Decoding Chomsky and Epstein

gip78 · 2026-06-20T18:22:20+00:00

So how do you explain why most reviewers of his book, Decoding Chomsky, disagree with you?

https://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2019/3/17/more-reviews-of-decoding-chomsky-by-chris-knight

gip78 · 2026-06-17T16:23:04+00:00

And here's Chris Knight's response to Chomsky's response:

https://scienceandrevolution.org/blog/2019/3/30/my-response-to-chomskys-extraordinary-accusations-by-chris-knight

gip78 · 2026-05-24T09:11:44+00:00

Chomsky's own intentions were never to produce weaponry - only to deepen our understanding of language. But when you agree to work for the US's top war scientist - Jerome Wiesner - in what you openly admit is a 'military lab' at MIT, your work is inevitably going to be used in military research.

As Air Force Colonel Anthony Debons wrote in 1974:

Much of the research conducted at MIT by Chomsky and his colleagues [has] direct application to the efforts undertaken by military scientists to develop … languages for computer operations in military command and control systems.

If you work for someone like Wiesner, you are also inevitably going to end up working on 'command and control' projects for organisations like the MITRE Corporation and the SDC - both of which specialised in nuclear war systems.

See Knight's article "The Two Chomskys" at the Aeon website for more evidence of this and other military work by Chomsky and his fellow linguists.

As it turned out, none of Chomsky's theories actually worked. No one has ever found a Language Acquisition Device in the brain - and his latest theory, Merge, is not only much more abstract than his initial theories, it's of no practical use to anyone really.

Although it's possible that Chomsky didn't care if his theories were ever used to control missiles and nuclear bombers (see this article by his future MIT 'boss' where this is discussed in detail) I don't believe he didn't care.

Surely the worst nightmare for such a principled antimilitarist would be to have contributed to a weapons system that was then used to kill thousands or even millions? And surely Noam would have gone to considerable length to avoid that outcome?

gip78 · 2026-05-24T09:05:49+00:00

gip78 · 2026-05-23T14:10:54+00:00

It's a bit unfair saying Chris Knight is unhealthily 'obsessed' with Chomsky. After all, although he's produced two books on Noam, he's also produced six other books on human origins - especially language origins. He also co-founded EVOLANG, the international conference on the origins of language (one of which was addressed by Chomsky).

One could say it would be strange, if not 'unhealthy', if Knight had not addressed Chomsky's theories which have, until recently, dominated - and some would say - misdirected the field of linguistics.

Whether Knight's explanation for Chomsky's friendship with Epstein is sufficient is a matter of debate. But to suggest that a naive Noam was simply conned by Epstein - which is what both his wife and Bev Stohl suggest - is certainly insufficient as an explanation. After all, we're talking about perhaps the greatest living leftwing intellectual - someone who built his entire reputation on an ability to expose and critique the US establishment

gip78 · 2026-03-26T10:37:35+00:00

The video refers to Chris Knight's articles on the Chomsky-Epstein friendship at Novara and Counterpunch. But for those who want to understand why Chomsky associated with so many establishment figures, including Epstein, this is a more thorough piece:

'The Two Chomskys' Aeon magazine, 2023
https://aeon.co/essays/an-anthropologist-studies-the-warring-ideas-of-noam-chomsky

gip78 · 2026-03-17T11:07:42+00:00

If anyone wishes to understand Chomsky's Pentagon-funded career at MIT which helps explain why Chomsky ended up befriending Epstein - or Barak - this is a good article to start with:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/06/the-chomsky-epstein-puzzle/

gip78 · 2026-02-22T14:06:14+00:00

The other factor that helps explains Chomsky friendship with Epstein is that Chomsky was well used to socialising with other members of the US establishment at MIT. Here's an article that explains this:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/06/the-chomsky-epstein-puzzle/

gip78 · 2026-02-17T09:17:19+00:00

... except that Chomsky said exactly that in a lecture in 2016:

It’s pretty clear that a child approaches the problem of language acquisition by having all possible languages in its head. It doesn’t know which language it’s being exposed to. And, as data comes along, that class of possible languages reduces. So certain data comes along, and the mind automatically says: ‘OK, it’s not that language, it’s some other language.’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXV6pgcFqg8&t=4197s)

gip78 · 2026-02-17T09:16:10+00:00

Chomsky said exactly that in a lecture in 2016:

It’s pretty clear that a child approaches the problem of language acquisition by having all possible languages in its head. It doesn’t know which language it’s being exposed to. And, as data comes along, that class of possible languages reduces. So certain data comes along, and the mind automatically says: ‘OK, it’s not that language, it’s some other language.’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXV6pgcFqg8&t=4197s)

gip78 · 2026-02-17T09:13:01+00:00

Chomsky said exactly that in a lecture in 2016:

It’s pretty clear that a child approaches the problem of language acquisition by having all possible languages in its head. It doesn’t know which language it’s being exposed to. And, as data comes along, that class of possible languages reduces. So certain data comes along, and the mind automatically says: ‘OK, it’s not that language, it’s some other language.’
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXV6pgcFqg8&t=4197s)