Subject: [lojban] Re: Loglan

From: Steven Belknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 22:30:59 -0600

On Sunday, December 1, 2002, at 07:16 PM, Invent Yourself wrote:
> You wrote:
>
> "I can not support a lojban baseline policy statement which does not 
> cover
> Loglan. A joint lojban/Loglan toggling cmavo would satisfy me."
>
> Threatening to reject the new policy is hardly "expressing mild 
> support".

I expressed mild support for a toggling cmavo, one possible means of 
addressing the Loglan issue. I also expressed a willingness to consider 
other possible means of addressing the Loglan issue. I have already 
voted "no" to the proposed baseline policy statement because it 
completely ignores Loglan. The lojban community cannot on the one hand 
say "lojban is Loglan" and on the other hand completely ignore Loglan 
in its policy statements.

> Now, the current baseline does not "reflect" Loglan. You want the next 
> one
> to. That would require a change; a difference between the two. So you 
> are
> suggesting changing Lojban, unless now you want to tire me with a long
> argument about how the Lojban language is somehow distinct from the
> baseline, and that you can alter the latter without affecting the 
> former.

There are several ways to address the Loglan issue. The toggling cmavo 
would be one way to do this. I mildly support the toggling cmavo. I 
strongly oppose completely ignoring Loglan.

> And if you want to encourage the use of a crazy-quilt pidgin of Loglan 
> and
> Lojban mixed in the same sentences, with Lojban cmavo and Loglan gismu,
> facilitated by rich use of the toggle you advocate, in order to pander 
> to
> people who in theory don't actually want to learn Lojban and in fact 
> have
> yet to make their presence known, with the hope of inflating the 
> "numbers"
> of "Lojban" speakers, or win the ludicrous propaganda coup of
> rapproachment to impress a bystander population of conlangers who don't
> really give a damn, and you think such a monstrosity would make life
> EASIER for newbies, I lack the time to refute this on its multiple 
> levels
> of sickness.

This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as the straw man 
argument.

> I'm sure the significance of the fact that there are no Loglanists 
> voicing
> their support for any of your measures, while one newbie has already
> announced discomfort at this Loglan talk is completely lost on you. Go
> right on believing that you're defending the interests of newcomers.

Silence could be disinterest, as you suggest. Or perhaps it is a lack 
of awareness that lojban exists.

>> Helping lojban to thrive is my goal, which has not shifted whatsoever.
>> Your goals are unclear to me. Are they clear to you? If so, could you
>> share them with us?
>
> My goal is to resist any efforts to tamper with the Lojban baseline to
> kowtow to a constituency that has never been heard from, in ways that
> would be inappropriate even it existed and was clamoring for it.

I am a part of the constituency of Loglanders who are now lojbanistani. 
I believe there are others who shared my interest in Loglan and would 
now share my interest in lojban. I believe that addressing the 
Loglan/lojban schism in some manner would reassure others like me who 
have not yet joined the lojban community. Who are you to contradict my 
point-of-view? Did you memorize all the predicates of Loglan only to 
find those predicates discarded in toto?

How does your hostility further your stated goal of preserving the 
lojban baseline?

-Steven