Re: Use of This List, relativity, ri'i

[cbmvax!uunet!Eng.Sun.COM!landauer (Doug Landauer)]

> It also is not a waste of time if it encourages debate on lojban-list, where
> 90% of the people are perpetually silent.  Are you listening out there?

Don't be discouraged by that silence -- I think that the "lurkers" far
outnumber the speakers on most newsgroups and on almost all large
mailing lists, especially technical ones.  I'm certainly reading the
discussions, and try (often unsuccessfully) to find the time to
concentrate on understanding lojban fragments like the 3-bears story
that was posted a few months ago.  I suspect that a lot of the readers
of the lojban-list have the time to follow the technical discussions,
but have little time available for thinking deeply about the issues or
composing serious contributions to them.

> Do you want lojban-list to have:
> 
> lojban text and commentary

Yes.

> teaching examples on topics of some factotum's choosing

Yes, I'd like to see more examples of relatively simple sentences.

> discussion of the language design - pros and cons (like the relativity issue)

Yes, I believe that this type of discussion is probably the area where
the attributes (speed, interactivity, and a sense of informality) of the
e-mail list can best be used.  (As compared with the slower turnaround
and more formality that is implicit in actual, paper publication, even
one as informal as JL.)

> description of the language design (mostly answers to your questions)

Yes.

> discussion of goals for the langauge / computer applications /
>    sapir-whorf / language education
> Which of these should be handled here, and which in Ju'i Lobypli?

I think that the breakdown of which items should be handled where
isn't so much based on topic as it based on the level of formality and
the degree to which an idea or proposal has been thought out.

> How do we serve the needs of the new people who are added to the
> list every week and don't hear the previous discussions?

Like any newsgroup does -- we suggest that they read the list for a
while, invite them to participate once they think they understand what
belongs on the list, and encourage them to ask any questions they might
have.  We can omit the ritual USENET-style flaming of newcomers for
asking a question that was answered a month ago.  :-)

> Three months ago John Cowan posted a translation/retelling of 
> what Jim Carter correctly identified as 'The Three Bears'.
> My question is:  did anybody actually try to read it?

I had printed it out, but hadn't found time to try to read it.  :-(

> Do you want things like Cowan's fairly major
> effort, which is highly readable since most everyone knows the story and
> he used fairly simple repetitive structures in good fairy tale form?

Yes, I would like to see more examples like that.

> Anybody out there listening?  It would be neat to hear comments ...
> That way we know what you want.

My guess is that what most of us want is to have more time to spend on
this sort of thing.  :-)

JSP> Time, fundamentally, is about causality.  The most important
JSP> implications of "A happened before B" are that A may have caused B,
JSP> and that B could not possibly have caused A.

> I assert that the first sentence is an assumption that Jeff is making
> that is not necessarily true, and that the conclusions that result from it
> are therefore invalid.  Specifically, the assertion of relativity seems to
> differ - that "A happened before B" does NOT imply that A caused B if B is
> not in the light cone of A.
> 
> Lojban's system of expressing causality is independent of its system of
> expressing time.

I don't think Jeff is suggesting either that
	A before B		implies		A caused/influenced B
or that there should be any dependence between causality and tense.
It seems to me that all he was saying is that it would make sense to
make the set of tenses more complete; and that it would be a bonus, in
a practical sense, that completing the set of tenses from the three
newtonian ones to the four relativistic ones would allow us to say
	A "tense-four" B	implies		A cannot have caused B
and
	A before B		implies		A *might* have caused B.
As you can prabably guess, I agree with him that this addition makes sense.

> ganai do dunda loi djacu ko'a gi ko'a banro       the conditional
> ri'agi do dunda loi djacu ko'a gi ko'a banro      the causal

Thanks for these examples, I fond them very interesting and helpful,
except:

> bagi do dunda loi djacu ko'a gi ko'a banro        the tensal (?)
> After you water it, it grows.
> 
> pugi do dunda loi djacu ko'a gi ko'a banro
> After you water it, it grows.

Wouldn't this one translate as
  Before you water it, it grows.
?

Or was this just a trick to see if anyone was listening?  :-)

> If tense relationships in Lojban do not imply causality or potentiality,
> is there still a need for these extra tenses?

I agree with Jeff -- I think that there is a need for the one extra
tense ("the oblivious zone") that he has described in detail.
-- 
Doug Landauer - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - landauer@eng.sun.com