From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Aug 14 23:21:36 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:24:48 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:24:41 -0400 Message-Id: <199308150724.AA11060@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6135; Sun, 15 Aug 93 03:23:25 EDT Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 8971; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:23:24 -0400 Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:21:36 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: jvoste #3 (8/10) X-To: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: UC> I suggested the change not to be fair but to avoid pissing off UC> potential adherents. I've become convinced that there is no way to handle this issue that won't piss off someone, and at this point I think that anyone who would become pissed off about this issue to the extent that it would affect their decision to learn the language is probably not that likely to learn the language anyway. It just ain't that important, and there is no culturally neutral way to solve the problem without a) pissing someone off or b) hobbling the language with too many words, or too few for expressing some frequently used concepts. UC> > It just isn't important enough to hold up the language for, UC> > and we don't have any reason to believe that a consensus is even poss UC> n UC> > the gismu minimalists, the fans of culture words like me, and the nat UC> > who may or may not wish to see their country or culture represented t UC> > way they want. UC> UC> I don't think the debate was sufficiently organized to say there was UC> no consensus. Several proposals were discussed, and not surprisingly UC> different people preferred different ones. But had the possibilities UC> been whittled down by eliminating the least-favoured solutions a UC> consensus might well have emerged. By the your reasoning change UC> will only occur if everyone spontaneously agrees on a specific UC> change. No. But there can be no consensus when one group's principles are the contradictory negation of anothers. The gismu minimalists are opposed to addding ANY gismu. Not a single one. For any reason. We should drop some. People in my position are opposed to dropping cultural gismu that we feel are useful and necessary. Another camp I am allied with are opposed to any sdeletions because the gismu list is baselined and some people have learned them. Put the latter together with the minimalists and you can neither add nor delete unless you can come up with an argument that is so compelling that it will change the moinds of an entire camp. The possible adding of a few gismu to make a set that would have the strong benefit of self-consistency with some arbitrary standard was the only sugges- tion that even addressed both camps, and it was responded to with a mixture of 50% either 'OK' or "we'll accept it as good enough" and 50% as "I'm not convinced that issue is important enough to make a change", with probably the slight edge to the latter in numbers. I saw no argument to answer the latter, and we simply don't have time for a full argument and polling of the issue via JL; I cannot override our standards of baselining lightly. I have a large camp of people who feel that any attempt to make the language more 'perfect' is in itself wrong if it delays the books any longer, and I will not let the dictionary go to press with an issue affecting as many words as the cultural gismu 'up in the air'. So I have had to decide that there was no consensus achieved, and none was likely in the timeframe available. This is what happens with most discussions on the List: most proposals fail for lack of a clear, oppositioonless consensus behind them. As for organized or spontaneous discuusion, this was one of the more organized ones that we've had on Lojban List. I didn;t just pose a question and say 'how do we solve it',. I posed a question and gave the data and what I saw would be the range of possible answers that was salable. I did not even get much response on where in that range the answer should be - instead the answers ranged from trying to select actual words - which was NOT the issue, to arguments on including gismu for Irish, English of England proper, and combined north/South America, of which only the former could be construed as relating to my proposal - but it raised a much nastier counter issue - that of counting people of an ethnic identity rather than people of a linguistic community. The issue was NEVER a wide open debate on what to do about cultural gismu. It was decided long ago that we would have them, and to some extent was decided by JCB in the basic language design. The question was where to draw the line, or even more simply, whether any reason at this point could justify moving the line from where it had apparently been arbitrarily drawn. The people who posted most loudly seemed to assume tacitly that moving the line was a given, which it was not under our baseline policy. When I 'called the question', several people who had been silent almost unanimously said "we aren;t convinced that any change at all is necessary", and even John Cowan who had argued FOR the change at the LogFest meeting and in postings on the list, was tepid in support for change when there was such opposition. Thus the discussion was rather structured, with a proposal, a discussion period, a call for votes, a vote, and a collapse of argument on the proponents for change side. This doesn't mean that side agreed with the consensus of no change, but rather they were unable to break the assumed consensus AGAINST change that is fundamental to a baseline system. Using your wording, we eliminated the least favored alternatives, i.e. all of the change proposals, since none attracted more than a couple of people in support. I will agree that in general change in Lojban is only possible if someone believes in aproposal enough to frame it and shepherd it through debate in a structured but forceful and active manner to encourage people to adopt the proposal. Such a person has to be willing to make changes in the proposal being shepherded, but must be enough of a believer that they keepthe idea going against inertia. This takes a lot of work if there is no immediate consensus. Nick has won a default consensus on his lujvo place structure proposals by doing an immnense amount of work, enough that I, as an opponent of early dictation of lujvo place struture patterns in stead of letting them be 'discovered' for a few years, could only stand aside. His ideas may still not be accepted, but his writing of a detailed paper supporting his proposal and analyzing the entire set of lujvo means that counterproposals must be either a) equally comprehensive, or b) piecemeal showing that individual words can't work like he has proposed and then getting enough of these individuals to show that the imposed standard isn't good enough to enforce even as only a default. I think the latter may indeed happen, but it will take a long time to build the langauge experience to make such a case. It woill similarly take a long time and a bit of actual experience using the language to resolve the culture words question. If actual usage shows that the status quo is a problem, than it is reasonable to assume that the language users will propose a change, simply adopt such a change without bothering with a proposal, or otherwise express their sentiment clearly. But that won't happen till we have a dictionary. lojbab