A conversation with Noam Chomsky: Linguistics, SETI, Cognitive Science, & Artificial Intelligence (#059)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2020

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential and highly cited scholars of our time. He is a pioneer in the fields of linguistics and cognitive science. This episode of INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE covers those topics and delves into his thoughts on communicating with aliens, meditation, and free speech including his contribution to the “Harper’s Magazine letter”. Chomsky is a prolific author and known political activist. We avoided politics, as is the custom for my interviews. Our conversation also covers the Turing Test, neural nets, and artificial intelligence, including why he expects Elon Musk’s Neuralink project to fail. Subscribe Professor Keating’s mailing list to receive show notes for this episode. 00:11:00 Does Noam Chomsky believe in extraterrestrial life & could we communicate with E.T.? 00:26:30 Busting (or confirming) linguistic myths with the master. 00:41:00 “There is no scientific method, it’s just being intelligent.” 01:00:00 Artificial intelligence applications in cognitive science. 01:11:25 Chomsky University would encourage discovery. 01:23:44 Thoughts on the negative reaction to the Harper’s Magazine article. 01:31:50 What object or knowledge would Chomsky put in or on his monolith? 01:34:09 What did Chomsky think was impossible until he did it? Noam Chomsky has been called “the father of modern linguistics.” He has been a professor at MIT since 1955 (now emeritus) and continues to teach at the University of Arizona at the age of 91. Chomsky has received numerous awards and honorary doctorates, along with being a member of multiple professional societies. He has written over 100 books covering topics including linguistics, politics, and philosophy. Read “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” the letter in Harper’s Magazine which Chomsky signed https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ Watch “Requiem for the American Dream” here https://youtu.be/hZnuc-Fv_Tc Find Chomsky on the web: https://chomsky.info and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Noam-Chomsky-294468630182/ ‍♂️ Find Brian Keating on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Find Brian Keating on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:07.0	Great, well it's a great pleasure to welcome Nome Chomsky to the Into the Impossible
0:15.0	Podcast, which is a production of the University of California, San Diego's Arthur C. Clark
0:20.3	Center for Human Imagination. We've been doing this for over a decade and or so and
0:25.9	the podcast is relatively recent and the name into the Impossible podcast takes its name
0:31.6	from one of Sir Arthur C. Clark's famous three laws.
0:35.9	The first one being any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:42.1	The second law of Sir Arthur was for every expert, there's an
0:46.0	equal and opposite expert. And the third law is the only way to find out what is
0:51.1	possible is to venture a bit beyond into the
0:54.6	impossible and I thank you for agreeing to come on and we're gonna maybe touch
1:00.0	upon the different areas that interested Sir Arthur C. Clark, in particular the melding of multiple
1:06.3	cultures, writing technology and science, these different aspects that we perceive as disparate, but perhaps there are some common
1:16.2	threads that we can pull on in doing so, reveal more about the underlying nature of these intellectual pursuits that you've been
1:24.2	participating in for many decades.
1:26.9	I should first say, welcome, Nome, thank you so much for coming on.
1:29.4	Glad to be with you.
1:31.4	This is the second time we've met.
1:32.8	We met in 2017 at the Science of Consciousness Conference organized by Stuart Hammeroff,
1:37.9	who's a mutual friend.
1:39.9	And he had the conference that was held here in 2017 when you were here and I was speaking, featured
1:46.7	a brain riding a surfboard as the logo of the conference. And I want to talk a little bit about some ideas that I haven't stopped
	...

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