Chomsky is the most influential & cited thinker of the last century...

Chomsky is the most influential & cited thinker of the last century, and it is hilarious none of you people realise this.

Nobody comes close to Chomsky's influence and impact, even if you do not agree with him, this is undeniable.

Other urls found in this thread:

samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse
web.archive.org/web/20080624123743/http://www.cogsci.umn.edu/OLD/calendar/past_events/millennium/final.html
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223153/
youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8
youtube.com/watch?v=REiqkK3ckiM
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>Nobody comes close to Chomsky's influence and impact,
If that were true then we'd live in a libertarian socialist fairyland with no CIA.

please list at least 3 of ideas who actually influenced the world

[show]
Known for
[hide]
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"
Axiom of categoricity
Bought priesthood
Cartesian linguistics
Chomsky Normal Form
Chomsky hierarchy
Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem
Cognitive closure (philosophy)
Context-free grammar
Context-sensitive grammar
Corporate media
Deep structure and surface structure
Deterministic context-free grammar
Digital infinity
E-Language
Elite media
Empty category principle
Extended Projection Principle
Formal democracy
Formal grammar
Generative grammar
Government and binding
I-Language
Immediate constituent analysis
Innateness hypothesis
Intellectual responsibility
Language acquisition device
Levels of adequacy
Linguistic competence
Linguistic performance
Logical Form (linguistics)
M-command
Markedness
Media manipulation
Mentalism (philosophy)
Merge (linguistics)
Minimalist program
Non-configurational language
Parasitic gap
Phonology
Phrase structure grammar
Phrase structure rules
Plato's Problem
Poverty of the stimulus
Principles and parameters
Projection Principle
Propaganda model
Psychological nativism
Recursion in language
Scansion
Second-language acquisition
Self-censorship
Specified subject condition
Speech community
Statistical language acquisition
Structure preservation principle
Subjacency
Symbol (formal)
Tensed-S condition
Terminal and nonterminal symbols
Trace erasure principle
Transformational grammar
Transformational syntax
Universal grammar
X-bar theory

Chomsky is a fucking hack and gets BTFO everytime by this intellectual giant.

Continentals>>>>ANALytics

>Linguistics
>Relevant
I've never met a student of linguistics who was competent to talk about anything other than glottal stops.

ad hominem

Happy Noam Chomsky Day, OP.

You want a Napoleonic scale, don't you

Ad whom?

i loved that movie

but when chomsky talks about anything science, he starts to sound like a dipshit. at least that is to me. chemical engineer here.

>chemical engineer here.
If you'd studied something important, like LINGUISTICS or LIBERTARIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY, you'd be better at chemistry AND engineering.

i keep that stuff as a hobby. its silly to think you need education for stuff like that when you can just teach yourself. lrn2autodidact

>Nobody comes close to Chomsky's influence and impact
>impact

He is a giant among intellectuals, but Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Popper, and Qutb's thoughts have had significantly more impact over the last century. The Literary Club's favorite thinkers are almost never impactful in any sense of the word.

No one argues about his influence in academia, just about how wrong he is on most things.

I really enjoyed Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?

absolutely nobody is influenced by Chomsky

>hobby
You'll never change the world with mere natural science--everyone knows that social change only comes when the Ivory Tower demands it.
>autodidact
Without peer review, how can you know that you know anything?

One of the most cited scholars in history, Chomsky has influenced a broad array of academic fields. He is widely recognized as a paradigm shifter who helped spark a major revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind. In addition to his continued scholarly research, he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mainstream news media. His ideas have proved highly significant within the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, but have also drawn criticism, with some accusing Chomsky of anti-Americanism and alleging that he is sympathetic to terrorism and, in some cases, genocide denial.


Michael Albert, Julian Assange, John Backus,[11] Derek Bickerton, Julian C. Boyd, Jean Bricmont, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Dennett,[13] Daniel Everett, Clinton Fernandes, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Fisk, Jerry Fodor, Amy Goodman, Stephen Jay Gould,[14] Glenn Greenwald, Gilbert Harman, Marc Hauser, Christopher Hitchens,[12] Norbert Hornstein, Niels Kaj Jerne, Naomi Klein,[12] Donald Knuth,[15] Peter Ludlow, Colin McGinn,[16] Michael Moore,[12] John Nichols, Ann Nocenti,[17] John Pilger,[12] Steven Pinker,[18] Harold Pinter,[12] Tanya Reinhart, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said,[19] John Searle,[20] Neil Smith, Aaron Swartz,[21] Crispin Wright,[13] and many others

>contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind.
The only people who need linguistics to explain the existence of the mind are people who are too dumb for neuroscience and too boring for theology.

