The Voynich Ninja

Full Version: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
(27-05-2019, 08:50 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-05-2019, 08:24 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Please note that I have already published two open access articles. They are available on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Hi Torsten, yes of course I'm aware of that. My comment was in no way personal, but just a general observation on the "open access" model.

I also prefer the open access model.

Peer reviews not only act as a filter. They also help to improve the quality of the publication. The suggestions of the reviewers do not only help to find flaws they also help to find missing explanations of ideas. Therefore, in the case of the two open access articles I asked several experts myself if they would review them. I must say that their comments where always helpful. The more critical a reviewer was about my theory, the more helpful I found his comments. Unfortunately there is no way to demonstrate that an open access article was in fact peer reviewed. Only for this reason this article was published in a peer reviewed journal.
Torsten, of course I had no intention to dictate to anybody how or where s/he should publish their articles, and if my comment appeared to be interpreted in that fashion, please accept my apologies.

My point is that technological advances shift the ways of social interaction (which of course is not a discovery of mine), and this applies to publication process as well, whether we welcome that or not.

Th' old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.


Enough of that, unless the topic appears interesting for further discussion, an Off-topic thread can be created.

One final note about peer-reviewing: we still have this: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-05-2019, 08:10 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sometimes the student does 100% of the work and the professor's name is really only there to help the student get a foot in the door.

Well, it is almost never the case that a student does 100% of the work. A piece of research is always enabled by the University / professor, and defined in the wider scope of on-going research. All the tuition that has been received goes into it and the work is followed up as it progresses, with reviews and further suggestions.

If a professor (or other type of tutor/manager) is co-author of a paper, it means he has reviewed it and he stands behind it. In conference papers, it is completely normal to look at the end of the list of authors to recognise who is the one standing behind it. It is of critical importance for Universities and other research institutes to have young bright people become involved, that they start contributing to progress and start publishing. In the beginning, these are "no-names" but if they are good they will become known.

Of course, in the world of Voynich publications, it is almost never like this. In the majority of cases (not all) the work is done completely outside the academic environment, by individuals. This doesn't automatically mean that it is wrong, but it clearly lacks a type of backing that would have been helpful. (In come cases to avoid embarrassing failures).
(28-05-2019, 07:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-05-2019, 08:10 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sometimes the student does 100% of the work and the professor's name is really only there to help the student get a foot in the door.
...

If a professor (or other type of tutor/manager) is co-author of a paper, it means he has reviewed it and he stands behind it.

I agree that it means he has reviewed it and stands behind it. No professor would put their stamp of approval (name) on a paper they didn't feel had merit. But that's not the same as doing the research, analyzing the findings, writing the paper.

I attended three universities and at one of them, a student could put together almost an entire field of study as independent study credits. The professor still had to review and evaluate/grade the work, but sometimes had no other involvement. This was usually in emerging fields in which there were no courses (imagine a subject like robotics, for example, in the days before there were any robotics or some esoteric field of physics before that field has been established as an actual field of study).

I've met a number of students (usually very independent and smart) who did their own research and wrote their own papers without professor involvement, but to get published, they needed another name on the paper with credentials.

I'm not saying this is what always  happens—many professors do research along with grad students, but there are students who do all the work but need an endorsement, and it's not always from someone who was involved in the actual work.


This is why I always try to maintain the order of the names on a paper when citing it. I don't want to take away priority from someone who might have done all the work (or even 80% of the work).
(27-05-2019, 08:29 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-05-2019, 06:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While my opinion of this work is along the same lines as Emma's, I do see that there are very interesting statistics that still lack an explanation.

More importantly, this topic is so much more worthy of discussion than the recent paper about proto-Romance.

What is your opinion based on?

I'm not sure I understand the question. My opinion is based on everything I know.

The reference back to Emma's comments does not work, because these were moved to another thread.
(29-05-2019, 09:02 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(27-05-2019, 08:29 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(26-05-2019, 06:13 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While my opinion of this work is along the same lines as Emma's, I do see that there are very interesting statistics that still lack an explanation.

More importantly, this topic is so much more worthy of discussion than the recent paper about proto-Romance.

What is your opinion based on?

I'm not sure I understand the question. My opinion is based on everything I know.

The reference back to Emma's comments does not work, because these were moved to another thread.

I'm sure that I do not understand your answer. Do you expect that we know everything you know?

Anyway, only some month ago you You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: "I think it is almost inevitable that whoever made the Voynich MS did something unusual, even original. So proposed explanations should not be rejected just because they include something unusual or original."  

You also You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:  "I rather expect that the 'expanding' took place in that process, and we should be 'compressing'. This would mean that:
– not all word spaces are real spaces
– or perhaps there is no meaning to be recovered"

Moreover, you started a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to "play around with methods to generate text that looks like the Voynich MS text."

One result of this tests was that the generated texts must be longer than the source texts:
(18-03-2019, 04:51 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Basically it is a verbose substitution, with spaces re-arranged. This allows to decrease the entropy and generate the word patterns. The resulting text is longer than the Italian source by a factor between 1.5 and 2 ...

