(11-02-2021, 03:17 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Antonio, look up SciGen, or even better the Sokal Affair, for examples of the motive to write a lot but not really say anything. It’s a deceptive high-level rhetorical trick that’s highly useful to people who want to make their voices heard, or are expected to say something, but have nothing of value to say on the matter. It’s intellectually dishonest and deserves to be called out, and I don’t think it’s a type of trickery that most present company would deign to try. But it’s not as far-fetched as you’re implying.
(15-02-2021, 11:03 AM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (15-02-2021, 10:07 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (15-02-2021, 02:18 AM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VM is an outlier on almost every theory for it. But to so easily dismiss it as can't-be-fake simply based on the effort required strikes me as naive.
Right, but we are blending two different things here. It is easy to think of reasons why someone would put lots of effort into forging a document.
The "too much effort" argument applies to a scenario where the text is meaningless, but the intention of the makers is not to forge a likeness of an existing or imagined document.
This is more narrowly drawn than the comment I was responding to, but even so, what if the intention was to fake a likeness of an imagined document, written in a never-before-seen exotic script and language?
Several points:
- First of all, there is the assumption used, which I often see, that meaningless=hoax, and hoax=meaningless. That is, it is often mistakenly stated that if there is no meaning, it must be a hoax (forgery, fake, what have you); and if something is found or theorized to be a fake it must have no meaning. As Renegade and Mr. Carlson point out, using examples in previous posts, neither is the case. And I also see it in papers on the linguistics such as the ones discussed here. But whether or not the Voynich contains any meaning is unconnected to whether or not is is fake or real, or new or old or any other characteristic that I can think of.
- Mr. Carlson also points out that a great deal of effort has gone into hoaxes (fakes, forgeries, hoaxes, what have you), some are long, and many of these have had meaning. He is correct of course. The counter arguments become, then, "not at the time of the VMs" (when I would argue we don't know "the time" of the VMs), or "not this long", or "not in an invented script", "not with this much effort", or whatever characteristic sets those examples apart from the Voynich, as though if they are not exactly LIKE the Voynich in each and every respect, it cannot be a long, meaningful or not, forgery (hoax, fake, etc.). No, each other example is a proof of concept of one or more characteristics of the Voynich, as fake. And not even fake, there are many other reasons long, meaningless and meaningful documents alike have had a tremendous amount of effort, so:
- It is another bugaboo of mine to see the Voynich being compared to any one specific thing, then being dismissed on that comparison. A good example of this is, for instance, I believe it to be a fake. Therefore, it has been said, the Chittenden Manuscript was not made as a fake, but an "homage", and therefore it cannot be considered a parallel example, and therefore "nobody would have made the Voynich as a fake, even though it would have taken as long as the Chittenden". Yes, it is different, but various aspect of it mimic the Voynich exactly: Long, on parchment, much effort in creating, etc.: You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. The same happens with the Hitler diaries, or the Howard Hughes will... this one is in German, that one was in ball point pen. Or worse yet, "those were discovered as fakes, therefore, since the Voynich was not revealed as a fake, it is not, a fake". As though there are not long and short and old and new and revealed and not, fakes in the world, made as homages, art works, props, experiments, hoaxes and forgeries. No, it is true the Voynich is not any one specific thing, and cannot be compared to any. But as a fake, every single characteristic of the Voynich does exist in some one or more other cases.
- I repeat the string "fakes, forgeries, hoaxes, what have you", because I see that the semantics of the use of various definitions is used to accept or dismiss different concepts. That is, one person might say it cannot be a hoax, on the basis it must be a "forgery" instead. If the term "forgery" is used, another will say "it cannot be a forgery, because forgeries are of some existing thing", or "some existing style", or whatever. So I like to use the term "fake", which forgery and hoax, as it requires no defining motivation or mechanism (I do believe it has elements of "hoax" as motivation). But I admit I use the definitions interchangeably, leaving my arguments vulnerable to this criticism by strict definition. Which brings me to the above quote of Mr. Carlson,
"... what if the intention was to fake a likeness of an imagined document, written in a never-before-seen exotic script and language?"
Right there, in a nutshell, is what I think the Voynich most probably is. It is a shame you didn't find You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view., Stephen, because that is exactly what I believe the intention of the Voynich is, to mimic an ancient, but imagined and mysterious tome, or grimore, using an invented script and content. As for the reasons I believe a made up exotic language was use is two-fold: To reflect the statements in the Carteggio ("unknown script"); and to provide "insulation" (readable forgeries in identifiable scripts are vulnerable to errors, and thus, to being revealed as fakes). And that point is not off topic here, because of the above points, that meaning or not is irrelevant to fake or not; but also this:
- It has been noted that Glossolalia and other supposedly meaningless output has some linguistic structure, usually based on the experience of the speaker. There are many cases of this structure being found, such as in the case of Helene Smith and her "Martian". So even if structure if found in the Voynich, it can still be meaningless, and still be a fake or real (well "real" in the sense the writer believed their output to be real... so "real" as in "real intent").
So my point is that while the work in analyzing and deconstructing the possible language structure of the Voynich is both interesting, and is probably very valuable in possibly getting a toe-hold to decipher it (by identifying a possible plain text language), the presence of lack of any such structure is totally unrelated to the possibility that the Voynich is fake, and also whether it even has meaning or not. I mean, I think all are unconnected, and one doesn't imply any other: meaning/gibberish, fake/real, and structure/random. You can have, or not have, any of those elements together, in any text found. They are separate issues entirely, and while valuable and important and interesting, knowing any one of them does not lead to identifying any other. It can be gibberish, have structure, and be real. It can be gibberish, not have structure, and be real. It can have meaning, be fake... you get the idea.