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I haven't read Goebbels or Pol Pot either. I've never tried Mungfish or monkey brains but instinctively know that would be a negative. I'm sure you had a point there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky

Frazzled wrote:I haven't read Goebbels or Pol Pot either. I've never tried Mungfish or monkey brains but instinctively know that would be a negative. I'm sure you had a point there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky

My point is that, generally speaking, immediately after professing or admitting ignorance of a subject I generally either choose to educate myself or to keep my mouth shut when it comes to expressing opinions on that subject, but that's just me. Better to not speak and let someone think you a fool than open your mouth and confirm it.

You might find Mungfish or monkey brains quite tasty if you listen to Andrew Zimmerman...at any rate, you may profess a lack of desire to try them for yourself, but to make statements as to their taste before you've tasted them is quite ignorant such that the opinion really doesn't deserve much respect, though we may hold back from outright scorn. It's better to believe in someone's potential to learn...

No, I will not bother following a link to a source which you would like to use as a proof of any sort of argument when that source
which is inadmissible as a citation in any sort of respectable scholastic research and which is only useful, at best, for surface-level understanding and/or to follow a path of actual research.

High school students proffer wiki as a citation. Surely we can do better than that.

If you want to judge Chomsky, read one book of his. Deterring Democracy is an excellent read, and as I have said his citations are excellent. You can look up his facts quite readily if you put the time in. He cites a lot of primary sources, and then draws his own conclusions from them.

Any political bent he may have is no reflection of his genius. This is the father of modern linguistics we're talking about, someone whose intelligence most humans on the planet, including you or I, cannot even touch. Like him or not he's one of the most brilliant minds we have, so dismissing him out of hand is just laughable, no offense.

I haven't read Goebbels or Pol Pot either. I've never tried Mungfish or monkey brains but instinctively know that would be a negative. I'm sure you had a point there.

Refusal to understand the opinions you think are wrong is a strong sign that your own opinions aren't particularly well founded. You can't know your own choices when you refuse to understand alternatives.

High school students proffer wiki as a citation. Surely we can do better than that.

Step off. Wikipedia is a fantastic source as long as the pages themselves are sourced appropriately. Stop trying to justify your giant stack of encyclopedias and step into the new millennium.

You're not getting my point and assuming I am ignorant of the person.

My point is that I do not have to read a person to not be critical. I've never read Goebbels or Pol Pot, or Stalin, but am free to be critical. I've never read right/left wing nutjobs who say 911 was an inside job or Obama is a dern furrener either, but am free to be critical of them.

I could offer multiple cites, but they were not summary and frankly I'm doing this on coffee breaks.


Finally, just because he's verbose doesn't make him intelligent. Chavez can give a five hour speech and he's still an idiot. Seriously, your adulation for this fellow appears so extreme as to leave you intentionally blinded of his many many many criticisms.


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ShumaGorath wrote:

I haven't read Goebbels or Pol Pot either. I've never tried Mungfish or monkey brains but instinctively know that would be a negative. I'm sure you had a point there.

Refusal to understand the opinions you think are wrong is a strong sign that your own opinions aren't particularly well founded. You can't know your own choices when you refuse to understand alternatives.

High school students proffer wiki as a citation. Surely we can do better than that.

Step off. Wikipedia is a fantastic source as long as the pages themselves are sourced appropriately. Stop trying to justify your giant stack of encyclopedias and step into the new millennium.

Ok you're right about the mongfish, but I can't stand fish so its an educated guess statement. Pol Pot and Goebbels though...no thanks, I'd rather not add to the many nightmares I have to wake up from.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We really have gone OT on OT topic haven't we...

Frazzled wrote:If you trust Commsky you should really expand your reading base beyond coffee table lefty hothouse.

Equally you should not out of hand dismiss everything he says just because it is him who said it.

Frazzled wrote:You're not getting my point and assuming I am ignorant of the person.

My point is that I do not have to read a person to not be critical. I've never read Goebbels or Pol Pot, or Stalin, but am free to be critical. I've never read right/left wing nutjobs who say 911 was an inside job or Obama is a dern furrener either, but am free to be critical of them.

I could offer multiple cites, but they were not summary and frankly I'm doing this on coffee breaks.

Finally, just because he's verbose doesn't make him intelligent. Chavez can give a five hour speech and he's still an idiot. Seriously, your adulation for this fellow appears so extreme as to leave you intentionally blinded of his many many many criticisms.

I don't want to sound like I am just trying to get the last word in here, but I do think that this conversation is relevant to just about everything that goes on in the Off-Topic Forum...

