The Voynich Ninja

(13-04-2020, 03:57 PM)elieD Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I talk about this hypothesis in my paper: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Basically, the VMS is an outlier, but other documents in a lot of other languages are also outliers for good reasons. It's interesting to know why these documents are outliers: mainly they are (sometimes romanized) retranscriptions of oral languages

I'm working right now, so I could only glance through it, but this base of information on languages is interesting.

(13-04-2020, 04:31 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here's the Wiki on the preprint server:



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Well if I was paid in an official research institute and be able to publish in established places, I most probably wouldn't be working on the VMS. But for my credibility, I also published in ACL: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
ViXra sure doesn't contain perfect papers, but I wouldn't adivse anyone to think that papers published in more established places are of a perfect quality either (anyone working on the VMS know that).
The advantage is that anyone can judge, it's free, the code I used is even available online so results are reproducible. It's either that, or no one would know someone worked on it. Most importantly, I put it there as a proof of anteriority, to share it with anyone and to receive feedbacks on it, as this is how I think science works.

@elieD — and all of you researchers who work partially or wholly outside of mainstream academe — I say that publishing work in non-traditional media is nothing to be ashamed of per se.  A good idea, well presented and amply supported, will eventually get the attention it deserves, by its remarkable resistance to damning criticism, and its practical utility for people who apply it. Not nearly all people with good original ideas are fortunate enough to have a ready audience among experts and academics, at least until their idea gains some popular traction.  And conversely, not nearly all people fortunate enough to have a ready audience among experts and academics have good original ideas.

I'm an idealist beyond redemption, and the Promethian increase in the accessibility of scholarship by websites like Stack Exchange and arXiv makes me happy. Kind of like how making video was made popularly accessible by YouTube and the falling price of cameras and information storage. On the one hand, a lot of this non-mainstream scholarship is low quality, and is destined to sit on the Internet not getting clicks.  But there are diamonds in the rough.  And any technology that makes a good idea more likely to be heard is all in all a good thing.

I'll be having a look at your paper this evening elie, and I'll let you know what I think.

Elie, you seem to have taken that very personally (and ignored the comment I made about the content of your paper), but I did not post it to disparage you. You assumed that. It's better to look at the big picture and not interpret everything on the forum as a personal jab.

I posted the link because Nick Pelling recently blogged about preprint servers and I don't think the one you used was on the list, so I provided a link so that people on the forum would be aware that there are more than what he mentioned and that it was the one you chose.


I do not judge the content of a paper by where it is posted. I judge it by what is written.

Renegadehealer writes:  "The text of the Voynich Manuscript is incompatible with natural human language."  I have seen some variation on this conclusion in a lot of recent papers and commentary....etc..

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Google defines "language" as:

1. the method of human communication, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way.
2. a system of communication

What type of language are you looking 4r?

Proving that the VMS represents a language is the wrong question/starting point.
One reason for example is simply because all possible languages have been checked with it.

I think the VMS is not a natural spoken language. That is, not a phonetically language or a language that can be pronounced in any way. 

The text in the VMS seems to be constructed around a system.  
If we could translate that system into human communication, we can say that it is a language. However, writing the rules of that system and publication of it, would be currently enough to explain the VMS in a scientific way. From that starting point the transition towards a language could perhaps be made. 
Asking to show that the VMS is a language, would be the same as asking to show why the VMS holds a recipe for soap.

This manuscript has become the "search for the philosophers stone" of the current era. Therefore the problem is, by publication of that system on the VMS you also throw away any academic credibility that you might have build. A good work around that problem could be in making the brand of the VMS a bit better, taking action to promote it in a positive way and presenting the problem in a more professional way.

(13-04-2020, 08:41 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The text in the VMS seems to be constructed around a system.  
If we could translate that system into human communication, we can say that it is a language.

I would say that perhaps the text is not constructed around a system, but by a system ( unknown so far ). The idea of an early planned language ( Friedman ) I consider to be daring, but possible. Hildegard von Bingen has shown it to a certain extent with her Lingua Ignota (including syllable extensions, adding sibilants and the invention of whole words).

