(23-06-2025, 05:01 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.garbage

(23-06-2025, 05:01 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.garbage

(24-06-2025, 01:53 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.They used to be better. The quality dropped a lot since Hank Green [apparently] handed the production over to his assistants.  In this case, I think that the producers were not aware of all the previous "hoax" claims and how difficult it is to prove that something does not contain meaningful information ...

• Extreme repetition: Repetition occurs at a scale far beyond that of natural language.
  
• Low conditional entropy: Lower than any known natural language, indicating high predictability (Bennett, 1976; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
  
• Binomial word-length distribution: Unlike the Poisson-like distribution typical of natural languages (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
  
• Lack of clear word order or repeated phrases: Atypical for meaningful linguistic texts (D'Imperio, 1976).
  
• Systematic shifts from Currier A to Currier B: Indicating structural rather than purely linguistic variation (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
  
• Context-dependent self-similarity: In the video referred to as the "Jon Snow effect" — where similar tokens cluster based on context, not meaning (Timm & Schinner, 2019).
  
• Deep correlation between frequency, similarity, and spatial proximity — suggesting an underlying, systematic process.
  
• A single network of similar word forms: Rather than distinct semantic word groups (Timm & Schinner, 2019).
  
• Random walk-like statistical behavior and long-range correlations: Pointing to structural generation processes (Schinner, 2007).
  
• Lines function as structural units: Indicating layout awareness during writing (Currier, 1976).
  
• Absence of semantic categories (e.g., nouns vs. verbs): Unlike any known natural language.
  
• No identifiable function words: There are no evenly distributed common words unlike in natural languages.
  
• No evidence of word roots: Suggesting tokens were generated without a typical linguistic base.
  
• No corrections or deleted sequences: Remarkably clean for a document of this complexity.
  
• Line-endings fit precisely into available space: Strongly implying layout was planned during writing.
  

• Natural language? The evidence conflicts with this.
  
• Cipher? The structure and self-similarity raise major doubts.
  
• A text generated by self-citation? From my viewpoint, the "self-citation" algorithm has the potential to resolve all of these seeming contradictions.
  

(24-06-2025, 01:53 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.to prove that something does not contain meaningful information

(24-06-2025, 07:06 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The text of the Voynich Manuscript (VMS) exhibits consistent internal structure, statistical patterns, and positional rules that can’t be ignored, regardless of personal belief about its meaning or origin. Some of these key observations include:

• Extreme repetition: A meaningful text in any natural language can be arbitrarily repetitive. 
  
• Low conditional entropy: Again, the character entropy is a property of the encoding (cypher or spelling system), not of the language.  The word entropy is quite in the normal range. And even that is a property of the particular text, not of the language.
  
• Binomial word-length distribution: Since you cited my 2002 webpage, you should know that East Asian monosyllabic languages do have a binomial word-length distribution.
  
• Lack of clear word order or repeated phrases: Again, this is a property of the text, not of the language.  But East Asian languages do give the impression of having no fixed word order.
  
• Systematic shifts from Currier A to Currier B: Those "language shifts" are perfectly compatible with each section having been copied or summarized from a different book on a different topic -- even if the books were all in the same natural language.
  
• Context-dependent self-similarity: Again, it is quite possible that a meaningful text in any language would have this feature.
  
• Deep correlation between frequency, similarity, and spatial proximity What do you mean, precisely?  Those terms can describe normal features of texts in natural languages.
  
• A single network of similar word forms: Monosyllabic languages have such "networks of similar forms" because of the fixed structure of the syllables.
  
• Random walk-like statistical behavior and long-range correlations: What do you mean, precisely? Texts in natural languages generally have "random-walk like behavior" and "long-range correlations".
  
• Lines function as structural units: There are simple explanations for why the Scribe could have created such patterns.  Like stretching, squeezing, or abbreviating the text to get line breaks falling on sentence boundaries when possible.
  
• Absence of semantic categories (e.g., nouns vs. verbs): Like most East Asian languages.
  
• No identifiable function words: Like most East Asian languages.
  
• No evidence of word roots: Like most East Asian languages.
  
• No corrections or deleted sequences: Surely it was not written directly on vellum, even if it was a hoax.  The Author wrote a final draft on paper and recruited a Scribe to copy it onto vellum. But in fact there are many instances of corrections and uncorrected errors made by the Scribe.
  
• Line-endings fit precisely into available space: Again, a normal product of a minimally competent Scribe.
  

(24-06-2025, 11:07 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sorry, but all those claims of "unlike any natural language" are wrong. 

[*]Systematic shifts from Currier A to Currier B: Those "language shifts" are perfectly compatible with each section having been copied or summarized from a different book on a different topic -- even if the books were all in the same natural language.

[*]Lines function as structural units: There are simple explanations for why the Scribe could have created such patterns.  Like stretching, squeezing, or abbreviating the text to get line breaks falling on sentence boundaries when possible.

• Line Start:  Word types are different at line start than elsewhere in the line.  It is more than simply adding a new initial glyph onto a word type for whatever reason.  Both middle glyphs and final glyphs can be different.  And I cannot think of any natural-language reason for how scribes avoid certain glyphs appearing under other ones.
  
• Line End:  Word types are different at line start than elsewhere in the line.  It is more than simply a final glyph cluster being abbreviated into final m.  We often see different initials as well.  Glyphs pop up in common line end words in ways that aren't common in mid-line words.
  
• Top Row:  Word types are different at paragraph start, at the line end of top row, and importantly in the middle of top row.  It is more than simply a matter of exchanging gallows.  Other glyphs appear unusually predominantly or rarely.  
  

1. How can these patterns be compatible with meaning and 
   
2. How were these patterns produced?  
   

(24-06-2025, 01:44 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But the second question is pertinent.  If meaningless text is generated by scribes in systems like Torsten's, how are these patterns generated so consistently?  There would need to be a set of rules that either require these patterns or result in them as a byproduct, or a mixture of the two.  This seems a bigger obstacle, e.g. if the text is meaningless, what system could result in vertical pairs like o-o being anathema when vertical pairs like s-s are just fine?

(24-06-2025, 01:56 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How did the scribe mantained the coherence of words structure using a 'copy-and-modify' mechanism along so many pages,... ?

(24-06-2025, 01:44 PM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But the second question is pertinent.  If meaningless text is generated by scribes in systems like Torsten's, how are these patterns generated so consistently?  There would need to be a set of rules that either require these patterns or result in them as a byproduct, or a mixture of the two.  This seems a bigger obstacle, e.g. if the text is meaningless, what system could result in vertical pairs like o-o being anathema when vertical pairs like s-s are just fine?

(24-06-2025, 02:10 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(24-06-2025, 01:56 PM)Mauro Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.How did the scribe mantained the coherence of words structure using a 'copy-and-modify' mechanism along so many pages,... ?

I think the answer is already in the question: not at all.