The Voynich Ninja

(04-12-2025, 01:28 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But why should we assume that those signs were taken from the original source?   In my version of the COT, they would have been added by the Author, when he commissioned the scribing onto vellum, to specify the approximate correspondence between each "Chinese" 30-degree sector and the closest European Zodiac sign. 

Because, quite simply, I am entertaining the hypothesis that this is a copy of an important section of an important extra-European work and I would expect it to have been copied. It is one thing to say it is a poor copy into a European style, but the more assumptions one has to make divorcing the evidence the manuscript provides from the supposed source, the less one can say they are looking at evidence for a Chinese theory.

[attachment=12798][attachment=12799]

(03-12-2025, 05:36 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, just because the plants don't look like European plants,

What don't you understand about this plant?
They are all European plants and they all occur in the same region. Most of them even grow right outside my front door.
I have now given so many examples that even you must slowly realise that they are real.
What was said 40 years ago is bullshit.

(04-12-2025, 03:44 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.this is a copy of an important section of an important extra-European work and I would expect it to have been copied

Possibly, if in the original diagrams there were any figurative signs to be copied.  

If I understood correctly, the 24x15-degree divisions can be paired into 12x30-degree sections, and each of these has a traditional animal (Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, etc.).  But these sections are offset by ~15 days from the Western Zodiac signs: the Tiger section, first of that calendar, was part in Aquarius and part on Pisces.  And so on.

But it seems that the 24x15 scheme was used more often.  There are 24 Chinese names, each two Chinese characters long, that go with this scheme; but they refer to points on the Ecliptic, not to arcs thereof.  And the names are not very pictorial: 立春 = "Spring Begins" (~Feb.4), 雨水 = "Rain Water" (~Feb.19), 驚蟄 = "Insects Awaken", 春分 = "Spring Equinox", 清明 = "Bright and Clear", 穀雨 = "Corn Rain", ..., 小寒 = "Little cold", 大寒 = "Big Cold" (~Jan.20).  

So it is quite possible that the presumed 24 diagrams in the original "Chinese" source book did not have "sign pictures" to be copied.

All the best, --stolfi

(04-12-2025, 01:52 AM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are plenty of people - particularly influential voices - who are still open to alternatives, such as that the text is meaningless.

You are right, there are other serious theories being supported besides "complex encryption of an European language".  Including random gibberish, constructed language, codebook cipher, etc.

But these theories too were proposed only because the naive theory "simple substitution cipher of an European language" failed, and people were convinced that "if it is a meaningful text, the language must be European" because of the physical features and illustrations.  In particular, this has been the only reason why most serious Voynichologists rejected the "Chinese" theory offhand.

And my point is that this last conclusion is a logical error.

All the best, -stolfi

(04-12-2025, 01:19 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sure, that would have solved the problem.  But the fact that such a plain intro is missing does not imply that it was meant to be a secret.  

As long as the book remained in possession of the author, such an intro would be totally unnecessary. 

To me it looks totally necessary if it was a phonetic rendering of a foreign book. There absolutely could be plaintext notes useful for the author. To specify where and when the book was recorded, how the author came across the source material, what the source material looked like, how the writing system was designed and definitely some word correspondences for any special terms of the source language that the author learned during the recording session. All this information is an essential part of the author's discovery and it wasn't in the "Chinese" language so there was no reason to put it down in the phonetic script, instead of the plaintext European language of the author.

On the other hand, if it was the choice of the author to not include any plaintext notes in the final codex and use a custom system of writing, that effectively makes the final codex enciphered and the whole Chinese theory is just a complicated way of explaining why we can't decipher it yet.

(04-12-2025, 09:13 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To specify where and when the book was recorded, how the author came across the source material, what the source material looked like, how the writing system was designed

But the Author knew all those things by heart. 

Quote:and definitely some word correspondences for any special terms of the source language that the author learned during the recording session

If the author learned any of them during the recording section.  

• [In "Chinese":] "Sorry, what was that word you just said?"
  
• "Má huáng"?
  
• "Yes, what does it mean?"
  
• "Well, it means má huáng.  You know, the herb."
  
• "What does it look like?"
  
• "Uh, I have never seen it. I buy it as flakes from the apothecary."
  
