Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/15/06, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 12:24:56PM -0500, Matt Arnold wrote:
> > Lokadin, different people mean different things when they describe
> > what the Singularity is. But here is Robin's best effort from when
> > I asked him to translate "The Singularity":
> >
> > la co'i ve'e terzmiku
>
> That doesn't look like something I wrote at all. Are you sure?
>
> I consider the (only) important aspect of the Singularity to be the
> rise of super-human intelligence, which that doesn't mention at all.
In any case, a translation of the _name_ "Singularity" might have
little to do with a description of what the Singularity is. If a restaurant
is called
"The Three Cows", a translation of the name might be
{la ci bakni}, which is not a description of what it names. A description
would be something like {lo gusta}. Similarly a translation of the name
"Singularity" requires a translation of the meaning of the noun
"singularity" and then that noun translated is used as a name, it does
not require a description of the event called "the Singularity".
Quite true, if we assume that the Lojban term for "the Singularity" is to be
a cmene, like {la ci bakni}. If we want a non-cmene term, though, we would need something descriptive. Lojban is so very literal.
mu'o mi'e .sen.
I think I agree with sen. The fact that "singularity" is a sensible term in English doesn't mean that translating "singularity" into Lojban is the best way to get a Lojban term for the same thing. Indeed, I'm not an expert on the singularity, but the English word could well be a crappy coinage. If it is, no reason for Lojban to go along with it. -- Preliminary research indicates that the term derives from "mathematical singularity" (1885), a concept that goes well beyond my math education. So translating "singularity" would be right if the tech/consciousness singularity is a sound analogy to the mathematical singularity, & "singularity" is a good word for the math singularity & we are aiming for a brivla -- Or have I simply gone too far? mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan