Subject: Re: [lojban] Are attitudinals assertions? (was: Attitudinals again (was: Sapi...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 18:15:20 EDT

In a message dated 6/15/2001 5:30:58 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> According to you, yes.
> 
> But some of us (gasp! horror!) aren't philosopher or linguists or
> logicians.
> 
> You know, your insistence that those of us who don't know as much about
> logic as you expect rather reminds me of my insistence that you should
> know more about computers and the internet before you speak up.
> 
> So, one way or another you're being a hypocrite. Please pick one.
> 

Well, I didn't sign up for Samban, so I didn't know that computerism was 
going to become a requirement and I do try to keep up a bit. As all I have 
done is ask in varrious ways that the development of Lojban not leave the 
majority, stuck in MS Windows and the like behind, I don't quite see that I 
need to know more. It is fairly clear that this majority is often ignored 
(and derided, alas) by computer developers, including some for Lojban. In 
the interest of growing Lojban, this seems to me a serious mistake. I am 
happy to see that some steps have been taken to change that, though there are 
still things unavailable in Windows that can be had on other platforms. That 
the converse is also true seems to me less of a problem, since it affects so 
few people.
Aside from that, I stay out of technical issues in computers because I don't 
know much about them. Would that people who don't know much (anything) about 
linguistics or logic or... would do the same with issues in those fields. Or 
would enter in an appropriately tentative way and learn by doing and asking, 
rather than charging in with "the answer" when, as it turns out they have not 
even understood the question. There is more than enough stuff to do in 
Lojban -- and very likely much more important stuff to do in Lojban -- other 
than arguing theory: developing usage, writing stories, translating 
appropriate texts, carrying on conversations, teaching,....
The metagame is a frill and largely still a foolish 0one until some of those 
other tasks have gotten further along than they are. Leave it for people who 
aren't going to do the other stuff or who are going to take an impractical 
view of things.