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Carrie and Megan talk about the Epstein emails and Chomsky’s correspondence with him. Carrie swears more than usual.
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Transcript
Carrie Gillon: Hey, it’s Carrie here, just dropping in to let you know that one of our former guests, Tim Brooks, has a Kickstarter where you can help him get his endangered alphabet carvings back to wherever they need it, and it’s called “Bringing It Back Home”. I will put the link in the show notes.
Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.
Carrie: I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan: I’m Megan Figueroa, and here we are.
Carrie: Here we are.
Megan: Here we are.
Carrie: This is a doozy.
Megan: Yeah. A doozy is a word for it.
Carrie: Yeah, and I just got some fan mail, and it just tells us not to giggle so much. So, no.
Megan: Wow.
Carrie: I’m not changing who I am. It’s no.
Megan: Oh my God! Can you tell if it’s from a man?
Carrie: It felt like it, but I don’t know. Women can be [crosstalk] just as persnickety.
Megan: [inaudible].
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: I’m actually surprised that this hasn’t happened before.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s true.
Megan: For years that we’ve been doing this.
Carrie: Yeah, we haven’t gotten that much feedback along those kind of lines. So, yeah, that’s true.
Megan: Also, of course, calling it giggling and not just laughing.
Carrie: Yeah, it’s very gendered.
Megan: It’s very gendered.
Carrie: And I feel like sometimes I giggle, but mostly I’m just laughing. I very rarely giggle, but I probably have giggled at least once or twice on this show. Most of the time it’s just laughing. Whatever.
Megan: No, you know who giggles? Nick Offerman.
Carrie: Oh, he totally giggles, and it’s so fun.
Megan: It’s so fun. It’s so good. That’s a giggle. That’s a man’s man right there. I actually just saw him live.
Carrie: Oh, nice.
Megan: Yeah, and he was talking about woodworking, and he was saying things that are also tools, or having empathy and being kind, and so that kind of a man’s man. [inaudible].
Carrie: Yeah, he’s very secure in his masculinity. That’s why he can giggle and not worry about it.
Megan: Exactly. It’s nice.
Carrie: Speaking of people who do actually like us, we have three people to thank this month. So, William Hart.
Megan: Yay, thank you, William.
Carrie: Ailsa Davey.
Megan: Thank you.
Carrie: And Emma Lodge.
Megan: Awesome. So, three people. That’s so lovely and generous, and we appreciate you all so much.
Carrie: Yeah, and two of them are from the UK.
Megan: Very cool.
Carrie: Yeah, very cool. So if anyone else would like to join us, we’re at http://www.patreon.com/vocal friespod, and we have a bunch of bonus episodes, stickers, and mugs. We also have merch. You could talk [crosstalk] merch.
Megan: [inaudible] merch. We have, is it called Redbubble?
Carrie: I think it’s Redbubble. If that’s a word, if that’s the name of it, it’s definitely Redbubble. So at Redbubble, we have some great merch. Hold on, let me look. What does it say? Language changes. What is it? It’s so good.
Carrie: Oh, boy.
Megan: Oh, my God. So sorry.
Carrie: Someone actually bought a sticker the other day.
Megan: Okay.
Carrie: Nice.
Megan: So we have a Redbubble shop, Vocal Fries Pod, and we have some great stuff on there. Specifically, I love “Language Changes”, “Don’t Be An Arsehole”. That’s on some pins, stickers, and notebooks.
Carrie: Cool.
Megan: We also have one that says “I love my Vocal Fry”.
Carrie: Oh, yeah, [inaudible]. I forgot about that one. Anyway, today’s a doozy, and I don’t know where to begin, so we thought we would delve into the Epstein emails because Chomsky is in there, and we were like, “So what can we learn about how Epstein thinks about language? And the answer is I don’t know what he thinks. It looks like garbage to me. It looks like nonsense.
Megan: Okay, so this is one of those things where I’m having internalized impostors [inaudible] almost. I’m like, “Even with Epstein,” I’m like, “Do I not understand something that’s, no, no, stop, Megan, stop. Don’t give it more credit than you’ve studied linguistics; you know language.” But I was just like, “Oh my God, is this above my head? What’s happening?” There are moments of that where I was like, “Is this just too far beyond me?” But I don’t know. It’s like Occam’s Razor. It’s like, “Well, maybe it’s just unreadable because it’s freaking nonsense.”
Carrie: It looks like Chomsky kept saying, “No, you’re wrong, that doesn’t make any sense, in the nicest possible way possible.” So I don’t think, at least the stuff he was writing, he understood either. But, I don’t know.
Megan: That you don’t think Chomsky understood Epstein’s…
Carrie: Yeah, ramblings because they’re ramblings.
Megan: Right. I don’t know. They were friends. This is obvious now. So that’s why he’s probably being nice to him about it. Because I’m like, “Why is Chomsky even entertaining these ramblings?” Because they’re incoherent, but, yeah, of course, now I know it’s like, “Well, they’re friends, so he’s being nice to his friend.”
Carrie: But he started pretty early on in their friendship being nonsensical.
Megan: Yeah, I got 2015 as some of the first.
