RE: [jboske] Re: gadri paradigm: 2 excellent proposals

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

Ah, sodomy. Me ex cathedra has to tell Me as formalist to shut up. God, 
do I hate this language.

Bob is correct as to how the BPFK was constituted. It was with the 
understanding that change shall be reluctantly essayed, and that yes, 
the backwards-compatible kludge shall prevail over the elegant 
innovation. For all that I think that the Lojban handed us by our 
forebears is often a pile of doodoo, I accept these constraints on 
anything we now say; because the Lojban we have been handed is a social 
fact.

If this means I too have to lose the battle for a Collective, then I'll 
lose it. The ontology is good and virtuous, and an excellent basis for 
any pedagogy I intend to essay. But if it's not regarded as backwards 
compatible, and if the current system is regarded as merely 
underspecified rather than contradictory, then it must fail, for the 
good of the language community. If what the BPFK comes up with is 
rejected by the community, we are well and truly fucked.

I am contravening fundamentalism by going along with the Excellent 
Solution; I admit this. Fundies are full of surprises, and it's also 
surprising who isn't quite fundie; John, for example, has accepted 
Unique (though not under that name.) That's why I'm looking for 
kludges. I'm trying to get both a cleaner solution and a solution that 
is basically compatible with CLL. Which is why I think a kludge with an 
extra collective has a damned sight better chance of success than a 
scheme where {lo} turns into substance, contrary to what CLL has 
proclaimed, justified just because Bob has a shaky command of predicate 
logic.

And if you reject that desire for backward compatibility even as a 
statement of desirability, And, then I'm sorry, but that means you're 
outside of what the Board has constituted the BPFK as doing. And you 
already know from the vote that this is a vote you'll lose. The list of 
articles is already there, in the Board Statement and my manifesto; if 
you want it to be formalised and put to vote, that too can be done.

And if you lose that vote of Confirmation --- as I believe you will --- 
you may choose to withdraw. For the good of the language, I urge you, 
as strongly as possible, not to. A kludge with some sprinkling of 
Excellentness is still better than the status quo. Without formalists, 
we will indeed be left with doodoo.

I hate this, because I think the status quo CLL gadri are muddle-headed 
bozosities, and the Excellent Solution is pristine and shiny. And I 
hate it because, right now, I think of [Prominent Revisionist's Name 
Censored] much more highly than [Prominent Fundamentalist's Name 
Censored] as an interlocutor. But this isn't about liking; this is 
politics. I want Lojban to profit from the Excellent Solution. But it 
cannot adopt it without compromise; that is politically unviable. We 
have no mandate for Lojban Mark II. We have a mandate for Lojban Mark 
I, with a little cleaning up. That remains so, and I recognise that a 
revisionist BPFK cannot command community support.

P.S. I mean it that I hate this, and I mean it that the status quo I'm 
compelled ex officio to defend is a pile of doodoo. Life sucks.

--
Edarh oni oroumene NICK NICHOLAS PhD, French/Italian,
kouraste na mpa"inei, University of Melbourne, Australia
apo ton kosmo entenh nickn@unimelb.edu.au
tsi naxei na orinei? http://www.opoudjis.net
--- Dhmhtzh Xouph, _O gerou-Kwstagkh_ (Tsakwniko poihma)