December 01, 2004

The Paradox of Language Okay I just couldn't take it anymore. Selfishly ripped from the dirty hands of the blue, carried excitedly back to the Monkeyhaus to be gigglingly rocked back and forth with.

autological and e-prime were also discussed. No biting.

  • Everything I say is a lie.
  • That's damn fine, thank you.
  • And that, my monkey friends, is why God does not exist. Or does. Whichever.
  • Am I to understand besides all our downfalls?
  • Wait, what were we talking about?
  • E-prime kicks, though I've never before heard it so named— I've always called it "avoiding the copulative," awkwardly. I've drilled it for years, trying to reduce the flabbiness of my prose.
  • "is it possible to formally codify the Universe in such a way that our system of coding will be both complete and consistent?" Strangely enough, the answer is no. Objectivity is a lie. Subjectively, I don't believe that.
  • Stop confusing me with your clarifications.
  • I feel like saying: I theory, practice and theory are the same; In practice, they are not.
  • Not a comment, this.
  • I was happy to be reminded of e-prime and the Institute for General Semantics. It's stuff I used to philososize about back in the day.
  • Word.
  • I am terrible about using passive English.
  • E-prime is awesome. No... I found e-prime to be awesome. noo... E-prime has been ruled awesome by me! Oops My brain has deemed e-prime as awesome. At last. PS. Is that "been" a verb? (I don't know grammar)
  • How about: E-prime makes you think about how to use language more effectively?
  • Or: I like e-prime. E-prime makes me happy. E-prime confuses me. Etc.
  • Or: E-prime roolz.
  • But not: E-prime is the shit.
  • E-prime made a monkey out of me.
  • "Has been" is a form of the word "be." er wait "Is" can be formed into "has been." yes! (Passive be is allowed!) (ah crap! here goes) (E-prime allows passive be.) (phew)
  • This reminds me of the self-referential aptitude test, which took me forever to solve, but was immensely entertaining. (via MeFi)
  • This sentence could have been a review of the link had it turned out differently.
  • *brain fizzles and implodes*
  • Mistakes were made in the use of the passive voice in this sentence.
  • The author doesn't really understand Goedel's theorem(s). One can easily present logics in ways that are sound, complete, and sufficiently powerful to do arithmetic; the best example is Gentzen's classical 'sequent calculus'. The sacrifice for such presentations is decidability — no computer program can decide if any arbitrary (input) proposition is a theorem of the logic. Decidability, however, is not the same as completeness.
  • I wrote this post in E-Prime. I rule!
  • E-prime or not, you ended with a preposition. Unless you meant "forthwith." Where's Wolof when he's actually needed?
  • You realize the "rule" against ending with a preposition is complete horseshit, right?
  • A proposition seems a good thing to end a sentence with.
  • You realize the "rule" against ending with a preposition is complete horseshit, right? That's the joke. Excellent work.
  • I never heard of E-prime before. I like it.
  • t-shirt
  • That's the only paradox t-shirt, but they do have some funny ones you don't have to think too hard about.
  • Only you can prevent narcissism.
  • mct: You made me laugh really loud and scare my dog :)