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+--- Thread: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. (/thread-5731.html)
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - PatrickZ - 14-05-2026
(12-05-2026, 05:39 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Using the phrase "a reproducible decoding framework" makes it sound like you're about to dump a truck of AI slop on us.
Sorry, I’m French — nobody is perfect
. So I use an AI assistant to translate my thoughts.
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - Bluetoes101 - 14-05-2026
Sack the assistant
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - PatrickZ - 14-05-2026
(14-05-2026, 11:07 PM)Bluetoes101 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Sack the assistant
Then you will have to read my broken english, which in this particular place (with some linguist) will look bad, but look the VM was designed in Europe so will do my best not to respond giberish...
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - PatrickZ - 14-05-2026
(13-05-2026, 06:47 AM)BessAgritianin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Show that the method is repeatable- it serves the herbal and the cosmology and the pharmacy language.But what if VM is not herbal nor cosmology nor pharmacy language at all ? will have to present a rosetta then ?
What if everybody for 600 years was wrong on the meaning because designed like this by the VM writer(s) as a decoy ?
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - oshfdk - 14-05-2026
(14-05-2026, 11:29 PM)PatrickZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But what if VM is not herbal nor cosmology nor pharmacy language at all ? will have to present a rosetta then ?
What if everybody for 600 years was wrong on the meaning because designed like this by the VM writer(s) as a decoy ?
I think ultimately whatever approach is taken, the result should be convincing to be accepted. And there are many possible ways to achieve this.
- There could be algorithmic proofs, say, providing a way to convert Voynichnese to a plaintext in a purely deterministic, mechanically reproducible and plausible for the 15th century fashion (unless there is some compelling reason to assign a later date)
- There could be knowledge proofs from reading the text, for example, extracting from the text of the manuscript some precise historical information that could be independently verified, like extracting the author's name, cross checking historical records, identifying other works by this author and finding exact parallels (a sample of Voynichese in some other writing would be perfect)
- There could be context proofs, say using images to pinpoint the ideas underlying the manuscript and tracking them to the specific organization or school of thought that produced the manuscript, and finding specific references to this or similar manuscripts in other works of this organization. A combination of clearly related images and a documented historical explanation of the nature and goals of the manuscript may be enough.
I think there are other ways too.
In any case, regardless of which avenue is taken, I think only some very specific evidence can work as a hard proof. Simple similarities between the Voynich Manuscript and some other works won't be enough.
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - Jorge_Stolfi - 14-05-2026
(14-05-2026, 11:29 PM)PatrickZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What if everybody for 600 years was wrong on the meaning because designed like this by the VM writer(s) as a decoy ?
Yes, people have though of that too.
One objection to that theory is that those weird drawings plus the text in code would have attracted more attention and suspicion than just the text in code.
Even by Kircher's time, scholars in Europe would often run into books written in foreign languages and scripts that nobody around them could identify. For example, on Rene's site there is a letter by a Prague Jesuit (Moretus) to Kircher, asking if Kircher could identify the language of an attached document; which turned out to be some old version of Serbian in the Glagolitic script. When such unreadable books were eventually read, as in that case, the contents usually turned out to be quite uninteresting.
Thus I would think that the VMS without the drawings would be assumed to be one of those books, and not given a second glance.
As he tells in his letter to Kircher, Barschius became obsessed with the VMS because he believed that it contained medical and herbal knowledge collected from "Egypt or some other Oriental land" that surely would have been superior to the faulty medicine of Europe. He could have got that idea only from the drawings in the Bio section and the plants "that no doctor in Prague could identify".
If the VMS had only the text, with no drawings, with high probability it would have been thrown in the trash by the landlord after the Author died...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - PatrickZ - 15-05-2026
(14-05-2026, 11:57 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(14-05-2026, 11:29 PM)PatrickZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What if everybody for 600 years was wrong on the meaning because designed like this by the VM writer(s) as a decoy ?
Yes, people have though of that too.
One objection to that theory is that those weird drawings plus the text in code would have attracted more attention and suspicion than just the text in code.
Even by Kircher's time, scholars in Europe would often run into books written in foreign languages and scripts that nobody around them could identify. For example, on Rene's site there is a letter by a Prague Jesuit (Moretus) to Kircher, asking if Kircher could identify the language of an attached document; which turned out to be some old version of Serbian in the Glagolitic script. When such unreadable books were eventually read, as in that case, the contents usually turned out to be quite uninteresting.
Thus I would think that the VMS without the drawings would be assumed to be one of those books, and not given a second glance.
As he tells in his letter to Kircher, Barschius became obsessed with the VMS because he believed that it contained medical and herbal knowledge collected from "Egypt or some other Oriental land" that surely would have been superior to the faulty medicine of Europe. He could have got that idea only from the drawings in the Bio section and the plants "that no doctor in Prague could identify".
If the VMS had only the text, with no drawings, with high probability it would have been thrown in the trash by the landlord after the Author died...
All the best, --stolfi
What if the secret was so important at that time, that it is related to the drawings in certain ways, but conceptually in accordance to a 15 century highly educated man in Alchemy...?
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - Radim Dobeš - 15-05-2026
I'll just try a little experiment and put some pictures in here. If this is not evidence for any theory other than balneological, then we'll never move forward and we can call it whatever we want. I don't need to be right, I'd like the decipherment to move forward.
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - DG97EEB - 15-05-2026
(15-05-2026, 08:05 AM)Radim Dobeš Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'll just try a little experiment and put some pictures in here. If this is not evidence for any theory other than balneological, then we'll never move forward and we can call it whatever we want. I don't need to be right, I'd like the decipherment to move forward.
The problem is there are 10s of thousands of images that "match". I'm no expert, but from everything I've read on art history, that's just not how it works...The burden of proof is significant and doesn't rest on superficial exemplars.
RE: Imagine waking up tomorrow with the solution to the Voynich Manuscript. - Radim Dobeš - 15-05-2026
(15-05-2026, 08:17 AM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The problem is here are 10s of thousands of images that "match". I'm not expert, but from everything I've read on art history, that's just not how it works...The burden of proof is significant and doesn't rest on superficial exemplars.And what if these pictures also coincide with a certain text, go one after the other as in the text and even on many pages in a row. As I already wrote, it will take several years before they stop solving recipes and herbs and baths. Plants are just another layer of code to make it look like a plant at first glance. But thank you for the answers, it is valuable knowledge for me how scientific research and professional science work. I understand that accepting a hypothesis nowadays requires a lot of persuasion and evidence.