Carrie: That was the first when they were really connected. So the basic chronology is 2012 Lawrence Krauss tried to introduce them, but for some reason, Chomsky cancelled. I would love to know why, if it was just like, “Oh, I’m just too busy,” or if he was like, “Mmmm, maybe I don’t want to be associated with this guy.”
Megan: Yeah, because at this point Epstein is a convicted sex…
Carrie: [inaudible]. I don’t think it was sex trafficker. I think that was part of the trial, though. Remember Pinker wrote a letter. [crosstalk] Actually, it wasn’t really trafficking for whatever reason.
Megan: Or semantic reasons, Carrie.
Carrie: Yes, for semantic reasons, and I love a good semantic argument, and goddamn Pinker was lying about not knowing who [inaudible], he knew. Anyway, in 2008, he was convicted of basically child prostitution, like hiring a sex worker who was underage. I think it was two counts, and it was way reduced from what he should have been. A sweetheart deal.
Megan: [inaudible].
Carrie: It was a total sweetheart deal, which is also part of the emails between him and Chomsky. Oh my fucking God. Anyway, we’ll get there. In 2008, he’s convicted. 2008, 2009 he’s sort of in jail, sort of not. He can go about his business during the day, but he has to go there at night. It’s so ridiculous. This man is a child rapist, and they knew that. Anyway, counts of something pretty minor in comparison to what he actually had done.
Megan: Right. So convicted at this point. Okay, back to the timeline.
Carrie: Yeah, so then 2012, Lawrence Krauss tries to introduce them, but it fails. Good old Lawrence Krauss, ASU. And then in 2015, they are introduced.
Megan: Okay, so that is the earliest.
Carrie: And it looks like Valeria, his second wife, is part of why, because they’re asking for her cell phone pretty early on, and she gives it. I don’t know. There’s something weird there. There’s something kinky.
Megan: Oh yeah, Epstein asked after Valeria a ton in this, and basically says stuff like, “You can’t operate without her.” It’s very weird. It was weird vibes. The whole thing is weird vibes, obviously, if you’re going to read anything in there.
Carrie: It’s very, very weird. Like when Chomsky’s talking about language stuff, it’s just all the stuff he normally says, and it feels normal, like he’s talking to just anybody. All the rest of it gets really uncomfortable really quickly. There’s nothing about the girls. There’s absolutely nothing about that shit until he starts talking at the very end of their correspondence about how to spin certain things. I don’t know. That part is weird. Mostly, it is either about weird ramblings about language or Chomsky’s finances, and holy fuck is all of that very uncomfortable, too.
Megan: Yeah, it’s terrible. That’s quite the rabbit hole to go down [inaudible].
Carrie: Yeah, and I tried not to go down too far because I’m like, “Not my business and also not what we’re trying to talk about,” but I couldn’t help but look a little bit. At one point, he was asking for half a million dollars from his trust. No wonder his children were like, “What the fuck is going on?”
Megan: It’s there for you to peruse if you’re interested in Chomsky’s finances.
Carrie: There’s almost 3,000 emails. Well, I don’t even know how you count to quantify it, but 3,000 instances in JMail.world, that’s what it is. JMail.world. So yeah, feel free, but it will take forever to go through it all. I didn’t even go through it all. I was just trying to find the language-related stuff, trying to get the chronology down, trying to understand what Epstein was saying about language, but honest to God, I don’t know.
Megan: Okay, so maybe we can start in 2015. It seems like Epstein is talking to some people about starting a Chomsky challenge.
Carrie: Yeah. Was that before or after the Institute idea?
Megan: Oh, what’s the Institute?
Carrie: So he also wanted to create some sort of Institute, which I think Chomsky would have been a part of, and I don’t know how many other academics he was thinking of. I’m sure all the AI guys.
Megan: Well, yeah. Okay, so this is September 6, 2015. He’s talking to Joscha Bach about the Chomsky challenge. There might be even some earlier, but it’s definitely 2015.
Carrie: No, 2015 would be the earliest for the Chomsky challenge stuff, but let me see if I can find the Institute. Oh God. Actually, let me look at my other document. I have too many documents.
So this would be May 2015.
Megan: Oh, really?
Carrie: Epstein says to both Valeria and Noam, “Look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Is there anything in writing on the Institute idea? I would fund anonymously so as not to pollute the work with press,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, lots more stuff. And then Valeria responds, “I have been working on the paper for the Institute. I would prefer if you would write only to my email about the Institute, since there are other people who read Noam’s email, and I would like to keep the subject more private at this point.”
Megan: That’s creepy. That’s weird. I didn’t see that, but I also [inaudible]. Sorry, that’s wild. And is this related? No, this is later, because in 2017, Jeffrey actually talks to Valeria and Noam. His lawyer, Richard Kahn, says, “Jeffrey wanted me to reach out regarding a payment from his foundation, Gratitude America, in the amount of $20000 for administering the Chomsky challenge in linguistics.” So this is in 2017, and Noam’s like, “I’m forwarding this to Valeria because she takes care of these matters.” And then Valeria says, “Thank you for the contact. It would be if you could please send a check to our address, that would be ideal.” I Google Chomsky challenge, I don’t think any of this happened. What did they do with the 20k? What is this?
