Re: "Misunderstanding of the lambda calculus"

[David Kastrup]

Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi, David!
>
> On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>>"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>>     As you can see, practically all meanings involve surviving into
>>>     the present time.  So I stand by my point that "archaic" and
>>>     "dead" are not synonymous.
>
>>> Archaic does not imply "dead", but it does imply "not very much
>>> alive".  Anyway, the relevant point is "archaic" is a smear term.
>
>>"Archaic life forms" are those that have survived basically unchanged
>>for millions of years, that were so well-adapted to their ecological
>>niche that natural selection has not weeded them out or made them
>>undergo significant changes.  That's not really a "smear term".
>
> David, "archaic" _is_ a smear term in this context.

Proper smear terms would be "obsolescent", "obsolete", "retarded".
While I agree that "archaic" might be intended to smear here, it is
applied because of a lack of a significant reason.  It is similar to
the use of "liberal" in U.S. circles.

>>It does imply "strange to behold as holding its own in modern times
>>where lots of things have changed utterly in comparison".  But that
>>is indeed something that I don't consider an unfitting sentiment
>>when confronted with Emacs.  Though TeX fits the bill even better.
>
> Of course, the real truth is that it's taken other commonly used
> languages (like C++, Java, ....) decades to catch up with Lisp.  :-)

Not at all.  There is no catching up here that I can see: completely
different ecological niches.  Humans didn't evolve due to playing
catch up with duck-billed platypuses.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum