Subject: [lojban] loi will be with you shortly (was: Nick will be with you shortly)

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:53:53 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 25 Feb 2003, Jordan DeLong wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 09:49:30PM -0500, Craig wrote:
> > >is too baroque to be acceptable (or that there is no problem with
> > >{loi} to be solved), but I'll just have to lump it.
> >
> > I don't know what the problem with {loi} is, and when the BPFK appears and
> > we all get a veto I will veto any change to {loi} that doesn't demonstrate
> > that there is one. In fact, I plan to veto any change to the language that
> > doesn't solve a problem which is either obvious or explained in the
> > proposal; the BPFK should not act lightly.
> > But, if the jposkepre have been able to put much effort into {loi}, then I'm
> > sure there is a problem and that their proposal will explain it to us.
>
> There is no problem with loi. I've been on jboske and saw all the
> complaints: basically what it comes down to is "Lojban-masses
> aren't either 'collectives' or 'substances' and therefore are
> broken". This argument is broken; it is not a foregone conclusion
> that lojban must directly map onto english or natlang concepts.
> Lojbanmasses behave as something distinct from substances and
> collectives, covering some features of both, without causing any
> difficulties or problems.

I agree that lojban concepts don't need to map to non-lojban ones.
However, this one was the result of actual confusion, as opposed to any
deep, insightful revelation about the fundamental unity of substances and
collectives.

You'll note there are precious few, if any, such deep concepts in Lojban
which are so difficult to map to English. That's more evidence that this
was a mistake. And when you ponder quantification over the mixed
definition, it blows up in your face.

I don't consider myself bound by or beholden to maintaining broken
definitions used by earlier waves of Lojban newbies whose clumsy attempts
were prematurely enshrined as canonical. No one has ever surpassed
kindergarten level fluency, and we won't end up with anything more if we
permit those existing scribblings to circumscribe us. In deference to a
principle of least confusion, we should remain as close to corpus as
possible, and I am certainly not advocating anything other.

Now, in terms of solutions, we've kicked around many, many solutions on
jboske. I find mine to be the most elegant of them all, and so simple that
I feel I can reveal it here outside the quarantine chamber of jboske.

* Use loi for collectives, and lo for substances.

* Collective is defined as a group with at least one Emergent Property.
This means a property held by the group that an individual lacks. The
canonical example is the 3 guys carrying the piano.

* There are 2 ways to treat a substance using lo. Take water. One is to
consider all the water in the universe as a unit, and consider a glass of
water as a small piece. The other is to treat any "piece" of water, be it
a glass or a river, as an individual. I don't have a preference.

-- 
Seventy-two city councils, including Philadelphia,
Austin, Chicago, Baltimore and Cleveland have
passed anti-war resolutions.