Would you find ambiguities in meaning to be a less controversial example of a linguistic phenomenon? For instance “I saw the man with the binoculars” (who has the binoculars) or “Every boy loves a girl” (the same girl?).

As for the pyramids… in science, there’s always the risk that your results are going to be coincidental, and with a baby science like linguistics the risk is especially high. That doesn’t mean we should give up– on the contrary, it’s all the more reason to keep hitting our frameworks with more and more data, control for various variables, and see which fmwks are fruitful and which are not.

[POSTSCRIPT: No generative grammarian would say that you have to specially learn what not to say. In calling a sentence ungrammatical, we're simply saying that it's not one of the things you do learn to say. I'm also puzzled by your mention of formal algorithms. Generative grammar has nothing to do with those. An algorithm is a list of instructions to accomplish some task– generative grammarians ask what the task is that's responsible for linguistic phenomena.]

Chomsky happened on some significant patterns of regularity in his description of language. But let’s remember that Erich Von Däniken also came upon some strange regularities in the relationship between the dimensions of the pyramids and the distance to the Moon.

Presumably the difference in acceptability between the English sentences “I did not eat” and “I not ate.” is a real linguistic phenomenon, right?

Is your objection to Generative Grammar that it is too narrow (i.e. ignores some interesting questions)? That there’s something really deeply broken with it (i.e. it’s a pseudoscience or something)? Something else?

There are people who claim that there are many features of the brain that are directly responsible for metaphor (mirror neurons, neuron excitations, etc.) George Lakoff and Jerome Feldman are big proponents of NTL (Neural Theory of Language) – see Feld…

1. “cargo cult” – see my somewhat stagnant project on Education as Voodoo (http://eduvoodoo.net).

2. I am most emphatically NOT saying that choice is a problem (although, it is not an unadulterated good or a moral sine qua non). But I am saying that frequently, choice is an illusion. Charter schools are pretend choice.

3. I don’t think primary/secondary schools have to be monopolistic intrinsically (also in any one areas they tend to be duopolies) but at current economies of scale, it is pretty much the only choice (thus the analogy to US cable providers in the 80s and cell companies at the moment). So while there may be some boutique alt edu providers in many areas they do not put any competitive pressure on the monopolistic ‘catchment’ schools. Many suggest that going back to the system of small schools would be a good idea – but I suspect it would also be a really expensive thing to do. And the problem with the market approaches to education is that they are also obsessed with saving money.

Nothing is intrinsically monopolistic – not even the police, armies or tax collection (see Ancient Rome) – but there are areas where it is beneficial for the state to have at least a monopoly of regulation (electricity provision, spectrum interference, POTS, etc.) even if the provision of a service allows for competition on certain surface aspects of the service.

4. You make valid points about the weakness of parts of my argument about lack of choice in some areas. I’ll have to think on this some more .

5. I’ll leave the description of growing up in a “communist” country for another blog post.

Also, I’d distinguish reason from rationalism – reducing everything to reason. I fear rationalism, but reason is a fun thing to play with. The fascist rejection of rationalism was itself a product of rationalism – and I see hints of that in some SciFi. Two reasonable/ing people can disagree amiably, two rationalists would tend to try to annihilate one another (because, if reason is infallible, only one can be right and remain who they are). Also rationalists hold in them the seed of the suppression of any more rationalism once the pinnacle of their ‘reason’ was reached.

Funny that Tyler Cowen linked to this on sci-fi and libertarianism some days ago. I think sci-fi tends toward rationalism, which fascism tends to deride. I distrust rationalism as well, but don’t go in for irrationalism (instead I think pluralism/empiricism helps us better attain accuracy).

“strong, charismatic leadership with a sense of duty and most of all a belief in the necessity of change led by common sense. The needs of the collective justified the suppression of the individual in almost any way.”
Except for that second sentence, it sounds pretty normal. And if it was spun in a more mild version than “almost any way”, that would also sound normal. I don’t read much sci-fi, but I think (as with most fiction) the individual tends to be held above the collective. Sympathetic individual protagonists make for better stories.

For fear of tripping spam filters I’ll refrain from linking to Scott Sumner’s post at TheMoneyIllusion arguing that the narrative form is inherently liberal. You can google the title “Is the term ‘political art’ an oxymoron? (Part 2)”. “Part 1″ has a completely different title, so don’t try searching for that.