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simplicio comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong
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In E's defence, the tradition of normative English grammar is that "shall" expresses a determination or volition, whereas "will" expresses a fact statement.
vs
Actually, believe it or not, the tradition of "normative English grammar" (i.e. high-status language) is that what you what you wrote is correct for persons other than the first. For the first person (I/we), it's the reverse.
I honestly don't know what the origin of this distinction is, unless it's the fact that British people seem to say "I shall" a lot.
Neither "shall" nor "will" originated as any sort of future marker. Originally "will" denoted intention, and "shall" denoted obligation. "He will do that" |-> "He intends to do that", "He shall do that" |-> "He is obligated to do that". The first-person/others asymmetry comes from what you can know about what you intend vs. what you can know about what others intend.
Fowler has a pretty thorough explanation of this history. It's a bit out of date, but that's OK; it's history.
But also note, EY mostly wrote ‘will’ or ‘'ll’, not ‘shall’.
It was interesting to see confirmation of my silly theory in the first sentence:
Yes, I definitely get the impression from Fowler that, while he knows the correct high-status English usage and can explain how it came about and how to use, he also knows that it's a little silly.
All the same, I do find ‘shall’ useful. As long as I remember not to use it when Fowler would use it as a simple future marker (‘will’ is the only simple future marker in my American dialect), I can use it to express determination. If people think that ‘shall’ and ‘will’ are interchangeable, then I can't do that; but as long as people know that ‘shall’ is something funny, then at least they can look up what I mean if they don't know.
It would be much nicer if things worked the way that simplicio said. Once the last first-person-simple-future user of ‘shall’ dies, then it will be safe to implement this rule. (So please hold off on the Singularity until then.)