All language subtitles for Is.the.Man.Who.Is.Tall.Happy.2013.720p.64-fiend-eng(1)

I discovered Noam Chomsky by

picking up a couple of DVDs at a
video store in New York a few

years ago: "Manufacturing
consent" and "a rebel without

a pause."
I remember the sequence

where a few kids from a school
radio station are interviewing

Professor Chomsky at their
little station.

Noam was giving them his full
attention, as he does to

everyone who requests it.
Film and video are both, by

their nature, manipulative.
The editor or director proposes

an assembly of carefully
selected segments that he/she

has in mind.
In other words, the context

becomes more important than the
content, and, as a result, the

voice that appears to come from
the subject is actually coming

from the filmmaker.
That is why I find the process

manipulative.
The human brain forgets

the cuts -- a faculty
specifically human that, I will

learn, Noam calls "psychic
continuity."

The brain absorbs a constructed
continuity as a reality and,

consequently, gets convinced to
witness a fair representation of

the subject.
On the other hand, animation

that I decided to use for this
film is clearly the

interpretation of its author.
If messages, or even propaganda,

can be delivered, the audience
is constantly reminded that they

are not watching reality, so
it's up to them to decide if

they are convinced or not.
Also, I have been looking for a

project that would add up a long
process to a hopefully coherent

result, a way to focus my often
shattered creativity and maybe

contribute to expose values I
share.

Of course, the egotistic side of
me also felt empowered about the

prospect of spending some time
with "the most important thinker"

"alive," as he is described in a
paragraph which, coincidentally,

ends by asking why Chomsky is an
"American-hater," a

misconception only possible if
you consider that the same

people who run a country also
constitute it!

But what the hell?
Professor Chomsky is not getting

any younger, and I better hurry
up.

After all, I just did a film
about my aunty for similar

reasons -- not animated,
though.

Then again, she is less
controversial, or is she?

We're gonna have a conversation,
and, um, sometimes it's gonna

run, or sometimes, not so.
Hopefully, it's not gonna be too

distracting.
>> No, it isn't bad.

Okay.
'Cause it's a bit noisy, so...

It's like that.

It's a old-fashioned sound.
>> Yeah, it's good.

So I wanted you to be prepared.

Hearken back to your youth.

Doesn't it wreck the audio?
>> A little bit, but -- we will

hear the camera, but as long as
we understand the words, I don't

mind.
>> Yeah.

So, I prepared my question
a little bit, but I... Uh...

Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous.
I-I, uh...

You are nervous?
>> He is.

After all your experience
in the public eye?

No, not... It depends on the
person I'm meeting more than

me.
So, I wanted to start with

asking you if you could record
the very first memory of your

life?

First memory of my life?
>> Yeah.

Yeah, I suppose.

There are memories that I can
date because I know where they

were.
Mm.

So, I can date memories from
about a year and a half, when I

was sitting on a -- I know where
it was, so it had to be a

year and a half -- where I
was sitting on a counter in my,

uh...
My aunt, who -- my parents had

jobs...

...which was unusual.
This was the 1930s.

So, there was a stream of aunts
and cousins and others who came

through, and there were several
aunts who spent time with us.

One of them was trying to get me

to eat oatmeal, which I didn't
want to eat...

...So I just put it in my cheek

and refused to swallow it.
And she tried to figure out how

to get me to swallow that
oatmeal, but I must have sat

there for a long time.
I was a stubborn kid.

>> I was not going to eat that

oatmeal.

I remember that very well, and
that had to be at about...

16 months or 17 months, and I
remember other things from that

time.
I was in a nursery school.

I remember sort of standing
there looking around, wondering

what all these kids were up to,
and why, and so...

Mm-hmm.
Do you think it's -- it's

connected with the development
of language, the formation of

memories?
Does it correspond to where the

brain starts to grasp...
>> A lot is being learned about

language acquisition.
The more intensively the topic

is studied...

...the more sophisticated the
research techniques, the more we

learn that children know quite a
lot of language, much more than

you would expect, before they
can exhibit any of that

knowledge.
>> Mm-hmm.

The direct evidence about
this -- and there's also

indirect evidence.
So, just to mention some of the

indirect evidence, there is a...

...technique of teaching
language to the deaf-blind.

Actually, my wife did a lot of
the work on this.

It's called the Tadoma method.
>> Yes, with the hand!

Well, what they do is teach
the person to put their hand on

someone's face...

...and using the motions of the
face and the vocal chords, to

interpret what you're saying.
Extremely little -- very little

information comes through, but
people get a very satisfactory

knowledge of language from that.
I mean, so much so that you

have to do pretty complex tests
to see what they don't know.

However, they have never
succeeded in using this

method...

...for people who lost sight and
hearing before about 18 months

old.
What seems to be the case is

that during the early exposure,
where the child is not

manifesting very much
knowledge, maybe producing a

word or two-word sentences,
they're acquiring the basic

character of the language --
quite a lot of knowledge, which

they can then build on when
they -- it's unconscious, of

course.

But they can build on it when
they get, at least later,

instruction which has very
little evidence.

And they can, in fact, live in a
society where people are

talking...

...and they can understand what
they're saying if they can put

their hand on your face.
In fact, I should say that, you

know, one of the most striking
things about language, which has

really not been studied...
Just consider an infant, you

know, a 1-day-old infant.
Now, there's all kinds of things

going on in the world.
How does the infant figure out

what part of what's going on in
the world has to do with

language?
It's an incredible feat!

Now, their --
>> well, you know what?

When I grew up, we used to
believe in reincarnation.

What? Reincarnation?
Oh, that's Plato.

It's a fairy tale, but I
think it makes me look to a new

being as a fully completed
person.

That's Plato.
That's Plato's theory of

remembrance.
>> Uh-huh.

He was puzzled by the
question of how you know so

much, and he said, "well, you
must remember it from an earlier"

life."
You're as smart as Plato.

So, I wanted to ask you,

quickly, the type of education
you received from your parents

and, quickly, at school.
>> It was a Deweyite progressive

school, which was very
successful.

And it was -- for me, at least,
it was perfect.

It was not unstructured, but it

did emphasize initiative,
creativity, and working with

others.
There was no grading, you know,

but you -- you were encouraged
to pursue your own interests...

Mm-hmm.
>> ...And -- but within a

structure that was established.
So, you went, you did, you know,

Learned the things you had to

learn, but you were all pursuing
your own interests and often

working with others.
In fact, I didn't -- I

wasn't even aware that I was a
good student until I went to

high school.
I went from this relatively

free, creative, exciting
environment to a pretty

regimented academic high school
where everyone was ranked and

did exactly what they were
supposed to do and everyone's

trying to get into college and
so on.

And then I discovered I was a

good student.
I mean, I knew I had skipped a

grade, and everyone else knew
I'd skipped a grade, but nobody

else...
The only thing anyone noticed

was I was the smallest kid in
the class, but it didn't mean

anything, aside from that.
And I can remember the school

years very well.
I barely remember high school.

It's kind of like a black hole.
>> And do think competition is

counter-stimulating?
>> It shouldn't be th--

what's the point of being better
than someone else?

And where was this school?
>> Right outside the city limits

of Philadelphia.
It was in kind of an open

countryside, so, you know, by
the time I was old enough to, my

best friend and I would spend
Saturday riding our bikes all

over the countryside.

Did you keep friends from
this age all during your life?

Uh, we sort of separated by
high school, you know, went our

separate ways.
>> Uh-huh.

You spent a lot of time on your
own?

With my father, by the time I
was 10 or 11 or so, every Friday

night, for example, we would
read Hebrew classics, you

know, 19th-century literature...

...essays.
And that was just part of the

routine of incorporating the...

...the emerging reviving Hebrew
culture, that was all their

lives.
I mean, that's what they

were devoted to -- the revival
of -- of the language, the

culture, and the palestinian
community.

This hebraic revival that --

Did you say "palestinian
community"?

Well, you know, it's
pre-Israel, so it's a Jewish

community in palestine.
>> Okay.

Yeah.
I suppose, by now, my father

would be called an anti-zionist.
He was then a deeply committed

zionist, but for him, it was a
cultural revival, basically.

Mm-hmm.
>> Not particularly interested

in a Jewish state.
>> Mm-hmm.

