Noam Chomsky Interview - Part 3

The Pierhead Sessions was proud to welcome the renowned linguist, scholar and political analyst Noam Chomsky during a rare visit to Wales. During an intimate question and answer session with Jane Davidson AM (Minister for the Environment, Sustainability and Housing) he discussed a wide range of issues including wikileaks, American foreign policy under Bush and Obama, New Labour, the Welsh Assembly, the Middle East, Twitter, the environment, religion, oil, nuclear weapons, the Chilcot Inquiry, language, Aristotle, inequality, and the British laws on terrorism, amongst many others.

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[stoprainingonme]

@5147848amp Cheers, I just checked the NSF. Yeah, 150-200 thousand years is the figure I usually read/hear. 250 thousand is the highest (I think it was Carl Sagan). However, to be fair on Chomsky, I usually hear the figure of 100 thousand as a BARE MINIMUM for the existence of MODERN HOMO SAPIENS. (please not: I'm not using capitals because I'm angry, just in lieu of italics).

[5147848amp]

@stoprainingonme

Check out the National Science Foundation's run-down at nsf dot org. Youtube won't allow me to paste the link in, I'm sorry to say.

To quote: "...researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting human bones found at that time are roughly 195,000 years old..."

I said "conventional" because the reading I've done consistently points to between 150,000 and 200,000 years for the age of our species.

[stoprainingonme]

@5147848amp Where is this estimate coming from? I mean, a more specific reference than 'conventional estimates' would be useful. Cheers

[5147848amp]

(Regarding Noam's final point) our species is 196,000 years old by conventional estimates; we've doubled the species average. There is hope.

[shallbeagain]

Thanks for the upload.

As always when listening to Noam I feel overwhelmed with guilt and shame for the evils and crimes done in the name of "western democracy" and "domestic and foreign interests". But at the same time there's always a sense of liberation and hope that I've expanded my worldview and that we can take control and influence our world for the benefit of everyone and not just the few.

[tokotokotoko3]

@AnarchoHumanist I hear ya. I have the "silence gives me jitters" too - as well as the Chomsky solution. If I don't have some distraction then my mind goes on about all kinds of stuff - and I find it uncomfortable. I sometimes wonder how it was for people in history - it is fairly recent that we even possibly could listen to music on a normal day.

The statistics about how much teens are texting is baffling - they seem to spend literally all their free time writing SMS.

[tokotokotoko3]

Great interview session - great questions, and great answers. I wish there were more parts of it.Thanks for the upload.

[AnarchoHumanist]

I have to say, I definitely see what Chomsky's describing about the hunger for stimulus in young people these days. I often get the jitters he describes if I don't have some kind of music or other background noise (often a Chomsky lecture) playing while I do homework and I sigh every time I encounter a really long paragraph in a book -- even when I really enjoy the subject matter. And I'm rather anti-social and don't even use Twitter or Facebook or send more than a couple texts per week.

[Crow512]

I actually enjoyed the last segment of this interview the most. I wish I could hear Noam talking about these topics more often.