Top all-time · #18363
Zompist's E-Z rant page
Personal blog · zompist.wordpress.comcultureprogrammingwriting
Zompist's E-Z rant page is a personal blog at zompist.wordpress.com about culture, programming and writing. Since 2009, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this linguistics blog to challenge Chomsky's poverty-of-the-stimulus claim. One commenter cites a review of a book arguing that children need plenty of linguistic stimulus to learn new constructions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Hopefully all too frequent again
What Hacker News says?
Which, again, is a poor argument in that Chomsky never demonstrates his central conceit: Is there a poverty of the stimulus? Here's a review of a book that makes the case that children need, and use, plenty of stimulus to learn new linguistic constructions: https://zompist.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/so-much-for-chomsky... > It’s been noticed that children rarely learn a new pattern that’s demonstrated in front of them…
Comment linking /2008/05/06/so-much-for-chomsky/
on “Chomsky Explains Why Nobody Is a Moral Relativist, Even Michel Foucault”Submitted On Aging as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted If managers were interviewed the same way as developers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted No, you don't need a natural language interface as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Maximum City as a story · 1 points
HN discussion