Do you remember if you had an
ambition for your future, as a

child?
>> A lot of crazy ambitions.

I remember once telling my
mother that I had decided that

when I grew up, I wanted to be a
taxidermist.

A taxidermist?
>> Don't ask me why.

I guess I liked the word.

I was about 8 years old.
>> So, since I'm ignorant, I got

the luck to discover descartes.
I mean, I knew who descartes

was, but I read him after I read
you.

And I noticed it gives you the
tools to doubt what he's saying.

It's like the opposite of
dogmatism.

I mean, that, you know, ought
to be the ideal of teaching,

anyway, whether it's children or
graduate students.

They should be taught to
challenge and to question.

Images that come from the
enlightenment about this say

that teaching should not be like
pouring water into a vessel.

It should be like laying out a
string along which the student

travels in his or her own way,
and maybe even questioning

whether the string's in the
right place.

And, you know, after all, that's
how modern science started.

For thousands of years, it was
accepted by scientists that

objects move to their natural
place.

So, a ball goes to the ground,
and steam goes to the sky.

And these things are kind of
like common sense, and they were

taken for granted for literally
thousands of years...

Mm-hmm.
>> ...From Aristotle.

And it wasn't until Galileo and
the modern scientific revolution

that scientists decided to be
puzzled by these obvious things,

and as soon as you start to
question things, you see nothing

like that makes any sense.
And every stage of science, or,

you know, even just learning --
serious learning -- comes from

asking, "why do things work like
that?"

Why not some other way?"
All right?

You find that the world is a
very puzzling place,

and if you're willing to be
puzzled, you can learn.

If you're not willing to be
puzzled, and just copy down

what you're told or behave the
way you're taught, you just

become a replica of someone
else's mind.

I mean, some of the technical
work I'm doing now is initiated

by my suddenly realizing that
assumptions that have been

standard throughout modern
history of generative grammar --

but, in fact, throughout the
traditional study of language --

just have no basis.
And when we ask, "okay, then",

why do we assume them?"
You have to look for a basis,

and lots of avenues open up.
And that happens constantly.

And do you remember when
you start to build your own

voice or your own philosophy, in
a way?

And could you describe how this
process happened?

It's a constant process, and
it probably starts with my not

wanting to eat my oatmeal, you
know?

"Why?" You know?
>> Uh-huh.

And in any kind of scientific
inquiry, any kind of rational

inquiry -- it's striking in
science -- you have a conception

of how things ought to work.
If you look at the empirical

data, they're, usually, at least
partially recalcitrant.

Things don't fall into place.
So, you, typically, are working

with a conflict between a
conception of the way things

ought to work, in terms of, you
know, like, in simplicity,

naturalness, and a look at the
messy way in which things do

seem to work.
The galilean revolution,

which was a real revolution in
the way of looking at the world,

for one thing, because of the
willingness to be puzzled about

what seemed to be simple things,
it's a hard move to make.

In the case I mentioned, it was
2,000 years, you know -- smart

people.
>> Yeah.

They said that nature is
simple...

...And it's the task of the

scientist to show that it's
simple, and if we've not been

able to do that, we've failed as
scientists.

So, if you find irreducible
complexity, you just haven't

understood.
Well, that's a pretty good

guideline, and it does turn out
to be a very effective driving

element in inquiry.
Because -- there's good reasons

where I think it ought to turn
out to be simple, you know?

I mean, for Galileo and the

whole of early modern science
right through Newton -- great

scientists, you know, huygens,
others, bernoulli, up through

Newton, you know, this is
that kind of classic period of

modern science -- there was a
very clear concept of

intelligibility.
The goal of science was to show

that the world is intelligible,
and "intelligible" meant

something.
It meant something that an

artisan could create, like gears
and levers, and something like a

model was these, let's say,
medieval clocks, you know, which

did all sorts of amazing things.
Now, that goes right through

Newton.
It's called the mechanical

philosophy.
"Philosophy" just meant science.

So, it's mechanical science, and
that's the goal.

And then Galileo, at the end of
his life, was kind of distraught

because he was not able to
construct mechanical models of

the tides and the motion of the
planets and so on, so he felt

his life -- scientific life had
failed.

Mm-hmm.
>> But then it went on.

Finally, you get to Newton, and
Newton demonstrated that, to his

dismay, that the world doesn't
work like a machine, that there

are what his scientific
colleagues called occult forces,

namely attraction and repulsion,
which don't operate by contact.

So, you can attract things at a
distance, which was just

unintelligible.
Newton himself thought that this

was, what he called an
absurdity, which no person with

any scientific understanding
could ever believe.

Uh-huh.
>> There are just inherent

mysteries which are beyond our
cognitive capacities.

Well, that was correct, and that
was a real shocking discovery.

It has now been absorbed.
So, to talk about the current

stage is misleading, if you're
thinking about...

...Emerging fields, like

cognitive science, because we're
not in that stage.

Mm-hmm.
>> We haven't got to the

galilean stage, yet.
>> Me, I work like a machine.

I know this sequence is quite a
struggle, and believe me, it's

taking me forever to animate it.
So, I'll take a break.

Noam kept coming back to
Galileo, Newton, the

enlightenment, and I tried
very hard to keep it short,

but it seems endless.
However, this is a very

important part, in fact, and I
must get through it.

I think that Noam is telling me
what it takes to do true

science...
Something to do with ideas,

creativity, and rigorous
observation of nature and the

willingness to be proven wrong
and start the experiment again

all over at any time.
Richard feynman, the great

physicist, often talked about
science integrity and said you

should always publish the
results of your experiment,

especially when they prove you
wrong.

He also had a funny story about
a good scientist that was

ignored.
In 1937, young, he was called,

was trying to teach a rat to
count three doors to get some

food.
So, he would place the food each

time in a maze, three doors away
from the right, to get it to

count three doors.
He would place the rat in a

different place each time,
with the cheese three doors

away.
But the rat never counted the

doors.
He always went right through the

door where the food was placed
the time before.

No matter where young placed the
rat and the food, the result was

the same.
He thought the rat must

recognize a detail on the
door, so he repainted them all

identically.
Still, the same result.

He then thought the rat could
still smell the food from where

it was the previous time,
so he put some chemical to wipe

any possible remaining smell.
Still, the rat went to the exact

same door.
Maybe the rat could notice some

light from the lab and use them
as a guide, so he covered the

maze.
Still, the same result.

He eventually found out that the
rat could tell by the way the

floor sounded when he was
running down the corridor, so he

put the whole maze on sand.
The rat couldn't tell anymore

and had to learn to count the
doors.

Feynman called this experiment
an a-class experiment because

young had to go through all the
possible steps before he could

affirm it was conclusive -- a
rigor that he felt was,

unfortunately, uncommon in the
science the way it was

conducted at this time.
Now I am just adding stuff that

is not even from Noam.
But I've put a loop under it, so

it is not so much work.
The truth is that I am

frantically going through this
animation, and it has been two

years since I started, so Noam
is now 84.

I neglect my appearance, and I
should be focusing on the film I

am preparing,
"I'écume Des jours," but I won't

stop.
I must finish the film and show

it to Noam before...
Well, before he's dead.

My room is a pile of animation
paper, my mother is at the

hospital, but I only care about
Noam's health, only to show him

the finished film.
This is childish and

unscientific, but true.

A few sessions we did before,
we talked about evolution.

You're very skeptical, and I
thought...

Not skeptical about evolution.

There's a common confusion,
outside of serious biology.

Now, I mean, natural selection's
a factor in evolution -- no

serious biologist doubts that --
but it's one of many factors.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> For example, mutation's a

factor.
>> Yeah.

I mean, there are many other
factors.

For example, if you just take a
look at our, you know, our own

genetic endowment, a lot of it
comes from transposition.

When you -- when you talk
about the "andormant"...

The... "Enduremount"?
How -- I'm sorry -- how do you

say "undoment"?
>> When you're born with what...

What? Like, uh...
>> Innate.

Yeah.
But do you use the word

"andoumant"?
>> How do you spell it?

Write it on the blackboard.

I don't know what he's saying.

"An-dou-ment"?
>> Endowment!

Oh, endowment!
>> Just had to write it down.

Sorry. I just couldn't hear.
>> So, you think that we have a

way to comprehend the world
within our self...