Being critical of actions is one thing, which is what you are referring to with Goebbels, Pol Pot, and Stalin. There is no need to slaughter miillions of people yourself to know that someone else doing so is wrong. I don't even need to cede that point because I would never argue it.

If you wanted to confront the political philosophies of any of these three lovely gentlemen, then you may need to read their writings to do so. No one is debating your freedom to be critical of anything, but if you want that criticism to be relevant or respected sometimes it will need to be couched in knowledge of the subject at hand. To wit, I am not terribly interested in any of your citations, no offense, because unless you've read Chomsky yourself you really don't know whether they are accurate criticisms or not...again to wit, if you haven't read him yourself you don't know if he's verbose or not.

Admiration has nothing to do with acknowledgment of genius...and just being a genius doesn't make one admirable. I can think of several quite intelligent but also quite evil people who I certainly do not feel adulation for, nor do I feel the same for Chomsky. He's a brilliant man, but he's also a real downer.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Step off. Wikipedia is a fantastic source as long as the pages themselves are sourced appropriately. Stop trying to justify your giant stack of encyclopedias and step into the new millennium.

I work professionally online and my wife is a minor internet celeb who has been getting into the national media fairly frequently over the last several months. She is a dedicated web-head, techno-geek, and gadget-fetishist. She was working on her third Masters Degree in a nationally reknown library science program and spent more time learning about search engine optimization and web resources than I could pretend to be interested in.

Chances are I take each of those next steps into the new millennium a month or two ahead of you just by paying attention to her on a regular basis, son.

Seriously though, Wiki is a great place for getting an overview of something and figuring out where else one might go for actual research. When I had to learn camo schemes for my Flames of War Late War Panzergrenadier army I hit Wiki for the basics and then moved to specifics elsewhere...but Wiki is not an appropriate secondary source in any millenium.

Ok you're right about the mongfish, but I can't stand fish so its an educated guess statement. Pol Pot and Goebbels though...no thanks, I'd rather not add to the many nightmares I have to wake up from.

The writing and the reality are inevitably different. You can read things like the communist manifesto without somehow being irreparably changed. You might even find that it broadens your incredibly narrow horizons and gives you an easier tim debating against the things you read. Knowing your enemy makes you far more successful in combating him, and reading some reviews on free republic isn't really a good way to accomplish that. Thats like the SUV soccer mom safety thing. It doesn't actually make anything better, you just feel big.

I work professionally online and my wife is a minor internet celeb who has been getting into the national media fairly frequently over the last several months. She is a dedicated web-head, techno-geek, and gadget-fetishist. She was working on her third Masters Degree in a nationally reknown library science program and spent more time learning about search engine optimization and web resources than I could pretend to be interested in.

Chances are I take each of those next steps into the new millennium a month or two ahead of you just by paying attention to her on a regular basis, son.

Chances are you don't. You're talking to someone who reads an hour of technology news aggregates minimum a day, compounding the hour of standard international news and business practice reading. You're talking to someone that has read every cnet and engadget article released in the last 2-3 years and in another 1.5 years will have two separate new media and technology design degrees from two separate schools.

Seriously though, Wiki is a great place for getting an overview of something and figuring out where else one might go for actual research. When I had to learn camo schemes for my Flames of War Late War Panzergrenadier army I hit Wiki for the basics and then moved to specifics elsewhere...but Wiki is not an appropriate secondary source in any millenium.

None that you've lived in. How are those gif laden, 256 color pallete, align centered websites in 1995 going for you? This may shock and amaze you, but we have phones that are likely better than the computer you're on.

Wow this is the first time I've seen people flex internet muscles at each other. Now all we need is internet gank signs to complete the farce.

GG

Frazzled wrote:If you trust Commsky you should really expand your reading base beyond coffee table lefty hothouse.

Like or dislike Chomsky*, you're right that you don't have to read him to have some level of opinion on him. But it's that other part there, where you talk about trust that's got me puzzled. Do you mean that you sit down to read a book and just trust what the author says? Because if true that's a big problem.

We read to be challenged, and to question our opinions. Part of that process is challenging the text, seeing if what it says is internally consistent, and fairly represents the real world. In doing so we take some ideas from the text and in then from others, and form our own opinions. Simply 'trusting' an author means you don't go through that process. It means you only read what you already agree with, and don't challenge that. It means you start running the risk of falling into the same trap as the OP, finding an article that says something you like, 'Obama is a hypocrit', and not bothering to actually think about what was being said.

For instance, I've read Das Kapital and I've read The Communist Manifesto. I came away with many new ideas, only a few of which were intended by Marx and Engels. I came away thinking that at the core of communist theory are some truly horrendous economic concepts (go read about the labour theory of value, it's very silly). But there are also great concepts in there about economic history, and also a remarkably forward thinking summation of capitalism. In comparison, I've also read much more agreeable texts, such as Keynes' General Theory, and come away with far less.