Carrie: I don’t know. I have many questions about some of the money stuff going on in these emails. There were like 17 different questions or something like that that Chomsky came up with, that maybe this could be the challenge. Epstein was a messy bitch, so he would share things around with everybody else and try to gauge what people thought. Joscha Bach was one of the people he sent all them to, and he would write down these long passages about each one, and it’s very boring.
Megan: Yes, it’s really boring.
Carrie: But they’re really talking past each other. Not that Chomsky knew that because he wasn’t involved in this conversation, but Chomsky was just talking about the things that he’s interested in. Bach is an AI guy, and he just does not see language in the same way because he really believes that it’s just statistics, like they all do, and that’s not true at all. So they’re just talking past each other, and I’m just like, “No wonder nothing happened.” First of all, Chomsky’s ideas are very specific. I don’t know, would they make sense to try and put out in the world? Maybe, maybe not. But most people who might be interested would not even agree with the premises generally.
Megan: It’s basically produce a non-living system that can be put into an environment for a while and be able to discriminate language from noise, which was the big thing.
Carrie: Yeah, that was what Epstein was really interested in. Like, “Can we get language out of anything?” And Chomsky kept just basically saying no.
Megan: Okay, so going back, he wasn’t referring to human language there? Like he’s referring to whatever this thing is to be able to differentiate between human language and anything else, I guess.
Carrie: I guess.
Megan: Okay. And from your perspective, because that Joscha Bach guy is statistics, and Jeffrey says, “I don’t want statistical modelling.” Yeah, he says, “I don’t want statistical modelling. Challenges learning a language different than moving blocks in a video game. You want it to do things a two-year-old can do.”
Carrie: Yes. So video games at that point, or autonomous systems at that point, could move things around on a screen. So he was like, “Oh, maybe language could do something similar, or maybe we can create a system that will learn language in a similar way.” But that is not how language works. And because they think in such mathematical terms, they fail to understand that the system is just very different from how they are thinking it will be.
Megan: So I think that’s the major thing it keeps coming back to. I’ve seen one or two emails of just Jeffrey talking about how great he is at math.
Carrie: Oh my God, he brags constantly about how amazing he is at math. It’s insane.
Megan: Okay, you saw more. I was like, “I’ve seen this. This is definitely popping up a lot,” that he finds ways to talk about how good he is at math and finance.
Carrie: Even Chomsky says to him, “Oh yeah, you could probably teach me about math,” and I was like, “Really?” Maybe he doesn’t come across in these emails as being a great math genius. Maybe in person, he did. I don’t know. Also, I am not a math person, so I can only tell when he is completely out to lunch when he’s talking about language because that’s what I know. I just kind of assume the math looks like nonsense to me, but maybe I’m wrong.
Megan: Well, but also you do know language, and it’s not going to be able to explain my math.
Carrie: Some parts of it, yes, some parts of it, but that’s the problem. It’s more than the sum of its parts.
Megan: Yeah, but he wants it to be a theory based in math. I’m just like, “This is something that I can tell you is never going to happen.” No theory based in math. But it’s like, “Okay, so what’s your part?” Did he already have these thoughts about language because he’s like, “Whatever,” and then he recruited Chomsky to be his friend? Or was it because he became friends with Chomsky, he was like, “I’m going to put my math mind to work and impress Chomsky?” Or, “What, chicken or egg?” I don’t know.
Carrie: It’s impossible to tell from the emails alone. We would need more. I don’t know if there’s texts. Because I know there are texts in the drops, but they’re not in these emails. This was already a big enough rabbit hole. I was like, “I am not going to try and find texts.”
Megan: I guess I’m just ultimately curious, like, what was his obsession over language, it seems that he had? Is it as simple as that he was just hanging around Chomsky, or does it go back to his drive to…
Carrie: Create the perfect human?
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: Maybe. I don’t know. I really don’t know. He was such a vile human being. There’s supposedly children out there that are maybe his that no one knows about. It seems like he was experimenting. I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. If anything, it just makes me very confused. But what makes me less confused is that at least Chomsky was charmed by this man, and he let him try to fix his finances or help him with his finances, which I think is a very dangerous thing to do with a man like that.
Megan: This shows you how much trust he had in him.
Carrie: Well, because he’s this math genius, so therefore he would know what.
Megan: What? No, I really don’t get it. I’m just thinking because I was reading something that he wrote in 2017, where he’s talking about the Galilean challenge. You heard this?
Carrie: It sounds familiar.
Megan: Yeah, Chomsky is just saying, “Damn it, how did I lose it again?” He states that language design appears to maximize computational efficiency but disregards communicative efficiency. So is that what you understood as being Chomsky’s view from the beginning?
Carrie: Yeah, I think so. He’s always been one of these people who thinks that language was not for communication but was more for thought, and I always struggled with that part of his theory. To me, it’s like, “Well, sure, it definitely helps us think more clearly; having language is crucial for really clarifying thought.” 100% behind that, but I’m like, “Sut surely at least one of the drivers was communication as well.”
Megan: So he’s saying that in every known case in which computational and communicative efficiency conflict, communicative efficiency is ignored. These facts run counter to the common belief, often virtual dogma, that communication is the basic function of language. They also further undermine the assumption that human language evolved continuously from animal communication, and they provide further evidence that externalization, which is necessary for communication, is a peripheral aspect of language.
