(01-08-2025, 02:09 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (01-08-2025, 12:16 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I assume the paper is this one: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[...] First of all, the number of authors is not known for 59% of the sample set, so even as an extrapolation the argument is not very good.
Actually it would be a good argument, IF the VMS has been chosen at random among the category of "encrypted books".
Say there is a box with 118 tokens, some marked "M" (multiple authors) and some marked "S" (single author). You pick one token at random from the box, but it drops into a hole before you can read it. You must guess whether it was an "M" or an "S". So you spill the contents of the box on the floor, and count what you see among the remaining 117 tokens. 73 of the tokens fall face down; 44 fall face up, and they are all "S". That is very strong statistical evidence that the one you picked was an "S" too.
First of all I need to correct myself, I misread the statistics about the number of books, so 59% is definitely wrong, the actual percentage is lower.
If the fact about the number of authors was revealed via some uniform random process (or whatever this is properly called, I mean via a process that represents all outcomes equally well), then yes, your example is a good one. But what happened in reality is the assessment of the number of authors was easily done in the situations where the contents (e.g., a personal diary) lead to an immediate conclusion about the single author. So, it's more like there are tokens either marked S on one side or empty on both sides, after spilling the contents on the floor some of them show S, some of them show nothing.
(01-08-2025, 02:23 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the fact about the number of authors was revealed via some uniform random process (or whatever this is properly called, I mean via a process that represents all outcomes equally well), then yes, your example is a good one. But what happened in reality is the assessment of the number of authors was easily done in the situations where the contents (e.g., a personal diary) lead to an immediate conclusion about the single author. So, it's more like there are tokens either marked S on one side or empty on both sides, after spilling the contents on the floor some of them show S, some of them show nothing.
Good point too. Or, rather: if the tokens are of different shapes, you grope blindly into the box for square or triangular ones, and they turn out to be all "S"; but you don't check the round and hexagonal ones, and the one you dropped into the hole was round...
All the best, --jorge
(01-08-2025, 08:49 AM)Yavernoxia Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't see any stroke on either of the images posted. It's pareidolia,
I wonder if there is such a thing as metapareidolia? The human tendency to dismiss as pareidolia other people's claims to see something somewhere?
All the best, --jorge
For contrast to Post #3, an alternate potential scenario. The VMs author was born several years prior to 1400. Perhaps they would have been in their 20s in the 1420s. Clearly, however, they have the knowledge to make the "sleeve" connection, which is one of the most specific temporal examples.
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The author may have planned and written the illustrations and text in advance of the parchment work, we don't know that. The production of the parts of the original ms. may have occurred over years, perhaps more than a decade. All parchment produced between 1404 and 1438 is basically equivalent in the C-14 results. VMs production may have taken some time.
Handwriting can change over time or due to injury of the hand. Vocabulary will change with various topics and languages.
If the VMs was produced before 1450, it could have been hidden away by its creator for a decade or more, then taken out and retouched by the original creator, adding the month names, and even restringing the whole thing. Who knows?
Are there reasons why this scenario is not possible?
While the paper of Dunin and Schmeh is in no way proof of the nr. of authors of Voynich MS, and I also did not say that, I do disagree with several of the arguments against this that were presented above.
We should not assume that the Voynich MS is in cipher, nor that it has meaning. It may or it may not. What we can safely say is that it either has a hidden meaning or it pretends to have this. Let's just call it mysterious in order to have a single word.
Books of which we don't know the number of authors are a seperate category. They are neutral with respect to the question of the number of authors, not against either of the other possibilities.
When looking at mysterious books, it is reasonable to consider as many as possible other mysterious books. There just aren't that many.
That these are not chosen 'at random' is not a valid argument, unless I misunderstood this point.
We can always imagine all sorts of things that could have happened. That does not make our imagination a strong argument. This applies to the handwriting analysis, the radio-carbon dating and many other aspects. The people who did these analysis also could imagine these things and may be assumed to have considered them.
(In some cases this is also documented).
Unfortunately, due to local and personal events, I cannot be very active in the coming days, and will barely read the forum if at all.
Just to mention it.
SherryMM wanted to present his work to us!
So, let him speak.
PS:
Smart alecks will be dealt with later.
On request, but due to system overload, it may take longer.