[ticulatedspline]

Taking the narrative as presented in this article seems plausible Epstein just crumpled it up and threw it out. He just wanted a way to further endear himself to Noam in order to have someone credible vouching for him. Work like this is a good way to do that, like that old Ben Franklin trick of having someone do something for you.

[foldr]

Yeah, of course. But the question is what Chomsky thought about all this. His wife seems to want us to think that Chomsky genuinely believed he was being paid $20k to develop a 'linguistic challenge'. I think what's nearer the truth is that he was happy to receive mystery money from rich financiers without asking too many inconvenient questions. And this is someone who we know was very good at asking inconvenient questions when he had a mind to.

[markus_zhang]

TBH, if you are a top scientist, or whatever, and you meet a rich admirer who wants to donate some $$$, it is very easy to accept. Chomsky probably knew this was just a way to give $$$ to him, but he didn't see anything wrong with it.

[foldr]

Chomsky won't be the first or the last person to be tempted by offers of free money from dodgy gentlemen. There are consequences to accepting such offers, as we now see.

[markus_zhang]

Yes there is. There is always the other side of the equation.

[basedrum]

Why do you find it implausible that he got money to develop this challenge? I work in the non profit space and we get these kind of gifts all the time, with minimal strings attached or sometimes the deliverables don't see the light of day. 20k is actually small in my experience and they often come from random people who support our mission. Sure we do investigate and sometimes refuse based on findings, but we don't know or find everything. Taking money doesn't mean you know and support everything the person who have the money ever did, thought, said...

[foldr]

Primarily because there is no evidence that the challenge exists, and it's hard to imagine what it could even be. Chomsky's own research interests didn't really lend themselves to setting some kind of math olympiad style 'challenge'. If he was excited about setting up prizes or challenges in linguistics, you have to wonder why he never once did it. He certainly could have if he'd wanted to.

[basedrum]

Just because you can't find it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Also just because you give it hard to imagine, does not mean that it didn't happen, or that people with better imaginations as you could accomplish that.

[foldr]

I was a generative linguist in my previous career and no linguist that I know has ever heard of this Chomsky challenge thing. It’s hard to prove that something doesn’t exist, but I’m fairly sure it doesn’t.

[basedrum]

He could have created this, and then Epstein decided not to launch it? It can exist without you and others knowing about it.

[ticulatedspline]

Noam strikes me as someone deeply attached to their "art", honestly this "linguistic challenge" feels like a nerd-snipe and Noam might have even done it for free.

I think the payment aspect works more in favor of Epstein than Noam. I don't think Epstein was oblivious to the "we go down together" nature of some of his relationships, quite the opposite.