Lojban discussions

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>>> >> I make no sense. Your reactions suggest that we are close to
>>> >> getting back to the ancient discussion about needing lo tanxe that
>>> >> led to enormous largely pointless volume 2 years ago (indeed it was
>>> >> 2 years ago Thanksgiving that we had something like 200 postings in
>>> >> a single day on the list or some similar nonsense).
>
>Suggesting that the vigor of a discussion is inversely proportional to the
>importance of a discussion is an interesting assertion.

Not what I was trying to assert. But we did lose half the subscription base
during that explosion, and most of the rest just discarded without reading
the bulk of traffic.  This is not productive, and indeed, since it excludes
lots of people who might care, it indeed makes the debate less important.

But what I was saying is that that debate let of lots of volume, megabytes, and
it resolved surprisingly little.  Mostly it raised new questions, most of which
remain unresolved today since they keep coming up in new guises.

In the meantime they have the begative effect of making the language look
incomplete (because the most skilled people in the language are arguing
about what the language is rather than using it) and arcane and difficult
(because most people can't hope to follow the debate with less than a couple
of years of logic and/or Lojban List history - AND more time than most people
are willing to spend) and too time consuming (time spent trying to follow the
discussion is time not spent using the language).

That is wht the debate is pointless and counterproductive.  At this point
in tim,e, such debates DO NOT settle anything, unless they can be couched
in terms of a clarifying note in the gismu list (which means they have to be
very simple), since the latter cannot have substantive changes i.e. to
place structures etc., which can go into the dictionary.  Debates on Lojbam
List are not bbinding on the community and indeed are read by less than
10% of the community (probably less than 1/2 of those who have already
bought the books, and there are 1200-1800 people who have not even gotten
ntoice of the book yet who are on various lists - most of whom are not on
the net).

>>> >I realize that to many these discussions are arcane, pedantic and
>>> >pointless.
>>>
>>> I am beginning to feel that all of them are, until we get more usage.
>
>I do not agree. The current discussions are interesting and helpful in
>bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Until thereis practice, there is nothing to bridge.

>Unfortunately, the
>discussions are not linked in a useful fashion to the grammer or
>dictionary, which leads to repetition and rehashing of already settled
>issues. (For one, the dictionary on the lojban web site is now down.)

I believe that all of the Lojban materials are available from our ftp site
at Digex, and it is possible that the digex web page will point locally
to some of them rather than to Finland and therfore make things accessible
by http rather than ftp.  I am not quite sure what the URL is of the
Digex page, but it should be pretty easy to figure out from my email address
and/or the ftp address.

>However, I found the discussions on irony to be quite interesting. I
>believe that the use of explicit markers to denote irony defeats the whole
>purpose of irony. The point of irony is to communicate a concept which both
>speaker and listener recognize as metareferential, despite minimal or
>absent explicit indication in the utterance that something beyond or other
>than the utterance is meant.

And Lojban, unlike most or all languages, has an explicit grammar of
metareference.

>Using an explicit irony marker is like putting
>a turd on your chocolate pudding. Its still chocolate pudding, but the
>pudding is irrevocably contaminated, and ain't nobody gonna eat it.

Is this a prediction of a Sapir-Whorf effect? %^)  If people have to mark
irony in order to use it, then people will not use irony?

BTW, I thinkl that the irony discussion is a different order of things than
the logical semantics debates that seem to be Jorge and And with me occasionally
butting in with less than a full habdle on the discussion.  It is these
latter that I consider to be realtively pointless.

Indeed, I think it is safe to say that any debate on semantics of Lojban that
is intedned to be decisive, would have to involve at minimum Cowan, myself,
Nora, Nick Nicholas, Colin Fine, Ivan Derzhanski, pc, as well as And and Jorge
(and there are others who might want to weigh in as well).  Of these, 2
are not on the list at all, and at least 3 have given indication that they
read little of the list traffic even though they are ninimnally subscribed.
Cowan himself does not weigh in on most issues unless they are put in terms
of specificallyt what did the refgrammar say.

> I hypothesize that some human mental
>illness also exist because of logical gaffs.

Totally off the subject of Lojban, I wouldn't mind sometime hearing your
private opinion on the question of viral causes for many mental illnesses
(it was in Discover agazine, but I don't know what professional literature
- it is work being done inb Germany involving some virus thought previously
only to affect horses).  But let us keep this one off the list.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";
    Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.