Yeah.
>> ...And we can only comprehend

the world up to this limit?
>> Well, that's just hume --

that's Newton and hume.
So, you try to discover, "what"

is this cognitive endowment
that we have?

That it is a fixed cognitive
endowment is not really

arguable, unless you think we're
angels.

Yeah.
>> But if we're part of the

organic world, we have fixed
capacities, just like I can't

fly, you know?
These capacities have a certain

scope, and they have certain
limits.

That's the nature of organic
capacities.

Then comes the question, "okay,
what are they?"

In fact, one of the striking
things is what I just mentioned.

We -- our cognitive endowment
sort of compels us to regard the

world in mechanical terms.
We know that's wrong...

Yeah.
>> ...But we can't help seeing

the world like that.
If you look at the moon rising

in the early evening, at the
horizon, it's big.

Yeah. Yeah.
>> And then it gets smaller and

smaller.
It's called the moon illusion.

We know it's not true, but you
can't help seeing it.

Yeah.
Well, I thought of it a lot, and

I know its one of the paradox,
but I think our brain zooms.

It's like if you see the world
through a window which is at a

far distance and you will see a
bridge in the distance and the

window delimits your attention,
then you would feel the bridge

is much bigger than what it is.
>> But now you're trying to give

an explanation, and there's been
a lot of work on what the

explanation is.
>> Yeah.

But whatever -- and it's not
so trivial -- but whatever the

explanation is, we can't help
seeing it, okay?

We just see it, just like we
can't help thinking that the

world works by physical
interaction, contact.

Some other part of our brain
tells us it's not true, well,

because of theories that have
been developed and say it can't

work like that.
>> Yeah.

But that can't change our
perception and interpretation

because that's just fixed.
>> Okay, try to visualize -- or

I guess it's not visualizable,
but this endowment.

So, we see a tree, and we
understand it's a tree.

Does it mean that our brain is
equipped with a fixed capacity

that tells us, "this is a tree"?
>> Here's another question where

it's good to be puzzled.
"How do we identify something as

a tree?"
It's not so simple.

So, for example, you plant a
tree, say a willow tree, which

is a good example.
It grows.

At some point, you cut a branch
off it, and you put that branch

in the ground.
Now, suppose it grows and it

becomes exactly identical to the
original tree.

Now, suppose the original tree
is cut down.

Is that new one the same willow
tree?

Why not?
It's genetically identical.

It has all the same properties.
But we know it's not the same

tree.
Well, why not?

I mean, and if you go further,
it turns out our concept of

"tree" or "rock" or "person" or
anything is extremely intricate.

And furthermore -- see, here's
what I think -- it's just a

classic error that runs right
through philosophy and

psychology and linguistics,
right up to the moment...

...That's the -- the idea that

words, say, meaning-bearing
elements like, say, "tree" or

"person" or, you know,
"John Smith" or anything --

pick out something in the
extramental world, something

that a physicist could identify,
so that if I have a word, say,

"cow," it refers to something in
a, you know, a scientist,

knowing nothing about my brain,
could figure out what counts as

a cow.
That's just not true.

That's why you have classic
books with names like

"words & object" --
"word & object," quine's major

book, or "words and things,"
Roger brown's major book.

That referentialist assumption
is simply false about humans.

Mm-hmm.
>> And it's true with

animals.
Like, as far as we know, in

animal communication, yeah,
that's actually true, but for

humans, it's simply untrue.
And furthermore, every infant

knows it.
And that poses a huge

evolutionary problem.
Where did that come from?

It imposes an acquisition
problem, a descriptive problem,

an evolutionary problem.
It's never been looked at

because everyone assumes,
"ah, well, there's just a

relationship."
That's like assuming things move

to their natural place.
We're never going to have a real

understanding of semantics
unless those illusions are

thrown out.

Well, something that always
struck me since I was young is,

like, you get the representation
of the world by symbols first.

Like, logically, you would see a
dog, and then you would see a

drawing of a dog and make the
connection.

But in your life, you get
exposed to the representation of

a dog in a very, actually
simplified way.

And then you go to the -- or
let's say you go outside and

you see a real dog.
>> The trouble is, that's not

the way it works.
Yeah, that's very

commonsensical, just false.
>> No, I'm not --

I'm saying it's how it's
exposed, like --

it makes sense, and every
work on philosophy or

linguistics says exactly that.
This just happens to be false.

And furthermore, every infant
knows it.

Now, fairy stories are based on
the fact that it's false.

Like, take a fairy story that
any child understands.

No, I'm not saying the child
believes it's a real dog.

What I'm saying is --
>> that's not the point.

We do not identify dogs in terms
of their physical

characteristics.
>> Hmm.

As you can see, I felt a bit
stupid here.

Let me explain.
I think I couldn't get my point

through to Noam.
Misuse of words and heavy accent

aggraved -- I mean, aggravated
my attempt.

I was simply expressing that, in
life, we first encounter images

of certain things, such as
animals, then, later, we would

see the real thing.
For instance, I saw many

pictures of a tiger before I saw
a real one in a zoo.

There is nothing to argue about
that, but Noam kept saying it

was false because of my use of
the word "representation."

I'm pretty sure that he
understood it as "mental"

"representation," as I was just
talking of an image in a book.

Nevertheless, it gave him the
opportunity to deepen his

argument, which is hard to
understand.

So, I kept the whole thing, even
though I look stupid.

Meanwhile, I decided to recycle
some of my drawings since he was

making the same point again.
>> We do not identify dogs in

terms of their physical
characteristics.

Hmm.
>> We identify dogs, for

example, in terms of a property
of psychic continuity.

Like, if a witch turns a dog
into a camel, and then some

fairy princess kisses the camel
and it turns back to a dog, it's

been a dog all along, even
when it looked like a camel.

I mean, that's the basis of
fairy tales.

Yeah, I was not saying
that it's --

but psychic continuity is not
a physical property.

Mm-hmm.
>> It's a property that we

impose on things.
So, therefore, there is

no hope for finding a way of
identifying the things that are

related to symbols by looking at
their physical properties.

They're individuated.
They're identified in terms of

our mental constructions, so
they're basically mental

objects.
>> Mm-hmm.

And that means the whole
referentialist concept has to be

thrown out...
And you have to look at the

relation of language to the
world in some different fashion.

So, and do you say we
constructed the world in

mirroring this image we had in
our mind, then?

We do it, but we don't do it
the way philosophers and

linguists think we do it.
We certainly do it.

So, for example, sure, we see
the world in terms of trees and

dogs and rivers and so on, but
then the question is, "well",

what are those concepts?"
Now, the standard assumption is

those concepts are linked to
physical -- identifiable,

physical things in the
extramental world, and that

assumption is just false.
>> Mm-hmm.

And unless we rid ourselves
of that assumption, we won't be

able to understand the way
thought and language relates

to the world.
But that's a topic that's just

taboo in philosophy and
psychology, so they're stuck.

They're like mechanics,
pre-Galileo, where everything

went to its natural place.
Well, as long as you keep to

that for thousands of years,
you're never going to understand

the mechanics of the world.
That's why -- I think these are

the kinds of reasons why it
makes very good sense to think

back to the earliest stages of
the scientific revolution.

Not Einstein -- that's too
sophisticated.

Let's go to the earliest stages,
where people had that incredible

intellectual breakthrough, and
they said, "let's be puzzled"

about what seems obvious.
So, why should we take it to be

"obvious that, if I let go of a
ball, it goes down and not up?"

Uh-huh.
>> "I mean, it's sort of"

obvious, but why?"
Well, as soon as you're willing

to ask that question, you get
the beginnings of modern

science.
If you're -- if you're not

willing to ask that question,
you say, "well, it goes down"

'cause it belongs on the
ground."

No science develops.
>> Once again, I had posed my

question the wrong way.
I was trying to ask if the way

humans built things such as
cities, art, cars, and so on,

was reflective of a sort of
a blueprint we would carry

within our endowment...
Like bees constructing their

hives, for instance.
So, next time I met Noam, I

showed him this animation,
hoping it would help to make

sense.

And it did make sense.
At the beginning of the second

interview, I showed the
work in progress to Noam, who

was quite pleased, it seems.
And I noticed in the second

interview that he was more
receptive to my ideas.