*For the record, I think he makes some excellent points, but seems too absolute, too strident for me to accept him entirely. While I agree with many of his individual points, I think he is too quick condemn the US for single actions, and too willing to remove agency from others to excuse them. But I'll happily admit I've only read his essays, mostly on Israel, and haven't ever read a book of his.

generalgrog wrote:Wow this is the first time I've seen people flex internet muscles at each other. Now all we need is internet gank signs to complete the farce.

GG

Oh hi, you must be new here. This is the off topic forum on Dakka Dakka. Welcome.

Isn't goebbels the chap who said that the only reason hitler became a leader was because of the radio and that he feared what would come after that?

Cairnius wrote:
That might take the cake for "most ridiculous statement ever written in this forum." People who disrespect Chomsky usually haven't read his books or seen the litany of citations he provides...he's one of the best-researched men I've ever read. Tell me you've actually read him?

The problem with Chomsky isn't his lack of citation, but his selective omission of key historical facts despite the presence of such extensive citation. For a man so fond of criticizing others for unfairly 'framing the debate' he does it an awful lot.

Cairnius wrote:
I think that an expressed policy of containment would have been one thing, but that's not how the ideological position was construed. It was very much a classic expansionist doctrine. America's empire was born of capital, not military conquest.

My contention would be that an expansionist America was the natural result of our various attempts at enforcing the Monroe Doctrine; culminating in Wilson's use of that policy as leverage during the negotiation of Versailles and the founding of the League of Nations.

Cairnius wrote:
I would also question whether the Soviet Union's entire foreign policy was one of expansion. I think history regarding the Soviet Union has been badly warped in the United States. I was a Russian history major in college for a while, and I think it helped garner me a better understanding of the Russian people. They'd been invaded, conquered, and Lorded over for centuries...I think, in the end, the Soviet Union just wanted to be secure, not to form an Empire.

They may have desired security, and indeed most late Czarist expansion was predicated on that notion, but the practical effect was a policy of expansion for its own sake. New territory was acquired in the name of security, and that acquisition required further territory to secure it; repeating ad nauseum. Pretty much what you would expect to from a state without any obvious, natural borders. Not overly dissimilar to the American response to a world in which oceans were no longer especially useful security features.

Cairnius wrote:[I work professionally online and my wife is a minor internet celeb who has been getting into the national media fairly frequently over the last several months. She is a dedicated web-head, techno-geek, and gadget-fetishist. She was working on her third Masters Degree in a nationally reknown library science program and spent more time learning about search engine optimization and web resources than I could pretend to be interested in.

Cairny whats an internet celebrity? Also gadget fetishist? Help me out here. I'm still trying to get adjusted to that newfangled telegraph.

ShumaGorath wrote:

I haven't read Goebbels or Pol Pot either. I've never tried Mungfish or monkey brains but instinctively know that would be a negative. I'm sure you had a point there.

Refusal to understand the opinions you think are wrong is a strong sign that your own opinions aren't particularly well founded. You can't know your own choices when you refuse to understand alternatives.

Were you not just rabid and foaming at the mouth about how people don't deserve rights because you don't think they know how to use them right?

A gadget fetishist is someone who has to buy v1.0 because it's new, even though they know it is full of bugs. Then they pre-order v1.1

ShumaGorath wrote:Chances are you don't. You're talking to someone who reads an hour of technology news aggregates minimum a day, compounding the hour of standard international news and business practice reading. You're talking to someone that has read every cnet and engadget article released in the last 2-3 years and in another 1.5 years will have two separate new media and technology design degrees from two separate schools.

I made a tongue-in-cheek comment, and now you’re turning it into e-peen swinging…and as soon as you say “every article” I can’t help but roll my eyes…I have a graduate new media degree from one of the best programs in the country and I don’t take this as seriously as you seem to. Lighten up.

ShumaGorath wrote: How are those gif laden, 256 color pallete, align centered websites in 1995 going for you? This may shock and amaze you, but we have phones that are likely better than the computer you're on.

You don’t know me from Adam, so you sound really unstable when you make statements like this. It detracts markedly from the value of your arguments.

sebster wrote:Like or dislike Chomsky*, you're right that you don't have to read him to have some level of opinion on him.

If you mean you can vomit out an opinion about anything you want whenever you want, sure - I guess I expect more of people than that. I always say that the difference between an opinion and a point of view is that a point of view is validated by some sort of fact to back up the proposition, whereas an opinion is only validated in the mind of the holder because it's theirs and therefore must be valuable.

