Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:59:59 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:59:52 -0400 Message-Id: <199310121759.AA15521@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0565; Tue, 12 Oct 93 13:57:59 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8540; Tue, 12 Oct 93 14:00:34 EDT Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:57:00 EDT Reply-To: protin@USL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Art Protin Subject: Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 12 09:57:00 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET John Cowan writes: > It is this sort of fuzziness which caused the Lojban engineers > to remove the comparative places from many gismu. As Art Protin > recently posted, Loglan "groda" historically meant "x1 is bigger > than x2 by standard x3" and "x1 is big" was interpreted as "x1 > is bigger than something-unspecified". (Institute Loglan has > never had an equivalent of "zo'e"). > This gimmick breaks down in many cases, though: "x1 is not big" > obviously cannot be so rewritten. I am afraid I don't see this. Either of the two forms seem to make sense: X [is] not bigger-than [something-unspecified] and X [is] reverse-relation bigger-than [something-unspecified]. (or reordered for English speakers "[something-unspecified] [is] bigger-than X"). Also, the "heap paradox" seems very lame. A heap is not precisely defined and then a formal proof fails because of this imprecision does not strike me as a really interesting paradox. The proof/paradox falls apart if I define a heap as a gravitationally stable aggregate of items such that there is no 2 available dimensional view that permits precise counting of the constituent items. Then the heap ceases to be a heap when the constituent items can be counted either because enough have been removed or those items have been rearranged to distinguish each item. The cleanup of the definition of small is more difficult, but again a precise proof with imprecise terms should always be suspect. Any kind of nonsense can be shown with those. thank you all, Arthur Protin Arthur Protin STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.