bs2Dec 19, 2023
> School doesn’t have to be boring. School can be the most exciting experience you ever had, and it sometimes is. If schools are boring it is because decisions are made to make them boring, and some of these decisions are at a federal level, and some at a state level, but they are decisions. So the conception of teaching to tests is designed to make education as boring, and stupid, and stultifying as possible.
https://chomsky.info/20130524/
#NoamChomsky #BoringSchool #BoringDecisions #School #Testing
Noam Chomsky – “Beyond Fascism” | Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Holder and Doug Morris

The Noam Chomsky Website.

Show threadbs2
7Y.O.: ‘Why are we here?'”
NC: There are two views about that which go back to #ClassicalGreece, maybe before. One is we are here for the same reason that rocks and trees and grass are here. That is just the way the #RulesOfNature worked out, and they happened to lead to us just like they led to other things.
> The other answer, which goes back to Aristotle actually, is that everything in nature has a purpose and a function...then #Aristotle drew some pretty ugly conclusions from that...
Dec 19, 2023 at 11:36pmWeb
Show threadbs2Dec 19, 2023
> The ones who are trying to save the species from disaster are the ones we call “primitive,” “#TribalPeoples,” “#Aboriginal,” #FirstNations people in Canada, Adivasi tribal peoples in India, they are trying to save the planet, and in fact in places where they have a degree of power they are actually doing something about it. #Bolivia happens to be in the lead.. There the indigenous population is.. a majority.. nature has rights we have to preserve.. an aspect of #TraditionalSocieties ..
Show threadbs2Dec 19, 2023
> It is not that the species is going to die off... the conditions for what we regard as minimally decent existence may sharply deteriorate. So, for example, all of #Boston could be under water. Of course, for poor countries such as #Bangladesh it is an utter catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people. In #SouthAsia the glaciers are melting in the #Himalayas. If that melting reaches a certain point, South Asia, with hundreds of millions of people, could become unlivable.
#ClimateScience
Show threadbs2Dec 19, 2023
> Humans will survive but in a very different world. So what can we do about it? We can do what the so called “primitive” people are doing, arrest it. You don’t have to lift every drop of #HydroCarbons out of the earth. It could stay in the earth where it ought to be. And, we could devote our energies not to wasting as much #FossilFuel as we can but to developing alternatives which will allow a #SurvivableSociety. It is technically feasible, it is a #MatterOfChoices, and we have the choices.
Show threadbs2Dec 20, 2023
> Take say, if I’m holding this here [cup of water], and say the water is boiling [putting hand over water], the steam will rise, but if I take my hand away the cup will fall. Well why does the cup fall and the steam rise? Well for millennia there was a satisfactory answer to that: they’re seeking their natural place.
> Katz: Like in #Aristotelian physics?
> Chomsky: That’s the #AristotelianPhysics.
https://chomsky.info/20121101/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/
#YardenKatz #HistoryOfScience
Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Yarden Katz

The Noam Chomsky Website.