There was a tendency in what's called among left intellectuals, late 60s, early 70s, to flirt with Maoism. One of the things that the Maoist policies did was save 100 million people. But this is not why people on the left flirted with Maoism; they had all sorts of confused ideas about Maoism. In fact, if you want the most enthusiastic Maoist in the country, his name happens to be Henry Kissinger. He adored Mao and worshipped him.
Noam Chomsky joins Tyler to discuss why Noam and Wilhelm von Humboldt have similar views on language and liberty, good and bad evolutionary approaches to language, what he thinks Stephen Wolfram gets wrong about LLMs, whether he’s optimistic about the future, what he thinks of Thomas Schelling, the legacy of the 1960s-era left libertarians, the development trajectories of Nicaragua and Cuba, why he still answers every email, what he’s been most wrong about, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded February 27th, 2023
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Photo credit: Duncan Rawlinson - Duncan.co