From xah@xahlee.org Thu Sep 18 11:43:05 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:43:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from host2-4.remarkablehosting.net ([208.186.130.4]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12) id 1A03jy-0005ur-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:42:54 -0700 X-ClientAddr: 209.234.96.194 Received: from xahlee.org ([209.234.96.194]) (authenticated (0 bits)) by host2-4.remarkablehosting.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id h8IIgW830174; Thu, 18 Sep 2003 14:42:32 -0400 Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 11:42:31 -0700 Subject: [lojban] Re: That's mostly for spanish readers Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v552) Cc: lojban-list@lojban.org To: gregory.dyke@epfl.ch From: xah In-Reply-To: <116ec17747.17747116ec@imap.epfl.ch> Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.552) X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-ILON-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-archive-position: 6222 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: xah@xahlee.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Thursday, September 18, 2003, at 10:32 AM, GREGORY DYKE wrote: > > On Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 09:49:42AM -0400, xahlee.org wrote: > > > stories as such are academic babbling, like that a mint with a > > blowjob will feel good. Appealing to the semi-intelligent masses > > as wisdom and potential truth, but in fact harmful as a piece of > crap. > > Would you care to explicate to a member of the semi-intelligent masses > such as myself, firstly why this is untrue - and why I *was* able to > read it with relative ease - secondly why considering this as a > hypothesis is harmful... such "stories" is a probable folk lore, esp the way now they are being spread. They have a lot to do with social psychology. on a academic ground, such lurid "theory" smells no scientific basis or significance. It has a quality where every layman appreciates. Any smart expert in languages with a crank twist can probably come up with 10 such "theories" and have them spread thru internet. There are millions of properties of languages and the way we perceive things and other stuff never thought about. I can just pick a few that would amaze the crowd as a theory they never thought of. Did you know that you can actually randomize paragraphs of any book and lose no understanding? I heard this from a research of a reputable university. Thru my massive knowledge acquiring fastidiousness, i have also learned that Eskimo has a hundred words for snow. As you know, languages are so complex. The English proverb "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" was once fed to the first translation machine and it became "the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten". Each person are exposed to millions of things daily. How you know one thing is or is not from another and correctly is really dependent on your general learnings as a whole. I may be wrong about what i said, or i may be simply a crackpot, but ultimately how you judge and your credibility depends on you. If one thinks about and researches on ghosts and goblins all day and night and year around and other million questionable random believable things, that would be harmful if one thought it was sound doings. Now if we think about this "research" findings... what is its significance? First of all, who and when did it? So maybe we could still read when inter-lettres are jumbled. But did you know eliminating vows works too? Maybe eliminate every other words works too. But not the least of all, perhaps we can delete half the ink of every letter and it would still work. Of the ideographs of Chinese, perhaps they can elide every other stroke, or just punch a hole in the middle of every character and it all still works. As far as hypothesis goes, eliminate conjugations and declensions would probably automatically work. Can you see the significance of my important hypothesises? related great site: http://people.howstuffworks.com/urban-legend.htm/printable Xah xah@xahlee.org http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html > And also - if the shape of words is one of the ways we recognize them - > how come we can still recognize the words when their shape gets mixed > up. > > mi'e greg mu'o >