Re: OFF-TOPIC: Non linguistics books by Chomsky

From: "Steve Cooney" <stevencooney@...>

> In light of this above sentiment, I wonder if the
> subject of this thread would better be generalized to
> something like "Changing One's Mind: Good or Bad?" or
> "Making Corrections: Sign of a Flawed Charachter?"
>
> If there are any merits at all for the notion of
> 'never admitting a mistake' (especially for public
> figures), then I will leave it to others to claim
> them.
This idea could apply to things like... designing a conlang! I'd say going
either extreme is bad.

One extreme would be in being rigid and never being willing to edit or
improve your own work, even if it makes you look wimpy. I see nothing wrong
with composing a symphony, and then later in life, 'recomposing' it with
some improvements, or at least changing a few things because the composer
feels like it. As long as the composer makes the original version available
since it might've already drawn a huge fan base which would not approve of
any changes.

The other extreme (the trap I keep falling into): do something, make a
statement on dogmatic level about it, then decide I don't like it then start
over and come out saying I was wrong, this is the way it should be, then
changing it back to the way it was originally. This is okay with my own
conlang project, since my ongoing research keeps turning up new stuff, and I
am trying to conceptualize what the 'language of the angels' (as well as
other things like how angels play music in just intonation) might be. Bad in
politics or any time someone is speaking frequently at universities.

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