Message-Id: <199308140323.AA02840@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 23:20:50 EDT
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>
Subject:      Re: jvoste #3 (8/10)
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

The debate on culture gismu ended like all others with the status quo, since
it takes a major consensus to change the status quo on the gismu list, and
there was anything but.

We will not deny rafsi to the cultural gismu becasue a) the rafsi list is
baselined and b) the would rather spoil the intent of making the culture
gismu in the first place.  I reinterate that WE DID NOT INTEND THE CULTYUTRAL
GISMU TO BE 'FAIR' in the sense that people seem to want fairness who are
proposing change.  A basic assumption of the language is that the 12 languages/
cultures that were deemed 'most importnat' by population weighting to affect
 thdesign of the language vocabulary should get cultural gismu.  We then
 assigned
some gismu based on this, with apparently less rigor than we might have liked
in deciding which countries should get them.  Oh, well.  It won;t be the
first mistake we've made (there are a few dozen known TYPOS alone that affected
the final gismu list, even assuming that we got the right word Chinese, Hindi,
and Arabic (our weakest knowledge base at the time) to use in making the gismu.

We can say that we tried, and the result is more fair than JCB's version
of the language, and we have a way of covering all the other cultures if
it matters.  It just isn't important enough to hold up the language for,
and we don't have any reason to believe that a consensus is even possible given
the gismu minimalists, the fans of culture words like me, and the nationalists
who may or may not wish to see their country or culture represented the
way they want.

I sought people's opinion, because I told people at LogFest that I would
report on the nature of the problem and see if there was a quick consensus
 solution that could be agreed upon that we could in some way justify breaking
 our
baseline policy.  We didn;t reach agreement as to whether there is a problem,
what the soltions miight be, nor which solutions are better.

I think this is an issue that will relatively go away when we have words, of
 whatever word type, for each of the cultures that we want/need them.  I am
personally almost antagonistic to those who argue for a nationalistic solution;
Lojban cannot survive nationalism (can much of anything - given what is
happening in the Balkans?)

lojbab