From: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Message-Id: <200710281811.OAA24625@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
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Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:53:43 -0400 (EDT)
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: geodesic dome
In-Reply-To: <E1Im4Qq-0001Xl-0N@chain.digitalkingdom.org>
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> I'm quickly discovering that the Lojban community is a group of
> people that don't take the language more seriously really than as a
> intellectual game which my level is apparently zero in and therefore
> I don't have a right to discuss the weaknesses and problems of the
> game that could be worked on.

That this is your perception (which I am entirely ready to believe)
does not mean that it is fact (which I don't believe).

I'm not much of a lojbanist myself.  But, while I've seen weaknesses in
lojban, I haven't decided that I know better than the people who have
been working on lojban for decades how fixable they are.

Every language has weaknesses, lojban included - weaknesses of varying
degrees of fixability.  But fixing any problem has costs.  Until I
(feel I) understand the language as it is, which I am a long way from,
I won't be (resp. feel I am) ready to try to determine the costs of
fixing problems and decide what's a good tradeoff - perhaps fixing a
problem would involve losing some other property that is even more
valuable, and, until I have my head around the language, I won't be
competent to make those decisions.

This doesn't stop me from seeing weaknesses.  I think I've even
mentioned a few of them.  But I've taken the experts' word for it when
they speak to the subject; they are the experts, and I know better than
to second-guess them on their field of (relative) expertise.

> My present inability to speak Lojban doesn't make it impossible for
> me to notice weaknesses as this exercise with a geodesic dome has
> demonstrated.

No.  But it does mean that you probably are not competent to fix them,
nor even to pronounce on how fixable they are.

And, on a completely different note, it would help if you could learn
and apply proper email quoting etiquiette.  Every time you top-post and
fail to trim context (which combination seems to be your usual modus
operandi) you push me closer to mentally killfiling you as someone who
can't be bothered to put even minimal effort into producing readable
email.

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