So I asked my question again,
but using bees and the hive as

an example made it more
confusing.

I suppose there is an...
Interaction.

So, if you watch children...
Building, trying to build a

house with cards, you know, you
stack them up and you put

something on top and...
They must have some initial

conception in mind of what
they're planning to do, but

it's certainly altered by the
process.

You see, "well, this is not
going to stand, so I have"

to rearrange it and do something
in a different way."

I mean, take the building we're
in -- one of its striking

characteristics, when you're
sitting in my office, is that

there aren't any right angles
in many of the buildings, so...

Everything's a little skewed.
The -- I don't know what was in

Frank Gehry's mind, but one
architect who came through,

working on the -- looking at
the structure of the building,

suggested to me that it has, in
some respects, the character of

a three-dimensional version of a
mondrian painting.

Yes, so, I wanted to know if
you have any thinking of the

mechanism of inspiration.
>> It's a mystery.

It's something common to humans.
You see it in young children.

You see it in scientists.
You see it in carpenters trying

to solve a complex problem of
how to build a house.

But... It's just something that
happens, in all kinds of

conditions -- strange
conditions.

So, for example, I was watching
a couple of carpenters working

on a summer cottage, and they
had a kind of an idea in mind,

but were kind of going along to
see how it would work.

They reached a problem that
looked insoluble, you know, and

they -- so they took off for a
while, and then they came back,

and then they immediately did
it.

And I asked, "how'd you do
that?"

And they said, "well, we went
out and smoked some pot, and it"

just kind of came to us.

Who knows? That's inspiration.
>> I wanted to get out this

sequence.
For a short time period, I had

an episode myself where I
indulged into this habit -- very

shortly, in fact.
And, looking back, it didn't do

me very good at all.
Now that I've said it, I can

keep this sequence.
That's interesting.

For instance, in my case, I use
a lot of my misunderstanding as

a source of inspiration, and I
realize that lately, like,

because my English is not good,
many times, when people talk to

me, I understand something
different.

I remember I was talking to my
friend, and she told me she had

made a model of a boat in a
forest, and I understood the

forest was in the boat, so I
imagined a sort of vegetable ark

of Noah -- Noah's ark.
Right.

I think something jarring takes
place, and that can happen in a

class, for example.
You're lecturing.

A student raises a question.
Suddenly, you recognize that

something you thought was
obviously true has a problem

with it.
And for a while, it may seem

insoluble, but you may take a
walk, or maybe overnight there's

something -- when you're
sleeping, something comes to

you, and all of a sudden, you
just see ways of looking at

the -- at the issue and the
world a little bit differently.

I think that's how, from
childhood on to...

People do creative work.
That's somehow the way it

happens.
Actually what's going on, nobody

understands.
>> In the little clip I'll show

you, you're talking a lot about
how we try to interpret the

world and how we ought to throw
away what's believed in

linguistics or philosophy.
You say, "why do we recognize"

that this is a different tree
when it's been cut and it grows,

and it's identical?"
And since then, I've read about

genetics, and that's a clone.
Basically, when you reproduce,

it's asexual reproduction, so
it's a clone, so it's

potentially identical.
But my only -- the only answer I

could give was that I know it's
a different tree because I saw

somebody come and cut it, and
then grow again.

Mm-hmm.
>> So I was thinking, it's

probably less trivial than that.
>> Well, actually, I think

there's a real point there.
Part of our concept of a tree

has to do with a certain, pretty
abstract, notion of continuity.

So, the original tree has a
continuous existence, which we

impose on it because,
genetically speaking, the branch

that was cut off is the same
object...

Yeah?
>> ...But when it becomes a

tree, it doesn't have the kind
of continuity that we interpret

as continuity, and a different
intelligence could interpret

continuity quite differently
and say that the new one is the

real tree.
That's our conception of

continuity...
>> Yeah.

...and it's a very complex
one.

So, for example, there's a
children's story which my

grandchildren like -- liked
when they were little.

It's a story about a donkey
named Sylvester.

And something happens, and it
turns Sylvester into a rock.

And the rest of the story is the
rock, Sylvester, trying to

explain to his parents --
parent donkeys -- that it's

really their baby Sylvester.
And since children's stories

have happy endings, something
else happens, and it turns him

back to Sylvester and
everybody's happy.

Well, the children understand
that the rock, though it has

none of the properties of a
donkey -- physical properties --

and has all the properties of a
rock, is really Sylvester.

And, for example, if he was
turned into a camel later or if

something would be a jar --
he's got to come back and be

what he is -- Sylvester.
>> Mm-hmm.

All right.
What that tells you is that,

without any instruction, of
course, an infant understands a

certain special kind of
continuity.

It's a very specific kind, even
more -- much more abstract,

even, than the case of the tree.
But there's a kind of psychic

continuity that we impose.
It's part of the interpretation

we impose on the world...
That... Identifies the objects

that are around us, whether it's
persons or rivers or rocks or

trees or anything else.
>> I think I have an example

that, maybe, make me understand
the concept.

When I meet a friend that I
didn't see for 20 years, only

the appearance is completely
different, first I feel I'm

meeting a different person, and
then, in the course of the

conversation -- it's generally
20 minutes, 30 minutes -- this

person become my friend, and the
old image of my friend, like

his picture, becomes younger
than he is, so I readjust, and I

was wondering if this is a
phenomenon that everybody

perceive...
>> All time time.

I mean, we --
>> but is this the same

phenomenon that we apply to
objects?

Yeah.
It's the same as with objects,

like the tree or a river or --
let's say, take the

Charles river over there, the
river going past the

building.
What makes it the Charles river?

You can have substantial
physical changes, and it would

still be the Charles river.
So, for example, you can reverse

the direction -- it would still
be the Charles river.

You can break it up into
tributaries that end up

somewhere else, and it would
still be the Charles river.

You can change the content --
so, maybe you build a

manufacturing plant upstream and
the content is mostly arsenic,

let's say.
Well, it's still the

Charles river.
On the other hand, there are

very small changes that you can
make, in which case it won't be

the Charles river at all.
So, suppose you put panels along

the side, so it goes in a
straight path, and you start

using it to ship freight up and
down.

It's not the river anymore --
it's a canal.

Oh, yes.
>> And now, suppose you make

some minimal physical change,
an almost-undetectable change,

which hardens it.
It's called a phase change --

undetectable, but it makes it
glass, basically, and you paint

a line down the middle, and
people start to using it to

commute to Boston, it's a
highway.

It's not a river.
Now, somehow, we -- and we can

go on and on like this -- but
we understand all these things

without instruction, without
experience.

They have to do with very
complex notions of continuity of

entities a physicist cannot
detect because they're not part

of -- I mean, of course the
physical world is part of them,

but it's only one part.
A major part of how we

identify anything in the world,
no matter how elementary, is the

mental conceptions that we
impose on interpreting very

fragmentary experience.
And our experience is, indeed,

very fragmentary, so visual
experience is just, you know,

stimulations of the retina, but
we impose an extremely rich

interpretation of it, including
things like, let's say,

continuity.
Actually, a lot of science

fiction is based on this.
So, if you, you know, if

somebody is in a spaceship, and
they get -- I forgot what the

word is used -- they transposed,
or something.

Teleportation?
>> Yes, tele-- tele--

what is it?
>> Teleportation.

Yeah, okay.
And they go somewhere else and

they reappear.
Well, I've watched my kids

watching these things.
They understand immediately

that it's the same person who
appeared over there, though

there's no continuity.
On the other hand, I ask them

sometimes, "well, suppose that
they had this teleportation",

or whatever it's called, and he
appears over there, and suppose

"he's still here.
Which one is the person?"

And at that point, you get
confused.

Yeah.
>> You don't know, because our

conceptions don't give an answer
to that.

Actually, there are classical
philosophical problems that

are based on this.
One famous one that's called

"the ship of theseus" -- goes
back to the greeks -- suppose

that theseus has a ship and he's
on the ocean and one of the

boards falls off, so he throws
it into the sea, and they put

another board there.
It's still the ship of theseus.

Now, suppose this keeps
happening until every board has

been replaced.
Still the ship of theseus.

Suppose someone on the shore has
been collecting all these boards

and reconstructs what, in fact,
was the actual original ship.