>he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mainstream news media. His ideas have proved highly significant within the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements

he hasn't affected change in any of these things though

>got BTFO by an atheist meme man

Chomsky sucks rocket

literally who?

This, it was fun to watch the old man resorts to all kinds of fallacies just because he was afraid of getting his flawed views debunked in public.

>the last century

Do you mean of the entire 20th Century?

Regardless of whether you like it or not, those ideas influenced the world. Eat shit faggot

>is it possible that I, Anonymous, have no idea wtf I'm talking about?
>No. It's an entire established field of study that's wrong.

>those ideas influenced the world
I'm afraid that I don't understand how.
>Is it possible that phrenology is pseudoscience?
>No, it's this person calling phrenology pseudoscience that's pseudoscientific!

chomsky saved less lives than my local fireman

What part of 'cognitive revolution' is so difficult for you to grasp?

it's easy to be the most quoted when you're operating in a giant liberal circlejerk for decades

The part where Chomsky is somehow more important than actual neuroscientists and where linguistics offers a viable explanation of how consciousness comes to exist and functions.

surrounded by sycophants

This sounds like a metalcore band name.

>where linguistics offers a viable explanation of how consciousness comes to exist and functions.

This isn't what he did. What he did was challenge the orthodox philosophy of psychology at the time, behaviorism, and used this challenge as a springboard for his own ideas about universal grammar and an innate capacity for language. These ideas helped pave the way for neuroscience and other fields while offering novel contributions to philosophy of mind and language. You don't have to agree with it but it was definitely influential

>behaviorism
Plenty of people have debunked behaviorism over the years. It isn't that big a deal. If this is the most you can say for Chomsky then I don't know why you expect me to stop deriding him.

kek no

samharris.org/blog/item/the-limits-of-discourse

Are you just being dumb on purpose? Chomsky (along with some of his other contemporaries) was the one who debunked it in his review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. That's what the cognitive revolution was.

When I took a course on philosophy of mind, we definitely discussed refutations of behaviorism, and Chomsky didn't come up once. The fact that his contemporaries did the same thing that he did strongly supports my own claims. You are greatly exaggerating Chomsky's importance, as do almost all of his followers.

Chomsky's critiques are the most well known and universally regarded as heralding the decline of behaviorism as a tenable philosophy of mind/psychology, considering it was a direct response to behaviorism's progenitor and the work in which its philosophy was directly expounded upon. His ideas ushered in the school of thought that swept behaviorism away, there is just no disputing that fact. You took a bad course.

>You took a bad course
Or maybe you're just a cultist. How about a source or two?

>According to Frederick J. Newmeyer:

>Chomsky's review has come to be regarded as one of the foundational documents of the discipline of cognitive psychology, and even after the passage of twenty-five years it is considered the most important refutation of behaviorism. Of all his writings, it was the Skinner review which contributed most to spreading his reputation beyond the small circle of professional linguists.

web.archive.org/web/20080624123743/http://www.cogsci.umn.edu/OLD/calendar/past_events/millennium/final.html

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223153/
This article is less charitable towards the results Chomsky arrived at but is unequivocal about his influence in behaviorism's decline.

>1st link
A few bullet points about why the book is important which admits that Chomsky is basically incorrect about many of the claims made in his review.
>2nd link
Basically "Chomsky is an aggressive pedant but I guess some people used his work as a branching-off point." There's nothing at all special about this.

You can continue to rage against the dying light if you think getting the last word means you win the argument, but I've already proven my point. Regardless of whether or not people think he's correct, the fact remains that the strength and influence of his arguments have forced people to respond to him and made him a seminal figure in linguistics and philosophy.

>Regardless of whether or not people think he's correct, the fact remains that the strength and influence of his arguments have forced people to respond to him and made him a seminal figure in linguistics and philosophy.
The same goes for pretty much everyone who's ever published a paper that received a little bit of attention. You only think he's a big deal because of his political posturing and public intellectual act. If it weren't for those things then he'd just be another no-name academic who did some work for the DoD.

Didnt Einstein change the way we comprehend existence? Didn't he work in the 20th century?

SHUT UP!

