5 ms·

Wouldn't information density be a bad thing for such uses? If one part of the rune is damaged, you lose a ton of information. Contrast with e.g. Latin, Greek, S

Wouldn't information density be a bad thing for such uses? If one part of the rune is damaged, you lose a ton of information. Contrast with e.g. Latin, Greek, Sumerian, etc. in which inscriptions are heavily damaged, but the meaning is still deducible. Consider this fragmented sentence: T___reside_t_of__he_Unit___tates__s_Joe_B__en A sufficiently determined future archaeologist will be able to figure out what it originally said with some degree of accuracy. The lack of density is essentially functioning as parity bits.

munk-a 4y ago
If you think information preservation is important enough to warrant repetition wouldn't it be more efficient to repeat the few highly significant characters several times rather than hope that the deterioration of characters happens to allow significance to still be gleaned? If the sentiment takes 1/6th of the characters to express you could just replicate it six times which would probably have a better chance of surviving wear than a single sentiment written once. Also - we, living humans, are very good at context based inference due to our high familiarity with the language - but someone who didn't know that "President" was a political position or had never heard of Joe Biden or the US would probably struggle to piece together even what that sentence was trying to convey. "They reside at of the Unit Potates. S'Cuppa Joe By Den"
- gamegoblin 4y ago
  Re: context, a future archaeologist would have more examples of the language, just like we have lots of examples of Latin, Greek, and Sumerian which allow us to learn the language with enough context to decipher the more damaged inscriptions. The trickiest part might be the name Joe Biden which isn't a part of English, per se. Correspondingly, there are ancient kings whose names we only have fragmented versions of for the same reason. Ithkuil would obviously also need a large corpus for future archaeologists to decipher, otherwise the runes are meaningless. Re: repetition - erasure coding (parity bits, basically) is far more efficient than duplication for data durability. How much this applies to natural language (where extraneous characters act sort of like parity bits) I am unsure, but there is nothing stopping you from just mapping your natural language to a binary code and using actual parity bits. Obviously, a future archaeologist will need to know what kind of erasure coding scheme you are using, but that is actually much simpler to convey than the corpus of the language itself. It's pretty simple math.
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  What's a Potate?
  - munk-a 4y ago
    That's a really interesting question - we're not really sure what Potate or Taters are, we've seen quite a few references to them across a few decades and our best bet is that it was connected to a briefly lived religious cult or or belief system as they are often referenced in connection to "heavenly" or sacred. A fragmentary surviving work by an author only known as STP describes in detail a "Mr. Tulip" who provides our most reliable source on this matter > 'I thought maybe a maypole,' said Mr Tulip reflectively. 'An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-filed system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar. this whole fragment of a fictional character describing some of the rituals related to the Potate can be found near the quote "Everything will be alright as long as you have your -ing Potate" as expressed near the end of their life.

munk-a 4y ago

If you think information preservation is important enough to warrant repetition wouldn't it be more efficient to repeat the few highly significant characters several times rather than hope that the deterioration of characters happens to allow significance to still be gleaned? If the sentiment takes 1/6th of the characters to express you could just replicate it six times which would probably have a better chance of surviving wear than a single sentiment written once. Also - we, living humans, are very good at context based inference due to our high familiarity with the language - but someone who didn't know that "President" was a political position or had never heard of Joe Biden or the US would probably struggle to piece together even what that sentence was trying to convey. "They reside at of the Unit Potates. S'Cuppa Joe By Den"

gamegoblin 4y ago
Re: context, a future archaeologist would have more examples of the language, just like we have lots of examples of Latin, Greek, and Sumerian which allow us to learn the language with enough context to decipher the more damaged inscriptions. The trickiest part might be the name Joe Biden which isn't a part of English, per se. Correspondingly, there are ancient kings whose names we only have fragmented versions of for the same reason. Ithkuil would obviously also need a large corpus for future archaeologists to decipher, otherwise the runes are meaningless. Re: repetition - erasure coding (parity bits, basically) is far more efficient than duplication for data durability. How much this applies to natural language (where extraneous characters act sort of like parity bits) I am unsure, but there is nothing stopping you from just mapping your natural language to a binary code and using actual parity bits. Obviously, a future archaeologist will need to know what kind of erasure coding scheme you are using, but that is actually much simpler to convey than the corpus of the language itself. It's pretty simple math.
SeanLuke 4y ago
What's a Potate?
- munk-a 4y ago
  That's a really interesting question - we're not really sure what Potate or Taters are, we've seen quite a few references to them across a few decades and our best bet is that it was connected to a briefly lived religious cult or or belief system as they are often referenced in connection to "heavenly" or sacred. A fragmentary surviving work by an author only known as STP describes in detail a "Mr. Tulip" who provides our most reliable source on this matter > 'I thought maybe a maypole,' said Mr Tulip reflectively. 'An' then a display of country dancing, land tillage under the three-filed system, several plagues and, if my --ing hand ain't too tired, the invention of the --ing horse collar. this whole fragment of a fictional character describing some of the rituals related to the Potate can be found near the quote "Everything will be alright as long as you have your -ing Potate" as expressed near the end of their life.