Conference hydra::dejavu

>return to
>    the more Godly languages our fathers knew, i.e. machine language,
>    LISP, and APL. Amen.                           

definitely APL ("Code Like an Egyptian")!  or how about just returning to
the switch-register panels that were on the computers of the Patriarchs?
;-)

    	What does ADA stand for??
    
    			Carla
    

    
    Well, would you lookit who's here!
    
    Hi .0 - welcome!
    
    Had a good chuckle the first time I read this today in another spot.
         
    Happy 1988 - and to all of you in DEJAVU too.
    
    Cindy

re: .4

AKA Ada Augusta, daughter of George Gordon (Lord Byron), i believe?
unindicted co-conspirator with Charles Babbage in the first functional
specification for a computer-like device (Babbage's "analytical engine")

    HAPPPY 1988 ALL!  I do hate to start the New Year confused <hoped
    to leave that in '87> but I am not clear if you have taken a stand
    on the AKA issue, or, if so, what it is.  
    
    It seems to me that most of the problems that we humans run into
    in our daily living is due to the fact that we do not understand
    eachother.  I know many family/friend relationships that do not
    understand eachother and they do speak the same language.  If you
    take that on a larger level, that of work groups, government groups,
    country groups and world communication; that might just help a little
    to speak the same language but the greater need is to "experience"
    what the next person feels.
    
    Now, of course, I don't mean that I have to blow my nose if you
    tell me about your cold.  It does mean, however, that if I am to
    clearly understand what you are feeling going through your cold,
    I would have to go within myself and seek out an experience I may
    have had that was similar to what you were feeling.  
    
    Until everyone tries to do that with eachother, one language is
    not going to be the answer or something to fear.  I believe that
    the Creator gave us certain rules and guidelines to work with when
    humanity was in the infant stage.  All of these still apply, but
    we are to look at *true* meanings within these guidelines and words.
    By this, I mean again the only way the words can truly be known
    is to internalize them and experience them.  What comes to me when
    I internalize any potential for world peace, by any means, is not
    fearful.  What I do realize is that as long as I still hold cards
    in the game, and I do not lay them all down, the game keeps on.
    gave us certain rules/guidelines to work with 

    Ada doesn't stand for anything. Ada, the programming language, as .4
    and .5 have mentioned, is named for Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace
    (pronounced "loveless"), who was Lord Byron's daughter. She worked with
    Babbage on the Differential Engine (his mechanical computer) and was
    thus the first computer programmer. 
    
    Ada is a proper noun, not an acronym. It is spelled "Ada," not "ADA."
    Those who insist on putting in in all caps are generally the sort of
    dweeb who spell "kernel" with an "a" and put a "d" in "privilege."
    
    	Jon

    re: .7 (Jon)
    
    	Thank you for that clarification.
    
    	I also must tell you that you are the first person I've
    	not "corrupted" who uses a descriptive word that I do.
    	How very appropriate for this topic!!!!!
    
    
    
    	*Dweebs* of the world unite!
    

    As an aside...
    
    There is a technical journal (whose name escapes me at the moment)
    devoted to computer languages whose cover is always a picture of
    the Tower of Babel with the stones labeled with the names of various
    computer languages.
    
    (OK now: how many believe that the bible says that the sin of pride
    in the story of the Tower of Babel involves the height of the Tower?)
    
    						Topher

    My understanding is that Ada is a computer programming language.
    Are you proposing that humans can use Ada to communicate with
    one another?  This seems quite far-fetched.
    
    There are proposed international languages, such as Esperanto and
    Ido, that may do the job better.

    There is an artifical language that is logical enough to be programmed
    in, if someone were to write a compiler for it.  It's called Loglan.
    Heinlein mentioned it in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".  At a place
    I used to work, I ran into a guy who was very interested in Loglan.
    He told me that there was a Loglan society complete with a journal.

    Mike

    Yeah, Loglan is an interesting language.  It's based on the first
    order predicate calculas.  It has no verbs and only proper nouns.
    Instead it uses predicates.  For example, there is a predicate for
    "mother" which could serve the purpose of either a noun or a verb.
    It takes several (I remember vaguly the number 5, but can only think
    of 3) "arguments".  In effect whenever you talk about "mother" or
    "mothering" you are always implicitly or explicitly saying "who",
    "of whom" and "with whom" (if you don't specify the arguments "someone"
    is the default).  So to say "Jane is a mother" you would say
    roughly "Mother Jane".  To say "Jane is the mother of Jim" you would
    say roughly "Mother Jane Jim".  To say "Jane is the mother of Jim
    with Frank as the father" you would say "Mother Jane Jim Frank".
    To just refer to some mother you would simply say "Mother" with
    no arguments.
    
