Fair enough, but still far less troublesome than the structure of any natural language I've ever studied, IMO, where each of many thousands of words must be memorized separately for mastery. At least there are consistent rules, even if they are currently incomplete or inadequate in some places. The language is still very young, after all. Even the documentation admits that lujvo are a bit problematic. Room for growth is not necessarily a bad thing.
This is a start toward what may be a better way of communicating (than many natural languages by standard of understandability ;). If nothing else, Lojban can show us some places where our own languages are... less than rigorous in promoting good mental habits. Our languages, cultures, and customs leave us with plenty of blind spots and I am happy for any tool that can shed light on even one.
Room for growth is not necessarily a bad thing.
Room for growth suggests that Lojban could outgrow it's horrible place system. I don't think that's true. It's a core design flaw. Admitting that lujvo are problematic doesn't help. They are a core feature of the language.
At least there are consistent rules, even if they are currently incomplete or inadequate in some places.
There's nothing consistent about gismu/lujvo places.
The lojban dictionary isn't even consistent on the meaning of melbi/beautiful.
The translation to french suggests that X3 is a s...
This was going to be a reply in a discussion between ChristianKl and MattG in another thread about conlangs, but their discussion seemed to have enough significance, independent of the original topic, to deserve a thread of its own. If I'm doing this correctly (this sentence is an after-the-fact update), then you should be able to link to the original comments that inspired this thread here: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/n0h/linguistic_mechanisms_for_less_wrong_cognition/cxb2
Is a lack of ambiguity necessary for clear thinking? Are there times when it's better to be ambiguous? This came up in the context of the extent to which a conlang should discourage ambiguity, as a means of encouraging cognitive correctness by its users. It seems to me that something is being taken for granted here, that ambiguity is necessarily an impediment to clear thinking. And I certainly agree that it can be. But if detail or specificity are the opposites of ambiguity, then surely maximal detail or specificity is undesirable when the extra information isn't relevant, so that a conlang would benefit from not requiring users to minimize ambiguity.
Moving away from the concept of conlangs, this opens up some interesting (at least to me) questions. Exactly what does "ambiguity" mean? Is there, for each speech act, an optimal level of ambiguity, and how much can be gained by achieving it? Are there reasons why a certain, minimal degree of ambiguity might be desirable beyond avoiding irrelevant information?