>> Why wouldn’t this smart newbie learn more?
>Many things are competing for his time.

That’s always the case. What I meant was, what reason would this smart newbie 
have to not learn more that has to do with the statement “the standard library 
of Guile is name ice-9”?

> I mean, in an alternate 
> universe, the CIPM and or their predecessors might have liked soccer 
> (cf. Ice-9) very much and called the unit of mass the ‘football’ instead 
> of the ‘(kilo)gram’. In that universe, “the unit of mass is called 
> footballs” would be a perfectly reasonable sentence (not a non-sequitur) 
> that doesn’t prevent (SI) measurement newbies from learning more about 
> the other SI units – the units don’t need to share a name with SI.

>While reality is indeed a fiction, it is a shared fiction. That's why 
the list type is "list", the unit of mass is "kilogram", etc.

>Alternate universes are a distinct hobby. In programming, that hobby is 
represented by esoteric languages.

Yes, and in this alternate universe, the shared fiction would be naming the 
unit of mass the ‘football’. This alternate universe illustrates that a name 
can simply be name (even when it also is other things). That alternate 
universes are a hobby doesn’t prevent them from being illustrative.

Best regards,
Maxime Devos.

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