The basic idea was just to have a collaborative constructive language project run within a Nomic, something that I still think is nostalgically/amusingly appealing, but I can't imagine you could easily get enough people together with enough interest and free time to make it work. I sure was obsessed with nomic at about that time, (and also, thanks to Hofstadter, unreservedly so with the prefix "meta-" without really understanding what it meant) but the linguistic angle was more of a novelty to me then, I think.
(TL5 pp.120-121, c. October 16th 1996)
Nomic Variant : METAlanguage
Initial Set:
I. There exists the METALinguistic Committee
(MLC) ,
players, both subsets of all
living person. A person becomes
a player by submitting a proposal
to the MLC. All mumbers of the
MLC are also players.
The MLC initially consists of [name].
II. Any player may make a proposal
to the MLC, which must be published
publicly. If no more than one-half, rounded down
of the members of the MLC object
within one week of the proposal's
publishing, any portions of the
proposal ordering any
- Making a player a member of the MLC
- Removing a member of the MLC
- Modifying the ruleset
III. The MLC is charged with the
responsibility of devising
a language wholly dissimilar
from any existing natural
language and gradually modifying
the ruleset to be written
wholly in this language. Any
proposal making this task
more difficult directly or
indirectly, or makes it
completely impossible, should
be objected to.