Thomas Sowell said hes a great linguist but mediocre political scientist. Sowell is based so I by default agree

Sowell is an uncle Tom so by default I disagree
Chomsky's linguistic work is terrible but libertarian anarcho-syndicalist apologetics for Pol Pot are the way to go.

>The same goes for pretty much everyone who's ever published a paper that received a little bit of attention.

This is false.

>You only think he's a big deal because of his political posturing and public intellectual act.

This is also false. I could not possibly care less about his political views and I find them rather juvenile. His works in analytic philosophy and linguistics are the primary draw.

>If it weren't for those things then he'd just be another no-name academic who did some work for the DoD.

Counterfactuals are a funny thing. Maybe next time you shouldn't waste money on shit college courses. Oh wait, that was mommy's cash right?

>This is false.
No it isn't. What you described is the academic process: a thesis is put forward, it is reviewed by the academic community, debate ensues, new positions deriving from the thesis ensue, etc. This is very basic stuff. Do you not know what peer review is?
>His works in analytic philosophy and linguistics are the primary draw.
You've done a poor job of convincing me that they're worth taking seriously in an age when neuroscience as a field already exists and behaviorism has been debunked for roughly 50 years.
>Counterfactuals are a funny thing. Maybe next time you shouldn't waste money on shit college courses. Oh wait, that was mommy's cash right?
Ah, I suppose you paid your way through your PhD with your own blood and sweat. Or you're crippled by debt and proud of the fact that you fell victim to usury.

Chomsky is really good at criticizing US foreign policy and neoliberalism, and he's clearly a genius. But anarchism is fucking stupid. Like, it's beautiful to hear him talk about but I don't get how someone that woke and smart can believe it.

your rhetorically dismissive epithetic of a black man whose politics and personal views you don't like, is wrong in every way that it is possible for such an epithet to be wrong. Do you know that?

the leftist: Q is an Uncle Tom.

The rational human being: Oh, so Q is a good person. That's what you mean when you say that. Why not just say that he's a good person?

the leftist: no herpderp false consciousness decolonize your mind terp derp

the rational human being: Q is a good person and you hate that because he is not your pet. Got it.

leftist: reeee

Every time a leftist calls someone an uncle tom, this is an instant tell to the rational human being that that someone is a good person - NOT strictly because he is a lapdog of the right, but exactly because he is NOT a lapdog of the left.

I can see you're trying really hard to poke holes where there are none, even after being proven wrong. First month on Veeky Forums?

>No it isn't. What you described is the academic process: a thesis is put forward, it is reviewed by the academic community, debate ensues, new positions deriving from the thesis ensue, etc. This is very basic stuff. Do you not know what peer review is?

Leaving aside the fact that you continue to move the goal posts in this discussion, different theses receive different amounts of attention. Not all papers are influential in the same way and whatever "a little bit of attention" might mean in your mind, it's certainly not the kind of attention Chomsky got.

>You've done a poor job of convincing me that they're worth taking seriously in an age when neuroscience as a field already exists and behaviorism has been debunked for roughly 50 years.

I'm not trying to convince you. You can very easily pick up a book or do a simple Google search to find out how Chomsky contributed to both fields. Linguistics and philosophy of language/mind simply deal with different subject matters than neuroscience that may occasionally overlap. For instance, linguistics is the study of the structure of language, how a language evolves over time, and how these might relate to psychological processes. Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. Different. Doesn't mean results in one can't have any bearing on the other.

>Ah, I suppose you paid your way through your PhD with your own blood and sweat. Or you're crippled by debt and proud of the fact that you fell victim to usury.

The only one who got swindled here was you my illiterate friend.

>I can see you're trying really hard to poke holes where there are none, even after being proven wrong. First month on Veeky Forums?
This can be read as:
>Chomsky is perfect because I say so, except where it isn't important, like the truth-value of his claims
>move the goalposts
No, not really.
>I'm not trying to convince you
Good because you're not doing a good job.
>Different.
OK--I still don't understand why you think that Chomsky's refutation of behaviorism is THE one that matters.
I don't know why I'm still responding to you.

are you familiar with horseshoe theory?

You seem to have gotten it into your head that I'm some kind of Chomsky apologist that praises him and everything he's ever said at the altar. I haven't expressed any personal opinion as to whether or not I think his refutation was successful. All I've done is acknowledge that his critique was enormously influential and interesting, which is true, otherwise we wouldn't live in a world where "behaviorism has been debunked for 50 years". Chomsky's was the most influential, that's all there is to it. Others were influential of course, but Chomsky led the charge and set the cognitive revolution, which eventually came to include the emergence of neuroscience, into motion. I can't see what's difficult to understand about any of these facts, other than the fact that you're blinded to Chomsky's non-political accomplishments by your hatred for his political views.