If one criterion for language is intentional communication, then "demarcations" like Lingua Ignota do not fulfil this criterion. This would also apply to the VMS. So whether such creations are to be called language in the strict sense of the word can be disputed.

edit: The fact that in Lingua Ignota letters are replaced by an imaginary alphabet is not really relevant. The method is so simple that it should be seen more as a "cover-up" than a serious attempt at encryption.

(14-04-2020, 11:37 AM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-04-2020, 08:41 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The text in the VMS seems to be constructed around a system.  
If we could translate that system into human communication, we can say that it is a language.

I would say that perhaps the text is not constructed around a system, but by a system ( unknown so far ). The idea of an early planned language ( Friedman ) I consider to be daring, but possible. Hildegard von Bingen has shown it to a certain extent with her Lingua Ignota (including syllable extensions, adding sibilants and the invention of whole words).

If one criterion for language is intentional communication, then "demarcations" like Lingua Ignota do not fulfil this criterion. This would also apply to the VMS. So whether such creations are to be called language in the strict sense of the word can be disputed.

edit: The fact that in Lingua Ignota letters are replaced by an imaginary alphabet is not really relevant. The method is so simple that it should be seen more as a "cover-up" than a serious attempt at encryption.

Yes, but now you are going to use English interpretations of grammar and words; the general contents of what I wrote is hopefully expressed correctly;

it is not about what is and what isn't a language, it is about the difference between proving when something IS a human language and when it IS NOT which is difficult.
As you mention one, there are many different ways of communication, some are considered, and some not. But finally this is a matter of agreement: when is Pluto a star and when not?

That can be avoided al together by finding the system applied.

(13-03-2020, 03:07 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-03-2020, 09:14 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the original topic of this thread, I can only pose this rhetorical question: is the Voynich text compatible with a medieval cipher?

This is a good (rhetorical) question. As far as I know, before Alberti there were only rudimentary approaches ( simple substitution ) and even an Alberti-like code would probably have been decoded already. So one can only assume that, if there is an encryption, it is based on a completely unknown,  unique system. This would not surprise me. So the question is what non-anachronistic method(s) would be possible.

I beg to slightly differ. We have two, and probably more, wundervolle (sorry for code-switching) threads on this board:

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I think that my argumentation was not understood, back then. I recounted from the books written by Al-Kindi (9th CC) & Al-Khalil (8th CC) about cryptanalysis - I don't think we should rely on the date of the Alberti publication for knowledge about this: super ciphers. My point then was, that staging multiple weak ciphers results in a super cipher, which is much, much more time consuming to solve. Modern cryptography does very much the same, to make it computationally very expensive to solve.

Let's suppose:

1) For the clear text we use code switching, changing languages insides sentences by a pattern defined by us. Or we write backwards, as it pleases us.

2) We encode bigraphs (graphemes that are represented by two or more (e.g. tri-) graphs like german ch or sch) by a pattern. Here we can use m:m relations, because the number of said graphemes is small.

3) We apply a substitution cipher

4) We apply a transposition cipher

5) We add nulls as fillers and use arbitrary spaces

6) - or where it may come in handy, we invent a writing system

This will be very hard to break, and the knowledge of all of it could very well have been available during the given timeframe.

What we very well can expect, and here I make a prediction, are errors in the encipherment. This is true even for the Copiale Cipher.. but this will not hinder us to understand the message, if:

We keep note of the patterns and stages.

Back then, I did an exemplary multi-stage enciphering using You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The enciphered message is this: thAt6ShOUld-bW5fUNkOmmA*5tOoaUSRufMzei>?9 . Who can solve this quickly, is almost certainly a wizard.

Because, my problem is the following, and this is true, because I did it on the fly: I forgot to take note about the stages I used, and the order of them. As far as I can remember I did not use nulls. So I cannot simply reverse this, without correctly guessing the last stage.

(14-04-2020, 05:43 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As you mention one, there are many different ways of communication, some are considered, and some not. But finally this is a matter of agreement: when is Pluto a star and when not?

