Language and collaboration (was: Python Statements/Keyword Localization)

[Ben Finney]

"Emanuele D'Arrigo" <manu3d at gmail.com> writes:

> Ultimately I certainly appreciate the ubiquity of English even though
> in the interest of fairness and efficiency I'd prefer the role of
> common language to be given to a constructed language, such as Ido.

I prefer Lojban <URL:http://www.lojban.org/> as being logically robust
while fully expressive, and sharing the Ido goal of avoiding
disadvantage to native speakers of any particular existing language.

> But it doesn't take a particularly religious person to see that "do to
> others as you would want them do to you" tends to be a valid principle

Indeed, religion is entirely redundant to that principle: one of the
earliest independent expressions of that principle is from a quite
non-religious philosopher.

    己所不欲、勿施于人。
    (What is undesirable to you, do not do to others.)
        —孔夫子 Confucius, 551 BCE – 479 BCE

I prefer this formulation, since it doesn't enjoin to *do* something to
others on the unproven assumption that someone else wants the same as me
:-)

-- 
 \       Moriarty: “Forty thousand million billion dollars? That money |
  `\            must be worth a fortune!” —The Goon Show, _The Sale of |
_o__)                                                       Manhattan_ |
Ben Finney