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OK, I guess I need to read your work in detail (which I haven't time to do yet).
Quote:But in a century, no one has found any convincing evidence of meaningful information encoded in the text.
That's not true. I won't mention the work by Montemurro & Zanette, because, as I noted, you suggest that you were able to reproduce the like results with the random text (however, if one works onwards from the pre-analyzed statistical properties of the text it might be trivial that s/he finds co-occurrences to sustain across the text). But, apart from that, there is quite a number of tiny indications. My favourite one is that two most frequent "Voynich stars" (labeled objects of f68r1 and f68r2) -
otol and
odaiin are both mentioned in You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. and both in the same paragraph. I wonder what would be the probability for that in a random meaningless text. Another one is that You are not allowed to view links.
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Dracaena - a plant that was largely known in Europe by that time only by hearsay, since Europeans did not yet frequent the Canaries or the Socotra back then, in other words - definitely a rare plant from the perspective of the VMS author, if a European he be) is the only (!) botanical folio not containing any occurrence of a label vord.
There are also clear distribution shifts of some vords to certain sections - such as balneo or recipe. (I can only wonder why this fruitful field is largely unexplored still). Not sure if this would be a characteristic of a meaningless text generated by picking cards.
(10-04-2017, 08:20 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.OK, I guess I need to read your work in detail (which I haven't time to do yet).
Quote:But in a century, no one has found any convincing evidence of meaningful information encoded in the text.
That's not true. I won't mention the work by Montemurro & Zanette, because, as I noted, you suggest that you were able to reproduce the like results with the random text (however, if one works onwards from the pre-analyzed statistical properties of the text it might be trivial that s/he finds co-occurrences to sustain across the text). But, apart from that, there is quite a number of tiny indications. My favourite one is that two most frequent "Voynich stars" (labeled objects of f68r1 and f68r2) - otol and odaiin are both mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and both in the same paragraph. I wonder what would be the probability for that in a random meaningless text. Another one is that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the supposed Dracaena - a plant that was largely known in Europe by that time only by hearsay, since Europeans did not yet frequent the Canaries or the Socotra back then, in other words - definitely a rare plant from the perspective of the VMS author, if a European he be) is the only (!) botanical folio not containing any occurrence of a label vord.
There are also clear distribution shifts of some vords to certain sections - such as balneo or recipe. (I can only wonder why this fruitful field is largely unexplored still). Not sure if this would be a characteristic of a meaningless text generated by picking cards.
In a 240 page manuscript of meaningless text, you're bound to find those sort of co-occurrences
somewhere. Also, the plants are poorly drawn and few have been positively identified.
Yes, it is a characteristic of a meaningless text generated by picking cards. I proposed that each section has its own state transition table. The probabilities contained in them can't be determined without reverse engineering. This also explains Montemurro & Zanette's finding. Their word associations (figure 2 in their paper) are because
the same table was used. Their section associations (figure 4) are because
similar tables were used.
Yes, and repeating sequenced words do not have to mean the same thing at all locations.
Not only the grammar, but a sequence f.e. "daiin ol" = xx yy could also mean in another line, for example with another key in front of the line: "daiin ol" = zzzzz an.
(10-04-2017, 08:20 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:But in a century, no one has found any convincing evidence of meaningful information encoded in the text.
That's not true. I won't mention the work by Montemurro & Zanette, because, as I noted, you suggest that you were able to reproduce the like results with the random text (however, if one works onwards from the pre-analyzed statistical properties of the text it might be trivial that s/he finds co-occurrences to sustain across the text). But, apart from that, there is quite a number of tiny indications.
I would argue that the presence of "tiny indications" is not contradicting the absence of "convincing evidence".
Quote:I would argue that the presence of "tiny indications" is not contradicting the absence of "convincing evidence".
When they are considered together they begin to form evidence ex contrario.
(12-04-2017, 12:11 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:I would argue that the presence of "tiny indications" is not contradicting the absence of "convincing evidence".
