all the way back to Roman times.
Not that Chomsky is alone in that regard. How often do you hear a public figure of his stature say "I'm sorry, I just don't feel qualified to comment on that issue?" Ironically, the most notorious of cross-disciplinarians, Marshal McLuhan, was himself accused of 'trespassing on other's domains" when he himself pointed directly at that exact problem.
let's start again... The medium is a message, and I'm not sure a comment on a post is the best way to share complex ideas. maybe I'm just triggered by the MK ultra bear.
That's odd. Not long ago you remarked to GW that Substack was the place to be, or words to that effect. If it's not in the comments then where is it? You can use it as a publishing platform of course, which I believe was the original concept, but it's become much more than that.
I see Substack as generating a network effect, as opposed to linear transmission of ideas from a single source to an audience, as with books, radio, TV or a YouTube channel. A truly multi-path medium. Unlike live debate, there's a time lag, which gives you a chance to organize your thoughts and frame a reply, the email notifications being the operational part of that process which is missing from forums like Zero Hedge, or is too awkward to manage, as with Wordpress. Much like the old Usenet system, where I was active for years.
One disadvantage to this approach is that you have to use precise language so as not to be misunderstood, which can happen quite easily if you're not clear in the thoughts you express. For example, what is an MK ultra bear? If we were speaking face to face you could explain that immediately. As it stands, I have to wonder if that's a joke, a slight, or an obscure reference that I just didn't get.
OTOH, in a network environment, where you have multiple nodes (individual authors and commentators) that connect to other nodes, information can spread organically. Also, if you believe, as I do, that change happens at the margin, then as long as you have this network effect you don't need a big audience. My own substack is an example. I don't advertise, in fact I've been intentionally obscure just to see who would show up. After a year and 1/2 I have around 50 subscribers, most of whom found me via a comment I made on one or another substack. It's not a big audience, but the point is it happened organically. I didn't have to do anything except put up the content, which I do anyway for my own enjoyment. Am I going to change the world? No, but hopefully I'll expose a few people to the idea of regarding other cultures more favourably, which is to say the more we know about each other the less likely we are to come into conflict.
Meanwhile I wander the net, but mostly substack now, posting what I believe are meaningful comments. They may not be meaningful to everyone, and they may even be incorrect, but by exposing myself to criticism it helps me to focus my thoughts and refine them as I go. Some of the replies I get are from comments I made months ago. I haven't see that happen anywhere else.
For me this is the hidden ground of substack, as McLuhan would call it. For most people it's invisible, they just treat it like any other social medium, but some people get it, and our numbers are growing, especially when we make an effort to point it out, as I'm doing right now.
Like I said, I began this journey in 1981 with a partner writing software for the C64 back when the internet was just a gleam in some developer's eyes. In our case we were way too early, anticipating the net over a decade before it actually appeared. Most of our predictions were accurate though, which is why I'm on substack. I see substack as a beginning actually, not as an end in itself. The next stage is full autonomy, made possible by open source software and individual PCs acting as servers, entirely cutting out the centralization which makes it vulnerable to attack. Not sure if that will come about, but it's at least worth thinking about and trying to figure out the actual mechanics of the process.
"The book highlights its foundation in transformational grammar, a linguistic model developed by Noam Chomsky,...."
If I can't criticize the founder, who can I? The acolytes? Or is criticism not permitted?
"transformational language is real"
Categorical statements like that leave little room for debate.
There are two ways to approach Substack, if you'll forgive the Hegelian dialectic. First as a standard form of publication - basically a one-way street. Second as a forum for debate. If you prefer the first, I'll move on and no hard feelings. If you prefer the second, then perhaps you could engage rather than dismiss?
I'm trying to help, considering I've been doing this (epistemology) since 1981 and have covered much the same ground as you. You've commented a few times on your program about the value of your time. Mine's valuable too, so which is it? You want to engage people who understand this stuff, or go it on your own, with all the pitfalls that entails? It took me a while to write that comment, and I was also prepared to write a synopsis of the books I mentioned for your site. Now I'm not so sure.
Noam Chomsky pops up a fair bit in that article, which is unfortunate since any attempt to construct a theory of language based on his principles is likely to fail. The basic issue is that he failed to recognize how Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem applied to linguistics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Godel's, as well as Alfred Korzybski's work, was available at the time Chomsky was studying, but he apparently wasn't aware of them, or of the fatal blow Godel's theorem dealt to Russell & Whitehead's program as expressed in 'Principia Mathematica.' The only place I've actually read about this crisis is in Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 work Gödel, Escher, Bach. The rest of academia, save Marshal McLuhan and a few others, seem oblivious to their work, which defined the boundary conditions for what we can actually know with any certainty.
