The Voynich Ninja

Quote:At word-level, there is no difference between natural language and natural language enciphered using a monoalphabetic simple substitution cipher.

Between those two, there would be no difference even on character level.

(28-06-2019, 02:10 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All the stuff about the tropes of bungling experts vs. bright newcomers, or the delving into people's (overt or hidden) motivation is only distracting, and while it can be annoying, it is best ignored as much as possible.

The point is about "ignoring facts that don't suit you".

Well, one can try to make many different piints of course. I am always careful in using the word 'facts', and find that in many cases it is used incorrectly.

(29-06-2019, 04:29 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, one can try to make many different piints of course. I am always careful in using the word 'facts', and find that in many cases it is used incorrectly.

The problem is not the usage of the word 'facts'. The problem is that the proponents of the natural language hypotheses do not consider former efforts to analyze the text.

There is for instance a broad consensus about the observations as described by Currier in 1976. No one ever argued that some of his observations are erroneous. On the contrary, observations like the described differences between Currier A and Currier B were confirmed multiple times. See for instance your own webpage (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the paper of Reddy & Knight (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the blog of Julian Bunn (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the blog of Nick Pelling (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), or my paper from 2015 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Moreover, on you website you even describe "differences between the two stars dialect" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

But if it comes to the natural language hypothesis no one considers the well known differences between Currier A and B. Montemurro et al. 2013, Amancio et al. 2013, Arruda et al. 2018, and Zelinka et al. 2019 are not aware of Curriers work or about his observations. Smith et al. 2019 are aware about differences between Currier A and B. They even describe some differences on their own (see Smith et al., p. 15). But when it comes to the language hypotheses they do not discuss them (see Smith et al., p. 18f).

There is no doubt that it is necessary to consider all the observations known about the VMS-text. You argue yourself that the differences between Currier A and B "does not demonstrate that the text is meaningful, or that the text variations are caused by different subject matter (as suggested in by Montemurro and Zanette). If that were the case, the difference between herbal A and herbal B should not exist. The cause of the (statistical) language variation is still unexplained" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

I think it is fundamentally wrong to try to divide people into two (or more) camps, for example whether they are proponents or not of the natural language hypothesis.

I am reminded of the latest blog post of Rich Santacoloma, where he basically writes that everyone is working from a certain theory, and sees the evidence in light of this theory.

I know several people who are not working on the basis of any theory or hypothesis, but are still in the stage of 'collecting information'. This is certainly the case for myself. I am not aware of any evidence that tilts the balance of meaningful vs. meaningless into either direction.

If I am critical of certain approaches, it is often because I think that the conclusion is not sufficiently justified by the evidence (data) presented. This is both in case of your paper, and in the case of the Montemurro paper. Just as examples.
So in the first case I am not arguing that the text cannot be meaningless. It is just that this is not shown by the evidence presented. Similarly, but in the opposite sense, for the Montemurro paper.

What I do see evidence for in the MS text is 'intention'. This suggests that the text was not the result of chance (someone throwing dice, for example, or indeed moving cardan grilles across a table).

Another interesting aspect is that not only are arguments behind a paper or a proposed solution occasionally flawed, the same can be true for the arguments presented *against*  these theories. And of course it goes without saying that if an argument against a theory is flawed, this is not a point in support of this theory.

I don't know if the text is meaningful or not. Just as a small anecdote, in the late 90's there was a 'pizza bet' in the old Voynich mailing list. I don't remember the precise rules. Basically, everyone contributing had to present his favourite explanation for the MS text, and if some day the truth was known, I believe that everyone had to buy a pizza for the person who had it right. Mine was 'mostly meaningless, but with meaning in small parts'.

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think it is fundamentally wrong to try to divide people into two (or more) camps, for example whether they are proponents or not of the natural language hypothesis.

I am reminded of the latest blog post of Rich Santacoloma, where he basically writes that everyone is working from a certain theory, and sees the evidence in light of this theory.

I know several people who are not working on the basis of any theory or hypothesis, but are still in the stage of 'collecting information'. This is certainly the case for myself. I am not aware of any evidence that tilts the balance of meaningful vs. meaningless into either direction.

My point was that it is necessary to consider all important observations. For such a statement it doesn't matter if the researcher is working from a certain theory or hypothesis or not.

