Message-Id: <199602101417.JAA08060@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 10 Feb 1996 08:44:02 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: existing ways to fuzz?
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 5192

>His proposal most certainly amounts to innovation, and not mere
>usage conventions.

Innovation in Lojban means new cmavo, gismu, grammar.  Since he proposes
a new MOI, I guess that part is  "innovation".  New conventions are
semantics arguments, which I would ignore were it not for the likelihood  that
they will end up in the refgrammar.  All that matters to me is that we have
*A* way to express it.  "How good" is a questions that "usage will decide".

>> I also understand that pc feels at least as strongly as I do that the
>> language does have sufficient resources.
>
>He has said that obliquely, as is his way, but has done nothing to

>substantiate it.

I'm not sure how onw would substantiate it.  Even Steven said that there
were ways to express fuzzy stuff in 15 syllables.  I am as yet unconvinced
that there is need for anyuthing shorter.  How many will use it?  If only
Steven, we are working hard for a small portion of the audience.

Reiterating, pc and I have said that there are resources in the language
to express most anything.  (IF he has only said it obliquely recently,
be sure that he has said it directly before; e.g. on tense issues).  The ma
in
arguments seem to be whether we need short forms to make the distinctions.
And it is harder to justify new grammar or new cmavo merely to shorten a
little used are aof the language.

>But I made two concrete proposals that were
>there as a basis for debate and attack, and so far they remain ignored
>due to the guillotine.

They were not ignored by Steven, obviously.
They are xVV proposals and hence experimental proposals, and so not necessarily

in need of official notice.  But we have debated them in terms of the whole
issue of how such experimental porposals might become part of the the language
in 5 or more years.
Cowan has been busy writing papers, and hence has little time to respond.
A less radical alternative is in my mind a response.

I have been catching up on 2 months worth of shortest-term backlog, from
when you and Jorge among others killed my in basket at Thanksgiving %^)
So I haven;t responded to anything.

You have been overloading pc with a long debate that apparently has now got
him exasperated with all of us.  So he hasn't had time to respond even if
he had interest.

It is NOT the guillotine that is making there be no responses, it is that
a couple of people seem to have time to generate more text than the trest of
us have time to read and respond to.  I have no problem with your doing so,
but please do not take offense when we do not respond to all of it.

I don't know enough nor care enough to have more of an opinion on fuzzy logic
matters than I have written already.  I ammore interested in exploring
actual usage of the language than in exploring theoretical capabilities.

>> I would say that many if not most changes are made by people who do not
>> understand or agree with the underlying philosophy of Loglan/Lojban.
>> But this is neither a condemnation of the changer or the change, just a
>> rejection.
>
>I'm not sure you can take it for granted that you fully know or appreciate
>what the underlying philosophy of Loglan/Lojban is.

I do not claim to be the inventor of Loglan and hence may have some
deviations from JCB in terms of knowing the underlying philsophy, although I
have had the advantage of long hours of conversation with him about it,
and the most complete archives on the language outside of his garage/study.

I do know the underlying philsophy of Lojban; i.e. that version of Loglan
thatwe are implementing, since I think I can claim to have largely defined
it.

>What I mean is, if you
>take those people who venerate Lojlan to some extent, and are in sympathy
>with major aspects of it, and then ask them what its essential features
>are, then you may get conflicting answers.

True, but for underlying philosophy, one must go back to origins.  JCB is
trhe authority on what his intent was.

>Ask, say, jimc and Goran

jimc's version of what Loglan is was explicitly rejected by JCB and by pc who
was at one time designated by JCB as his intellectual heir as leader of the
Loglan project.  Goran I find I seldom have disagreement with, though he
certainly is a relative newcomer that knows little history.

>It would be fairer to say that these proponents of changes are people who
>do not know much about the *history* (rather than the philosophy) of
>Lojlan.

Since the philsophy was written down in the historical writings on the language,

this seems to be tautologous.

>(I was rather envious of Nick when he told me how Major (now
>vanished hence) brought back all the lognets and JLs to Australia from
>USA and passed them on to him.)

Actually he brought only the JLs, not the Lognets.  The entire Lojb
an archive
excluding such relatively useless arcana as the original gismu-making data
run printouts that are better accessed on disk, occupies around 2 full filing
cabinets, and working on a third one, and a good 100 Megabytes of diskspace
ce
compressed into .zip files  (we've toyed with making a CD of the latter,
but not yet - amajor problem is the mixture of personal stuff with Lojban
stuff in my mail archoives).

lojbab