Chomsky is great though not as influential as he really should be.

Sowell is the second biggest nobody that ever wrote a book. The first being of course And then there's who's not even a /big/ nobody. I don't want to rag on him too much because I'm certain he's autistic but his reddit-tier "just want 2 deb8 m8" shtick, all designed (as he himself notes) to make books for profiting off of plebs, is intolerable.

Imagine being Chomsky and having these neckbreathers knock on your door and demand you give them any of your time when they are barely literate and fully belligerent for fully selfish reasons.

You sound pretty triggered.

I recently watched his famous debate with Foucault and he sounded like nothing more than a rhetorician. That's all I know of him.

>I haven't expressed any personal opinion as to whether or not I think his refutation was successful.
Was it or wasn't it? And does that matter? If you don't think it matters then fuck off and stop acting like your opinion is important.

all I know of chomsky is that he's an american, an analytic and a gommie, so I'm never going to take anything he says seriously

Dogmatic Chomskyists are like Dawkins' Atheists. He's very bookish and right about a lot of things, but people will gloat over him like he's the second coming or something and it's undeserved. His theory of Recursion, which was the staple to his brand, was disproven by Everett over two decades ago. Chomsky switched his focus to politics and economics to save face for him and his sponsors. Now he's reinvented his idea of the universal language organ through some new aged shit and MIT is floating the bill for everything. Compared to European intellectualism, he's like any other professor, but at the time, Foucault was more impressive.

Chomsky:
>Jewish
>American
>Exceptionally well-funded
>Proves "American Exceptionalism"

His name is like a business

That's about it.

I like to think of the debate (discussion, really) as having alternately been won in two parts. Chomsky won the first part in the sense that he was more right, while Foucault was more wrong - Chomsky asserted, with very careful qualifications, (my paraphrase now) that there really is something like a real and existent human nature (this atomic phrase is true in my view, which is the basic reason why I judge Chomsky to have won the first part) which can be meaningfully discussed, being amenable to some description through science. Foucault, meanwhile, literally and civilly pushes back on this (mistakenly in my view, of course) with what amounts to what every liberal arts undergrad is taught to parrot today: Muh Social Construction. Foucault basically wants to say something along the lines of: since culture and rules were different at different historical periods (his "grilles" in the discussion), and producing quite different effects depending on what century you're in, (throw in some Marxist terminology now just to make a philosophical discussion taking place on the Continent complete) - one must be very skeptical of such claims of human nature. Foucault doesn't push this too hard, nor does he dominate the first part. Chomsky wins Part 1.

Then the mediator Fons Elders turns from Muh Human Nature, to Muh Politics, and this is where Foucault shines, in that he much more accurately describes how the world actually is, let alone can be, than does Chomsky with his wish for his preferred flavor of anarchy. In addition to literally misrepresenting what legality and illegality themselves are (Chomsky as much as wants laws to be wrong just because he feels, albeit perhaps quite justifiably, that they /are/ wrong/not coterminous with ethical conduct), he confuses the two, while Foucault runs rings round him and is all um Power is always gonna do its thing dude.

Here's the single best exchange in the debate, where Foucault B'sTFO of Chomsky: (cont, cliffhanger if you've cared to read any of this at all):

It was a potent attack on philosophical behaviorism. Methodological behaviorism remains alive, well, and extremely useful. Aside from this, my personal opinion has no bearing on the fact of his influence.

Keep dancing around the words 'right' and 'wrong' all you want. I see through your charade.

So they're talking politics and Vietnam protests/civil disobedience, (with the above Chomsky stuff I've already mentioned), when this happens:

F: I would like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and say that the proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just. The proletariat makes war with the ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take power. And because it will overthrow the power of the ruling class, it considers such a war to be just.

C: Yeah, I don't agree.

F: [my emphasis] : ONE MAKES WAR TO WIN, NOT BECAUSE IT IS JUST.

C: I don't, personally, agree with that (goes on missing the point)...

The point being that Foucault understands, on some specific level, how the world actually works, and this hurts Chomsky's fee-fees.