Carrie: So I don’t know about that last bit, but I do kind of agree that if there’s a conflict, communication it’s never the most efficient.
Megan: Yeah.
Carrie: It’s not. There’s so much redundancy in language. I think that’s probably, maybe on purpose is too strong, but it helps. If there’s redundancy, you’re more likely to get the entire information across if some of it gets lost in transmission. So he’s saying some true things in there and some very speculative that [inaudible].
Megan: Well, yeah.
Carrie: At best.
Megan: Yeah, his whole argument seems to be that. Actually, the explanation for language, there’s reason to believe it would be quite simple. And so I’m thinking, he’s basically saying that his idea is very simple.
Carrie: Yeah, he strongly believes that his idea is very, very simple because for him, language is just one operation, but it’s not. When you actually go into his theory, it’s much more complicated than that, and every time he does try to reduce it, something happens where you’re like, “Well, that doesn’t explain anything anymore.” So anyway, I think he really wants language to be extremely simple, just this very simple mathematical process, merge, and then that’s it. But even within syntax, that’s not enough. You need a lot more mathy stuff going on, even to explain very basic sentences. So that’s always been my struggle with him. I love the idea, especially more recently, well, since the late 90s, to try and really simplify the theory, because everything was getting out of control. How is that learnable? So it has to be simpler than it was in the 80s.
Megan: It can’t just be merge. He’s been trying to simplify his own theory.
Carrie: Yeah, he did, and the Minimalism was [crosstalk].
Megan: He was doing that, but it’s still very complicated. So, his idea of simple it’s interesting. I think simple meaning, like, computationally. Human brains do this simply.
Carrie: Yes, computationally, it has to be kind of simple. It can’t be too hard, because little children learn.
Megan: Yes. [crosstalk].
Carrie: They’re doing pretty complex things pretty early, right?
Megan: Yeah, they are. And so Chomsky’s taking this merge as a mathematical concept, but he’s very clear that he doesn’t think statistics are how language is learned. Do you think that Epstein is trying to say that?
Carrie: It felt like Epstein kept trying to get to some kind of statistical thing. I don’t know if he understood that he was doing that, but I feel like he really believes that we can teach AI language, and the only way to do that is through statistics, because of the way the computation works for a computer. But that doesn’t work. All you get are these LLMs that do one really amazing thing, which is spit out really good English sentences, and probably other languages too, but that’s it. And they’re not new or interesting.
Megan: Yeah. It’s infuriating because, as someone who studies language development, it’s like, “Oh my God, AI is not a young child learning language.”
Carrie: Or worse, a PhD student. They make wildly different kinds of claims depending on what they’re trying to sell you on any given day.
Megan: That’s true. You’re right, though. Does this go back to him wanting…
Carrie: I think so.
Megan: …to basically make it so that AI can do what a human can do?
Carrie: Yeah, I think so.
Megan: Because of optimization or what?
Carrie: I think, just like all these people that he hates.
Megan: [inaudible], yeah.
Carrie: Do you want me to try and read one of these things? I don’t know how interesting it is to actually try and read his nonsense.
Megan: Yeah, try to read it.
Carrie: Okay, so I don’t even know who this email was to, and I will fix the grammatical errors because it will be too hard to read or understand otherwise. “It appears to me that language can be defined as the biological organising principle that creates a shape space. Coherent sentences are defined as those that fit on the shape. The projection on the sensory motor allows communication. There are an infinite digital number of seen sentences that do fit on the shape, but orders of magnitude more that do not fit.” What? There’s more, but it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe what he’s trying to do is say, “Oh, I understand universal grammar; this is what you’re saying, right? That there’s a shape to the language and everything else just goes away.” But that’s not really what universal grammar is supposed to be. There’s a bad name for it, more like a universal acquisition device. You will learn language depending on the input, but you have this filter because you can’t create languages that violate whatever. So there are lots of languages that could exist that don’t.
Megan: To be fair, Chomsky’s theory here is not well tested on other languages.
Carrie: What do you mean?
Megan: Most of his work is on English.
Carrie: His own work, yes, but there are plenty of Chomskyan linguists who have worked on plenty of other languages. That’s not exactly fair, because certainly in Indigenous languages there are plenty of people, but plenty of Chomskyans too, who have [inaudible].
Megan: But I guess what I mean is, I guess he wouldn’t think it matters, because he just thinks it works for all language. But for him to only consider it in English, I think, is…
Carrie: Well, it’s not only English.
Megan: Although it is limiting.
Carrie: It’s not only English that he’s worked on. No, he’s also worked on Hebrew, which was his first language that he worked on, and then he also did some work on Icelandic.
Megan: Oh, okay.
Carrie: Yeah, but everybody else did all the other work on the other languages. Not all languages, but way bigger chunk of languages than you think. If he’s right, the mystery is, “Okay, so how do you get all these different-shaped languages?” Because they’re not going to look the same. They don’t look the same.
Megan: So Epstein is regurgitating in a weird way.
Carrie: Maybe?
