Comment by throwaway729 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway729 | Hacker News Reader

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I don't really understand at all what that email exchange is supposed to indicate.

Chomsky starts the entire chain and every subsequent email with some equivalent of "we don't have enough common ground on these subjects to have a reasonable conversation, so let's not have a stupid back-and-forth in which we do nothing but loudly contradict each other's basically axiomatic interpretations".

And then there's a lot of back-and-forth that's frustrating to everyone involved (and particularly to the third party reading the exchange). It's frustrating because Sam and Noam are talking past one another, and clearly don't have enough common understanding to take part in a productive discourse, and one party is trying the entire time to just get out of the damned stupid back-and-forth of nothing but mutual contradiction.

To me this reads like a very common occurrence at parties I attended in college: two people who disagree, with one person trying to avoid a public argument that's bound to be fruitless and irritating to all involved, and the other one insisting on having the argument anyways. I never had much sympathy for the Sam character when the Noam character finally snapped and told them to change the topic or fuck off.

> so full of themselves that they don't entertain anyone challenging their ideas.

There's a HUGE difference between realizing a particular conversation is pointless and refusing to have any conversations with dissenters. The latter is arrogance, but the former is an important social skill.

> to a genuine offer of conversation...

1. Noam's primary complaint is that he doesn't believe this is a genuine offer of conversation, and that even if it were, he doesn't think the conversation would be remotely productive.

2. Noam has far more patience in this thread than I or most people would've displayed. I probably wouldn't have replied beyond the second email with anything other than "We obviously disagree on some pretty basic facts. Any further conversation on this matter would therefore be fruitless to both of us. Have a great day!"

Replying to someone trying to argue in good faith, "We obviously disagree on some pretty basic facts. Have a nice day!" would generally be considered impolite in real life, so I suspect most people are reacting to that. If he had just used some polite, meaningless social courtesy, like "I don't have time to discuss this right now", then it would be less controversial.

>...would generally be considered impolite in real life

1. Neither would insisting that someone have a public debate with you. The entire situation was not at all like "real life".

2. I've been on both sides of "we should stop talking about this because we'll never agree and won't learn anything". I've never felt uncomfortable or rude on either side of that conversation.

In real life, if you publicly proclaim controversial beliefs, people will probably publicly confront or question you about them. Most of them will not push a debate further if you say "I don't want to talk about this topic" or something similar. But if you say "We seem to disagree about some basic facts", it seems to imply you think they are making basic/obvious mistakes, but you aren't going even going to deign to explain those mistakes to them. In short, it could come off as condescending or rude, and it could easily be averted by being a bit more polite.

Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives.

A religious person telling a scientist that a debate about religion with him would be "pointless" is indeed dismissive. It may end up being pointless to the people making the arguments but not necessarily for the listeners.

It's Sam Harris who refused to acknowledge pretty factual statements which Chomsky was making. Like the fact that the attack on the Sudanese pharmaceutical facility was an act of terrorism at least as bad, if not worse than 9/11.

Is that a factual statement?

It is. The 9/11 attacks were surely a horrific atrocity. The al-shifa bombing too. It destroyed much of the production of essential drugs for livestock and malaria in a country already on the brink. Werner Daum thinks "at least" tens of thousands of people died as a consequence.

I have no disagreement with you about the scale of fallout. I just have less certainty about whether it was an act of terrorism. i.e. I'm far from convinced it was an act intended to kill at that scale. Whereas with 9/11, it's almost a certainty they aimed to kill even more than they managed to.

I'm still trying to work out for myself the extent to which intent matters when it comes to condemning an act, which is why I struggle to think of your statement as a fact.

From the perspective of the Sudanese, and the families of the immediate victims, I suspect they'd call it either terrorism or an act of war.

Chomsky's position to the question of intention, cited in the letters above, as given me pause for thought (considering that the attack was openly acknowledged as a retaliation for the earlier attacks on US embassies[1]):

And of course they knew that there would be major casualties. They are not imbeciles, but rather adopt a stance that is arguably even more immoral than purposeful killing, which at least recognizes the human status of the victims, not just killing ants while walking down the street, who cares? (...)

It is inconceivable that in that brief interim period evidence was found that it was a chemical weapons factory, and properly evaluated to justify a bombing. And of course no evidence was ever found. Plainly, if there had been evidence, the bombing would not have (just by accident) taken place immediately after the Embassy bombings (along with bombings in Afghanistan at the same time, also clearly retaliation). There’s no rational way to explain this except by assuming that he intentionally bombed what was known to be Sudan’s major pharmaceutical plant, and of course he and his advisers knew that under severe sanctions, this poor African country could not replenish them (...)

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/US/9808/20/clinton.02/

> Realizing a particular conversation as pointless is dismissive if you aren't open to attempting to understand other perspectives

1. Your original charge was that Noam is arrogant, not that he is dismissive. Dismissiveness and arrogance are not the same thing.

2. Noam isn't dismissive in this particular. Refusing the reply to the email or replying only with terse non-acknowledgements would be dismissive. Spilling hundreds of words worth of ink to elucidate why you don't want to have a conversation is anything but dismissive.

3. Charging Noam with being dismissive toward his critics is a different claim with a different burden. It requires analyzing the preponderance of evidence, not one specific case. Just because Noam is dismissive of one particular critic doesn't mean that he's dismissive of his critics in general.

> A religious person telling a scientist that a debate about religion with him would be "pointless" is indeed dismissive

I fail to see how this is necessarily the case. For example, if the scientist's point is to change the religious person's mind, and the religious person is firm in their faith, then the religious person isn't being dismissive. On the contrary, the religious person is saving both parties from a fruitless and frustrating endeavor.

> It may end up being pointless to the people making the arguments but not necessarily for the listeners.

More analogous to Noam/Sam, if the scientist's point is to demonstrate the falseness of religious by disproving transubstantiation, and if the religious person explicitly said they do not believe in transubstantiation, then the religious person is well within reason to refuse an invitation, because regardless of the outcome of the conversation, the end result won't be informative to anyone.

3. If the Scientist pushes for a debate even though the religious person is not interested, he's most likely being a bit of jerk.

Funny because I thought Harris was quite dismissive "I don't appreciate your tone" (!)

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