Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 27 Feb 2004 12:17:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from miranda.org ([209.58.150.153] ident=qmailr) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.30) id 1AwoQ5-00043V-2k for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 27 Feb 2004 12:17:13 -0800 Received: (qmail 10868 invoked by uid 534); 27 Feb 2004 20:17:11 -0000 From: jkominek@miranda.org Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:17:11 -0700 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: (no subject) Message-ID: <20040227201711.GE15105@miranda.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i Accept-Language: jbo, en X-archive-position: 533 X-Approved-By: jkominek@miranda.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: jkominek@miranda.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners Content-Length: 1041 On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 11:59:29AM -0600, melissa@fastanimals.com wrote: > My understanding is that Lojban, like Loglan before it, has a goal of > making irrational statements impossible. No. The idea is to make it obvious what you *said*, not necessarily what you *meant*. > I assume that I could make a statement that "green clouds sleep > furiously," but that's semantics. Purely syntactically, it should > be impossible to make a statement which is valid yet senseless. 'Sense' isn't an applicable concept at the syntactic level. Besides, preventing 'senseless' or irrational statements is impossible, and not the goal of Lojban. Rationality and 'sense' are entirely opinion. Someone could say, for instance, "I'm going to kill you, because you're black." You and I consider that an entirely irrational statement, but if a hardcore KKK member hears it, it'll be as rational to him as the statement "Its raining, you should carry an umbrella" is to us. -- Jay Kominek Common sense is anything but common.