Megan: When he’s talking about [inaudible]. Maybe? No, you know what? Ultimately, it makes me think of Bayesian statistics. The probability space is [inaudible].
Carrie: Yes, he talks about probability a lot, and again I’m like, “No.”
Megan: That’s probably what he’s referring to. If he’s such a mathematical mind, that kind of makes me think he’d be thinking about shape in that way.
Carrie: Yeah, that must be what it is. I think this was about language again. I believe talking with Valeria for some reason. So the architecture of language, I think, is what he means. The architecture would be highly tied to the vision equivalent: certain images allowed, certain sentences allowed. No theory on how they are crafted. In images, the probability of nearby values is higher. I also like the idea that puns, there are visual images that share two meanings, and both are impossible to see as one.
Megan: He’s obsessed with the vision component, too.
Carrie: Well, that I think also comes from Chomsky, because Chomsky says that you grow your language the same way that you grow an eyeball.
Megan: Grow an eyeball. Do eyeballs get bigger?
Carrie: No, in the uterus, right?
Megan: Oh, okay, that’s what he means. All right.
Carrie: Yeah, so it’s like you can’t just have any old shape of an eyeball. You’re going to grow an eyeball and a language, same thing. You’re not going to just grow any kind of language; it’s going to be constrained in very specific ways. That’s why the world’s languages don’t do certain things. There’s lots of things that human languages do not do that AI could.
Megan: Yeah. So, the visual component, you think, is because of that? He’s basically just [inaudible].
Carrie: I think so.
Megan: Okay, because he seems to be upset. He talks about the rigidity principle [inaudible].
Carrie: A lot, and I didn’t get that part either.
Megan: Yeah, and also kind of the sensory motor system too, which is important in development of language.
Carrie: Yes. And it’s also a big part of Chomsky’s stuff. He says, “Okay, there’s all this computation that goes on, and then it gets fed to the sensory motor stuff. It gets pronounced or signed or whatever.
Megan: As Epstein says, projected. Sounds like it gets projected. I think that’s what he was saying.
Carrie: Yeah, I think you’re right.
Megan: Yeah. I don’t know. It’s creepy to me. I know that there’s this creepy reason why he’s obsessed with language. The idea that Chomsky has is you grow your language like you grow an eyeball, or your capacity for it. Epstein is obsessed with eugenics and race-based science.
Carrie: I found it really interesting. I feel like he sometimes tried to slip in certain things to be a little bit racist, and Chomsky would be like, “That doesn’t quite make sense.” He really should have been like, “Oh, this is bad. No, I’m out.”
Megan: Exactly. The fact that he even entertained it as fodder for thought or a conversation between two friends. That’s when you know, like, “Really?” He’s showing you who he is. Obviously, you knew that he was a convicted sex felon before that.
Carrie: He claims he didn’t.
Megan: Oh, Valeria [inaudible].
Carrie: Sorry, Valeria claims that they didn’t know. I don’t believe it, and even if it was true, he did find out.
Megan: And still talk to him.
Carrie: Yeah. So where was that letter? There was a letter to the editor that Epstein wanted to send about the sweetheart deal, and Chomsky says, “It’s a powerful and convincing statement, but my feeling is that it would not be wise to submit it for publication. Taking the stance of a reader who comes to the matter afresh, perhaps having heard some rumors but knowing nothing, the reaction I suspect will be of the ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ kind. Few are willing to think through the arguments and factual details or try to adjudicate conflicting claims. I’ve seen this happen over and over on other matters, many years of having been accused of Holocaust denial, for example. Ugly and bitter as it is, I suspect the best course now is to not stir the pot by raising the issue publicly, opening the door to charges and accusations that can no doubt be answered in the court of logic and fairness. But that’s not the public domain, where innuendo and suspicion and accusation reign.” There’s a little bit more, but I’m sorry. You know what he was actually convicted of by this point. If you didn’t before, if you didn’t back in 2015, you do by now. But this was like 2018, 2019.
Megan: Well, I think he knows because in 2015, Jeffrey was basically like [inaudible].
Carrie: Oh yeah, “I don’t want to put this into the press.” For sure, he knew.
Megan: He’s known for the entire [inaudible].
Carrie: He knew the whole time, but even if he did, let’s give him the pretend benefit of the doubt. By 2018, 2019, he knew, and he was like, “Oh, it’s whatever. Who cares?”
Megan: Right. I don’t know.
Carrie: And Valeria’s whole argument that they were small beans who didn’t know any better. I’m so mad about it.
Megan: So offensive to my sensibilities. It’s like gaslighting.
Carrie: It’s attempted gaslighting for sure. It really is. Some people are falling for it. How many linguists are like, “Oh, it’s a moral panic?”
Megan: Oh yeah. Michael [inaudible]. Every time I hear “moral panic,” I just think about Michael because he’s so good [crosstalk].
Carrie: He also clocked that.
Megan: Yeah. No linguist. Men, all I’ve seen have been calling it a moral panic.
Carrie: Yeah, I’ve only seen it from men, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t at least a couple of women who are also partaking in that.
Megan: Of course. Chomsky knew. He was an active listener. He was doing active listening with Epstein and entertaining all of his thoughts, like things that you do with a friend. Epstein was his friend. I’ve heard Chomsky take down people that don’t agree with him regarding language, and the way that he is kind to Epstein about it, I thought it was telling.