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I am critical of certain approaches, it is often because I think that the conclusion is not sufficiently justified by the evidence (data) presented. This is both in case of your paper, and in the case of the Montemurro paper. Just as examples.

There is already a thread about my paper (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). I think this would be the right thread to post an opinion or an argumentation about it.

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So in the first case I am not arguing that the text cannot be meaningless. It is just that this is not shown by the evidence presented. Similarly, but in the opposite sense, for the Montemurro paper.

You are arguing against something nobody said. The point was that you are right to point out that the Montemurro paper didn't address the difference between herbal A and herbal B. For such a statement it simply doesn't matter if the VMS-text was used to transport meaning or not.

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What I do see evidence for in the MS text is 'intention'. This suggests that the text was not the result of chance (someone throwing dice, for example, or indeed moving cardan grilles across a table).

Indeed, the VMS-text is full of patterns. There is no doubt that they are not the result of chance (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Another interesting aspect is that not only are arguments behind a paper or a proposed solution occasionally flawed, the same can be true for the arguments presented *against*  these theories. And of course it goes without saying that if an argument against a theory is flawed, this is not a point in support of this theory.

Indeed, it is important to present an argumentation for it or against it. It is fruitless to discuss only some opinions.

(01-07-2019, 01:24 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't know if the text is meaningful or not. Just as a small anecdote, in the late 90's there was a 'pizza bet' in the old Voynich mailing list. I don't remember the precise rules. Basically, everyone contributing had to present his favourite explanation for the MS text, and if some day the truth was known, I believe that everyone had to buy a pizza for the person who had it right. Mine was 'mostly meaningless, but with meaning in small parts'.

It seems that you believe that meaning is a property of a text. But meaning is something the writer of a text had in his mind (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Since language depends on its context it is always possible that a reader interprets a text differently. The only way to know if he understand the intentions of the writer correctly is to ask the writer about her/his intention. But even then a misunderstanding is possible. In the same way it is impossible to know if the writer had the intention to hide some meaning within the VMS-text or not: "it is impossible to devise an exact mathematical proof that an arbitrary set of strings is truly meaningless, or not. This would involve a general method to compute upper boundaries to the Kolmogorov complexity" (Timm & Schinner 2019, p. 16).

(01-07-2019, 04:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems that you believe that meaning is a property of a text. But meaning is something the writer of a text had in his mind ...

No, I don't, as should be clear e.g. from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

However, this is a simplification we need to make, since we only have the text, and we cannot talk to the writer.

Coming back to the original topic of the paper, it will require a closer read. I may still change my opinion about it.
However I find it a tough read for several reasons.

It should be possible to have a piece of sample text from Torsten's text generation "app" analysed by the same method to see what happens.

(02-07-2019, 02:42 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(01-07-2019, 04:12 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems that you believe that meaning is a property of a text. But meaning is something the writer of a text had in his mind ...

No, I don't, as should be clear e.g. from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

However, this is a simplification we need to make, since we only have the text, and we cannot talk to the writer.

Indeed, we cannot talk to the writer. All we have is the VMS-script and the VMS-text. We have to analyze the key-features of this text in order to try to understand how the script and the text works. You say it yourself "What we do know for certain, however, is that some time in the past, somebody or some group of people sat down and wrote the Voynich MS using some method. ... This text generation method is what we should be looking for" (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Hello friends ,
I am really shocked by how quickly you are informed about this paper. It is only 2-3 weeks we got the info that it is accepted. Well, I am the author . Concerning to paper, yes there is (now correction is sent to journal) error in explanation, we have used FSG coding and Courier font was used only for visualization on a few figures. Sorry for that - mea culpa. Only mine. All experiments were done on FSG file. Concerning to fractals, it is there as the brief notice of the paper we are now writing in a full version. When we began to write this paper, we mentioned it as an overview however, there was no so much space for all, so we focused mainly on "complex" network basic evaluation. There is a lot of other possibilities on how to built up network from the text, but it is volume for a book  not for a paper. So we hope that paper will at least inspire people to follow this direction. So take it as an inspiration on other possibilities how to visualize and analyze...
I will inform your/our community via this when new papers-results  will be ready. We are going to employ AI and other methods in different ways there - well hope it will be beneficial.
Also, sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker  .
Best.