Matter of personal taste and probably upbringing too. If I was Muslim, I'd prefer it over bells. When I heard it in Cyprus, it was disruptive and annoying precisely because of the music. Bells are less disruptive to me by comparison. I can see why people in Nicosia would hate it. It's played by mosques in Northern Cyprus which is literally 100% Muslim, but can be heard in Republic of Cyprus where about 20% are Muslim

Pretty much like circus music vs. hillbilly rock.

The Selfish Gene is great, important and a must read imo. Not that it's at all impossible for a person to have written it and still be a huge xenophobic ahole and completely irrational about it.

What are you talking about Chomsky? How about an example?

Remember when Chomsky tore Harris a new one?

Good times.

I don’t think there is any scientism with Chomsky. I can’t think of University departments who ignore Chomsky’s popular level writings more than science departments. Dawkins rises to the level of sometimes embarrassing ally to science. Chomsky, outside of narrow work in linguistics, is just a standard political hack. Possibly taken seriously by political science departments but used as a living piñata for intrepid cub historians.

Chomsky may not always have every detail right, but he has a very good batting average. He mostly chronicles actual atrocities committed by the US where millions of people have died. That's what he does and he's pretty on target. If your entire role here is lolling about cub historians debunking a couple things he wrote over the last 50 years then you're essentially in it for holocaust denial. Why don't you go dig up some errors at The Museum of Tolerance and have a laugh.

Business departments, genius.

(what a baffling claim on every level. To claim to have surveyed University departments, to think that's a measure of anything, the insane nerd **** of "oh I'll say SCIENTISTS hate communism that'll show them")

It’s an odd metric. Academic science departments tend to ignore any and all pop science books almost by definition. How often does PLOS cite The Selfish Gene?

IIRC Chomsky is well-respected as a linguistics researcher.

Max is barely smart enough to make sure he just says that Peterson and Chomsky are the same but what we have here is an attack on Chomsky and a defense of Petersen. This has nothing to do with their respective qualifications. Max is just showing where his sympathies lie.

What a baffling, lol dumb old Fly interpretation of that post. I never said I surveyed university departments. My offhand phrasing (I can’t think of...) says the exact opposite. The point was it’s fair to blame science or scientists for Dawkin’s douchiness. We helped to make him famous, gave him a platform to speak and egged him on when making fun of the Christian Right. Scientists neither get credit nor deserve blame for Chomsky.

Chomsky's narrow work in linguistics shows up in automata classes (computer science / math).

Scientists didn’t make Dawkins a pop-culture fixture, wtf are you even talking about.

My issue with Chomsky qua science (or linguistics) is that generative grammer stuff is pretty uninteresting and, to my mind, helped distract two generations of linguistics researches and stifled the development of cognitive linguistics. See discussion in the first part of Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.

That said, Chomsky came of age during the truly deplorable reign of behaviorism, and his damning review of Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" in the 1950s is spot on and helped drive a stake through behaviorism.

I don't follow his politics that closely. He seems like someone who always complains that the US should be better and the world should be more perfect. He's likely right on many issues, but I'm not a fan of idealistic criticism without dealing in the realm of realistic alternatives, like a dude that criticizes a plan when the alternative options are even worse. Though, of course, such issues have to be debated on a case by case basis.

I’m not commenting about his linguistics research, but his pop culture icon status. People like Dawkins or Hawking achieved pop culture fame by writing best sellers about subjects they were community designated experts in. I don’t think anybody really had objections to the Lucasian chair of mathematics writing about the Big Bang, where as fellow linguists probably have serious objections to Chomsky’s political writings, which is the main reason why most people who’ve heard of him have heard of him.

How does the Finance Mathematics community feel about the way you spout off?

I can’t think of University departments who ignore ecriture d'adulte's Official "Intellectual Dork Web" Fanboi Containment Thread posts more Finance Mathematics departments. I suspect perhaps Poultry Science or Ceramic Engineering, but I haven't done any formal surveys so idk.

Just a reminder that Peterson is extremely, extremely stupid. Max, again, just insanely good work to go to bat for this guy as your real Dad just because I mocked him.

I like how he always frames every dumbass take as a question, which works as an out for when people call him out on it.

Uhh... I said he was similar to Chomsky and Niall Ferguson. That’s not going to bat for, I think those dudes are terrible.

I'd be willing to wager thousands of dollars that you couldn't accurately describe Chomsky's political views in detail without heavy cribbing and research.

To be fair, I couldn't either. And I suspect neither could most of the people who praise him. But absolutely nobody believes you've rejected Chomsky after careful consideration of his arguments. You try to discredit him because you think he's somebody influential to your left and you're worried he might be a lot smarter than you.

What? No. You've been pro-Peterson itt for like two weeks now.

Totes agree. He can be the new “ Pepperidge farm remembers “ guy.

Show me a “pro” Peterson post I made itt that doesn’t apply to Chomsky or Ferguson.

I’m going to make pro Petersen posts if everyone ignores me.

pro-Petersen posts are fine

I think it's pro-Peterson posts that piss people off