From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Mon Jul 05 1999 - 19:04:39 MDT
"Elizabeth Childs, baby extropian" [Whoa! "Childs" "baby" ...Set me up!]
inquired,
>What does this mean?
this (pl. for adj. and pron. def. 2 _these_ adj.)
1. That is near or present, either actually or in thought: _This_ house is
for sale; I shall be there _this_ evening.
2. That is understood or has just been mentioned...
Oh, wait... you mean What does *that* mean!
Uh, <goes to get yet another beer> by hyper-cognitive selectivity I meant
selection (or the absence thereof) based on high-level consciousness. Like,
knowing the best thing to do next. Or, in the face of accelerating
uncertainty, keeping your head, while all the Rudyard Kiplings around you
lose theirs.
>Any other Extropic English I ought to know?
>From http://extropy.com/faq/eprime.html :
What is E-Prime?
E-Prime is English without the verb "to be" (is, are, was); more
specifically, without the "is of identity" ("John is a liar; Linda is a
lawyer; Edgar is stupid."). E-Prime emerges from the tradition of General
Semantics. The reason for E-Prime is that the "is of identity" connotes an
eternal Platonic essence possessed by the thing that is said to "be"
something. The "is of identity" tends to blind both the speaker and the
audience to many important characteristics about the relationship between
the person being described and the quality or category being assigned to
them. "Joe is a racist": "Racism" is not a measurable quantity of an object
like mass or momentum; there is no "racism meter" we can point to a person
that will detect whether Joe has the "essence" of a "racist" in him.
"Racist" is a name we give to an object based on our observations of
emergent phenomena like behavior; but the assignment of the label is in our
heads, not in physical reality. E-Prime, by restricting the use of the "is
of identity," makes explicit the fact that these are statements about the
state of our nervous system, not about the outside world. E-Prime confines
itself to observations and operational statements like "Joe frequently makes
statements that sound racist to me" or even "I heard Joe say Angelo is a
dirty wop."
Examples of English sentences translated into E-Prime:
ENGLISH: Marty is an asshole.
E-PRIME: Marty frequently says things that make me angry.
ENGLISH: Religious fanatics like David Koresh are dangerous. (Makes the
implicit assignment "David Koresh was a religious fanatic.")
E-PRIME: The government considered David Koresh, whose followers believed he
was God, a danger to their authority. (Talks about who holds what beliefs.)
ENGLISH: Natalie Merchant's voice is the most beautiful in the world.
E-PRIME: I like Natalie Merchant's voice better than anyone else's.
ENGLISH: Natalie Merchant is a Commie dupe.
E-PRIME: Natalie Merchant has said she thinks private property is bad. (An
operational statement of an observable fact regarding something somebody has
said.)
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I experimented with e-prime for several years.
Try it, you'll (perhaps) like it.
"The future may hold excruciating boredom for us all,
unless someone decides to do something (you know) weird.
So someone answers all my email from the back of my computer."
--Penn Jillette
http://www.sincity.com/penniphile/nyloft.html
PS: Nice chatting with you on Gina's chat doo-dah.
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