That's not the ship of theseus.
It's the one that theseus is on,

even though it's the other one
that's physically identical to

it -- this one isn't.
So, there's no point trying to

solve the philosophical problem.
The problem is an

epistemological one.
It's only about the nature of

our cognitive systems.
And, so, it appears that, as far

as it's understood, non-human
animals have a direct connection

between symbolic representations
in their minds and identifiable

physical events in the world.
So, you take a vervet monkey,

which has alarm calls, and,
apparently, those alarm calls

are triggered automatically by a
certain, you know, movement of

leaves in a tree, which -- they
give a predator call, you know,

and, apparently, it's reflexive.
>> While I was doing these

interviews, I was editing
"the green hornet."

One day, I walk into the edit
room, and I realized that some

of the object had a different
kind of entity than the other,

the one I had interacted with.
It's like if they jumped to tell

me the story we shared.
The sofa -- I was so tired after

the shooting that I asked for
something more comfortable to

rest on.
They treated me with a sofa.

But I had to move the chair to
the side to make room.

The coffee table -- I dragged it
closer to the sofa so I could

check my e-mails while watching
the editing on a giant screen

that was specially installed for
me.

And my editor, of course, but
he's a person, so it's not

surprising to have a relation
with this.

Do you remember the first
exposition you had to

science?
>> Should I tell you an

embarrassing experience,
which I've felt guilty about

all my life?
Okay.

In third grade, I decided I
wanted to do a science project

on astronomy, so the teacher
said, you know, "fine."

And I went and looked.
What I finally did was, took the

encyclopedia britannica, and I
copied out a section on

astronomy, and I handed it in,
knowing that that's not the

right way to do it.
And nobody ever -- there was

no -- I mean, the teacher could
obviously tell, you know.

But there was no censure or

anything and, but, it's what --
I must have been -- third grade,

so I was 8 years old, so that's
about 75 years of guilt.

I had the same experience
than you at school, much later.

The first essay I wrote, my best
friend wrote it for me, and I

got the best notation for the
class, so I had to read it in

front of everyone.

And have you felt guilty all
your life?

Oh, so horrible!
Okay.

But and the funny part is I...
>> We're partners.

But the funny part is, I got

good grades after that.
>> Yeah.

You know, like a lot of kids, I
had a chemistry set down in the

basement, and... Producing
horrible smells that drove my

parents crazy, and they were
hoping I wouldn't blow the place

up, and that sort of thing.
Electrical circuits,

chemistry -- things like that.
Now, with one -- my closest

friend, since nursery school,
right through high school was --

we would go every Saturday
afternoon -- by the time we got

old enough to take the subway,
you know, 10, 11, we'd go to

the Franklin institute.
That's a science institute in

downtown Philadelphia, which
had lectures, exhibits.

And we'd spend most of the
afternoon in the -- either in

the Franklin institute or the
museum of natural history, which

was right next door.
That was our Saturday afternoon.

Noam spent also hours at the
library, devouring 19th-century

French and Russian literature.
I had just finished

reading "fathers and sons" by
Ivan turgenev, and I pointed out

to Noam that constant feeling of
generalized deterioration of the

world that each generation
blames the next one for.

"When I was young, life was
better."

Things were much simpler.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah."
I was wondering if there were a

biological explanation for this
phenomenon.

When I was young, life was
better.

Things were much simpler.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah.
>> But Noam took the

conversation to a different
place.

It could well be a property
of urban, industrialized

societies.
I'm not sure it's true of

peasant societies -- a farming
society where you learn the

skills and you apply the skills
and you transmit them to your

children, and so on.
I mean, for example, one thing

that has been discovered --
surprised a lot of

anthropologists and agricultural
scientists -- is that when

a people -- when --
there have been development

programs in which, say, you
know, in, say, Liberia, there

happened to be one, where
scientific agriculture was

introduced -- you know, peasants
were taught the most

sophisticated techniques of
agriculture and so on.

And they determined that yield
dropped.

And when it was investigated,
it --

eel dropped?
>> Yield, the production.

Oh, yeah, yeah.
>> So, they were producing less

with scientific agriculture than
with traditional peasant

agriculture.
At first, nobody knew why, but

when it was investigated, it
turned out that agriculture had,

in fact, become a science, known
only to women.

So, women had extensive,
detailed lore about planting --

you know, "you plant this seed,
under this rock, at this hour of"

"the day," and so on and so
forth.

And it was transmitted from
mother to daughter for maybe

thousands of years.
And it got more and more

sophisticated, and it got to
give very high yields in not

very productive soil.
And the men in the community

didn't even know about it --
nor, of course, did the

outsiders who came in.
Well, you know, that's a case

where people kind of reproduce,
improve.

I doubt that, say, those little
girls would have had the -- the

feelings that you were
describing.

You're getting something from
your mother, which is a

repository of, you know, endless
tradition, and maybe you find

ways of adapting it or slightly
improving it, but -- but you're

essentially reproducing what you
grew up with.

And, so, how do you balance
this knowledge that's come from

the ages to the improvement of
science?

Like, now science and the
technology has advanced, you

would feel that previous
knowledge would be obsolete, but

yet, there is an instinct -- or
I don't know if it's correct to

call it an instinct, but people
know there is a science of

knowing what plant to use.
>> It's lore, not instinct.

Yeah, how do you call that --
"lo"?

"Lore," just accumulated,
unarticulated knowledge.

It's like you know how to
behave.

I mean, you know, you're taught,
or you learn in childhood, how

to behave in social situations.
You can't articulate it...

Yeah.
>> You're not conscious of it.

So if you find a child who has,
let's say, Asperger's syndrome,

I mean, they just don't pick up
social cues.

Yeah.
>> They don't understand when

you're supposed to talk to
someone and when you're not

supposed to talk to them and how
you're supposed to act towards

them.
I mean, these are children who

will have a lot of problems from
nursery school on.

I once asked a mental-health
specialist what it was -- I

didn't know what Asperger's
syndrome was, 'cause I've heard

about it.
And she laughed, and she told

me, "walk down the halls of
M.I.T., and half the people you"

see have Asperger's syndrome."

How do you deal with somebody,
coming to you and talking about

astrology?
>> Astrology?

Yeah, because a lot of women,
for instance, and it's terrible

to generalize -- Michèle here,
she's going to kill me -- but my

girlfriend, for instance -- she
gets mad at me if I dismiss her

belief in astrology.
And I want to maintain my

relationship.
>> I don't dismiss the person's

interest in it.
>> Uh-huh.

I mean, people have all sorts
of irrational beliefs --

me too, you know.
I may think they're irrational,

but to them, they're meaningful.
And, after all, some pretty

smart people were interested in
astrology, like Isaac Newton,

for example.
>> Uh-huh?

So, it's not -- it's not
imbecility.

I mean, humans have a -- kind of
like an automatic -- in this

case, instinctive -- drive to
find causal relations, to

explain things that are
happening in terms of causes.

When you can't see the causes,
you postulate hidden causes -- I

mean, infants do this.
You can -- you do experiments

with infants in which, you know,
something is moving along and

then something starts moving
this way.

They'll make up in their minds
that there's some hidden contact

there that you can't see, you
know.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> And we just do this

instinctively.
I mean, if things are happening

around us, we try to find some
agent behind it...

Yeah.
>> ...Often an agent, you know,

like an active intelligence
that's doing it, sometimes

something mechanical.
So it pretty naturally leads to

beliefs like astrology,
especially because you find -- I

mean, life is full of
coincidences.

So you try to make a connection
between the coincidences, and

you find a pattern in the stars,
or it's a full moon, so this is

going to happen, and so on and
so forth.

'Cause I notice in what
you're saying, like, you're not

a believer -- if I do some
research on you, you're not

going to come up as atheist, and
I think because the religion is

really for a lot of people, and
you don't want hurt that.

Well, I think one or another
kind of religious belief is a --

it's a real cultural universal.
I don't think any group has ever

been discovered that doesn't
have some sort of belief in

something, you know, beyond
their conscious experience

that's directing things, or
that's somewhere in the

background and giving their
lives meaning.

I mean, they may not believe in
a divinity, but some sort of a

spirit in the world that we
can't grasp that's making sense

of things, that's giving meaning
to life.

Throughout history and
throughout every society we

know, people are just not
satisfied to think, "look, I go"

from dust to dust, and there's
no meaning to my life."