Carrie: In person, yes, but in email, I’ve seen other people talk to him with their wild ideas about language, and he’s been unfailingly polite to them as well.
Megan: Really?
Carrie: I don’t know if he’s just like that over email.
Megan: That’s weird because in person, I’ve seen him be very condescending.
Carrie: I know. It’s very strange. It’s like when he has time to think, he’s a little bit more careful. I don’t know.
Megan: But entirely condescending in a way that is like he doesn’t even change his tone of voice.
Carrie: No, it’s just no. In his writing, he’s also condescending, but it’s weird that it’s over email; he seems to be unfailingly polite, except to his own goddamn children. Holy shit.
Megan: That’s true. I know. So, where do you think we go from here? Just thinking about linguistics, what are people going to do when they talk about Chomsky’s theory? We just talk about it.
Carrie: We still use Frege’s ideas in semantics, and that guy was a huge antisemite. My thought is you can talk about what may make sense, what doesn’t make sense, why maybe these ideas can coexist in a person. I do think you need to talk about who he is a little bit more than we have in the past. I definitely knew about the language wars. We talked about that in some of our classes. So I did know how brutal he could be, but maybe also this side of him, where he’s perfectly fine letting Epstein pay $1400 a night for a hotel for him and Valeria one time. It’s perfectly happy for him to pay for a private jet for him, and then the $20000 for whatever reason.
Megan: That probably didn’t go further than the Chomskys, it sounds like.
Carrie: No, it definitely went right straight to them. I don’t know. This is definitely a stain.
Megan: But it’s not as simple as I’m not going to watch Woody Allen movies anymore. [crosstalk].
Carrie: Right, because as far as we can tell, he didn’t do anything that bad.
Megan: There are more emails to come. I don’t know if they would have already been in there. [inaudible] dreaming of that little island in the Caribbean.
Carrie: That’s true. He did talk about dreaming about the Caribbean. But honestly, it could have just been because it was warm. It’s hard to know how much each individual person got to see. Some things are a bit more like, “Okay.” But from most of the emails, it’s more like, “I don’t know for sure. He was perfect.” This is the other thing about him that I’m still mad about, that people keep trying to push under the carpet. He met with Bannon. He was perfectly fine to meet with Bannon. And this was after everybody knew who he was. This was not 2012 Bannon, where maybe I wouldn’t have known who he was. This was like 2018.
Megan: ’17?
Carrie: ’17, something like that. He was definitely known by that point.
Megan: Well, Chomsky, Epstein, Woody Allen, and his wife had dinner all the time.
Carrie: Soon-Yi[?].
Megan: And everyone knew about Woody and Soon-Yi. So I wonder if there’s a part of him that, whatever he believes about our brains or whatever, does he also believe Pinker does? That men have some sort of biological…
Carrie: Maybe, but when Epstein tried to say something along those lines, he was just like, I don’t know what you mean. Cells are cells. What are you talking about? So I don’t know. I always suspected that he was sexist, but in the way someone born in the 1920s is sexist. Is it worse than that? I don’t know. I don’t think we can fully tell from these emails. He jokingly calls Epstein sexist.
Megan: Oh, really?
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Can we tell that he is sexist because of the way he said the hysteria [inaudible]?
Carrie: Yes, but is that worse than 1920s sexism?
Megan: It seems pretty par for the course with a lot of people who talk about the MeToo movement and everything.
Carrie: So yes, definitely. But that’s the least surprising out of all of this shit. Anyway, do I think he’s sexist? Yes, I absolutely do. I always thought he probably was, at least a little bit. But is he like the Epstein, Woody Allen level? I don’t know. Maybe.
Megan: It’s just weird. Like I said, it’s easy to not, because we know who Woody Allen is. We don’t support him by giving his movies money or watching them or whatever. But it’s like when someone comes up with ideas in your field, and either you’re trying to prove them or disprove them, I don’t know.
Carrie: It is tricky. It is really tricky because some people are so obviously toxic. It’s like, “Oh, should we even be talking about them at all?” But then, if they had an idea that a bunch of other stuff has been built on, you can’t just pull it out from the root.
Megan: Well, especially since it feels like it’d be undermining all that work that good people have done, that non-pedophilic people have done, or non-friends with rapists.
Carrie: With Epstein, yeah. I don’t know, but what I do want is for people to stop making excuses for Chomsky. I don’t care if you’re a fan of him or not. I am a trained Chomsky linguist. I’m perfectly fine with most of his theories, not all of them. I am not going to fucking defend him, and you definitely shouldn’t either.
Megan: Yeah, if there’s a point of this, besides the fact that Epstein doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to language, it’s that there’s no excuses for Chomsky. No excuses.
Carrie: Right. No excuses. I was worried that he was going to come across even worse than he did.
Megan: There’s still time.
Carrie: There’s still time. Other shit might come out. And maybe I missed something, too. His condescension about the MeToo shit, unsurprising. So I wasn’t shocked by any of that, just the chumminess. The chumminess with a sex predator.
