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THE VIDEO SHELF · philosophy of mind

Noam Chomsky - "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding"

Noam Chomsky's 2011 University of Oslo lecture on Newton's contributions to the study of mind. He argues Newton abandoned mechanical explanation and lowered the bar for scientific intelligibility, with consequences for the limits of human understanding. Q&A starts at 45:33.

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Why HN readers recommended it

Recommended as a lucid, insightful lecture on the limits of human knowledge and the study of mind, one commenter calling it among the best lectures ever.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Andy80o
Topic
philosophy of mind
Format
lecture
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
2
HN mentions in dataset
5
Recommendation years in dataset
2013–2022

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Maybe off-topic, but Prof. Chomsky always mention how important Newton was in the history of science and how significant his giving up on the mechanical philosophy when he failed to explain gravity in a mechanical way, how "lowering the bar" was important to set a …

    mrwnmonm on Hacker News · 2021-03
    In Translating Newton’s Principia

  • Chomsky's surprisingly insightful thinking on the limits of human knowledge, and the consequences: [VIDEO]

    Supermancho on Hacker News · 2022-09
    In Quantum tunneling makes DNA more unstable

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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