Well, what's your personal
feeling on that?

I think you go
from dust to dust, and there's

no meaning in your life.
But that's hard for a lot -- I

can easily understand why plenty
of people wouldn't be happy to

accept this.
I mean, you can easily

understand if -- let's suppose a
mother has a dying child...

Yeah.
>> ...And wants to believe that

she's going to see him again in
heaven.

Okay, that's an understandable
belief, and I certainly don't

ridicule it or try to teach her
that -- give her a lecture in

epistemology or something.
>> You don't want to hurt

people.
>> It's something that I don't

personally have, and I don't
listen to rock music, either.

Yeah.
>> But it doesn't mean that

other people shouldn't do it.
>> Yeah, yeah.

And, furthermore, the fact of
the matter is that religious

beliefs do create communities.
They weld communities together.

And we're a tribal society.
You know, people form families

and clans and groups, social
groups, professional groups.

So you want to be part of
something...

Yeah, yeah.
>> ...And religion happens to

be, in fact -- again,
cross-culturally -- one of the

ways in which the group coheres
and gets something more out of

life than just my individual
existence.

Yeah.
>> So it's understandable that

there should be one or another
form of religious belief.

I think we should change the
camera.

I think it's time for the -- for
the break.

Lunch break?
>> Oh, I see, okay.

So we get another camera next
time?

Yeah, I'm gonna use this one,
because I -- I'm...

Okay.
The discussion is so good, I

don't want to lose a drop.

In fact, I eventually decided
to stick to my plan and continue

to shoot the rest of the
interview with my old mechanical

bolex.
This way, I could only film

short fragments of Noam, and I
was committed to what moments he

would appear in the final
version.

I was also committed to have to
animate 98% of the whole film

and hear the sound of my cranky
camera each time Noam would

appear so I would have to
illustrate its sound every

single time.

Do you remember what was your
first thinking of linguistics?

There's background, like when
I was a child.

My father worked on history of
the semitic languages, so I

read work of his -- like, I
read his doctoral dissertation

when I was -- I don't know --
10, 12 years old.

Uh-huh.
>> It was on a medieval

grammarian -- medieval Hebrew
grammarian -- so I kind of knew,

had some acquaintance with the
field.

Later, I sort of got into it by
accident.

And when I got into it, yeah, I
found it intriguing, but -- and

did things that we were taught
to do, and, at some point, I

realized, "this doesn't make
any sense," you know, the way

we're taught to do things was
descriptivist.

So, the -- the way you...
Linguistics at that time -- and,

to a large extent, still -- is a
matter of organizing data.

So, a typical assignment when I
was an undergraduate, let's

say, would be to take data from
some American Indian language

and put it into an organized
form.

You didn't ask the question,
"well, why is the data this way

and not some other way?"
That wasn't a question that was

asked.
In fact, I remember,

dramatically, the first talk I
gave when I was a graduate

student invited to a major
university to give a talk on

work that I was doing -- you
know, the normal thing -- the

leading figure in the
department, one of the famous

linguists, met me at the
airport.

And you know, we drove to the
college.

And on the way, we talked, and I
asked him what he was working

on.
And he said he's not doing any

work now -- what he's doing is
just collecting data and storing

it.
And he had a good reason, which

is implicit in the linguistics
of that day in Europe and

the United States.
Computers were coming along, so

pretty soon, you'd be able to
analyze huge masses of data.

It was assumed that the
procedure, the methods of

analysis that had been reached
in the structuralist traditions,

that they were the right way to
understand everything about

language.
Well, you know, if you sharpened

up those procedures, you could
program them for a computer,

then you feed the data in, and
you're done.

How old were you when you --
>> that was 1953.

Okay.
>> So, I mean, I kind of

half-believed it, because that's
the way I was trained, but the

other half of my brain was
telling me this makes absolutely

no sense.
>> Can you tell me the

transition, and, also, the
inspiration that started your

theory?
>> Well, it was pretty

straightforward.
When I was an undergraduate, I

had to get an honors thesis.
You'd do a piece of work that's

your honors thesis.
And the faculty member who I was

working with -- very famous and
very significant person, very

influential -- rightly, he
suggested to me that I do a

structural analysis of modern
Hebrew.

Well, I knew some Hebrew, so it
made sense, and I did what we

were supposed to do.
What you're supposed to do is

get an informant and then carry
out field-work procedures.

So, there's a set of routines
you go through to take the data

from the informant, you know,
find the phonology, find the

morphology, you know, a few
comments about the syntactic

structure, comments about the
semantics, and that's your

thesis.
So, I started going through the

routine with him.
And after about a month, I

realized this is totally
ridiculous.

I mean, I know the answers to
these questions.

Why am I asking him?
And the questions that I don't

know the answers to, like the
phonetics, I don't care about.

But the parts that I care about,
I already basically know the

answers, so why do I care?
Why do I have to get it from

him?
So, we -- I stopped the

informant work, and I just
started doing what seemed like

the obvious thing to do --
write a generative grammar.

And that's what I did, but it
was kind of a hobby.

I don't think anyone even looked
at it -- you know, the fact

that, finally, it was published
about 30 years later, I think.

Can you tell me, like, in a
simple way -- like, this first

approach of generative grammar?
>> It's almost a truism.

I mean, if you think about what
a language is -- say, what you

and I know -- we have, somehow,
in our heads, a procedure for

constructing an infinite array
of structured expressions, each

of which is assigned a sound and
assigned a semantic

interpretation.
That's like a truism.

Furthermore, these structured
expressions have the property of

what's called "digital
infinity."

They're like the numbers -- the
natural numbers -- you know,

there's 5 and 6, but nothing in
between.

That's not natural numbers
anymore.

And the same with language.
There's a 5-word sentence, a

6-word sentence, there's no
51/2-word sentence.

They're very much unlike the
communication system of bees or

any other system, you know.
Now, that's very rare in the

natural world -- digital
infinity.

And by that time -- say,
late '40s -- the mathematics of

it were well understood.
The theory of computation had

been developed, the theory of
recursive functions -- so these

were familiar concepts within
contemporary mathematics.

And, you know, I studied them
when I studied advanced logic

and mathematics.
And it just sort of fell

together.
The -- you have -- you have this

system of digital infinity and
its procedure of some sort that

generates an infinity of
structured expressions.

Well, that's a generative
grammar -- in fact, that's all

it is.
>> Mm-hmm.

So that ought to be the core
of the study.

And then comes the question --
well, okay, what is it?

Then, you run into the problem I
mentioned before -- as soon as

you try to do it, you find that,
in order to deal with the data

available, it has to be
extremely complex and intricate.

But that doesn't make any sense,
either, because every child

masters it in no time.
So, somehow it can't be rich and

complex.
And then comes the field.

The field is to try to show that
what appears to be rich and

complex is, at the core, just
very simple.

Actually, there's -- you know,
when you think about it, as we

started to do from the '50s --
there's an evolutionary basis

for this, too.
Language is a very curious

phenomenon.
I mean, one question we ought to

be puzzled with -- well, two
questions -- is, why are there

any languages at all, and
another one is, why are there so

many?
If you go back, say,

50,000 years, both of those
questions were answered, because

that's when our ancestors left
Africa.

And there's been no relevant
cognitive change since, so

children everywhere in the
world have the same capacity for

language acquisition.
So, the questions were finished

by about 50,000 years ago.
And if you go back very shortly

before that, maybe 100,000 years
ago, the questions were answered

'cause there weren't any
languages.

From an evolutionary point of
view, that's the flick of an

eye.
>> How do you have this record?

Well, that comes from
paleoanthropology.

Ah, yeah, the tombs the
Americans --

well, we know the fossil
record.

We know the record of the, you
know, creation of artifacts, and

so on.
>> Yeah.

And it's pretty well
recognized that there was a

sudden explosion -- sometimes
called "the great leap forward"

roughly in that period, you
know, maybe 75,000 years ago.

You can argue tens of thousands
of years -- it doesn't matter

much.
From an evolutionary point of

view, it's an instant.
So, somewhere in that instant,

some small hunter-gatherer
group -- you know, it could have

been a couple of thousand of
people -- you suddenly find a

burst of creative activity,
complex tools...