That aside, I also see Chomsky as yet another victim of Expert Syndrome.
https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/forget-imposter-syndrome-its-expert-syndrome-that-should-scare-you.html
In a nutshell, it's the tendency of people who are experts in one field to assume they have competency in others. The house I lived which was designed by a doctor who thought he was an architect is a good example. No less than 9 revisions to the plan until the builder apparently gave up. Now read this and tell me if you don't see it:
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-unvaccinated-should-just-remove-themselves-from-society
The guy displays a stunning lack of knowledge on the subject, not to mention a complete lack of empathy for the people affected by the policies he endorses. He apparently missed a part of his own history where Jews in Nazi Germany were accused of spreading typhus, following a long tradition of such accusations going all the way back to Roman times.
Not that Chomsky is alone in that regard. How often do you hear a public figure of his stature say "I'm sorry, I just don't feel qualified to comment on that issue?" Ironically, the most notorious of cross-disciplinarians, Marshal McLuhan, was himself accused of 'trespassing on other's domains" when he himself pointed directly at that exact problem.
let's start again... The medium is a message, and I'm not sure a comment on a post is the best way to share complex ideas. maybe I'm just triggered by the MK ultra bear.
That's odd. Not long ago you remarked to GW that Substack was the place to be, or words to that effect. If it's not in the comments then where is it? You can use it as a publishing platform of course, which I believe was the original concept, but it's become much more than that.
I see Substack as generating a network effect, as opposed to linear transmission of ideas from a single source to an audience, as with books, radio, TV or a YouTube channel. A truly multi-path medium. Unlike live debate, there's a time lag, which gives you a chance to organize your thoughts and frame a reply, the email notifications being the operational part of that process which is missing from forums like Zero Hedge, or is too awkward to manage, as with Wordpress. Much like the old Usenet system, where I was active for years.
One disadvantage to this approach is that you have to use precise language so as not to be misunderstood, which can happen quite easily if you're not clear in the thoughts you express. For example, what is an MK ultra bear? If we were speaking face to face you could explain that immediately. As it stands, I have to wonder if that's a joke, a slight, or an obscure reference that I just didn't get.
OTOH, in a network environment, where you have multiple nodes (individual authors and commentators) that connect to other nodes, information can spread organically. Also, if you believe, as I do, that change happens at the margin, then as long as you have this network effect you don't need a big audience. My own substack is an example. I don't advertise, in fact I've been intentionally obscure just to see who would show up. After a year and 1/2 I have around 50 subscribers, most of whom found me via a comment I made on one or another substack. It's not a big audience, but the point is it happened organically. I didn't have to do anything except put up the content, which I do anyway for my own enjoyment. Am I going to change the world? No, but hopefully I'll expose a few people to the idea of regarding other cultures more favourably, which is to say the more we know about each other the less likely we are to come into conflict.
Meanwhile I wander the net, but mostly substack now, posting what I believe are meaningful comments. They may not be meaningful to everyone, and they may even be incorrect, but by exposing myself to criticism it helps me to focus my thoughts and refine them as I go. Some of the replies I get are from comments I made months ago. I haven't see that happen anywhere else.
For me this is the hidden ground of substack, as McLuhan would call it. For most people it's invisible, they just treat it like any other social medium, but some people get it, and our numbers are growing, especially when we make an effort to point it out, as I'm doing right now.
Like I said, I began this journey in 1981 with a partner writing software for the C64 back when the internet was just a gleam in some developer's eyes. In our case we were way too early, anticipating the net over a decade before it actually appeared. Most of our predictions were accurate though, which is why I'm on substack. I see substack as a beginning actually, not as an end in itself. The next stage is full autonomy, made possible by open source software and individual PCs acting as servers, entirely cutting out the centralization which makes it vulnerable to attack. Not sure if that will come about, but it's at least worth thinking about and trying to figure out the actual mechanics of the process.
The article is not about Chomsky, and transformational language is real, in any case...
"The book highlights its foundation in transformational grammar, a linguistic model developed by Noam Chomsky,...."
If I can't criticize the founder, who can I? The acolytes? Or is criticism not permitted?
"transformational language is real"
Categorical statements like that leave little room for debate.
There are two ways to approach Substack, if you'll forgive the Hegelian dialectic. First as a standard form of publication - basically a one-way street. Second as a forum for debate. If you prefer the first, I'll move on and no hard feelings. If you prefer the second, then perhaps you could engage rather than dismiss?
I'm trying to help, considering I've been doing this (epistemology) since 1981 and have covered much the same ground as you. You've commented a few times on your program about the value of your time. Mine's valuable too, so which is it? You want to engage people who understand this stuff, or go it on your own, with all the pitfalls that entails? It took me a while to write that comment, and I was also prepared to write a synopsis of the books I mentioned for your site. Now I'm not so sure.