I think I disagree with toki pona philosophically speaking. In my own philosophy of language I think languages should be maximalist and not minimalist.

I think human languages are an abstraction for the purposes of easier expression and I think that making the abstraction too minimalist, stripping it down to the barest of essentials strips the fun out of a very important form of human expression (constructed or otherwise).

I'll note here that this doesn't mean I dislike toki pona or think it shouldn't exist, it has every right to exist as any other language. I just disagree with the stated philosophy of the language's creator and therefore the language that they created.

I'll also note that philosophy and linguistics are not topics I'm an expert in any way so these are lightly held opinions and as such I'm open to hearing people's thoughts on it and I may change my mind about it as a result.

to elaborate a little bit more, there are certain language maximalist tendencies that I think are asinine - for example - gendered nouns - I think we should get rid of that concept.

from the replies to this thread so far I'm getting the sense that people gravitate towards toki pona because it is easier to learn than maximalist languages to which I say, yeah that's fair and understandable.

as someone who has learned two languages over the course of my life (Bengali and English) I do sometimes find myself wishing language was "simpler" to both use and learn.