When they are considered together they begin to form evidence ex contrario.
Anton, I'm afraid I can't agree at all.
One can make lists of arguments why the text seems meaningful, and why the text seems meaningless.
In any such list, invalid arguments would have to be removed.
You presented two examples why the text could be meaningful (not a very long list), but both are completely speculative.
Speculation can never be used as evidence.
The problem, in my opinion, is that it's impossible to prove that the text does not carry meaning. Even if someone writes a watertight program that mimics how a 15th century monk could have generated the text without losing too much time to the generating process itself (as is still a problem in this proposed solution), then still it is only shown that it could be meaningless.
Unless I'm mistaken, it could be proven that is has meaning, but it can never be proven that it doesn't.
Rene, I can't agree with you neither. What I presented are not examples why the text could be meaningful. Those are examples of what is not very probable to be observed in a randomly generated (hence meaningless) text. As I suggested above, this is not positive evidence, but evidence ex contrario. I don't see why the observations that I proposed are "speculative".
But maybe let's not wander too far offtopic from Donald's material. Don't remember if we have already a thread of "meaningful" vs "meaningless", if not, let's create one, if yes, then let's move certain posts thereto. (I'm sorry I have to run right now).
Hello Anton,
there is always a risk of wandering off-topic, but sometimes it is also necessary. Anyway, the topic was a proposed argumentation that the text is meaningless.
Let me try to summarise what I think are the main points:
- - - start of summary - - -
Donald Fisk presented an analysis that would lead to the (tentative) conclusion that the text in the MS is meaningless.
(I still intend to pick on some interesting aspects of it, in the coming days).
I argued, by using an example, that the tentative conclusion is not justified by the analysis.
This does not mean that I believe that the text cannot be meaningless. I am open to that possibility.
Demonstrating that the text is meaningless seems next to impossible (as Koen stated and I tend to agree).
Donald also stated that there is no conclusive evidence that the text has a meaning.
I agree. I am not aware of such evidence.
Of course this is not at all sufficient to conclude that the text is therefore meaningless.
You argued that there are, what you call "tiny indications" that the text could be meaningful.
I argued that "tiny indications" is not conclusive evidence. I think that this should be obivous.
Whether these tiny indications do add up to something that can be used, will require looking into them more closely, which is probably off-topic for this thread.
- - - end of summary - - -
The main arguments for or against 'meaningful content' are in my opinion:
FOR: it seems very hard to imagine that such a book, that must have taken significant resources to compose, would have a long text without any meaning.
(The strength of this argument I find impossible to judge).
AGAINST: in 100 years nobody has been able to find any meaning in it.
(This argument is not really very strong)
AGAINST: the text near the herbal illustrations is written in two very different vocabularies, and shows nothing of the usual patters that are normal for herbal manuscripts.
(Strictly speaking, this would suggest that the text does not refer to the illustrations, which is a slightly different argument).
FOR: (the Montemurro argument, which is confirmed also by my own analysis): the text shows variations which are typical for different subject matter, and the variations coincide with the types of illustrations.
(The main problem with this analysis is that Montemurro et al do not mention at all the two types of text on the Herbal pages, which are more different than that between sections with different illustrations.)
AGAINST?: There are relatively few repeating phrases.
(For me, this argument is still neutral. Interestingly, this is very well suited for all types of numerical analyses, of which only very few have been made).
(13-04-2017, 08:35 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The problem, in my opinion, is that it's impossible to prove that the text does not carry meaning. Even if someone writes a watertight program that mimics how a 15th century monk could have generated the text without losing too much time to the generating process itself (as is still a problem in this proposed solution), then still it is only shown that it could be meaningless.
Unless I'm mistaken, it could be proven that is has meaning, but it can never be proven that it doesn't.
This is an misunderstanding. You
can show it is textual nonsense.
If most of the text is copied and this process is iterative,
then I am sure you can agree the text is a copy process and the meaning of such text
1. is art
2. bears no grammatical meaning