army1987 comments on Decision Theories: A Less Wrong Primer - Less Wrong

69 Post author: orthonormal 13 March 2012 11:31PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 16 March 2012 10:03:53PM 1 point [-]

If you doubt the existence of universal grammar, you should try The Language Instinct as well.

While some linguistic universals definitely exist, and a sufficiently weak version of the language acquisition device idea is pretty much obvious (‘the human brain has the ability to learn human language’), I think Chomsky's ideas are way too strong. See e.g. Scholz, Barbara C. and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2006) Irrational nativist exuberance