4chan archive /sci/ (index)
2015-01-07 01:08 6994032 Anonymous (noamchomsky.jpg 229x344 12kB)
https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=JVqM AlgAnlo Do you agree with this sentiment? Why are students at elite schools so conformist?

53 min later 6994119 Anonymous
>>6994032 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVq MAlgAnlo

21 hours later 6995591 Anonymous
>>6994032 chomsky is shit at his own field. he also caused the vietnam war.

21 hours later 6995606 Anonymous
>>6994032 >.co lol

45 hours later 6997586 Anonymous
>>6994032 >unironically calling someone 'conformist'

50 hours later 6998131 Anonymous
>>6995591 >shit at his own field Do you even know anything about linguistics?

60 hours later 6998801 Anonymous
you're essentially asking a bunch of compulsive conformists and elitists this question getting around denial isn't that easy

79 hours later 7000692 Anonymous
I actually agree with the video. The sciences at undergrad level requires a lot of rote learning, but once you hit graduate school you are expected to be independent and think for yourself, where as in the humanities it is more of a cabal. I think thats why the best students often tend to be combatitive to some extent.

80 hours later 7000712 Anonymous
>>6994032 >there's lots of stupidity so most people will stop caring about doing assignments Fairly true

82 hours later 7000922 Anonymous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMh 81SiAHs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOI M1_xOSro

83 hours later 7000995 Anonymous
>tfw Noam Chomsky will one day die and there is no one of his intellectual caliber to take his place. hold me

84 hours later 7001003 Anonymous
>>6994032 I am disappointed that /sci/ doesn't despise this guy.

84 hours later 7001013 Anonymous
>>7001003 It's ok anon I think he's shit

90 hours later 7001418 Anonymous
>>6998131 >Levine and Postal >"a corrupted linguistics"

90 hours later 7001505 Anonymous
>>7001003 elaborate

90 hours later 7001514 Anonymous
>those vestigial remnants of a Philadelphian accent stop it, boner

91 hours later 7001538 Anonymous
>>6994032 people tend to worship chomsky too much, because to many he's their first contemporary philosopher anyway I was the same way with Neil Postman in the 90s, so there's no harm in it

91 hours later 7001588 Anonymous
>>7001538 he's pretty straight forward in international politics, particularly the american interventionism and the israeli-palestinian conflict

91 hours later 7001602 Anonymous (BaUHkG_IYAAadnB.jpg large.jpg 982x676 105kB)
>>7001514 it's my jam

92 hours later 7001693 Anonymous
This is what Chomsky does. It's what he always does, and what he's doing here. He finds an aspect of something, often it's a minor aspect, and he goes on this great big speech about how it's the whole thing. He's noticed something interesting, and that's how he gets the audience's interest, but then he goes off on a wild tangent about it and totally exaggerates its significance until he's being completely misleading. He's like a guy who's showing you a picture through a microscope and telling you it's the view through a telescope: >>>Behold the universe! >>Uh, Mr. Chomsky that is a mite's elbow. >The universe! It's based on bending up to 90 degrees to support a system of self-perpetuating, self-expanding parasitism, just like our state-corporate system! Look through the telescope, upon the fundamental large-scale truth! The best analogy I've heard for it is that he specializes in going to beaches of ordinary yellow-white sand, and picking through the grains until he finds enough black ones to fill a bucket, then he goes to the lecture hall and dumps out the bucket, "See! This is the sand of that beach!"

92 hours later 7001714 Anonymous
>>7001693 thats a pretty racist analogy bro. are you sure you're not racist?

92 hours later 7001734 Anonymous
>>7001714 You're not Chomskying it up enough. You need to turn that choice of color into an elaborate speech about how I am the perfect representative of a world order founded in using race as an organizing principle for exploitation of the many by the few, from my black-slave-owning ancestors to my uncles and their friends commanding the new Crusades against Iraq and Iran, even the computer I'm typing this on is something I owe entirely to the Holocaust because of the link between IBM and the Nazi party.

98 hours later 7002282 Anonymous
>>7001693 but this is what all lecturers do to a certain extent. It's impossible to put foreward a coherent argument if you're constantly contradicting yourself

98 hours later 7002309 Anonymous
>>7002282 No, not all lecturers exaggerate one facet of a subject and try to convince the audience that it's the entire subject. A lecture on the role of education in promoting conformity would be far more valuable, more enlightening, and more true if it didn't claim that education was actually PRIMARILY about promoting conformity and discouraging independent thought. He's promoting an extremely unbalanced, twisted view, and irresponsibly encouraging radical action based on accepting such a view uncritically. His lectures are not aimed at thoughtful people, who will pretty much all eventually want to go slap him upside the head after they've finished processing what he said, he's trying to rile up and supply ammunition to people who want to seem thoughtful, without putting in the effort of critical thought.

99 hours later 7002393 Anonymous
>>7002309 >He's promoting an extremely unbalanced, twisted view, and irresponsibly encouraging radical action based on accepting such a view uncritically. His lectures are not aimed at thoughtful people, who will pretty much all eventually want to go slap him upside the head after they've finished processing what he said, he's trying to rile up and supply ammunition to people who want to seem thoughtful, without putting in the effort of critical thought. So you're mad at him because he's babby's first philosopher, and that he peaches to the choir. I don't see a problem with any of this, especially when I'd rather have someone quote him instead of a hack like Marx or Al Gore.

