[lojban] some thoughts about lojban use and future

[xah lee <xah@xahlee.org>]

on the orkut forum sprang a discussion and here's my thoughts. (below)

What do you guys think is lojban's use and future?
For controlling devices using spoken languages... i think lojban would 
offer not much more benefit than natural languages.

  The task of having computers understanding natural languages at 
parsing level is basically solved. For example, today there are lots of 
online translation softwares from and to many natural languages and 
they do manage. To go beyond translation to real understanding as to 
generate a proper response, involves AI that is still pure science 
fiction.

in sort, today we already have the machinery to parse natural languages 
for the most part and lojban's regularity and formal spec wouldn't make 
much difference.

Further, as appliances taking spoken commands from people in the near 
future, it would probably be a subset of spoken phrases. So, it makes 
no difference of using lojban or English. (and of course we are 
discoursing imagined scenarios, because in reality no manufacture would 
ever implement lojban)

I don't think lojban will befit as a language for human communication. 
Suppose if we have a region to speak lojban from now on, and lojban 
being the first language of all newborns. I believe in a few 
generations lojban will quickly loss all its design premises of 
regularity and mathematical properties. This i believe because humans 
do not process information as a logical machine, even if all their 
thoughts are in a logical language.

The need to create new words and other daily communication will very 
quickly blow away any math properties of lojban.

as to the worf(sp?) hypothesis that language effects thought, it is 
obviously true. I think it is moronic to believe otherwise.

I think the way for lojban to prosper is for it to remain in the hands 
of logic community, as it is today. Lojban is a great tool in studying 
the relation of meaning, logic, and natural languages. It is an aid in 
the field of philosophy of languages or analytic philosophy. I imagine 
the utmost achievement for lojban is for example having mathematical 
treaties in lojban, and for it to be heavily used in AI research, 
machine to machine or human to machine.
---------
the above spran from an orkut.com lojban forum discussion.

What do you guys think is lojban's use and future?

  Xah
  xah@xahlee.org
  http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html



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