Noam Chomsky Quotes
It’s very hard to predict the weather. Predicting human affairs is very difficult.
Noam Chomsky, Linguist & Political Writer, C-SPAN, Book TV, February 3, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Most scientists are of the opinion that although we cannot control the weather we can refrain from those activities that would induce more extreme climate changes. It is the extreme’s that cause the major problems. The other weather problems cause difficulties but they are manageable.
Politicians and public administrators have been aware of unintended consequences for a long time.
He is absolutely right, but unfortunately made this statement several years after he served as the Fed Chairman. He never made a statement like this when he and his colleagues made their policies based on their economic forecasting. Central bankers have generally felt that one of their jobs was to give the people confidence in the nation’s banking system and economy and the admission that much policy making was based on “coin toss” forecasting.
See {630694} for a later, more specific instance where Hand’s principle was required operationally.
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
