Subject: Re: On nil qua false [was: Re: On conditionals] From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 15:34:23 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3215864060763152@naggum.net> * Kenny Tilton | No, implicit in my suggestion was the energy I saw being misdirected at | defending CL, I gathered in the hope someday of greater use. Please let each person determine what is the "greater use" of their own energy, as long as it is not harmful. | Given that goal apparently sought by others, I recommended more | aggressive action crucially outside c.l.l. How do you know about happens outside c.l.l? How would you discover that whatever it is you would recommend is actually done? | I am on the fence. I would love to see CL take over the world, but I am | not going to worry about it, I am just trying to do good work with CL. I would not like CL take over the world, because that which takes over the world, is taken over by the world. Considering what the world does to other things it has taken over, it would be terrible, terrible fate. | This is why Arc may be a wrong turn. I have briefly looked at Arc. It is yet another demonstration of the problem of too strong an ego that cannot live with what somebody else has made. Be it the standard conditionals, nil versus false versus the empty list, or whatever else this purportedly strong ego is too weak to accept, it is nothing more than proof of the core problem of the IT world -- the hardness of its pillars makes them brittle, not strong, so they cannot be used to build upon. What was it that stood so much in the way that Paul Graham could not have accomplished it without creating a new language? Why was creating a new language and starting from scratch better than building on what had come before? Why is the IT world defined by people who are unable to deal with the concepts of continuity, longevity, and design for long-term stability? Why do they believe they are so much smarter than everything that has gone before them, when they clearly are not and repeat mistakes that take years to undo, if not replaced by another stupid "revolution" that itself starts from scratch? If people built societies the way computer people build communities, we would still live have small warring tribes and no concept of a law that binds all people and absolutely no concept of a constitution that binds lawmakers. For all the talk about the Internet changing the world, we lag the real world by about 40,000 years when it comes to how we make lots of people who do _not_ agree to everything live and work together. Suddenly, I feel old and tired. /// -- The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture has taught you. Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are more important to you than those in your past ever will be. The world is changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.