    Loglan was *not* invented, however, for world communication.  It
    was, rather, invented in an experiment to test the Sapir-Whorf
    hypothesis.  (Warning: brief descriptions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
    are exceedingly misleading, and have engendered many foolish arguments
    directed against strawmen).  The essense of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
    is that "The languages we speak fluently effect the ease (*not*
    the posibility) with which we can think about various areas."
    
    The idea of the test was to see if people who spoke Loglan fluently
    gained in their ability to think logically (as opposed to, for example,
    to think poetically.  The inventors did not, claim, that logical
    thinking was better than, e.g., poetic thinking, only that it was
    much easier to judge whether the quality of that mode of thinking
    had improved).
    
    Unfortunately, although many people have gotten proficient at quickly
    translating between Loglan and their native language(s), few if
    any have actually gained linguistic fluency (i.e., being able to
    "think" in Loglan without special effort).  My guess is that its
    very artificial syntax is simply not of a form that the human
    linguistic processing mechanisms are good at.  So, so far at least,
    the Loglan experiment has to be judged a "glorious failure" with
    a fascinating "spin-off": the Loglan language itself.
    
    [Note: I have never studied Loglan, nor am I expert.  About 10 years
    ago I gave a single reading of the Loglan Institute's introductory
    material -- both philosophy and language].
    
    						Topher
    

    
    Re. a couple back
    
    Just so you understand .0 a bit - this article was also entered
    into the CHRISTIAN conference.  It is my understanding that
    fundamentalists who take the Bible literally believe that when the
    whole world speaks the same language, then the 'end is near' (if
    you subscribe to the pretrib idea, anyway), and that the anti-Christ
    mentioned in Revelations through the concept of a world government
    would be able to take over the world quite easily (common language,
    common monetary system, Big Brother stuff, etc).  This is also why
    some fundamentalists believe that the New Age is so horrible - because
    it fosters communication between people and nations and is thereby
    somehow fulfilling the prophecy (and is also viewed as the anti-Christ
    organization).   For more information on this, read note 25 in the
    CHRISTIAN conference to get a better idea of what this is all about.
    
    Of course, there is a major difference between a world government
    that is totalitarian in nature and one that is a world democracy,
    or a 'United States Of Earth'..........but somehow this point always 
    seems to get lost in the discussion (buried in the rhetoric and
    dogma).
    
    The topic name as entered in CHRISTIAN, by the way, is "Ada - Tool
    of the Devil?" (or something close to this).  You will notice the
    slightly different title of this article as entered into this
    conference......
         
    Cindy

RE: .13
    
    One of my usual nits.
    
    Its very easy to lump "fundamentalists" into one bag.  After all
    they all claim to simply believe the "literal truth" of the Bible.
    If there is one thing that the study of language has revealed it
    is that there is no single "literal" interpretation of any piece
    of language written or spoken.  So there are many brands of
    "fundamentalism" much of which is very highly interpreted beyond
    the straight forward interpretations of the Bible.  The political/
    religious interpretation you describe is indeed prevelant in
    *American* *Protestant* fundamentalism.  I suspect rather strongly
    that it is not universal even within that broad category.
    
    					Topher

    Re.14
    
    You're correct.  Thanks for the reminder.
    
    Cindy

    Hi.
         I've been thinking a little about this type of thing lately.
     I thought everybody could learn two languages.  Their own native
    language and another language, that every nation could speak in
    common.  Personally, I think the idea of Esperanto or the like is
    ridiculous; pick some existing, living language as the world standard.
    Now for people who think this will hasten the end of the world,
    I'd suggest that they keep the world safe by not learning the standard
    language.  That would serve their purposes ( and mine, by the way).
         The idea that the world could be taken over because everybody
    could understand each other, at least on a superficial level, would
    lead us to look at the formation of nations more closely.  That
    would be a model of some sort.  Countries can be taken over by 
    ideologies.  Nobody seriously considers the idea of breaking up
    nations.  I guess what I'm translating the original note here to
    say is "We can't have progress on this issue because the Bible tells
    us not to.  This is evil."  While I don't believe in Satan as the
    original source of evil for the universe, I do have lots of judgements
    about what's good and bad.  One of the attributes of "bad" is anything
    that contributes to serious divisions between any "us" and any "them",
    at least the way I see it.  People who fear Satan can keep the rest
    of us safe by being a part of the world that can't communicate directly
    with the rest of the world.  Everybody else could have the benefits
    of being able to talk with other people wherever they go.
         Another thought that comes to mind about this is that because
    the world is going to end when people speak one language doesn't
    mean that the ability to speak one language is the work of Satan.
    I look at that more fatalistically;  God's going to end the world
    someday anyway and the world's ability to communicate directly may
    well be a coincidental rather than a contributing factor. A lot
    of other things will also be coincidental factors; many of us see
    some of those things as good.
         As you can see, I'm not big on finding out details before offering
    an opionion.  I think along the lines of "If x Then y".  Then I'm
    quite willing to jettison y if x turns out to be incorrect.  Like,
    "never mind".
                                             Mike
    
