Problems of Symbol Congestion in Computer Languages

[Cthun]

On 17/02/2011 9:11 PM, rantingrick wrote:
. On Feb 16, 4:07 pm, Xah Lee<xah... at gmail.com>  wrote:
.> Vast majority of computer languages use ASCII as its character set.
.> This means, it jams multitude of operators into about 20 symbols.
.> Often, a symbol has multiple meanings depending on contex.
.
. I think in theory the idea of using Unicode chars is good, however in
. reality the implementation would be a nightmare!  A wise man once
. said: "The road to hell is paved in good intentions". ;-)
.
. If we consider all the boundaries that exist between current
. (programming) languages (syntax, IDE's, paradigms, etc) then we will
. realize that adding *more* symbols does not help, no, it actually
. hinders! And Since Unicode is just a hodgepodge encoding of many
. regional (natural) languages --of which we have too many already in
. this world!

What does your aversion to cultural diversity have to do with Lisp, 
rantingrick? Gee, I do hope you're not a racist, rantingrick.

. -- proliferating Unicode symbols in source code only serves
. to further complicate our lives with even *more* multiplicity!
.
. Those of us on the *inside* know that Unicode is nothing more than an
. poor attempt to monkey patch multiplicity. And that statement barely
. scratches the surface of an underlying disease that plagues all of
. human civilization. The root case is selfishness, which *then*
. propagates up and manifests itself as multiplicity in our everyday
. lives. It starts as the simple selfish notion of "me" against "other"
. and then extrapolates exponentially into the collective of "we"
. against "others".
.
. This type of grouping --or selfish typecasting if you will-- is
. impeding the furtherer evolution of homo sapiens. Actually we are
. moving at a snails pace when we could be moving at the speed of light!
. We *should* be evolving as a genetic algorithm but instead we are the
. ignorant slaves of our own collective selfishness reduced to naive and
. completely random implementations of bozosort!

What does that have to do with Lisp, rantingrick?

. Now don't misunderstand all of this as meaning "multiplicity is bad",
. because i am not suggesting any such thing! On the contrary,
. multiplicity is VERY important in emerging problem domains. Before
. such a domain is understood by the collective unconscience we need
. options (multiplicity!) from which to choose from. However, once a
. "collective understanding" is reached we must reign in the
. multiplicity or it will become yet another millstone around our
. evolutionary necks, slowing our evolution.

Classic illogic. Evolution depends upon diversity as grist for the mill 
of selection, rantingrick. A genetically homogeneous population cannot 
undergo allele frequency shifts, rantingrock.

. But multiplicity is just the very beginning of a downward spiral of
. devolution. Once you allow multiplicity to become the sport of
. Entropy, it may be too late for recovery! Entropy leads to shock
. (logical disorder) which then leads to stagnation (no logical order at
. all!). At this point we loose all forward momentum in our evolution.
. And why? Because of nothing more than self gratifying SELFISHNESS.
.
. Anyone with half a brain understands the metric system is far superior
. (on many levels) then any of the other units of measurement. However
. again we have failed to reign in the multiplicity and so entropy has
. run a muck, and we are like a deer "caught-in-the-headlights" of the
. shock of our self induced devolution and simultaneously entirely
. incapable of seeing the speeding mass that is about to plow over us
. with a tremendous kinetic energy -- evolutionary stagnation!
.
. Sadly this disease of selfishness infects many aspects of the human
. species to the very detriment of our collective evolution. Maybe one
. day we will see the light of logic and choose to unite in a collective
. evolution. Even after thousands of years we are but infants on the
. evolutionary scale because we continue to feed the primal urges of
. selfishness.

What does any of that have to do with Lisp, rantingrick?

And you omitted the #1 most serious objection to Xah's proposal, 
rantingrick, which is that to implement it would require unrealistic 
things such as replacing every 101-key keyboard with 10001-key keyboards 
and training everyone to use them. Xah would have us all replace our 
workstations with machines that resemble pipe organs, rantingrick, or 
perhaps the cockpits of the three surviving Space Shuttles. No doubt 
they'd be enormously expensive, as well as much more difficult to learn 
to use, rantingrick.