Megan: Oh, he called him his best friend, him and Valeria’s best friend at one point. And he called it a permanent friendship or a forever friend, some sort of language about how this friendship is going to be forever. This was after 2018.
Carrie: Yep. One of the other things that was kind of creepy about these files, that it’s just so minor in comparison, the way Epstein talks about Jewish people makes me think he’s anti-Semitic.
Megan: I know. Yeah.
Carrie: He would say things like, “Oh, do you want any ‘JEW FOOD’ from New York? What the fuck?
Megan: Yeah. [inaudible].
Carrie: I know he’s Jewish and so he can say things like that, but it just reads as bad. Or like, “Oh, I went to the Jew doctor.” What is happening?
Megan: I did see that. Sometimes I do point out the fact that, “Oh yeah, it’s really cool that my doctor is Mexican American or something,” but I don’t know. [inaudible] I don’t know.
Carrie: I have Jewish friends, and sometimes they say things, well, they use the word Jewy or something like that, a word that I would not normally use outside of quotes because it sounds weird to me. I don’t know. There’s just something about the way he was doing it in the emails that felt way worse than just intercommunity, chanting[?] around.
Megan: Well, also, I have no generosity of spirit for him.
Carrie: Well, there’s that. We haven’t even talked about the race science shit. I’m sure he thought that Jewish people[?], well, Ashkenazi Jews anyway, are better than everybody else.
Megan: Like Pinker.
Carrie: Like Pinker.
Megan: Yeah. He certainly makes a distinction in his head between white people and Black people, for sure.
Carrie: Oh my God. There’s so much racist shit.
Megan: It’s terrible.
Carrie: Yeah. I don’t even want to read any of it. It’s horrifying.
Megan: I would tell people not to go look for it because it’s so horrifying.
Carrie: And Joscha Bach also.
Megan: Oh my God. Yeah, and Joscha Bach is also very racist, but it’s like, “Oh my God.” Of course, there’s this bigger problem, the most disgusting problem of why even there is the Epstein files. Even this side quest of his is disgusting, so disgusting. I don’t know. Just the whole thing is disgusting. It’s layered.
Carrie: It is layered. And the fact that he seemingly had his hand in so many things, obviously, the backlash to MeToo, which I didn’t know but is unsurprising in retrospect. I don’t know if you saw the woman who created the shitty men in media list. Do you remember that?
Megan: Yeah, I do.
Carrie: So she talked about it in her podcast. What was that one called? I don’t remember now. Am I going to be able to find it? Probably not. Oh, “In Bed with the Right”. She talked about being in the Epstein files because of this. And he funded the suit against her, and her own lawyers at the time were like, “This has to be externally funded because you have no money. This person who’s suing you doesn’t have that much money. What is going on?” “Oh, Epstein, of course.” So he claimed that he had helped fund Seed magazine, which was this interesting culture science magazine that I loved, and now I feel tainted. Of course, he could have been lying. Sometimes I wondered how much of this is actually true and how much of it is just him being [inaudible].
Megan: Self-aggrandizing. [inaudible].
Carrie: Yeah. So it’s hard to know for sure, but I could believe that he would want to be into something like that.
Megan: Yeah. Well, I’m listening to “Behind the Bastards”. They’re only on the second part of, I think, a six-part series on Jeffrey and how he molded the world we live in now. But I’m like, “What? He’s basically responsible for crypto being a thing or helping it along in a very [inaudible]”
Carrie: He came into it at the right moment to kind of help it launch. Microtransactions in video games. He’s got his finger in that as well. So, therefore all his shit.
Megan: Right-wing media. He seems [inaudible].
Carrie: Yeah. So much of the right-wing media, especially the online stuff and memeing Trump into the presidency.
Megan: Yeah. He was looking at really alt-right websites before it was cool. He was linking to some, I don’t know if they would be called right-wing or alt-right stuff, but it seems like he had his finger on the pulse in that [inaudible]. I don’t know.
Carrie: Yeah, and people have said that they think that he wasn’t particularly political until he was arrested.
Megan: That’s what “Behind the Bastards” was saying.
Carrie: Maybe that’s where I got it from, but I’ve been listening to many podcasts. I think that’s probably true. He didn’t really care that much. He just wanted to make money.
Megan: Yeah, and then he wanted to clear his name after that.
Carrie: He really tried. He must have been so pissed when he got arrested again. He must have been so pissed because everything he was doing was so that that couldn’t happen to him, and then all of a sudden it did. [crosstalk]. I wonder how, actually.
Megan: [inaudible] Survivors.
Carrie: Pardon?
Megan: Survivors. Didn’t they fight for it? I don’t know.
Carrie: That’s true. They did, but honestly, I’m surprised that was allowed to happen now after all of this.
Megan: Especially during Trump’s term.
Carrie: Yeah. I don’t remember if we said this on here or not, but it really feels like he was murdered.
Megan: Well, if Julie K. Brown thinks so, then she’s like, [inaudible].
Carrie: That’s right.
Megan: Yeah. On The Daily or on The Journal, she’s basically like, “Of course he was killed.”
Carrie: What was that that I sent you? I can’t remember what it was now. It wasn’t The Daily because I don’t listen to The Daily anymore.
Megan: You listen to The Journal?