    

    Re .-1 (Mike)
    
    >Personally, I think the idea of Esperanto or the like is
    >ridiculous; pick some existing, living language as the world standard.
   
    Just a nit here, but any existing language you would pick would
    be favoritism to the people who speak it, thus discriminatory against
    the others who would have to learn it.  It would give those whose
    native tongue it was a "home field advantage".  The only remedy
    for this that I can see is to pick a language of some small, isolated
    group (some flavor of aborigine?) who isn't a major contributor
    to world politics, use their language, have the "civilized" people
    learn it.  Otherwise, I think a language like Esperanto is the best
    choice.  The other advantage of Esperanto is that it is designed
    toward 20th century peoples and lifestyles - a language that has
    50 words for yam, and none for airplane is somewhat useless to the
    goal of worldwide negotiations.  I certainly see it as the best
    compromise.
    
    Elizabeth

  Is .0 really serious?  When I first read this note I interpreted as a
 tongue-in-cheek parody of some extreme Bible-literal fundamentalist views.
 Anyone who considers machine language, LISP, and APL as "Godly languages"
 must have their tongue super-glued to their cheek, mustn't they?  :-)
 Even the name "Journal of Irreproducible Results" sounded contrived to me.

  The use of a computer language as an international mode of expression
 is so limiting as to be ludicrous to me.  Esperanto (and possibly Loglan)
 seem to qualify as potential common world languages, although I doubt they
 will proliferate widely.  Actually, if .0 is for real, then it is encouraging
 to me that this particular variety of extreme fundamentalism is spending
 effort on this total non-issue since that may leave them less energy to
 expend on harassment of individuals and groups who do not live according
 to their own simplistic 'God-fearing' moral absolutes.

  I have gotten a bit carried away with my disbelief of the serious
 consideration imparted to the Ada/Devil connection, but I would like to
 suggest alternate interpretations of the references to a "common language".
 To me, this common language refers to the direct communication of an
 *internal* understanding rather than the interpretation of external
 manifestations of speech and grammar.

  Anyone who has seen the United Nations general assembly in action will know
 that no matter what language is being spoken, you can pick up a headset and
 dial in the language of your choice from a selection of at least five or six.
 Now, would forcing everyone to speak and interpret Esperanto (or Ada ?!? :-})
 actually relate information more accurately than these trained interpreters?
 For me the answer is ... definitely not.  I don't really think that this is
 the problem.  Those who have described misunderstandings between themselves
 and their spouses etc. are closer to the point, I think, and of course in that
 case the language is the same, it is the interpretations which are different.

  One way of directly communicating an *internal* representation to another
 would be through some sort of telepathic communication.  If one entertains
 the possibility that humans could have communicated predominantly through
 telepathic means (ie. right-brain mechanisms) at some time in prehistory,
 then the introduction of *any* structured spoken language (ie. left-brain
 mechanisms) could soon relinquish the telepathic faculties to vestigial
 status.  While it seems highly unlikely to me that a *single* spoken language
 could have been developed or maintained by pre-historic humans who were so
 diverse both geographically and culturally, a rapid proliferation of the use
 of *any* spoken language seems not only possible, but likely.

  Telepathic communication is one alternate interpretation of what is meant
 by the common language, but let me add another.  In writings of Gurdjieff
 and Ouspensky, who claim to accurately relate the teachings of ancient
 esoteric schools (see 106.30), a different 'common language' is described.
 Much of the 'schooling' consists of attempting to directly experience and
 thus internalize the meaning of many terms/concepts used in the teachings.
 While this sounds like a _subjective_ enterprise, they contend that the
 result is an extremely _objective_ understanding of reality, using extremely
 precise and unambiguous terms.  These concepts include such seemingly vague
 terms as "remembering yourself", "knowledge and being", and "understanding",
 and also encompass more specific ideas such as "'shocks' which span the gaps
 which naturally occur within octaves", along with many other concepts.