Recording natural phenomena...
More complex family

structures...
Symbolic representation, you

know -- art, and so on.
From an evolutionary point of

view, it's an instant.
Now, it's generally assumed

that -- and it's hard to think
of an alternative -- that that

instant must be the time when
language suddenly appeared,

'cause language is required
for all these things.

Before, there could have been,
you know, primitive

communication systems, like
every animal has.

But human language, with the
property I just mentioned -- the

capacity for thought
constructing in your head --

when you walk around, you're
talking to yourself.

Yeah.
>> You can't stop.

I mean, it takes a real act of
will not to talk to yourself.

And what you're doing is
thinking, basically,

recollecting, or, you know,
whatever it is.

Yeah.
>> But you're making use of,

constantly, of this capacity
to construct an unbounded array

of structured expressions, which
have a meaning and a sound.

Now, that's the core of our
ability to create, to invent,

you know, plan, interpret...
>> Yeah.

...and so on.
Well, that must have happened

right about that time.
But if it happened suddenly, it

has to be simple.
There's no time.

In evolutionary time, that's
nothing, remember?

Yeah.
>> Which means that some small

thing must have happened -- some
small mutation, probably.

And one -- and a mutation is in
one person.

It's not in a group.
Suddenly, it gave that person

the capacity to -- this
capacity.

Well, that person was unique in
the animal world -- it could

plan, it could think, it could
interpret, and so on.

But if that happened -- and
there's no pressures on that

system -- no selection nor other
pressures.

Yeah.
>> It just appeared.

Well, if it just appeared, it's
gonna be perfect.

It's going to be like a
snowflake.

Uh-huh.
>> And it just follows from

natural law -- that's what
appears, like a snowflake is

what it is.
You know, it doesn't evolve.

Well, you know, that capacity
would have been, in fact,

transmitted to offspring,
partially.

And after some time, maybe a
couple of generations, this

capacity might have dispersed
through the group.

And at that point, there becomes
a reason to externalize it -- to

find a way to take what's going
on in your head and turn in into

sound or gesture or something.
>> Yeah. But does this capacity

give an advantage to this person
or this group?

It does give an advantage to
the person because, look, if you

have the capacity to plan and
interpret and so on, yeah, you

have advantages over others.
It's not such a trivial matter

for advantageous traits to
proliferate.

They often just die off.
So, for all we know, this might

have happened many times in the
preceding couple 100,000 years,

but once it took -- we know that
it took 'cause we're here, you

know?
So, at one point, this took.

A number of people had it.
Some point, you start getting

externalization.
Then, you can get communication.

But what that means is that,
contrary to thousands of years

of speculation, and what's
almost universally assumed now,

communication couldn't have been
a significant factor in

evolution.
It's a secondary process.

Today, during the lunch
pause, Noam went to see his

doctor and get some test
results.

Are you worried about your

health?

Mm. I'm not.
Doctors are, but I'm not.

So, you don't have anxiety?

I figure,
three score and 10 -- that's

what we're supposed to have --
70 years, according to

the Bible.
Anything else comes free.

When I was about 10 years old, I
used to get frantic about dying.

You know, what happens when that
spark of consciousness

disappears?
I had nightmares about it, but

by the time I was a teenager, I
figured it's ridiculous, you

know.
My model is David hume.

When he died, he had his friends
with him, like Adam Smith, and

he was very placid, you know.
He said, "you know, this is the"

way existence works, and
goodbye, no afterlife --

nothing."
>> Do you mind if I ask you

about your feeling when your
wife passed away?

I'd just as soon not talk about

that.
>> It's too soon.

I can't get over it, you know.

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry.
>> Yeah.

I'm so sorry.

♪ I gave you my home
♪ I gave you my hope

♪ the walls...
>> It seems that you had the

perfect relationship from the
outside point of view.

It wasn't -- you know,
nothing's perfect, but it was

very intimate, yeah.
>> I think a lot of human beings

spend a lot of their life trying
to solve problems of a

relationship or find a
relationship, and...

Well, we pretty much solved
it when we were children.

We were children when we got

married.
>> Yeah.

Carol was 19, and I was 20.
>> ♪ here in my kitchen

♪ soup is on ♪ lover

♪ lover ♪ come on over

And do you think it helped
you in your work?

It's hard to say -- I mean,
Carol was kind of a social

butterfly.
You know, she was -- as a

teenager, you know, went to all
kind of parties, dating, this

and that.
I was very solitary.

But -- and for a couple of
years, we more or less lived her

style of life.
But, you know, I'd sit in a

corner at the parties.
But after a while, we just

drifted into a very private
life, you know, saw a couple

friends.
We -- we weren't hermits --

like, you know, children,
grandchildren, friends, and so

on, but, mostly, we lived -- we
preferred to be alone, you know.

So...
>> ♪ come on over

and we started to talk about
your education with -- last

time, but more about the school.
Can you tell me a bit more about

the relationship you had with
your parents?

Things were quite different
in those days.

I mean, the relationship was
fine, you know, but not very

close, really.
So, for example, there were

things happening in my childhood
that I never would have dreamt

of talking to them about.
We were the only Jewish family

in a neighborhood that was
largely Irish and German

catholic.
This is in the '30s, and

very anti-semitic, and pretty
pro-Nazi, in fact -- the Irish

'cause they hated the British
and the Germans 'cause they

were Germans.
It's not like today.

A boy in the streets wasn't
gonna get shot, you know.

But it was unpleasant, you know.
There was a lot of

anti-semitism.
And the streets -- there were

streets I couldn't walk through
because the Irish kids lived

there, and I'd go somewhere
else.

And -- but I never talked to my
parents about it.

I don't think they knew, till
their deaths.

You know, by the time the second
world war came, everything

changed -- superficially.
So, in December 7, 1941, the

people who had been still having
beer parties at the fall of

Paris, which I remember, were
walking around with tin hats,

telling everyone to pull down
their shades, because the

luftwaffe was going to bomb the
city and so on -- a very

striking transition, which
taught me something.

But then, during the war, for
reasons I don't understand,

there were race riots all over
the place.

In fact, there was a teenage
curfew for a couple of years.

At 7:00 --
>> in Philadelphia?

Yeah, if we wanted to go out
after 7:00, we had to have

parental permission.
And I went to a Hebrew school,

and, actually, we had police
protection from the subway stop

to the school and back,
unless we were on the subway --

you were kind of on your own.
But I don't know why, but there

was some kind of phenomenon that
took place during the war.

And when did you hear about
the camps the first time?

Well, rumors were coming
through by '42, '43, but nobody

really knew the scale.
And it was downplayed,

strikingly downplayed.
The most dramatic as, actually,

as I'm sure you know, there were
international conferences to try

to do something about the people
who wanted to flee the

continent, but nobody was
willing to do anything.

Roosevelt, in fact, turned back
a ship at St. Louis, which came

with, I think, 1,000 refugees
from Europe.

And they went to Cuba -- sort of
wandered around the region, but

the U.S. just turned it back.
They were sent back to Europe.

Most of them ended up in, you
know, in gas chambers.

The most striking thing was,
after the war, in 1945, there

was -- by then, everybody
knew -- there was no longer any

pretext for not saving the
survivors.

And there were a fair number of
survivors.

And they were living in
concentration camps, but the

camps were not very different
from the Nazi camps except that,

you know, the gas chambers
weren't -- no --

no extermination, but living
under horrible conditions.

And they came back with a very
grim picture of what was life

was like in the camps.
>> You mean the same camp in

Poland?
>> Same camps.

You know, maybe another
detention camp, but the

circumstances were not very
different.

But they were like, not in
detention -- they were...

Well, you know, they weren't
extermination camps -- no gas

chambers, you know, no killing,
no slave labor -- but the

conditions were horrible.
You should read

the Harrison commission.
>> How do you call that?

Harrison?
>> Harrison -- h-a-r-r-i-s-o-n.

I suppose it's obtainable.
It's a pretty grim picture of

life in the camps.
>> "Generally speaking, three"

months after victory of Europe
day and even longer after the

liberation of individual groups,
many Jewish displaced persons

and other possibly
non-repatriables are living

under guard behind barbed-wire
fences, in camps of several

descriptions -- built by the
Germans for slave-laborers and

Jews -- including some of the
most notorious of the

concentration camps, amidst
crowded, frequently unsanitary

and generally grim conditions,
in complete idleness, with no

opportunity, except
surreptitiously...

