Subject: The Nicolaic New Testament

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 04:47:52 +1100

Message: 10
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:58:36 -0000
From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: lo'edu'u

> Nick, this was a beautiful exposition of myopic singularization.
> Can you put it on the wiki?

Done, and I'll be adding emendations as I get time from both private 
communications and jboske. The executive summary is that, while the 
lenu/lo'enu distinction is valid, squintability doesn't necessarily 
carry across to du'u, and I got carried away. A difference between nu 
and du'u is that, while lo'enu may end up turning off places (lo'e nu 
limna kei = lo'e nu zi'o limna zi'o), du'u routinely does so in 
different ways: ledu'u zo'e kaunai lima zo'e kaunai kei, ledu'u ce'u 
limna ce'u. But I'll need to go through what happens on jboske on this 
(and for And to make a fuller case for lo'edu'u). I think both are 
valid, actually, and lo'edu'u is inductive reasoning; but that's for 
that forum.

And it's not going to happen soon. I took today off work to catch up on 
Lojban mail (directly and indirectly: my sleep was shot to hell all 
this week because of this, and I badly needed to catch up on sleep 
anyway); but I can't keep doing so.

So I defer the tech details. But on the ideological stuff we're all 
here for:

While me agreeing with And on a particular issue is not intrinsically 
poison, me being hailed as a Salvator by him is. :-)

On the specific issue of lenu being overused where lo'enu is more 
appropriate, Jordan agrees too; he just didn't make the song and dance 
about it that I did. And me realising the difference is not such a 
revolutionarily new thing; the ka...ce'u discussions of last August 
were similar: brought in by jboskeists, accepted by the community at 
large, which also accept that prior usage was thereby invalidated.

Now, we have several issues arising from your proclamation of a 
Nicolaitan New Testament.

1. Ever since my cotranslator of the Klingon Hamlet spoke of 
Nicholasian style, I've been yearning to launch my own oddball 
adjectivisation of my surname, which would be Nicolaic. But don't mind 
me.

2. If we're going to do this trope, I'd rather I author the Gospel of 
the Ebionites than the letters of Paul. If the "not a jot of the Law" 
business is true, the historical Jesus would as well. [Allusions to 
history of Christianity I won't go further into; that's what google's 
for :-)]

3. Any leaps and bounds I engineer in the understanding of Lojban, I 
undertake to do with caution and reluctance. I don't *like* annulling 
past usage, after all.

4. If this New Testament is to be a formalist mathematicalisation of 
the language, then the formalists do it on their own time and their own 
dime, after the freeze. And while it will be fun and will illuminate 
our understanding of the language, it cannot have any prescriptive 
force on the language, because by then the naturalists will have gone 
their way anyway.

5. If this New Testament is to be the _Lojban for Intermediates_ I have 
ruminated on, the mantle I'd be taking on isn't really Woldemarian, 
it's Turnerian (and at a remove, LeChevalierian, but taking up Bob's 
mantle is something we've been doing routinely anyway.) And as John 
already knows, he's my first choice as a coauthor for such a work 
anyway. There won't necessarily be just two authors, but there will be 
more than one.

6. The only legally sanctioned NT to Woldemar's OT, though, is the 
forthcoming dictionary. And, And, since it will be a committee work, 
with much compromise and watering down, it can't be the break with the 
past you're evangelising. It'll be at most the Mishnah.

7. Furthering the formalist mission consists of three aspects as I see 
it. (a) Articulating and agreeing on a formalistion. jboske and the 
Lore have being trying to, but very disjointly. (b) Using formalist 
insights in Lojban text. Jorge has been doing this; whether people are 
paying attention, well, if I was actually reading Jordan and Jorge's 
exchanges I'd find out :-) (c) *Explaining* this formalist stuff to 
other Lojbanists. I'm interested in doing the last; I don't think this 
makes me a salvator.

[For explanation of why I say Salvator rather than Saviour: the 
allusion is to And's talk on the wiki of the "Grice Salvator": when in 
doubt, trust context and such. 'Salvator' connotes to me a machine, a 
Saviour-In-A-Box, a Ready Fix For All Your Problems.]

8. I see we work with personality cults. Traditionally, Supplication to 
Bob; frequently, me and xod Supplication to John; Deference to Jorge by 
default (though not in all specifics --- then again, none of this 
always works with specifics :-) ; and I'm starting to see, Leadership 
from me.

Now, this stuff is not intrinsically bad. "I agree with X much of the 
time, and he's not usually an asshole, so I'll trust him on this." 
That's an acceptable shortcut much of the time; not everyone can debate 
everything always for themselves. But of course, not everyone defers to 
any one person in this community ("herding cats"), and nor should they. 
Any authority I get given needs not only to be removable, but also to 
be checked; and I want it checked.

There's a possibility that jboske stuff becomes mainstream stuff when I 
accept it, and that that's what happened with ka...ce'u; really, 
though, people, I'm uncomfortable with that prospect. The real solution 
is that jboskeists develop the skills being attributed to me, to simply 
explain what the hell they're on about better.

I have some skills I am willing to place at the community's disposal; 
but please, let's not talk of mantles. That makes me nervous, and I'm 
still cult-of-personalitying the guy whose mantle you would have me 
assume, after all. :-) .i mi na jinvi ledu'u da pamei le'i tolckapygau 
befi le cecmu .i mi jinvi ledu'u za'u vajni za'u gunka zo'u: le gunka 
cu .ei mulgau le vajni .i pe'i pa gunka za'urau vajni zo'u naku le 
gunka cu .ei mulgau le vajni .i kakne najenai bilga lenu go'i

[][][][] [][][][][][][][][][] [][][][]
Dr Nick Nicholas. [email-masked] http://www.opoudjis.net
University of Melbourne: [email-masked]
Chiastaxo dhe to giegnissa, i dhedhato potemu,
ma ena chieri aftumeno ecratu, chisvissemu. (I Thisia tu Avraam)