  Messages which originate from within the _esoteric_ inner circles are then
 repeatedly distorted as they are subsequently reinterpreted by people in
 the _mesoteric_ and then _exoteric_ circles, and finally end up with only a
 germ of their original meaning when they reach the outer circle where all
 people who have not entered a school are considered to reside.  The following
 excerpt from "The Fourth Way" by Ouspensky describes this outer circle:

	"The outer circle is called the circle of confusion of tongues,
	 for in this circle people cannot understand one another.
	 Understanding is possible only in the inner circles."

  In the inner circles, it is not the spoken words used to express these
 concepts which is important for understanding, but the concepts themselves.
 Gurdjieff and Ouspensky claim that members of the esoteric inner circles
 of *ANY* esoteric school can communicate unambiguously with esoteric adepts
 of *ANY* other school!  It is this commonality of expression and _objective_
 understanding which exemplify a true 'common language' of human experience.

					Todd

                
    RE.18 - The Journal is for real.  The article, however, is almost
            definitely tongue-in-cheek.                               
                      
    On a common world language:
    
    According to that show on PBS entitled "The Story Of English", there
    are apparently upwards of 100 million Chinese people learning the
    English language via the most popular television series ever shown
    there (somebody correct the number if it is not correct - been a
    couple of years).
    
    So, perhaps we have our common language after all.  Who would have
    ever suspected?!           
    
    As for breaking up the world into itty bitty pieces to foil Satan,
    I did pose the question of "Why are there 50 United States all under
    one country when they could be each their own country and make it
    that much more difficult for Satan to unite them?" in the CHRISTIAN
    conference, since this was (and may still be) a hot topic of
    discussion.   Never did get an answer.
    
    Cindy
    

    Hi, again.  Ms. Younger,
         I don't mean to be overly formal, I just don't know how to
    get to the other window to find out your first name.
    I see what you are saying about "home field advantage".  That is
    definitely a disadvantage to picking a currently used language.
    A disadvantage to made up languages is that NOBODY speaks them at
    this point.  There is currently no literature in that language.
    There are no television stations in that language.  For most intents
    and purposes they really don't exist.  Most people learn to speak
    languages from other people.
         I think the effort to get most of the world to learn a made
    up language would be far greater than would be required to learn
    a currently used language.  The "home field advantage" would also
    have some advantages to it for people who don't have it.  
         I think the U.N. or some commission thereof should pick the
    top ten or so languages in terms of population using them.  Throw
    them in a hat, mix them up and pick one.  Prior to that, I wouldn't
    mind seeing a general assembly debate on the pros and cons of a
    made up versus a current language.  Basically, I would be quite
    willing to give up any home field advantage for the benefits of
    having a real, usable, world standard language.  I don't think
    Esperanto has a snowball's chance in hell of seeing widespread use.
         Finally, I think that if an issue like this gets to be seen
    as some sort of nationalistic issue, it won't fly.  There are lots
    of problems to be worked out with this, by wiser heads than we
    possess.  Truthfully, I'm willing to be surprised by the success
    of a made up language.  Whatever finally works is just fine with
    me.
         As regards a later note about telepathic communication;  I
    know this is Dejavu, some people do seem to possess that ability.
    However, I'm unable to seriously consider this as a real alternative.
    I will be more willing to think about it when you can tell me 
    or anybody else why we should by using telepathy.  (On the one hand,
    what I just wrote looks snotty to me; on the other hand it's honest
    and fair.  One of life's little dilemnas.)
         A final disclaimer;  all I'm really sure about in most situations
    is my experience and thoughts.  It's the only thing about which
    I'm the leading expert. I state my opinions, constantly reminding
    myself that other people see things differently and that they have
    EXCELLENT reasons for doing so.
         Thanks for the discussion.
                                            Mike

RE: .18,.19
    
    Specifically the *Journal of Irreproducable Results* is a magazine
    devoted to scientific parody.  Nothing (except occasional announcements
    of increased subscription cost :-) in it is written with serious
    intent.  A book of collected articles from JIR has been published
    and is a lot of fun, but the title escapes me.
    
    					Topher