From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Usual Libels against Chomsky
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 2 Sep 92 23:54:30

In article <2SEP199213213832@reg.triumf.ca> orwell@reg.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON) writes:

   John McCarthy (jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU), "replying" to me:
   >Why should we believe Gervasi rather than the Pentagon?

   I could answer in detail (Gervasi discusses this question himself, where 
   he points out that the facts are generally not in dispute, but 
   rather the interpretations used to create "threat inflation"), 
   but the question is clearly disingenuous, since John McCarthy obviously
   has no intention of letting the facts confuse his beliefs in this area. 
   I presume this is not how he goes about his work in mathematics and
   computer science. 

   Let me -- with 46 years of historical justification -- turn the question 
   around, and ask John McCarthy why I should believe anything the 
   U.S. political-military-industrial complex has to say about this,
   since they have shown themselves to be consistent liars in this area?

   You just need a memory and knowledge of history longer than two weeks.
   From George Orwell, "1984" (Part I, v, pg. 61 in 1989 Penguin Books
   edition), emphasis in original:

     "... For the moment he [Winston Smith] had shut his ears to the
     remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the
     telescreen.  It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to
     thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a
     week.  And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that
     the ration was to be **reduced** to twenty grammes a week.  Was it
     possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? 
     Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it with the stupidity of an
     animal.  The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it
     fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down,
     denounce and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the
     ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too --- in some more complex
     way, involving doublethink -- Syme swallowed it.  Was he, then
     **alone** in the possession of a memory?"  [George Orwell, "1984"]


      Ron Balden

It was the Soviet Union not America that Orwell had as a model.  He
feared that the whole world would turn out like the Soviet Union
under Stalin.  He conjectured that the actual personality of the leader
didn't matter.  He conjectured that it didn't actually matter whether
there really was a Big Brother.  Fortunately, he was mistaken, and
things got a bit better in the Soviet Union after Stalin died,
and the West didn't go that way at all.

Should I accuse you of lying for this misleading quotation?

I expected you wouldn't actually answer the question but would turn
it around.  But you don't realize the extent to which I see things
differently from you.  In my memory of the last 46 years, the
American left has lied far more consistently than the Pentagon.
One of the most prevalent forms of lie was distorting what the
Pentagon said.

Let's see, to begin with, let's mention I.F. Stone repeating the
Stalinist lies about the the South Koreans starting the Korean
War and the U.S. using germ warfare.

As a more recent example, let's consider the American left
propagating the Soviet lie that the accident in Sverdlovsk
(now again Ekaterinburg) didn't involve germ warfare.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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