From: Jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 7:52 AM To: Noam Chomsky Cc: Subject: e: e: 1. if you would design a fair tax system. what goals would you suggest. I ve been researching how to start a new =inancial system for Zimbabwe. its now so broken it prese=ts a clean petrie dish, exchange rate of a billion billion dollars equals one us dollar 2 berwick and yang. clever. =olution hunters, . not sure if question raisers ,=sherman better 3 . taking sherman work . and my conjectures ug 's would be genetically created modules of "sense makers. " structures t=at were able to separate sense from non-sense. I think there would be a ug for vision . smell etc and probably similar or=connected in some way. in previous emails I have been referring to &q=ot;shapes" as a metaphor for those structures. shap=s do not have an input /output . a failing of the computational analogies. let me try this , a cell membrane , has a shape, it se=arates inner from outer. it is easy to see what is inside or o=t. the shape of the membrane is determined solely by a probability d=stribution. nothing more. The tons of works on spoken language =seem in vain to try to make of the mechanism from a minuscule sampling of=the combinatorics . silly. in the elephant and the blind man s=ory, , they are not even close to touching the elephant they are fasc=nated by its droppings. On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Noam Chomsky «= href="mailto: target="_blank'a>=wrote: I wouldn't dare to run the sh=w for money 101, but I'm sure I would learn a lot by sitting in.</=pan> It's true that grammars stand=outside of time, a fact that many linguists and psychologists don'= understand. There are suggestions of something like a "universal UG," =hough not couched in just these terms. Notably Michael Sherman =99s theory that a universal genome appeared at about the time of the Cambr=an explosion, and all forms of life are minor variants of it. From: Jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]=m] Sent: Monday, June 22, 2015 12:06 AM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: 4 EFTA_R1_01620939 EFTA02496456

1. dont you have any =uestions about money, . ? ? finance.. =? I owe you some knowledge . 2 .to say the shape c=n be" decribed " by language is redundant. the "shape"=is the metaphor for an n-dimentional object , it stands outside of t=me. as do grammars , but sentences do not, they require time. = the shape is somewhat like a fitness landscape? contrasted with communication which also requires = time dimension and biololgy that needs and uses energy . I suggest the mammal Ug is a subcategory of all UG.s = and that as biology prefers redundancy . the other modules, ie vision are small distortions of it. 3. during that UN period I often give a " money 101 to world leaders who have in many case.. little knorledge of a subject to which they give many speeches and policy directives , as they only have experinces such as that of a g=neral , a politicitain, in some instancees a disk jockey, before having to run their country. I would love to consider =ome of what you thought was " fair " . with regard. allocations. if you were running the show. href="mailto On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Noam Chomsky «= target="_blank">awrote: I follow up to the point where you wr=te "the organizing principle of the shape is language... =80 No doubt it can (partially) be described in language, but that's not what y=u mean. Zipf's law is a rank-frequenc= distribution. And also meaningless, as Mandelbrot showed 60 years a=o. I hope Yang is clear about this. He surely knows.</=> Noam From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]=m] Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2015 2:48 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: it is my failing not =ours. the old math requires numbers . too li=iting. ( we can put a metric overlay on later in the chain) i=agine a shape in real space. it is readily apparent if a line either fits on the shape or not . how=do you know. ? you compare the line with the shape. your visual system allows the mental shape to either map onto or not onto the shape in a coherent manner. the shape is not an input device ,it is an object . the organizing principle of the shape is la=guage, the shape is a collection of grammars. line= on the shape are either coherent or not. coherent ones are le=itimate sentences . yang is flexible in his use of the term probability.=. for example he in a number of papers refers to zipf as a probabiltiy dis=ribution. i have checked a number of his papers after your last remark, I 5 EFTA_R1_01620940 EFTA02496457

think it is a mistake. he m=ans that after empirical measurement . for ex word frequency, . if ten times out of 100 the corpus has the word x. then he describes the probablility of finding the word as 10 perc=nt . this is not correct. it is only the probablity of finding the word in the=frequency list . but he is very accomplished at mathematical m=dels. On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Noam Chomsky cOMMIMMIE > =rote: Interesting image, but I don'= see what it tells us about language. The problem looks to me like this, ro=ghly. Take, say, the human visual system. There's a genetic component that determines that humans will=have a mammalian and not an insect visual system, and much else. Same wit= other subsystems of the organism — "organs," =80 modules." Language in particular. The technical name fo= this component, whatever it turns out to be, is UG. UG therefore de=ermines that certain systems are possible I-languages for humans, others are not. =1 presume that is what the "biological organizing principle =9D for language is. It's plainly not an input system, though=it determines possible input systems for human languages. I don =80 t see how we improve understanding by looking at it from this perspective.q=pan> A minor technical problem, not serious, has to do with distinguishing digit=t infinity from continuity, like continuous lines on the surface of a hemi=phere. I think you'll find Yang inte=esting. Noam From: Jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]=m] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2015 10:52 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: 1.1 will wait on vale=ia. we can craft a fun few days 2, try this on but only if you get a moment , i know you =re busy 6 EFTA_R1_01620941 EFTA02496458