Carrie: I don’t think I listen to anything called The Journal.
Megan: [inaudible]. I don’t know what you sent me then. I thought it was one of those, but anyway, she’s the reporter that broke everything in the Miami Herald in 2018. We brought it back to life. Wasn’t it Alan Dershowitz that basically made it so she couldn’t get a Pulitzer for that?
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: They’re all connected. They’re all one man, right?
Carrie: They’re all one man. They have the same gross ideas about IQ and women, and it’s on a spectrum, I guess, of how shitty they go on those two things.
Megan: And race. I don’t know. We can be better. Maybe we can learn some lessons from this. Who’s going to learn[?] I feel like some people are lost.
Carrie: I think the big thing we need to learn is we can’t make any one person a hero. We have to hold everybody to account. If people fuck up, we shouldn’t protect them, especially if they’re a rich old white dude. Why are we protecting Chomsky?
Megan: Yeah. Exactly. He’s not even around to see y’all kissing his ass.
Carrie: I know. That’s the only thing that makes me feel a little bad, that he’s probably very much not aware, and that feels kind of shitty, to be talking smack about somebody who’s on their deathbed.
Megan: [inaudible] he’ll know no consequences.
Carrie: Right. So, can we give the consequence of he needs to be reevaluated? Bare minimum. You don’t have to throw everything out if you don’t want to, but I do think that you should at least take a step back. Think about it.
Megan: Yeah, and it comes to the point where we are writing footnotes in our articles where it says, espousing universal grammar doesn’t mean that I endorse Noam Chomsky as a man or something. I don’t know. Listen.
Carrie: Yes, he was already problematic in so many ways. He was kind of a monster in our field, and the language wars, or linguistic wars, I should say, were pretty bad. It was basically him terrorizing people. One of my former professors in undergrad basically kind of, not even left the field, because he was still teaching, but he just didn’t do any more research. He was just like, “Okay, whatever.” And then Chomsky kind of stole the ideas of that field that he had quashed. So I don’t know.
Megan: I just feel like someone who studied language development, I was basically working in the psychology department because I think a lot of people who would have looked at the kind of work that maybe challenged it or even just questioned it went into psychology or other fields. They weren’t in linguistic departments. I don’t know. I just wonder.
Carrie: It could be that that’s part of the reason why. I also had a professor who was an acquisitionist when I was an undergrad. I don’t know how much he questioned or didn’t question because I wasn’t super into acquisition.
Megan: Yeah. I know, but he’s definitely been a bully.
Carrie: He’s definitely been a bully, yeah. 100% been a bully. He’s said some very uncomfortable things about certain genocides. But one thing I was pleasantly surprised by is that he was a huge critic of Israel in those emails. I have to give him credit for that.
Megan: Yeah. [crosstalk].
Carrie: He was like, “No, this is fucked up.” People are complicated.
Megan: We contain multitudes, but just because we contain multitudes doesn’t mean Chomsky deserves to be protected [inaudible].
Carrie: Forgiven or just papered over. This can’t be papered over.
Megan: No.
Carrie: It can’t. It could also be worse. We don’t know. But what’s there right now is bad enough for me to say, “Stop fucking protecting him.”
Megan: Yeah. Exactly. At a certain point, you might be just telling on yourself.
Carrie: Right. That’s what I always think about people who protect too strongly. I worry about it, but that means something about you.
Megan: Yeah. Me too.
Carrie: And so I did some searching for certain names on here because I was like, “Mmm.”
Megan: I don’t blame you.
Carrie: I didn’t see anybody. There were definitely some names that I recognized, but as far as I could tell, there was no interaction between that person and Epstein, so I won’t even bring him up because that would be unfair.
Megan: Yeah, exactly. [inaudible].
Carrie: Anyway, I don’t even know what to say. He’s an arsehole about so many fucking things. Epstein and Chomsky should have known better.
Megan: Yeah. And stop protecting Chomsky.
Carrie: Yeah. Just stop it.
Megan: That’s the title, right?
Carrie: Yeah. You know what? Yes, it is.
Megan: Nope.
Carrie: We always leave on such a fun final message. Stop protecting Chomsky. Maybe that was a giggle. You know what? Never mind. Maybe I do giggle more than I think. Whatever. I don’t care.
Megan: We don’t care.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, if anybody has any other things they have noticed that we did not talk about that are particularly about language, and maybe we misunderstood something, please absolutely let us know. Because I do want to get this right, but it was just so hard.
Megan: It was hard. Yeah.
Carrie: And I do feel like it was hurting my soul to read those emails.
Megan: I know.
Carrie: Especially when it was the finance stuff. I tried not to delve into it too much because I was like, “No, it’s not my business.” But I was like, “Why is he so mean to his children and his grandchildren? I don’t like [inaudible].”
Megan: I know. That’s enough reason to be like, “Stop protecting Chomsky.” Oh my God.
Carrie: That was also shitty. It was shitty in a different kind of way.
Megan: All right. We have another message that we always leave with our listeners: don’t be an arsehole.
Carrie: Don’t be an arsehole.
Megan: And stop protecting Chomsky.
Carrie: Stop it.
Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, the music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com, and our website is vocalfriespod.com.
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The Vocal Fries Pod 