Comment by romaniv
15 years ago
Chomsky is just appealing to our own biases. We don't want to be statistical approximation machines
Do we? Intellectual cynicism that makes people to publicly reduce humans and humanity to something mechanical and predictable is probably the most popular attitude I see online. This doesn't mean it's wrong in all cases, but surely it's not something exceptional.
The kind of intellectual cynicism you describe is often a prerogative and mode of those highly educated in the sciences, and therefore of a very small majority of humans generally, who otherwise in my experience do tend to think of themselves as agents free of statistical determinations and as having wills and minds rather than cogs of any sort.
this statement is exactly the attitude described by romaniv.