Re: [lojban] On international applications of Lojban

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

From: John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>

And Rosta scripsit:

> And very probably it was easier to work out
> the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
> as stark as predicate logic form.

IIRC, the main advantage was that it was easier to check the
interlingua for correctness, becasue that merely required people who
understood Desperanto (Esperanto + small number of hacks).

> Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme
> simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so
> simple it is unlearnable.

JCB believed that Loglan '60 (the version documented in Scientific
American, which was really really close to speakable-predicate-logic)
was indeed too small to be learnable; he described it as
"rattling around in learners' heads like a pea", IIRC).

> I was assuming that for patents, all that counts is an unambiguous encoding
> of truth-conditional meaning. That of course is a very restricted set
> of goals.

IMNSHO, having read or rather decoded a fair number of patents, I believe
that what counts is to disclose everything, thus claiming legal protection,
while in fact revealing nothing to one's competitors.  For these purposes,
what is wanted is a language which is a mass of ambiguity and can be twisted
into meaning, post hoc, almost anything one wants it to mean, while
remaining utterly unintelligible on the surface to anyone except the writers.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

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