Noam Chomsky - Limited Understanding and Scientific Progress

[@Spock0987]

Everytime I listen to Chomsky I feel the pleasure of knowing that yes I have known one of the trully most important philosophers of my time on this planet.

[@tasheemhargrove9650]

Not only philosopher, linguist.

[@geez6666]

Couldn't agree any less.

[@hhijazi6296]

@@geez6666 How come? (genuinely curious)

[@lorenzomcnally6629]

A Marxist sociopath more like.

[@petestevens3970]

What a rich life, to read (everything) and attempt to understand.

[@jones1351]

I think, the point that the questioner is missing but that Chomsky is making is that no machine has ever accomplished something that is beyond our conceptual abilities, or outside our hypothesis space. Bernoulli's hypothesis preceded heavier than air powered flight by nearly 2 centuries. The sophisticated self correcting Bayesian algorithms of Googles current 'thinking' machine preceded the tech by several decades. In both, and really all cases, the tech had to catch up to the concept/hypothesis. The questioner imagines that someday it will be the other way around. Chomsky simply says we'll see, but history is not on the side of the question.

[@dfghj241]

i'd like to think the questioner was imagening a scenario where we create new logical tools with the aid of machines, similarly to how newton managed to create a previously unexistant computational tool that catapulted human hability of understanding things over time in the form of calculus. So if we were to continue persuing such logical tools for comprehension and analysis, we would eventually, increase our scope tremendously. But still, even understanding the question in that manner doesn't seem to make it any diferent. What the questioner really wants to know is if we will ever be able to escape the spectrum of inteligibility of the human species, and that question is still, so far, a resouding no. If calculus catapulted humanity to a new level of understanding, it did so quantitatively, and in this respect it allowed our existing cognitive capacities to reach new conclusions, increasing our qualitative scope. The limit was aways there.

[@noisepuppet]

What Chomsky is getting at, I think, is that more sophisticated models may solve many problems, but they won't overcome the fact that the most basic processes of the world around us make no sense to us. They radically violate common sense. So we can come up with all sorts of useful new models, possibly with the aid of new machines and algorithms. That's great, we have to do that. None of that will cause the behavior of light, for example, to make sense to us. Obviously, we can construct mathematical models of it that work, within their scope, and learn those models and apply them to tasks like spaceflight or astronomy. So we have Einsteinian theory. Which doesn't render our observations about light any more intelligible. I mean look at it. It's nuts. Literally nonsensical. It destroys our common sense notions of what space and time are. Quantum mechanics is no different. And all the most fundamental objects of our scrutiny turn out to be this way. This indicates that we are just not built to grasp the way the universe works. So I'd answer the guy's question by saying that sophisticated computers-- machines as he says-- can help us build more sophisticated machines, or theories, or mathematical models, or whatever. These can be very revealing. What they can't do is "help us understand" the basics of the universe any better, which is how he phrased the question. Model, yes. Understand, no. I think that's a distinction that's underappreciated.

[@livinthefilm]

Science is not nature. It is our understanding of nature.

[@aalromihi]

What a great-thorough answer!

[@academeta9043]

Imagine if both Mendel and Darwin knew each other by the time they've finished the majority of their work.

[@madmanga64]

You can tell Chomsky has great respect for newton as he should

[@doubleslit3389]

“Last of the best, you can forget the rest.”

[@gh5972]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson needs to listen to Chomsky

[@livinthefilm]

yeah lol. Cox as well

[@EuDouArteHipHopArtCulture21]

Thank you .

[@trevorleake2010]

I wish they kept the camera on the ASL translator.

[@양익서-g8j]

저는 적어도 과학과 철학은 진보한다고 보기때문에 결정론은 불완정하다고 생각합니다.

[@waindayoungthain2147]

🙏🏼

[@alexbode6894]

Which philosopher is he mentioning in regards to inference to the best explanation?

[@vinayseth1114]

CS Pierce

[@danishkayani8116]

Charles Sanders Peirce

[@MassDefibrillator]

anyone know where I could read about the work by the philosopher who made the connection between scope and limits?

[@edwardjones2202]

I think he's talking about CS Pierce...could be wrong

[@duncanreeves225]

2:26. "Were called ..... elements" What did he say here? I can't tell

[@propavshijbezvesti]

Occult, meaning hidden - unobservable forces. In scholastic thought (derived from Aristotle and popular in the middle ages) it was believed that things moved because of "sympathies and antipathies" towards each other - unobservable forces. Then the mechanical model came about and it was believed that everything could be explained with mechanical forces - pushing and pulling. But Newton's discovery of gravity proved that unobservable forces do exist, which Chomsky argues is unintuitive to us.

[@Phoniv]

cyborg reaching farther, I believe that. Action at a distance not so magical once you can solve the mathematics of a field. Human limitations are perhaps one day complemented through generic engineering, robotic implants, nanotechnology, to name just a few. Not necessary to wait for the course of evolution.