Subject: [lojban] Re: a new kind of fundamentalism

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 21:14:29 +0100

Jay:
> On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 09:07:51PM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > > People who want to change things, rather
> > > than work out problems with ill-defined portions of Lojban, should go
> > > play with Lojban2 or Andban or something, using Lojban as a base, but
> > > not calling it 'Lojban'. The name is of no consequence to those parties,
> > > but 'brand recognition' is key to growing the speaker base.
> > 
> > I agree. Since the baseline was imposed, I have never tried to change
> > the baseline -- at least not as far as I can recall. I've even said
> > in several places that I'm opposed to officially changing the baseline.
> 
> "I am in favour of anything that subverts the baseline" - You.
> 
> Er, could I trouble you to reconcile that?

Setting aside the views of 99% of Lojbanists (measured by sheer numbers
rather than by quantity of Lojban-related activity), I would prefer that
there be no baseline. So if others choose to ignore it, or ridicule it,
or whatever, I'm pleased. But I myself don't try to get the baseline
changed, not even in anticipation of the time when it could be changed
officially.

> Whether or not the change is official doesn't matter. People also have
> to be _using_ the baseline version of Lojban. Using something else and
> calling it Lojban is no good. If they're using baseline Lojban, plus
> some suspicious stuff in the undefined areas of Lojban, well, you can't
> really complain about that, either, as they don't have a whole lot of
> choice.

As John agreed in the parallel thread on prescriptivism, this is the
true prescriptivism, and I would reject it. As far as I'm concerned,
people should be free to use Lojban however they like, and even to
call it Lojban. Anything else is -- well, no flamewar intended, but
it seems hyperbolically apt -- fascistic. Do you really want to sell 
people on a language that they are not free to use however they like, 
without risking abuse from others? By all means a group of fundamentalist
purists could go off and establish for themselves a mutually agreed
code of behaviour, but it is not reasonable to impose it on everybody
else.

> > That's the weird thing: you keep on accusing me and my sort of crimes
> > I don't think we're guilty of; or at least you keep protesting about
> > them -- 'accuse' is perhaps too strong a term.
> > I'm not being disingenuous: I can understand how some jboskepre
> > could be perceived to be trying to change the language, but it
> > would be a different argument to wish for jboske to cease lest it
> > deter learners, and I don't think that would be in the best interests
> > of Lojban.
> 
> I'll admit to accusing you of doing things which will appear to most
> people as tinkering of some sort or another. Whether or not you
> actually are, sadly, is beside my point. Whatever it is you're doing,
> you said you're willing to do it on jboske. If you actually go through
> with that, I'm more or less out of things to complain about.

Jboske plus wiki pages.

> Its a matter, I think, (whether or not I've made this clear in the
> past) of keeping one's dirty laundry out of public view.

OTOH it's important to let people know that we do have a laundry.
People who are interested in Lojban are not stupid, and if they
know anything about logic or language they will realize that not
all problems have been solved. We need to be able to say "Yes,
we know this, we have jboske for this purpose, and it is unlikely
that any problem you can think of has never been addressed by
jboske, but if you have hit on a problem that hasn't been addressed
then we are delighted to hear of it and to address it". 

So perhaps we can agree that the best policy is not to do the
dirty laundry in the entrance lobby, but not to do it out of
public view either.

--And.