(14-04-2025, 08:10 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-04-2025, 06:50 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Have you considered the possibility that Koen might be wrong?? Of course there are loads of people who claim to have solved it but I really believe my decode works, what would you do, just go quietly into the night or bash it out to see if I'm right, I took Koens critique on board I haven't ignored it but in my opinion his critiques are answered and I'm going to show that. He started out as friendly enough but I wouldn't say that's the way it is now and why?? because I don't want to give up and listen to him when I really don't think he's correct and I don't think he gave it a very good look, he only saw half of it, the more I'm decoding the more sense it's making, not less....what do you suggest I do??
One can't have the cake and eat it too. It's up to you whether to withhold or publish your method, but the less information you share the less persuaded people get. There are many ways to indirectly prove your knowledge of the contents of the manuscript without revealing the text. It would be helpful to your case if you could explain, for example, the meaning of: the big red glyphs on the first page, the sequences of four figures on f85r2 and f86v4, the composition of the Rosettes folio, the four corners of f86v3, the meaning of charts on f67v2, f68v1, f68v2, f68v3, f69r, f69v, f70r1, f70r2. I think a good specific insight into 3-4 of these would add a lot of weight to your deciphering without giving away anything about your method.
I'm going to publish it, you just have to wait a few days :-) then you can all pick it apart to your hearts content
(14-04-2025, 09:11 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.No one is being mean to you. Koen went out of his way to look at your solution (none of us has ever signed an NDA before!) and give you thoughtful feedback. In return, you suggested he didn't want your solution to be correct and didn't fully look at it. Moreover, you also said you "always push on regardless", which kind of makes it pointless to have asked him to look at it.
(14-04-2025, 06:50 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Of course there are loads of people who claim to have solved it but I really believe my decode works
What we are trying to tell you here is that those loads of people - actually hundreds of people - felt and feel the same. They didn't pop up and say "I think I might have cracked it but I'm not sure - what do you guys think?"
No, they were all absolutely and passionately certain that their solution is the correct one. Just like you. And it was explained to them why their solution was wrong, to no avail: they still believe absolutely and passionately that their solution is correct. Just like you.
Take a look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.who is still an active member of the forum and still passionately believes she has solved the manuscript ("My solution is the truth"). You can see us asking her the exact same question joben asked you: why are you so certain you are different from all the others?
In a month's time, someone else will have turned up with a completely different solution from you. And we will be saying the same thing to them and pointing them to your solution and the others, and they will be saying "I'm not like Kris and all those others, I really have solved it."
And the cycle will continue, month after month, solver after solver. So, tell us: why are you so 100% certain you are different, given how each of them was 100% certain they were different from the others?
Quote:what would you do, just go quietly into the night or bash it out to see if I'm right...what do you suggest I do??
OK - I'll take you up on that. The problem is that you are already convinced you are right. Confirmation bias means it's probably too late now. To this date, I don't believe we have ever convinced a Voynich solver that they are wrong.
But if it's not too late, then you could read through some of the other solution discussions. From those, you can see:- how those solvers react to criticism; how confirmation bias is causing them to ignore the criticism or denigrate it (you are far from the first to suggest that people here don't want your solution to be correct)
- the reasons why solutions fail. All the solutions in our list are for different systems but all share common problems. You can then consider whether/how those flaws are present in your solution.
- how really the odds are massively against any solution being correct, because there is is this trap in the Voynich that causes people to believe they have solved it when they haven't.
And then try to look at your solution objectively and reassess it and Koen's comments with all the above in mind. It would still be interesting to see a wrong solution from someone who can discuss its strengths and failings objectively, especially if it can provide even one explanation for Voynichese's unlanguage-like behaviour. It's not interesting to keep getting wrong solutions when the solver is convinced they are right and hand-waves away all criticism because they can't entertain even a slightest flicker of doubt about whether they really are the chosen one who has pulled the sword from the stone, etc, etc.
If/when you publish your solution, I would recommend you do it under a pseudonym. Even though he is unlikely to recognize it, Gerald Cheshire hasn't done his career and reputation any favours with his media frenzy for his wrong solution.
(And I'm still curious as to whether you read any previous work before starting your decoding).