...have managed, in spite of the
many obvious difficulties, to

find clothing of one kind or
another for their charges, many

of the Jewish displaced persons,
late in July, had no clothing

other than their concentration
camp garb, a rather hideous

striped pajama effect, while
others, to their chagrin, were

obliged to wear German S.S.
Uniforms.

"It is questionable which
clothing they hate the more."

Actually, you know, this is
pretty normal.

I mean, treatment of holocaust
victims is grotesque.

But right now, take France --
the Roma were -- you know, they

were treated pretty much like
the Jews.

France is expelling them to
miserable poverty.

They're expelling basically
holocaust survivors and their

descendants, and it's
particularly dramatic in France

because there's so much
posturing there about holocaust

denial.
I mean, you can't have a more

extreme case of holocaust
denial than taking survivors and

punishing them.
And as far as I can see in

France, there's almost no
discussion of this.

In fact, when the European union
protested, Sarkozy condemned

them, you know, for their
anti-French extremism and so on.

I mean, you know, the cynicism
about all of this is pretty

remarkable.
>> Um... Can I come back to

maybe more happy matters?

Pick at random, and the world
won't be very happy.

I know, but we're going to

come back -- go more inside your
memories and...

Okay.
>> I wanted to know if the --

the education you gave to your
children was influenced by what

you believe in language
acquisition or what's going on

with the brain.
>> Well, I mean, the education

at home, yes.
So, you know, we read to the

kids and encouraged the kids to
read and encouraged them to

follow their own interests.
The three kids were quite

different.

My -- my son, from a very early
age, was mostly interested in

science and mathematics, so, you
know, by the time he was

10 years old, we were reading
together popular books on

relativity theory and things
like that.

But we just let the kids go
where they wanted and encouraged

them.
You know, they went in different

directions -- it was
fine with us -- and, you know,

tried to just encourage them to
do what they wanted.

The school was conventional.
We wanted them to go to the

public schools, and it worked
reasonably well.

And one child was not making out
in public school -- we moved her

to a quaker school, which was
better.

They... Essentially picked their
own paths.

They left home -- they went off
to become political activists.

My older daughter spent a couple
of months at college, couldn't

stand it, and went off and
joined the united farm workers

and, ever since then, has been
very involved in political

activity.
My young -- her younger sister

went to Nicaragua in 1980 and
stayed.

And my son went off in a
different direction.

But my children grew up in an
atmosphere of extreme political

tension.
I don't know how much they felt.

For example, I was in and out of
jail, and I was facing a long

jail sentence, enough so that my
wife went back to college after

17 years to try to get a
degree -- an advanced degree --

because we assumed she'd have to
take care of the children.

She'd need a job.
And the kids kind of grew up in

this atmosphere, but I don't
think they felt any particular

tension.
My wife told me once that my,

probably 8-, 10-year-old
daughter, I guess, told her when

she came home from school --
she asked, "what'd you do in"

show-and-tell?"
She said, "well I described -- I

told them how my father was in
jail."

What makes you happy?

Happy?

Children, grandchildren,
friends, you know.

I don't really think about it
much.

I don't spend much -- any time
in self-indulgence, especially

since my wife died.
I do almost nothing -- don't

go to the movies, don't go to
the theater, don't eat out.

I do what I have to do.
Mm.

But, I mean, there are a lot of

things that are very gratifying.
So, for example, especially

seeing victims -- like, I just
came back from Turkey, where I

was -- I've been there several
times.

And this -- it's always issues
related to the repression of the

Kurds, which I was there one --
the first time I was there, it

was to take part in a trial and
be a co-defendant.

But, this time, it was for a
conference on repression and

freedom of expression.
You see people who are really

dedicated, courageous,
struggling all the time,

standing up against repression.
It's quite inspiring.

A couple of months before that,
I was in Southern Colombia.

And Colombia has the worst
human-rights record in the

hemisphere, and, of course, the
most U.S. military aid in the

hemisphere -- they correlate.
These places I was visiting --

quite remote endangered
villages -- and the people were

just inspiring.
Actually, it was a very moving

experience, personally.
I was there in part because they

were dedicating a forest to the
memory of my wife.

And it's the kind of compassion
and kindness that you just don't

see in the world we live in.
And it was just kind of

natural -- no pretentiousness
about the ceremony.

And you -- you see things like
that all over -- all over the

world here, too...
>> Mm-hmm.

...not much in the circles in
which we live -- you know,

elite, intellectual circles.
>> Yeah.

...much more abstract, even,
than the case of the tree.

There was a sudden explosion.
The answers to, like, the

phonetics, I don't care about.

My father worked on history
of the semitic languages.

During the early exposure,
where the child is not...

We learn that children know
quite a lot...

It's a story about a donkey
named Sylvester.

In one of your books from the
'70s, you give this example of a

sentence -- "the man who is
tall is in the room," and how

the child naturally can
postulate the question.

And I was wondering if you could
explain, just quickly because I

could do a very nice animation
from that.

This is a simple question.
And it's interesting that it

never bothered anyone.
It's a little bit like, for

2,000 years, scientists were
satisfied with simple

explanation for an obvious fact.

If you take an apple and you
detach it from a tree, it's

gonna go down.
If you take steam, it's gonna go

up.
>> Yeah.

So, 2,000 years -- the answer
was, well, they're going to

their natural place -- end of
discussion.

As soon as people started
getting puzzled about that, like

Galileo and Newton, then you
have modern science.

But can you --
>> this is the same.

Take the sentence that you
gave me -- "the man"

"who is tall is happy," or
whatever it is.

If you want to form a question
from that, you take the word

"is," and you put it in the
front.

So, "is the man who is tall
happy?"

All right?
That's the question.

You don't take the first
occurrence of "is."

You don't take the closest one
to the front...

...and say, "is the man who tall
is happy?"

That's gibberish.

And how does it -- why?
I mean, why doesn't the child do

the simple thing -- take the
first occurrence of "is" and put

it in the front?
That's, computationally, that's

much easier than finding the
main occurrence, which requires

knowing the phrases and so on.
But it's an unconceivable error.

No child has ever made that
error.

And it's the same in all -- you
know, with minor variations --

it's the same principle that's
in all languages, so why?

Well, you know, there are some
interesting explanations for

why, but this is a good example
of the brute-force approach in

computational cognitive science,
where they, as a matter of

principle, want to believe that
the mind is essentially empty.

The man who is tall is happy.
The man who is tall is happy.

The man who is tall is happy.
Then, Noam took my pen and wrote

the following sentence.
>> Look, there are serious

questions about it, like, take,
"the man who is tall is happy."

This is a predicate, this is
the subject, okay, and this is

sort of the main element -- you
know, that's the main element of

the whole sentence.
And that's the one that,

structurally, is closest to the
middle -- to the beginning.

This one is more remote from the
beginning, structurally, because

you have to work through this
whole business, okay?

So, structurally speaking, this
is the closest to the front.

Uh-huh.
>> Linearly, this is the closest

to the front.
>> Right.

Now, the question is, why do
you use structural proximity and

not linear proximity?
And it's not just this case --

it's everything -- every
language, every construction.

Is that the evidence of this
generative grammar?

Well, that's the data, and
there is a principle -- I mean,

the principle is, keep to
minimal structural distance.

Okay, now where does that come
from?

This part is probably just a
law of nature.

Computation tries to do things
in the simplest way, but the

structural distance part is a
fact about language.

I mean, you could have minimal
computation if you did it this

way.
In that case, what we would

say -- "is the man who tall is
happy?"

The child picks structural
closeness because that's a

property of language, probably
genetically determined.

Yeah, but that's -- that's about
all there is to it.

The man who is tall is happy.
>> Yes, the man who is tall is

very happy.
>> Is the man tall and he's

happy?
Is the man who is tall happy?

Is the man who is tall happy?
Is the man who tall is happy?

Is the man who is tall happy?
Is the man who tall is happy?

Okay, I guess we're being...

Okay.
>> Yeah, I got to rush him over.

He's gonna miss the thing.
>> Okay.

Good to see you again.
>> Yeah.

I'm glad you're doing well.

We got to get you out of here.
Your bag.