Moreover you argued that a method to generate a text must explain additional features:
(17-03-2019, 04:50 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is also no explanation for the variation between Currier languages, and with this type of method, the biological text is almost inevitably nonsensical.

From what you wrote it is at least surprising that you now say that your opinion is along the same lines as Emma's. Especially since you didn't give any explanations.
Emma wasn't convinced about the self-citation method and my opinion is along the same lines.

More specifically, I see it lacking in two main points.

1) It only explains how words are derived from previous words, but not how new words are introduced.
It's only half the story.

2) The description of how words can be changed from previous words allows a lot of freedom. There should be very strong constraints on this to maintain from the beginning to the end the word structure in the MS.
 
That's my opinion.
(30-05-2019, 11:42 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Emma wasn't convinced about the self-citation method and my opinion is along the same lines.

Do you mean that the reason doesn't matter?

(30-05-2019, 11:42 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.1) It only explains how words are derived from previous words, but not how new words are introduced. It's only half the story.

This is explained on page 7. See also the details for <chey> and <chedy> on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. For instance <chedy> is introduced on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. 

You can probably describe for each page something only typical for this particular page. The existence of exceptions is a rule for the VMS. For instance the word <daiiny> occurs only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. On first sight it seems unclear if it is a misspelled variant of the more common word <daiin> or a new word.  Another example is the use of the  <m>-glyph on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. If you search for new words on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. you will find for instance the words <sheoldam>, <tsheoarom> and <pcheoldom>. This three words are similar to each other and they occur only once within the VMS. Moreover <tsheoarom> and <pcheoldom> are used as paragraph initial words. There are only seven paragraph initial words using a final <m>-glyph in the whole VMS. This is the way new words occur within the VMS.

(30-05-2019, 11:42 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.2) The description of how words can be changed from previous words allows a lot of freedom. There should be very strong constraints on this to maintain from the beginning to the end the word structure in the MS.

This is explained on page 10. a) "The rules to modify a source word normally don’t affect the order of the glyphs." b) "... the scribe also used esthetically motivated design rules for glyph selection, in order to harmonize the overall appearance of the text. ..." 

c) It is always possible to ask why he didn't wrote something else? If a new word is not copied the word occurs only once and some would say it is an error. If the new word is copied we would accept its structure as valid for the VMS and some wold say it is repeated so often it must mean something.
There is nothing too concrete on how new words are introduced. Just *that* this happens.

More importantly: if the text in the MS was *really* generated using an auto-copying process, it should be possible to pinpoint examples of this throughout the text. Lots and lots of concrete examples. There would be no need to generate a tool to simulate this behaviour.

It would also be possible to produce some key statistics like:
which percentage of words is a modification with edit distance 1 of a recent word, for different definitions of 'recent'.

This is a key value. If this percentage is high, say 80%, then the theory is clearly describing a relevant fraction of the text. If it is low, say 20%, then the theory is *not* describing a relevant fraction of the text. In fact, the vast majority of the text would remain unexplained by the theory.
(30-05-2019, 08:29 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is nothing too concrete on how new words are introduced. Just *that* this happens.

A new word is generated like any other word. It is generated by copying and varying words already written.

For instance <chedy> is introduced on page f32r. The word before <chedy> is <tchey>. To introduce <chedy> it was only necessary to repeat <chey> and to ad a <d> before <y>. 
Just click on the link to page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

(30-05-2019, 08:29 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.More importantly: if the text in the MS was *really* generated using an auto-copying process, it should be possible to pinpoint examples of this throughout the text. Lots and lots of concrete examples. 

This is possible for every page. See section You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "Graphs for individual pages" on "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". You can convince yourself that always tokens with high structural similarity appear preferably in close vicinity of each other. Just click on the links to voynichese.com in section You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

(30-05-2019, 08:29 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There would be no need to generate a tool to simulate this behaviour.

The tool is used to demonstrate that by using this method it is possible to reproduce the statistical key properties of the Voynich manuscript.

(30-05-2019, 08:29 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It would also be possible to produce some key statistics like:
which percentage of words is a modification with edit distance 1 of a recent word, for different definitions of 'recent'. 

This is explained on page 5: "Figure 2 shows the resulting network, connecting 6,796 out of 8,026 words (=84.67%)."

(30-05-2019, 08:29 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is a key value. If this percentage is high, say 80%, then the theory is clearly describing a relevant fraction of the text. If it is low, say 20%, then the theory is *not* describing a relevant fraction of the text. In fact, the vast majority of the text would remain unexplained by the theory.

There is only one giant network connecting all frequently used word types. Only You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (=2.85 %) differ in more then two glyphs to all other word types. They occur only once. Moreover, even for this 229 word types it is usually possible to split them into two or more words also occurring in the VMS. Two words of this kind are <okeokeokeody> and <okeeolkcheey>. It is for instance possible to split this two words into <okeo>+<keo>+<keody> and <okeeol>+<kcheey>. There is simply no word that is not similar to at least one other words. The key value your are asking for is therefore at least 97.15 %.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7