See 55:50

youtube.com/watch?v=3wfNl2L0Gf8

>chumpsky
>greatest """"""thought"""""" is libertarian socialism
>literally contradicts itself in the name
>hurrr trust us, we're totally volantarists
>oops we just shot all the ebil capitalists, cuz they wouldn't give us all their ill-gotten gains gotten from back before we decided everything was voluntary and they were mean anyways
>in 10 years we'll do it again to the next rich meanies, because everything is supposed to be equally distributed in nature and unequal distributions could only be the result of cheating. Right guys?

chomsky is the one that never really shows emotion

other way around, m8

>Here's the single best exchange in the debate, where Foucault B'sTFO of Chomsky: (cont, cliffhanger if you've cared to read any of this at all):

Waiting for you to deliver on this, in part because I have a feeling we're thinking of the same exchange, where Chomsky ends up just saying, "No, I don't agree with that."

>horseshoe theory
you mean literally the most retarded thing anyone's ever thought of?

Chomsky's arguments against U.S. imperialism are entirely based on a 'feels over reals' understanding of foreign policy masked by Jewish verbal dexterity. His moral claims are all fallacious because he's clearly an atheist.

Yeah I like how Chomsky dismissively chuckles at the Spinoza name-drop. Really captures how wide the chasm is between their two respective traditions

>C: Yeah, I don't agree.

>F: [my emphasis] : ONE MAKES WAR TO WIN, NOT BECAUSE IT IS JUST.

>C: I don't, personally, agree with that (goes on missing the point)...

Kek this is the part I expected

>Be distinguished MIT professor
>Get confronted with a way of looking at the world that you don't understand
>Say you don't agree with it
>Talk about how Leninism isn't the most just system imaginable
>Fail to comprehend the play of power within class relations
>Use the word 'justice' so much that it becomes obvious it's just a word you use to make people think you're morally superior to your opponent, who provides a more interesting and valuable description of revolutionary change
>yfw

The most important thinker of the latter half of the last century is Edward Witten.

(now that a few cool-off hours have passed, though regrettably perhaps the same faggot hot-pocket-man is watching...)

I wasn't before, but I am now, because some faggot hot pocket man has, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, deleted my original post (now deleted) to which both you and had referred. To correct this state of affairs, I reiterate what had been rightly posted, and incorrectly deleted, which was originally in reference to , HERE WE GO AGAIN:

When you make the rhetorical epithet that so-and-so is an uncle tom, your epithet is wrong, in every way that it is possible for such an epithet to be wrong. It goes like this:

the leftist: Q is an Uncle Tom

the rational person: oh, so Q is a good person, which is what you really mean when you use that phrase. Why not just call Q a good person, instead?

the leftist: omg he's a obedient lapdog decolonize your mind fff terp derp

the rational person: what you really mean to say is that you are upset that this Uncle Tom, being a good person, is not YOUR lapdog.

When a leftist labels Q an Uncle Tom, this is thus an immediate tell to the rational person that Q is simply a good person: not because Q is a lapdog of the right, but exactly because Q is NOT a lapdog of the left.

I re-post something (this) that never should have been deleted in the first place, with the expectation that someone who does not know his own business will either delete it again or otherwise react incorrectly.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


Literal reply from Harris after being BTFO because "muh intent" and "america is a gentle giant" and deflecting the question like a fucking bitch

>You appear to have begun this dialogue at (or very near) the end of your patience. If we were to publish it, I would strongly urge you to edit what you have already written, removing unfriendly flourishes such as “as you know”, “the usual procedure in work intended to be serious,” “ludicrous and embarrassing,” “total refusal,” etc. I trust that certain of your acolytes would love to see the master in high dudgeon—believing, as you seem to, that you are in the process of mopping the floor with me—but the truth is that your emotions are getting the better of you. I’d rather you not look like the dog who caught the car.

Basically:

>I-I-I dont like your tone

In what way did Chomsky affect my life?
Did he create a useful technology?
Did he cure a disease?
Did he create positive change in global politics?
Did he write something that wasn't read by 5 bored academics?

Referring to people who don't think of Sowell as a god as 'leftists' is a sign of retardation.

uh-oh! you seem to have made a mistake there

Another butthurt linguist who can't justify the existence of xir field, I see.

Chomsky is for sure a great and influencial thinker but certainly not the greatest or the most influential. See for example Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger...

i didn't try to do anything, the whole point was to use "uh-oh" :=)

i don't see why you think the field should require justification at all. it is a knowledge-producing discipline and that is all it needs to be

The fact of the matter is that every field requires justification.

that seems to me to be just your opinion

What are Chomskys best 3 reads?