Personal opinions are not always valuable. Sometimes they are absolutely worthless...which is why I am generally entirely uninterested in opinions, but enjoy listening to points of view.

sebster wrote: But it's that other part there, where you talk about trust that's got me puzzled. Do you mean that you sit down to read a book and just trust what the author says?

I said no such thing. If I did, please quote me without editing and I will issue an immediate retraction. I said that in order to criticize Chomsky yourself you need to have read him yourself. Otherwise you’re just giving someone else’s opinion which you don’t know is valid or not – hence it’s rather foolish to quote those opinions as they may be factually wrong, they may be full of bias, and now you’ve just taken that upon yourself. It’s just not very smart.

I don’t know if it’s everywhere or just here in America, but people have this deeply-rooted fear of expressing ignorance, as though that makes them stupid. Stupidity is the inability to learn, and there’s no shame in it because that’s just the way someone is. Ignorance is the state of not having learned yet, and there’s certainly no intrinsic shame in that, either…so people would be better served to learn to admit ignorance and then go learn something if they really want to talk about it. If they’re not willing to learn then it stands to reason that they really don’t care that much in which case one may wonder why they’re talking about it in the first place…

sebster wrote:*For the record, I think he makes some excellent points, but seems too absolute, too strident for me to accept him entirely. While I agree with many of his individual points, I think he is too quick condemn the US for single actions, and too willing to remove agency from others to excuse them. But I'll happily admit I've only read his essays, mostly on Israel, and haven't ever read a book of his.

See, that’s not how I read Chomsky. I don’t read condemnation, I read more of a cynical reporting on how people actually behave rather than how the illusions we often hold would suggest we behave.

In “Deterring Democracy” Chomsky’s thesis is that the United States, a nation which purports itself to be a nation that treasures and supports freedom, has very often suppressed democracy in foreign nations when the governments that democracy would have elected would have been hostile to our interests. It’s actually a rather obvious point that’s silly to debate – the debate comes in when one discusses the morality of what we’ve done.

Chomsky may personally dislike our actions, but he is able to remove himself personally enough from his analyses to state that no one should be surprised at any of this because this is what nations do. Therefore I don't read condemnation, but more of a cynical resignation and exasperation that this is just the way things are.

I think where Chomsky becomes irritated is at this notion held by I would say a clear majority of Americans that somehow the United States is above all this when clearly we are not.

We’ve committed genocides, repressed rights, supported dictators and overthrown democracies…but every nation has done this sort of thing in its history. Factually he is correct because the United States has done all of those things. We virtually wiped out the Native Americans, we still don’t offer full civil liberties to all Americans, and perhaps people remember the Shah of Iran as just one example.

Frazzled wrote:Cairny whats an internet celebrity? Also gadget fetishist? Help me out here. I'm still trying to get adjusted to that newfangled telegraph.

“Cairny” is a new one.

Someone who is famous on the internet? Bloggers of reknown? Note that I said “minor” – the internet is a wonderful collection of sub-cultures and sub-sub-cultures where one person can attract a fandom of tens of thousands; and nowadays this can result in New York Times interviews and Good Morning America appearances.

A gadget fetishist, to me, is someone who always has to have the new and better just because it’s new and better, and they’re obsessed with this stuff. I, myself, am traditionally a late adopter. I wait until the technology has been proven both in quality and in longevity within the culture. Of course, this didn’t help me with my 360. I suspect that had I kept waiting until now it STILL wouldn’t have helped me…I have no more faith in their current chipset than the original. Not with 60% failure rates on the console. It’s amazing that they continue to get away with that…

..your wife is Paris Hilton ?

OK I get the gadget fetishist. When you say someone famous on the internet, is this like a youtube posting thats going around or what? I'm not being swarmy I'm trying to understand what this is. Could you give me a few examples for reference?

As Redy noted are we talking like Paris Hilton or something completely different?

I like Cairny OT, although when I was younger I was called a carney but for wholy different reason. "You need two tickets to ride."
Worst job for me evah!!!

At the risk of sounding evasive, I treasure my privacy. There's a reason why I go by "Cairnius" and not my real name. So, I'd rather not post up information on my wife here on Dakka Dakka. It's not a big deal, I think there's only like 5,000 people on her one site, she's only been in two published books I think, only been on television the one time though she's turned down other offers, most notable FOX News which still cracks me up.

Were she Paris Hilton I assure you that I would never, ever be on Dakka Dakka. I would be getting someone pregnant. LOL!!!!

No no Cairny don't mention here. Privacy understood and needed. I'm saying can you show me some examples of internet celebs so I get a better handle on what you're saying.

Magibon is an internet celebrity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magibon

Thats different than I had expected.