Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: periodic hexadecimal reminder

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 02:52:43 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 [email-masked] wrote:

> i'll touch on both here...
>
> --- In lojban@y..., Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@d...> wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 01:10:24AM -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > > On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 thinkit8@l... wrote:
> > >
> > > > this is just a post to remind everyone that hexadecimal is the
> > > > future, and lojban is by default hexadecimal. rafsi will be
> assigned
> > > > for dau-vai, and "ju'u dau" will be used for references to the
> old
> > > > way of doing things.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > What are the benefits of hex that outweigh the enormous, trillion
> dollar
> > > investment in decimal infrastructure?
>
> this is a lojban group. we aim to replace enormous, trillion dollar
> investments in (mainly) english infrastucture. using hex is minor
> compared to this task. and as for the benefits...it's the attunement
> to logic that makes powers of 2 more useful.

The builders of primitive computers found two-state logic easiest to
implement. There is no physics preventing us from building n-state
electronic systems. And binary logic competes against the Aymara 3-state
logic and all sorts of fuzzy systems in use as well. So I don't see
anything very special about base 2 except that it's easiest for finger
counting.

The world is used to the idea of different languages, but all of those
languages use base 10. The metric ruler, for instance, can be used all
over the world except for one or two stubborn parochial holdouts. Thus the
investment in base 10 is MUCH larger than that in English.

(I am not associating metric with base 10! An inches ruler uses base 10
digits too, and those would need to be changed into hex digits.)

As for replacing English with Lojban, personally I think Lojban can make
inroads as a language for important documents that need to be translated
using software into a multitude of languages. I also think it can do well
as a scientific/technical language, but I don't foresee mothers with
strollers chatting in Lojban on street corners. Still, stranger things
have happened and if Lojban gets picked up by cult or a mass movement,
such an outcome is possible.

-- 
It's said that Mullah Omar has met two non-Muslims in his life. Others say
even that's not true.

Sami ul-Haq, Osama bin Laden's closest friend in Pakistan, runs the
"University for the Education of Truth," a fundamentalist institution that
educated and trained nine out of the Taliban's top 10 leaders.