Re: [lojban] Re: Dropping the speech

[Ryan Keppel <keppel@pdx.edu>]

.a'usai

I think that you are getting to the heart of what I am talking about. Lojban is
a "bridge" towards eventual binary language. The fact that it is parsable makes
it unlike any other "natural" language on Earth (as far as I know, no other
languages, including Esperanto, have this vital characteristic).

As you say, we start with Lojban. Once we remove the need to be spoken, we get
to the more interesting parts that you describe here. All of this will interact
heavily with transhumanism. This will happen to both aspects of transhumanism.
Top-down, our brain chips will understand Lojban natively. Bottom-up, our
computers already can parse Lojban. They just need the semantic background to
interact in it.

fe'o (Actually the Big Red Book notes that "fe'o" is specifically meant for
machines.)

Quoting Andrii Zvorygin <andrii.z@gmail.com>:

 doi Ryan, well I'm glad that you've returned to the Lojban community.
 Offering support that we indeed need. The project you seem to be working on
 seems similar to mine, maybe we can merge, and work on them together? here
 is a "tip of the iceberg" description of what I'm working on:
 http://lokiworld.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page

 Have you ever noticed how in science fiction literature, often people speak
 to the computer and they understand the user, and do what they were asked.
 Well have you ever tried typing or talking to your computer? Did it talk
 back? You probably think this is a ridiculous notion. So currently, this
 project, that we'll call the We With You Network, is going to allow for you
 to talk to your computer, and have it do what you want it to do.

 The We With You Network is really an programming project that will turn into
 the We With You Network.

 We start with Lojban, a human-to-human language based on Predicate Logic.
 Predicate Logic can be defined in lay terms as a form of math that can
 express "natural language"(like English) statements. For instance "something
 went to someplace" could be expressed as G(x,y) in predicate calculus
 (though thats very simplified version) as we also have to express what the G
 stands for, as well as declaring if it's "for each" variable or "for all"
 variables. In Lojban, the same statement can be expressed as "da klAma di",
 which literally translates as "something1 is/was/will be a goer that goes to
 something2". It very versatile for instance "mi ba klAma la frAns. la
 kAneda. fu lo vOfli" means "I will go to France from Canada with method of
 transportation being flight."

 Predicate logic has been used before to form programming languages for
 example "Prolog". Though as you may have noticed by the predicate logic
 example in the above paragraph. Raw predicate logic isn't very useful to the
 layperson. However something most people are capable of is language. Lojban
 is a language, it can easily be used for human-to-human interaction -- I use
 it every day, and learned enough to understand just about everything people
 were writing in just three weeks, tutorial found here:
 http://tinyurl.com/ygrzr7.

 So with Lojban we can make a logical programming language, making it as easy
 to communicate to the computer as to other people. At first it will be like
 communicating to a naive child, but in time as the network expands and more
 functionality is added, so will the experience of the computer.

 In order to have a sustainable -- lets call the We With You Network program,
 prOgram -- prOgram, we can not allow it to turn into a monolithic program
 (all in one chunk), and we must make it so anyone will be able to
 contribute. So we can do this by having the "predicates"(AKA "predicate
 logic statements" AKA "lojban sentances") all have the functionality which
 they describe.

 For instance: fAnva zo mlAtu la Englic. la lOjban zoi.gy. cat .gy. means:
 the single lojban world "mlatu", translates as "cat" in english.

 this is a fact that the computer will know, all facts can be stored as
 statements (unless you can't think of them), and the computer will know
 them(will store them, and be capable of retrieving and using them). To tell
 the computer to do something you can say "ko fanva zo mlAtu" and the
 computer, knowing the facts that you speak la Englic. and with the knowledge
 of how to translate mlAtu into english, it can output the desired result.

 For things more complex than word for word translation you will probably at
 least in the begining, prefer to use a well established language like: Java,
 C, C++. We are going to support creating functions in any language you can
 make it into an executable, (for Java you can make a shell script to execute
 your function).

 Still with me? Good job, you are doing well .ui.o'a(meaning happiness and
 pride in reference to last statement). Now you get to hear about the
 network. With all these predicates that we will be creating more or less on
 the fly, we will probably be to lazy to distribute manually. The solution
 being that you can use a distributed network like that of Freenet to pass
 the predicates around.

 Why? you ask. The answer is this: due to the scale of this project, the many
 possibilities it will have, centralized control will not work. Can you trust
 that a predicate you get from another computer is not malicious? that it is
 not a virus? Do you know everything that is happening in your computer right
 now? These are all security issues. If you aren't connected to people you
 know, then you don't know how reliable the information you get is.

 You can design a predicate, test it make sure it works, pass it to your
 friend, who's computer will automatically put the predicate in a isolated
 sandbox, and it will run the predicate through a few test runs to make sure
 it outputs what it should according to the inputs either you already had
 archived from earlier or at worst passed from you as well. The sandbox will
 make sure that the predicate makes no changes to the system other than those
 it's supposed to, then it will mark it as a safe predicate and move it into
 the computers database of knowledge. (note this is but one variation of what
 you can do to every incoming predicate, you can take literally as many
 measures as you can imagine and have the resources for). The computer will
 be managed mainly by the computer itself, though it will add filters and
 optimization filters to itself based on the suggestions of it's network
 friends (trusted, useful nodes), the computer itself probably running
 evolutionary algorithms to try and speed up the function of predicates that
 are causing bottle necks in the system. Again I reiterate, this is just one
 possibility of how it can operate. there are as many things possible as a
 language is capable of expressing, and lojban aims to express at least as
 much as the rest of the languages in the world can express.

 So the We With You Network in the end, will be the nodes (individual
 computers) communicating to each other. In fact the goal is for all things
 to communicate to each other in lojban(adding encryption and all that
 possible, just after you agree on a standard, the agreeing part would be
 done in lojban), that would allow for computers to understand what you
 wanted your piece of hardware or software to communicate, just about no
 matter how in lojbanistan you decided to implement your protocol.

 The network will be able to hold much more than simple predicates. The
 entire internet can function through the We With You Network. When we start
 connecting our wireless routers to our neighbours, and them to their
 neighbourhoods, you can probably spread through cities just using wireless,
 maybe later even regions, or countries.

 In any case, if you are interested in more information feel free to ask, if
 you don't understand anything, then please ask, you probably aren't the only
 one.

 anyone interested in participating, we need:

    - people to learn lojban(soon we will have english transaltions,
    though the base will probably always be some derivative of lojban)
    - people to help design parts of the network, (if you have experience
    designing anything IT, then you can be sure that your opinion will be
    valued, as all things need to be taken into account.)
    - people to help program (any language is fine)
    - people to help test
    - people that want to help (we'll find something for you to do)



 On 10/23/06, Yanis Batura <ybatura@mail.ru> wrote:
 >
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Ryan Keppel <keppel@pdx.edu>
 > To: lojban-list@lojban.org, Timothy Hobbs <tim.thelion@gmail.com>
 > Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 21:40:07 -0700
 > Subject: [lojban] Re: Dropping the speech
 >
 > > .u'inai
 > >
 > > do tavla zo'e ma .i ko tavla ko
 > >
 > > .ionai
 >
 > doi ra,ian lo nu do pilno lu ionai li'u na clite .i e'o ko clite vi ti
 >
 >
 > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
 > with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
 > you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
 >
 >