I know manufacturing consent is his most famous, but what else by him is good?

What makes you say that? Do you not know that research requires funding?

>Did he create a useful technology?
Some of his ideas had a big influence on computer science if that means anything.

>thinking zizek is anything but a funny meme

That's not the same as inventing something.
What you say may be true, but IIRC it's only because he worked for the U.S. Department of Defense, which makes his political convictions appear disingenuous.

Zizek has improved my moral character more than any other author I've ever read.

>A random, old Jewish crypto-Marxist, contrarian fart whose entire work consists of absolutely no innovation nor actual intellectual thought
>thinker

He's anything but. He's a symptom of a modern disease within the society whereas people demand, no - require a messiah whose stances they are about to adamantly parrot for being the slightest bit of contrarian in their nature and this is exactly what Chomsky played upon.

By adhering to the likes of him, the gullible pseuds find themselves under a veil of convincing delusion that they are the rational, unique individuals capable of maintaining an intellectual stance.

Chomsky is first and foremost a demagogue and a celebrity and little else beyond it. The fact that he's influential goes to show the delusion of the masses. Beyonce, Rihanna and Cyrus are also influential and are often used as reference points of quality, yet one could easily dismiss their whole act and performance as vulgar and putrid.

What should I read/watch to get a good idea of who is Zizek, what is his thought, and why people think listening to him is worth their time?

What do you suggest instead senpai? How do I increase my ability to think for myself? MAGA tbhfam XD

>>greatest """"""thought"""""" is libertarian socialism
>>literally contradicts itself in the name


Is american education really this fucking terrible?

Oh, he's self taught.

youtube.com/watch?v=REiqkK3ckiM

Just listen to his lectures and you'll see. His thought is more a work of synthesizing Hegel, Marx and Lacan than can be spoken of as anything personally novel so its hard to speak of his ideas if you don't have a background in them.

One of this main achievements is demonstrating the infinity of Language even within the parameters of Materialism, not even bothering to go deeper into the inherent contradictions at the bottom of Materialism itself. All the more maddening for STEMlords.

He's a continental philosopher and a lacanian psychoanalyst, so a meme basically. He has some good things to say about liberals being self-serving ideologues, but most of the time he just spouts nonsense.

well unfortunately he's a major obscurantist, so his thought is painfully hard to untangle.

There is a summary online somewhere (which is less poorly written, at least to the degree that it is somewhat intelligible), written by someone named "Daly" (that's all I remember). From it I gathered that Zizek is a huge pessimist who think that there's always something "lacking" in human existence. And he has a lot to say about how ideologies control people by doing stuff with that lack (not merely promising to fix it).

I just watched a lot of his youtube talks and read a few of his articles on lacanianink.com.

Personally, I think that listening to him is worth my time because he's always going "beyond" what you expect.

Like, he'll put forth an interesting idea, then he'll reveal that that interesting idea was only really the naive conceptualization of the thing he's attempting to describe. Then he'll go nuts and redescribe it in a quite paradoxical and Chestertonian way.

Let me give you an example (another reason I like him is that he always, without fail, follows abstruse impenetrable critical theory jargon with an example that makes everything totally clear):

Monks are taught to meditate, when around beautiful women, on the fact that, beneath the appearances of their attractiveness, the reality of these women and their bodies is the reality of their future decay, of how they'll age and become dust, how they're just a composite of flesh, tendons, bone, and blood, and how there is even feces being produced in their intestines, etc... (another thing I like about Zizek is that he's often so abruptly obscene...)

Ok, so monks are taught this... but isn't the reality the opposite? I mean yes, all the above is true, but the beautiful women before you and the sex you could be having with her is not just equally real, it is actually MORE real, insofar as you are unlikely to see her vivisected anytime soon, and she won't be growing old for many years!

^So there, performed awkwardly, is an example of one of his characteristic reversals.

I also like him because he's excellent at telling jokes, and he actually has a good sense of humor, which is something you could never say of Sam Harris or even Jordan Peterson. Moreover, his jokes are always totally apposite to the material he's talking about, which really makes me feel like he understands the material.

I don't like that he's a stalinist (or even jokes about being one), and I wish he would be brave enough to write clearly... but I agree with his practical political criticisms, and so on and so on...

>MAGA tbhfam XD

Maybe you'll manage by projecting further, you little shitstain.