• "How would you specify it for an European reader?"
  
• "I am not sure, but I have a hunch that 300 years from now some guy over there will name it Ephedra sinica."
  
• "Okay.  Let me note that down on page 1..."
  

Seriously, if the Author did create a glossary, it would probably have been a separate booklet, that he could consult while reading the VMS. 

Quote:not include any plaintext notes in the final codex and use a custom system of writing, that effectively makes the final codex enciphered

Well, yes, one can say that using a foreign language is a form of encryption.  

In fact, a natural language that one does not know is the strongest form of encryption there is.  Much harder to crack than Vigenère, Enigma, Purple Code, even codebook ciphers...  And yet very easy to write and read, for those who speak the language.

Quote:the whole Chinese theory is just a complicated way of explaining why we can't decipher it yet

It is much more than that.  The COT proposes a specific set of languages, a specific type of "encryption", and definite clues about the nature of the contents.  Possibly even the identity of some source texts.

But may I ask what is your preferred theory about the VMS?

All the best, --stolfi

(04-12-2025, 09:54 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-12-2025, 09:13 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To specify where and when the book was recorded, how the author came across the source material, what the source material looked like, how the writing system was designed

But the Author knew all those things by heart. 

Did he have eidetic memory? Even a simple visual description of the original book would be of help.

(04-12-2025, 09:54 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the author learned any of them during the recording section.  

• [In "Chinese":] "Sorry, what was that word you just said?"
  
• "Má huáng"?
  
• "Yes, what does it mean?"
  
• "Well, it means má huáng.  You know, the herb."
  
• "What does it look like?"
  
• "Uh, I have never seen it. I buy it as flakes from the apothecary."
  
• "How would you specify it for an European reader?"
  
• "I am not sure, but I have a hunch that 300 years from now some guy over there will name it Ephedra sinica."
  
• "Okay.  Let me note that down on page 1..."
  

Seriously, if the Author did create a glossary, it would probably have been a separate booklet, that he could consult while reading the VMS. 

I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make here. Of course any reasonable person would write this down on the margin as "ma huang - some herb, can be bought as flakes in apothecary", because this is already a lot of useful information. That this is some pretty common herb that probably has some medicinal use and it's possible to obtain a sample of it.

(04-12-2025, 09:54 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But may I ask what is your preferred theory about the VMS?

It's probably a ciphered codex created in Europe in the XV century with the underlying plaintext language being a language known in Europe at that time, most likely Latin or some form of Romance or Germanic languages. It was likely created for personal use individually or by a small group of people or as a proof of concept. It's possible that the contents are not related to the illustrations and it can be something like:

1) a demonstration of a new encryption scheme - similar to Trithemius' Staganographia.
2) some occult teachings potentially incompatible with Christianity and challenging its political dominance
3) just a book of real or made up secrets written by a bit crazy person
4) something else entirely - political manifesto, prisoner's diary, forbidden memoirs, treatise on some taboo topics, disguised to look as a somewhat innocent herbal.

I find the argument that a XV century cipher would have been certainly deciphered by now completely unfounded. People normally would bring up diplomatic ciphers for comparison, but there is a huge difference between a cipher used for communication between different parties - it should be standardized, easy to comprehend, accessible without a steep learning curve, and a cipher devised for personal use, which could employ principles and mechanics that only the author finds easy. It is quite easy to invent a cipher that would be nearly impossible to break, if you don't have to explain how it works to all of your correspondents. (Edit) Unfortunately, it's also possible to create a cipher that would appear decipherable only to its author, that would actually work as a mnemonic for the original text rather than a proper cipher. However, I think it's unlikely a cipher like this would be used for 240+ pages before the author discovered she or he could not longer read what was on page 5, so I bet on this being a proper readable cipher instead.

I think any need to involve the Chinese language just to explain why we can't decipher it is an overkill.

PS: I also hear a lot the argument that any such cipher would be anachronistic. We can't establish if it is anachronistic until we know what this is. Yes, if it turns out to be AES256, then surely it would be anachronistic. But until we know the actual mechanics of this cipher, there is no way to tell if this could have been used in the XV century or not.

(04-12-2025, 10:35 AM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Of course any reasonable person would write this down on the margin as "ma huang - some herb, can be bought as flakes in apothecary", because this is already a lot of useful information.