To take the example of the invented words in the Lingua Ignota, here a conscious departure from well-known languages such as Latin or German was made. Known languages are based on the agreement of the meaning of words.  Invented words offer no value because known words already exist in the other known languages and no conceptual expansion takes place. At least not in the Lingua Ignota where only known words are "translated". If this "artificial language" is supposed to make sense, it is only that the circle of recipients of a text should not be expanded but drastically reduced. The changed grammar does the rest here. The question is no longer whether Pluto is a star or not, but what Pluto is in its "translation". So the planned language is anti-communicative and if the VMS is based on such a language, then it is obviously about demarcation and not about the will to communicate. This may be a banal statement in itself, but it does raise the crucial question: if a manuscript, like the VMS, is unique but is not communicated, is there really a language behind it? Language serves the purpose of communication, but where this does not take place, a fundamental requirement for it is not fulfilled.  If an intention of "non-communication" is assumed (no marginal notes, no accompanying text or similar), this is especially true. What remains is a construct that pretends to be a language but is not in the true sense. This would be true regardless of whether the authors assumed that the text contains meaningful information or not.

(14-04-2020, 07:59 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-04-2020, 05:43 PM)Davidsch Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As you mention one, there are many different ways of communication, some are considered, and some not. But finally this is a matter of agreement: when is Pluto a star and when not?

To take the example of the invented words in the Lingua Ignota, here a conscious departure from well-known languages such as Latin or German was made. Known languages are based on the agreement of the meaning of words.  Invented words offer no value because known words already exist in the other known languages and no conceptual expansion takes place. At least not in the Lingua Ignota where only known words are "translated". If this "artificial language" is supposed to make sense, it is only that the circle of recipients of a text should not be expanded but drastically reduced. The changed grammar does the rest here. The question is no longer whether Pluto is a star or not, but what Pluto is in its "translation". So the planned language is anti-communicative and if the VMS is based on such a language, then it is obviously about demarcation and not about the will to communicate. This may be a banal statement in itself, but it does raise the crucial question: if a manuscript, like the VMS, is unique but is not communicated, is there really a language behind it? Language serves the purpose of communication, but where this does not take place, a fundamental requirement for it is not fulfilled.  If an intention of "non-communication" is assumed (no marginal notes, no accompanying text or similar), this is especially true. What remains is a construct that pretends to be a language but is not in the true sense. This would be true regardless of whether the authors assumed that the text contains meaningful information or not.

I like your reasoning. (but I hate the reference to Lingua Ignota because it has a entirely different connotation, but that's beside the point)

Suppose I have no language. Suppose I want to define as follows: every word that starts with 3 = black. and every word starting with 2=hold water of some kind.  Now with this simple but confusing definition, we can create words, that only hold "value" for a small part.
For example: 3MOUSE. I want to use that word for a black stone which is undefined, (because I do not know what kind of stone it exactly is) Probably when I see another stone which is also black, but entirely different in size and composition, I simply also call it 3MOUSE. I could write 23 or I could write 32 for black water. The order does not matter to me. water black or black water is not different in my simple system, because I define my own system and make the rules.
Now, can you translate that system into OUR current language? I think you can't,  because I am using concepts, aka notions, and not per definition translatable or decode-able objects as we use them now.

>>..if a manuscript, like the VMS, is unique but is not communicated, is there really a language behind it?..
You will have to ask that question to the author of the VMS. Perhaps he spoke Latin, or perhaps he was a mute, we don't know.
What's the intention of the manuscript is also a question that has to be approached seperately.

In relation to the VMS, I call this "a system", because I did not yet decided, what it exactly is. However, it can not be translated into a language directly. The Voynich system is fairly simple, consistent and descriptive. Of course, for the layman, let's say the average president, or the average new reporter you can say 23=black water, and that will be acceptable, but for serious researchers this will not be sufficient. Perhaps when I finish my current research(es) I will again focus on the VMS and write everything down, but in the mean time, I would like it very much if there would grow support for the philosophical path on the language in the VMS, as sketched. Once you understand what I mean, I think it would be fairly easy to construct the system of the language but it's quite a task and you don't get paid. ;-)