I'm looking at my solution objectively every time I work on it which is all the time for the last few days, you'll all just have to wait and see whether Koen was right or I am :-) I'm confident
(14-04-2025, 09:11 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....how really the odds are massively against any solution being correct, because there is is this trap in the Voynich that causes people to believe they have solved it when they haven't.
Well said tavie, but I'd have to disagree with that part of your response. I mean did you have a particular Voynich-specific "trap" in mind? I think the phenomenon you are referring to is in the type of person who gets convinced that their solution is correct and not in the puzzle itself . That seems to be the case with any celebrated unsolved cipher or mystery. (It was certainly so with the Zodiac Z340; One well known and orherwise competent researcher was absolutely convinced he had solved it when it was embrassingly obvious he had not.) Most sensible people realize that when such a problem is correctly solved, the correctness of the solution is blatantly obvious and compelling -- problems where the solver has to actually convince the world that they are correct are pretty rare. But there are always some people who cannot avoid the self-delusion that their solution is somehow special despite it being obvious to everyone else that it's not.
Andrew: I do believe that certain aspects of the MS make this kind of behavior more likely. Perhaps most important that the glyphs are easy to tell apart and they look like a regular European script. Words look like words. You don't have to think too much before you can get your theory going. Compare that to Linear A or the Rohonc Codex for contrast.
Making a Voynich theory that feels plausible to the solver is just...easy. That's the trap.
(14-04-2025, 09:44 PM)asteckley Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I mean did you have a particular Voynich-specific "trap" in mind?
There is one trap that I think is objectively there - the individual glyphs look ambiguous enough, that you can interpret the script as a mangled plaintext in a language you are somewhat familiar with. E.g., I've seen EVA-d interpreted as Latin d, s, g, p, Cyrillic v, etc. I think I've seen theories where people read the manuscript as plaintext Dutch, English, Ukrainian. I don't think this would happen if the script was either just plain unambiguous Latin or made of some clearly non letter-like forms.
(14-04-2025, 09:37 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm going to publish it, you just have to wait a few days :-) then you can all pick it apart to your hearts content
This is a good idea, and it's actually very helpful to have a deadline. As far as I've seen, a lot of researchers/solvers tend to get lost in various intricacies of their solutions and keep pushing back the release date indefinitely. I humbly recommend, if you still feel like it's not yet ready in a couple of weeks, to reconsider the validity of the whole approach.
(14-04-2025, 10:15 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-04-2025, 09:37 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm going to publish it, you just have to wait a few days :-) then you can all pick it apart to your hearts content
This is a good idea, and it's actually very helpful to have a deadline. As far as I've seen, a lot of researchers/solvers tend to get lost in various intricacies of their solutions and keep pushing back the release date indefinitely. I humbly recommend, if you still feel like it's not yet ready in a couple of weeks, to reconsider the validity of the whole approach.
It'll be ready, it's actually really cool to see it all coming out correctly and making sense, the repetition will become clear to you all then too :-) It's super cool, got google docs, spreadsheets and more windows open then I've had hot dinners but I'm in my element and the more I find the more it confirms not denies my theory :-)
So without giving any of the code away I can tell you, I thought it was lunar herbalism but it's not it's celestial herbalism and each plant page is saying how the plants give medicine under certain planetary conditions. I also think this is why nobody could link the plants to anything, look at them all again, they're mostly up absorbing the heavenly energy or they're down, pushed down by it, that's why the leaves look so weird and with that in mind I found one today and matched it to a folio, now I have to go and research more about celestial herbalism
(14-04-2025, 10:24 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So without giving any of the code away I can tell you, I thought it was lunar herbalism but it's not it's celestial herbalism and each plant page is saying how the plants give medicine under certain planetary conditions.
Generally speaking, without giving any of the code away, what is the last paragraph of the manuscript about? The block of text with no stars on the margin at the bottom of f116r. Is there anything there about the authorship or the origins of the manuscript?
(14-04-2025, 10:36 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (14-04-2025, 10:24 PM)Kris1212 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So without giving any of the code away I can tell you, I thought it was lunar herbalism but it's not it's celestial herbalism and each plant page is saying how the plants give medicine under certain planetary conditions.
Generally speaking, without giving any of the code away, what is the last paragraph of the manuscript about? The block of text with no stars on the margin at the bottom of f116r. Is there anything there about the authorship or the origins of the manuscript?
not that I can see, these are his notes
