The phrase manufacturing consent was not mine. I borrowed it from Walter Lipman's, as you know, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century. Both Wilson and Bernice were very impressed with how what Lipman called engineering of consent could control the public shape opinion. They have to be fed in necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications said Reinhold Niebuhr.
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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