99 hours later 7002432 Anonymous
Conformity in education You think this doesn't happen somehow?

99 hours later 7002439 Anonymous
>>7002393 I'm not mad at him, you utter child. I'm educating people on his deficiencies.

99 hours later 7002450 Anonymous
>>6998801 I like it. Nice. >>7001003 This. >>7001588 Fuck his politics he's a linguist. You gonna get your butcher to build a coal plant or something? If he was a medical doctor expounding his 'great theory' on particle physics he would probably be treated with much suspicion and vetting, etc. etc. probably tossed aside immediately. >>7001693 This too. >>7002432 You think there's a better way? Go for it.

99 hours later 7002455 Anonymous
>>7002450 Not having tenure for a start. Pretty much nuking k-12 from orbit, its not even a good day care system because it doesn't keep the kids long enough. Stop student loan financingnsupporyed by the government. Stop all government money being funneled to schools.

100 hours later 7002474 Anonymous
>>7002455 I was talking about the conformity thing.

100 hours later 7002513 Anonymous
>>7002474 Tenure. You will never hire anyone that doesn't share your opinion because you cam never get rid of them. It happened.

100 hours later 7002517 Anonymous
>>7002450 >Fuck his politics he's a linguist as if linguists cant know politics. theres no expert technical training that has to be passed before you get to say you can "practice politics"

100 hours later 7002521 Anonymous
>>7002517 Says the person who doesn't understand politics. If you couldn't run a village/tribe you have no business running a country and so on.

100 hours later 7002522 Anonymous
>>7002521 cont. >>7002517 I'm not saying he can't talk about it, I'm just saying his opinion is next to worthless because he hasn't proven that he knows what leading a group of people is like.

101 hours later 7002561 Anonymous
>>7002439 you use pretty strong language, which implies butthurt also the term "deficient" doesn't really describe the tone of "He's promoting an extremely unbalanced, twisted view, and irresponsibly encouraging radical action based on accepting such a view uncritically. His lectures are not aimed at thoughtful people, who will pretty much all eventually want to go slap him upside the head after they've finished processing what he said, he's trying to rile up and supply ammunition to people who want to seem thoughtful, without putting in the effort of critical thought." very well, in fact it just seems to me that you're insulting him because he's popular. You're not actually criticizing him in any meaningful way, other than saying "he's dumb because everything he says is for children". While that may be true, it's a very weak argument unless you go into detail (which you should be able to because, presumptively, you've read enough of his work to know why it doesn't work).

106 hours later 7002937 Anonymous
>>7002521 That's idiotic. The Chinese politburo elite tend be made up of trained engineers, The Koreans are lawyers and attorneys and Angela Merkel/Thatcher were chemists.

106 hours later 7002947 Anonymous
>all this autism in this thread. Did anyone watch OP's fucking link. He (Chomsky) pretty much validates /sci/ consensus and says that the domain of sciences are more intellectually strenuous than that of the humanities. He also said there was an element of groupthink in the educational system that weeds out people with dissident opinions from getting into positions of power in society and from engaging in critical discussion. In the humanities that doesn't matter so much but in the sciences he argues that is counter-intuitive to progression and that creativity becomes allowable once you've gotten past the gatekeepers at undergraduate level and enter graduate school. I tend to agree, to me the teachers and colleagues were infinitely more interesting to be around and the work emphasized self reliance and initiative that was lacking during my undergrad years. That said it seems like a lot of Chomsky's political critics attack him without actually carefully reading any of his arguments/citations first. I think this thread validates this to be the case. All there is, is wild conjecture and drawing conclusions out of straw without any citations or attribution to Chomsky's writing.

106 hours later 7002959 Anonymous
>>7002455 whats your opinion on ayn rand and ron paul and limited government?

106 hours later 7002972 Anonymous (1409924026481.gif 478x358 84kB)
I sort of agree with his sentiment, but I also think that students like the easy route. They want to be handfed, and only complain about their 'supposed' lack of choice or 'parroting' in retrospect. Spread the blame for your failures as far as you can, and try not to get any on yourself. There's also a big, though apparently subtle, difference between non-conformity and wanton disobedience, and between creative thinking and nonsensical, inane prattling. Challenging students in sciences to think for themselves, is a great idea, and they should try to make something work in the curriculum. If, however, you want to just spout any old inane bullshit that pops in your head and have your peers applaud you for it, try the arts or study post-modernism. Sciences don't want or need you.

107 hours later 7002988 Anonymous
>>7002937 >Angela Merkel/Thatcher were chemists. to be correct, merkel holds a phd in physics, not chemistry

107 hours later 7003009 Anonymous
>>7002947 Just re-watched the video, just for you buddy. >sciences (I assume you mean math as well) are more intellectually strenuous than humanities Worthless sentiment everyone who would accept it already fucking knows this >element of groupthink in the education system There is an element of groupthink in every human endeavour involving more than one person. Holy shit. >dissident opinions weeded out Yes because to challenge what we have requires that you front some serious evidence because what's currently accepted sure as shit has been through the same vetting process. >sciences counter productive to progression Your role as an undergrad is not to progress science but to understand a small part of the shitload that's been done before you. if you can't even fucking do that then why would anyone listen to your ideas on progressing it? >I agree That's nice. Your lack of initiative in your undergrad years wasn't the fault of your teachers but the fault of you not understanding how university works. It isn't meant to be like highschool.

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