Again: IF the Author had collected such a glossary, it would most probably be a separate booklet.  Not part of the VMS that have today (which, at the time, seems to have been kept as 4-5 separate stacks or quires of loose bifolia).  The glossary would almost certainly be on paper, like the Author's notes and draft.  And then the size of its pages would probably be different from that of the VMS vellum folios, so that it could not be bound together with them.

Quote:That this is some pretty common herb that probably has some medicinal use

The point of that mock conversation was only to show how awkward and pointless it would be for the Author to get glosses for the unfamiliar terms. 

Ephedra sinica was only a random example.  It is in fact an important herb in Chinese medicine (source of ephedrine, from which many modern drugs are derived), but AFAIK it was unknown in Europe in the 1400s.   The Author would have known it was a medicinal herb just from the fact that it was listed in that book he transcribed; and presumably he understood the language well enough to get from that text as much information about it as the Dictator himself knew.

By the way, the structure of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be interpreted as sort of a table of contents, with short descriptions of the four main sections of the VMS...

Quote:I find the argument that a XV century cipher would have been certainly deciphered by now completely unfounded.[/quote

I did not say that.  I said that the naive theory that is an European language with a simple substitution cipher was debunked long ago; and that is why many people turned to, among other alternatives, an European language with a complex encryption scheme.   Improperly excluding non-European languages, only because of the physical and stylistic evidence.

[quote]I think any need to involve the Chinese language just to explain why we can't decipher it is an overkill

That is not at all why I believe in the COT.   I started to believe it only after I found that the lengths and structure of Voynichese words are very similar to those of "Chinese" (monosyllabic) languages.   And then I observed other features that fit that theory, like the Zipf distribution, ~10 bits or entropy per word, somewhat small lexicon, apparent absence of function words, etc.

All the best, --stolfi

(04-12-2025, 11:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again: IF the Author had collected such a glossary, it would most probably be a separate booklet.

Why? If the author wanted to save the knowledge, it would make sense to have it all together. If such notes existed, the value of the book without these notes would be greatly diminished even for the author. Keeping the commentary and the notes together with the main text looks like a very sensible thing to do.

(04-12-2025, 11:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The point of that mock conversation was only to show how awkward and pointless it would be for the Author to get glosses for the unfamiliar terms. 

And yet, what you have shown was exactly the opposite, that author immediately got very useful information about an unfamiliar term that made a lot of sense to keep and that could have been likely lost if the author didn't keep a note of it.

(04-12-2025, 11:21 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....many people turned to, among other alternatives, an European language with a complex encryption scheme.   Improperly excluding non-European languages, only because of the physical and stylistic evidence.

Because of total lack of any specific evidence pointing to any non-European culture, while abundance of evidence pointing towards Europe. You created a scenario that can explain the present state of the manuscript by introducing a specific interaction of several parties: the reader, the author, the scribe, possibly the retracers.

One of the point of my recent flurry of competing scenarios: the prisoner, the traveller, the hermit, the lunatic, is to show that it's not very hard to invent an origin story that would explain various aspects of the manuscript. There are endless possibilities. I don't think one can prove a theory by providing a compelling origin story. One can use a compelling origin story to help one build a proof based on specific evidence, quite possible. But in this aspect the Chinese hypothesis seems lacking so far. Statistical similarities between Voynichese and Chinese are very limited. What is more important, if Voynichese was a faithful phonetic representation of any natural language, it would have been solved at least partially by using label correspondences in the text. As far as I remember, the Chinese theory "solves" this by suggesting the author used an imperfect transcription for 240 pages without having any second thoughts, without even questioning why the label for, say, "root" ended up spelled differently on many occasions, without attaching any plaintext annotations in Latin. So far, all of this doesn't sound even remotely plausible to me.

(04-12-2025, 08:22 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(04-12-2025, 01:52 AM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are plenty of people - particularly influential voices - who are still open to alternatives, such as that the text is meaningless.

But these theories too were proposed only because the naive theory "simple substitution cipher of an European language" failed, and people were convinced that "if it is a meaningful text, the language must be European" because of the physical features and illustrations.  

Again - how do you know this?  This seems an assumption and a sweeping one.