Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [Announcement] The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 14:06:31 -0400

At 05:41 PM 10/9/02 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>Jordan:
>#situation where it *is* simply correcting an error.
>
>In long debates held in the past, it emerged that Lojban Central's
>policy was Let Usage Decide (or Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom
>for the maoists).

It still is.

>The idea was there would be no official prescriptions
>regulating usage, and that the language would emerge out of the
>melee of usage like organisms from the primeval soup. That is,
>if one thought that such and such a feature of Lojban was broken,
>then one should respond by adding to one's usage a mended
>version of the feature, and collective usage would determine whether
>it was useful enough to catch on.

That is NOT what "let a thousand flowers bloom" means, as I have understood 
it, although pc was the originator of the slogan's use and can correct me 
about his intent. He, after all, also condemned Carter's usages in 
violation of settled Loglan standards as "Nalgol" (Loglan backwards).

"Let a thousand flowers bloom" means that questions of usage (and 
especially semantics) for which there is no clear answer in the language 
definition should be left undefined and unadjudicated - that there would be 
no "right" and "wrong" by fiat, and that may possible solutions should be 
encouraged to exist. As a design principle, it means that if logic does 
not require a particular solution, that we include multiple options.

"Let usage decide" by contrast means that when there is a small but finite 
set of legal options for expressing something, that we do not need to 
decide it by fiat, but usage will select it. It also indirectly refers to 
the EVENTUAL fate of the baseline language, that usage might "decide" by 
evolution away from the standard, where violations of the baseline go 
unremarked because no one notices and yet understanding occurs, until there 
is a clear pattern of usage; that clearly has NOT occurred 
here. Furthermore, the whole spirit of that understanding of "let usage 
decide" was referring to the natural language style of evolution which is 
NOT a matter of one person attempting to change the rule by intentionally 
violating it.

The "thousand flowers blooming" suggests in fact that usage should NOT 
decide on a single form, but should tolerate multiple forms.

But all this refers to "usage" which is those areas of the language that 
are left undefined, or perhaps where the definition is not understood.

Meanwhile, while the baseline exists, LLG is committed to actively 
defending the baseline as a standard. We cannot say that something is in 
accord with the baseline, if it clearly rejects it.

>So (and note that I am not flaming here) when you and Jay come along
>saying it is sinful to violate the baseline in one's usage, this is a clear
>deviation from what at one time was the relatively consensual position
>of the community.

It is indeed "sinful" to insist on a violation of the baseline in one's 
usage, once it has been identified as a violation of the baseline. Such 
insistence is the rejection of the concept of consensus and abiding thereby 
(since the baseline represents a snapshot of what consensus is at some 
point in time), so arguing on a consensual basis that rejection of the 
consensus is a good thing seems self-contradictory, or at least 
bloody-mindedness.

> In saying this, I mean only to point out that what
>xorxes does was formerly generally held to constitute Right and
>Proper behaviour of the good lojbanist.

I think you misunderstand what was held as "Right and Proper".

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org