Subject: Re: [lojban] Loglan

From: Steven Belknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 02:44:23 -0600

On Sunday, December 1, 2002, at 11:33 PM, Nick Nicholas wrote:

>> On Saturday, November 30, 2002, at 10:10 PM, Nick Nicholas wrote:
>
>>> That Loglan is ancestral to Lojban? Sure, but that's history, it has
>> nothing to do with the baseline.
>> Yes it does. If things go well, the lojban baseline will also be the
>> Loglan baseline.
>
> But the notion of a Loglan-Lojban merger is not one that should be
> resolved in this, rather technical document. It is a broader issue,
> which needs to be debated separately and widely (since it was a
> membership statement to begin with.)

This "rather technical" document is primarily a political document, as 
you implicitly concede in your previous post.

>
>> Possibility 2: lojban is not Loglan. If so, then the baseline could
>> serve to attract Loglanders to lojban if they are dealt with in a
>> respectful manner. You are underestimating the importance of emotion
>> in human decision-making.
>
> *shrug* Being seen to be poaching is not being seen to be respectful.
> Like I said, you'd need to write up yourself what such a statement
> would look like.

Poaching? What a horrible analogy! These are intelligent people who 
were interested enough in Loglan to learn some of the language. They 
are not dumb game animals. Loglan is dead. Maybe they would be 
interested in learning the successor language. Maybe we can do some 
things to facilitate that transition, or at least to make old 
Loglanders feel welcome.

>
>> reality. Most artificial languages die due to schisms of one sort or
>> another. It would be prudent to resolve this schism, as this will
>> reassure artificial language enthusiasts that lojban is not going to
>> mutate.
>
> But this is a different issue, and an isssue that Lojban needs to
> resolve for its own ends: the stability of the language itself.
> Saying to the Loglanists "your language is hereby our language" is
> orthogonal to any commitment that Lojban shall or shall not be
> stable. And you will note that the baseline statement says little
> about Loglan --- but a hell of a lot about stability.

How "stable" was it to throw the complete vocabulary in the trash? I 
understand why this was done, but it certainly is not very reassuring 
to a newbie. Explicitly resolving the Loglan-lojban schism will 
reassure potential learners that perhaps we are not going to do the 
same thing to them again.

>> McIvor is not on the BPFK, is he? Why not invite him?
>
> Bob expressly wants to invite him. I didn't, and if he is invited,
> as far as I'm concerned, he's invited as a Lojbanist (or at the
> least, as someone with expertise in Logical Language), not as a
> Loglanist.

I think you are being very foolish in not welcoming McIvor to lojban. 
The man likely has something to contribute.

>>> So Steven, please clarify what you'd want.
>
>> More wisdom than has been shown so far, nothing more.
>
> Still not specific enough. Now, I want a draft brochure... :-1/2

Those who do not remember their past are condemned to relive it.