Toward Understanding E-Prime (2001)

If this had been written by anyone else, I would not have read it in full, let alone considered its theses. The idea(s) seemed abhorrently trivial at first but in the end, as with many things of this nature, I am -- badum-psh! -- not so militant against this word or the people that use it. And furthermore, after giving it some thought, I would turn it back around and say that the word "is" bears no fault here but instead lies with this worldview which asserts that the word "is" represents an absolute, static, and singular essence of being, instead of a temporary avatar created by circumstance. This may sound like a weird transition, but the stoics were talking about this (at length) thousands of years ago, and it really cuts at the core of the argument presented here: Who is -- badum-psh! -- the master of your mind? Because the person making this argument I think has clearly ceded control of their mind to an external force whenever a person uses the word "is". It may not be such a popular opinion these days, but I think the world could certainly do with less externalization and more introspective critical thought. I'm on board with the assertions of some form of mind control in advertising slogans. However that is kind of the point, right?

I once spent a whole week using e-prime. I wrote everything, text, emails, social media postings in e-prime. I allowed myself to speak "normally" for that week, but the following week I tried to only speak using e-prime.

I found trying to only speak in e-prime ridiculously hard as familiar phrases that I would normally use unconsciously, I had to discount consciously. I used a notepad to tell people that I had trouble talking right now because of an experiment which helped!

Writing in e-prime had more benefits. I think non violent communication (NVC) has similar benefits. It appeared like the emails had greater objectivity than before and less "blame". I think I spent more time editing stuff (including this comment) though!

'"Is", "is", "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.'

- Robert Anton Wilson

I find e-prime very useful now and then. It helps highlight the people, feelings or phenomena and their interactions and effects. It helps avoid assumptions. It helps disentangle causes and effects, sites of action or loci of emotion. Other commenters have noted that it helps avoid assigning power to external forces (e.g. "it is raining"). I agree. The existence of such forces gets harder to assert the more you avoid the "is" of attribution.

You can also have fun with it. It benefits from terseness. You can also use it to finely qualify your ideas, in time, in location, and with ownership.

Previous HN discussion of the Wikipedia entry for E-Prime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10688201

Is it Sapir-Whorf or the belief systems that limit the thoughts ? Belief systems seem to be akin to a game and language seems to be the physics engine.

I find that writing documentation in E-Prime helps. E-Prime helps me distinguish name from value from type. Confusion of those three aspects often arises with lazy use of "to be". Reducing that name/value/type confusion of in-code commentary makes a big difference.

What about mathematics?

A finite field appears to be commutative. Or A finite field is commutative. ?

Good! Now, let's ditch indefinite and definite articles. Yet more unneeded fluff.