From: jeffrey E. <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 10:43 AM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: 1.do you have any specific questions for him? he thinks its not going in the right direction. ie. bibi, not stro=g enough to make tough decisions. . ehud trusts hamas more than abbas. I know you dont like telephones but w= could set up a text exchange if you wanted to. 2. more importan= I use my coin flip analogy often. ie. . single cell experim=nts, like looking through a microscope at my coin , measure its cont=nt it moment, its shape, all trying to figure out why the res=lt after a long while is always the same -equal number of tail= and heads. a consistent result. no algorithm , no comp=tation . Why i am pushing you on this , is that i firmly=believe that language needs a theory, cognitive science =eeds a theory, your minions and intellectual offspring are like bio engineers --they will be able to mimic some of th= behavior , yes it is amazing but not interesting. you have th=ught long and hard and more importantly have seen what does NOT work. einsteins =hought experiments led to truly remarkable results in physics. Im hoping that resu=ts like that can be achieved for biology On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 11=05 PM, Noam Chomsky > wrote: Have a good weekend. I wonder what he=thinks about where the state is heading now. We'll probably be at the Cape= in Wellfleet, if we can make it. Maybe there are miracles, but I think=more prosaic approaches yield rich results in domains like vision (Marr =80 s main concern) and language. Like some of those I've mentioned. I don't see how to progress in other=ways. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 10:20 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: 1 you are a treat and=l very much appreciate your non finance views.): 2 ehud barak will b= with me for the weekend in ny. not sure where you are? Marr, Marr,-try, probabilty, , symmetry. ent=opy. it might look like computation but it is not. it mi=ht look like algorithm but it is not. the flip of a coin does not co=pute, have an algorithm or a mechanism. though it might look as if EFTA_R1_01624355 EFTA02498693

it does. it is not an input system, there is not mechanism drivni=g the heads and tails towards equal numbers. , there is not nature looking=to see what the previous results were and computing the next result. like =our ug it is more of a miracle. On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 9:54 PM, Noam Chomsky c » =rote: I wouldn't take the term =80 mechanism" too literally. It refers to whatever is taki=g place in the brain. For some, as most of those in the Nowak group, it means neural nets. =For Gallistel, it's processes internal to the cell. Useful t= look at these matters in terms of Mares three levels: computatio=, algorithm, mechanism. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 9:46 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Re: 1 will do , by the way new =ousing starts were the highest in 7 years. the mortgage intere=t deduction cheerleaders , ( not me ). are thrilled. 2.1 am willing to be convinced, as always=/u> 3. my admittedly naive point is that &qu=t;mechanism" ,I believe ,is the wrong concept. driven in error,=by the machine -computer analog since the early 1900s . instead think of probability, it is not a mechanism On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 9:05 PM, Noam Chomsky c > > =rote: 1. Not a trivial matter. I'm not the=best person to ask. I'd suggest contacting people who =99ve really thought seriously about these issues, like Robert Pollin, a fi=e independent economist at U Mass Amherst 2. Sherman's speculation is an interesting exten=ion of recent discoveries about conservation, deep homologies, regulatory =ircuits, and other elements of what's sometimes called "the evo-devo revolution." It remains to be seen whether a=ything can be done with it. I think you underestimate the contributi=ns of Berwick and his students, including Yang. 3. The idea that there is a "ug" for vis=on, language, etc., seems to be essentially what Randy Gallistel calls =80 the norm in neuroscience," quoted in the paper on modularity =hat I sent you. And yes, they're 2 EFTA_R1_01624356 EFTA02498694

certainly connected, at least a= the level of cells, and presumably well beyond. These are live and =ignificant research areas. These "central modules" d= not have input or output, but they are accessed by input systems and in some cases, like language, by output systems. That seems a fair p=cture of the rough cognitive architecture. I don't follow th= rest. It's true that work on human language uses as evidenc= what is available, namely performance. And much of the work unfortunately is fascinated by the droppings, just as in other fields. But there is some work that seeks to discover the mechanisms, as discus=ed in the papers I sent you. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2015 7:52 AM To: Noam Chomsky Cc Subject: Re: Re: 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. 23, 2015 at 12:28 AM, Noam Chomsky «= href="mailto target="_blank"> =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. 3 EFTA_R1_01624357 EFTA02498695