it appear to me that ""language" can be defined as the biological organizing principle that creates a shape spa=e. "coherent sentences " are defined as those that f=t on the shape. The projections on the sensory motors, allows commun=cation. . There are an infinite digital number of sentences.that do fit on the shape , but=orders of magnitude more, that do not fit.- to attempt a naive=representation, imagine a hemisphere, ( symmetric), any continuous line drawn on its surface , is a sentence. there are infinite numbers of lines that can be drawn. however, try=ng to connect two points, directly without traversing the hemishpere is also infinitely possible but most solutions need to leav= the surface. The principle that organizes the shape is NOT an input device. one can map inputs onto the shap= but it is not THE shape , ex, a hemisphere bowl in 3 =pace, analogy, one can put marbles in the bowl and they will map a p=th to the bottom. but the shape of the bowl . determines how f=st they move, and in which direction, . the shape of the bowl is the language= there is a shape for vision as well. = it exists without input, certain paths are more probable etc. 3. I will contact Yang href="mailto On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 10:41 PM, Noam Chomsky «= target="_blank"> =wrote: Valeria's not here right now,=so will have to check with her about late September. Really intrigui=g possibilities, and a delightful offer. On Yang, I read his work quite differ=ntly. He does make use of word frequencies and probability distribut=ons, but as far as I am aware in pretty straightforward and innocuous ways. And he's quite sophisticated about these matters. Smart and int=resting guy. You might want to contact him directly. I don't recall his using Zipf=E2 s "laws," but it wouldn't matter much. Mandelbrot showed back in the '50s that they were a statistical artifact, near meaningless. I was, incidentally, surprised to see how he dealt with this result in =is autobiography. I think he called it his "Keplerian moment=" or something like that. Noam From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]=m] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2015 12:10 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: EFTA_R1_01620942 EFTA02496459

I think you might try to plan on late september, ta=ing my apt and spending a few days with valeria in the city, A= it is the openiing of the UN general assembly , as well as the Clinton global initiative New york is rife with people with a= least influence, if not new ideas. . I, we. can organize man= fun interactions. my house becomes a respite for the select f=w, to take off their ties , and talk openly. You would be welcome to join as many create or participate as you prefer. yangs work deals with language as signals . his relia=ce on Zipf like distributions is a good example of naive probablities. . empirically zipf appears. but cannot be derived from any of his or anyones elses to date. so somewhat misleading to suggest the&=uot; probililty of word , x appearing, " it is the =istake of frequency vs probablity, and careless common usage.=u> href="mailto On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 11:44 AM, Noam Chomsky «= target="_blank"> &g=; wrote: Sounds like a most interesting person= And someone it would be very interesting to talk to. I presum= he spends time in NY. Hope we can work it out. Would be interested in learning more =bout your critique of the use of probability in language work, mostly by computational cognitive scientists, as far as I know. I =80 ye written critiques of it too, but on different grounds: failure to =ccount for what they are trying to show, or even to understand the issue. There are, I think, some notable exceptions, like the recent work of Charles Yang, one of Bob Berwick's student=. From: Jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]=m] Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2015 8:22 AM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: He is the head of the human rights court in strasbou=g. / former prime minister of norway... He=would be happy to have a dinner with us. . subj. drones. solitary confinement , death penalty ( europe does not have one , so if killing terrorist= is to be under an act of war, argument , then they, as enemies ,hav= war rights. ). tribalism, mafia, syria, ukraine, saudi, egypt. libya, . We have a great friendship. - I give him his financial ABC's class. he gives me my pragmatic =olitics lessons. fyi great similarity now as the old political=guard seem toreflect the patterns of the old long term investors, ( skills of . planning. executing . etc ) now confronted by media . and pressured to make quick decisions. ie behaving like inexperienced short term traders. fyi I h=ve read a great number of language papers. many if not most, m=suse the concept of probability . making naive, erroneous uses of th= word , hence forming nonsensical conclusions. ( like the silly , life on =ther planets " calculation". probability needs repetition =nd symmetry, historical events do not have either ! )<=p> On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 1:08 AM, Noam Chomsky <mailto »= wrote: Glad it worked. Hope that the s=eech was of some interest. 8 EFTA_R1_01620943 EFTA02496460