Subject: Re: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 10:37:29 EDT

In a message dated 7/18/2001 1:03:08 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> You seem to be saying that you can get everything offered by the
> experience of driving a car by staring at the car's blueprints long
> enough. Do you suppose a car that feels great to drive could be improved
> by the ideas of people that never themselves drove it?
> 

This is a really lousy analogy. The answer to the final question is pretty 
clearly "Yes," as has been demonstrated over the 100+ years of automotive 
history, so that side of the analogy goes out. The other side would be to 
ask whether you would be happier in a car designed by someone who could read 
blueprints or someone who only an a sensitive butt for the comfort of the 
ride. Happily, for the most part the designers of Lojban are also among its 
better speakers/writers/users. Whether they live/think in Lojban is unclear, 
but probably irrelevant, since Lojban has no life aside from the language 
itself and thus does not really present the possibilities such idioms 
usually intend for natural languages.