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+--- Thread: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? (/thread-5344.html)
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - asteckley - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 08:16 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The thread title "Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?" implies a judgement (unwise) on those who rule out simple substitution (people like Marco, myself and many others). So this is the rebound of that. But let's remain friendly.
Definitely, let's remain friendly -- people too often seem to take any suggestion that threatens their own beliefs on the VMS as an attack. The defensive response here might have been anticipated if eggyk had said "Have you ruled out simple substitution unwisely?". But I think he went out of his way to avoid offense by saying "Have we..."
As for simple substitution (which by normal definition means one-glyph represents one-letter in some language), that seems to be a strict dead-end unless and until, one first identifies a mechanism of word-delineation that accounts for the word length distribution seen in the Voynichese. It simply does not align with any known language (and I've looked at a very large number of candidates.)
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - oshfdk - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 06:47 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I thought I made it clear that I'm trying to discuss the possibility that transliteration alphabets have potential blind spots in their use.
Most certainly. I don't think anyone who tried comparing the actual writing with the transliteration would expect the transliteration to capture all the nuances of the script.
However, I think the argument to entropy is not about transliterations, but about solutions. If a person has a solution, the question is how this solution explains the low entropy of the plaintext. If the solver answers that each symbol actually corresponds to 3 different plaintext characters depending on how the strokes overlap (for example), this answers the entropy question immediately. The question about entropy only stays for naive 1-1 mappings of EVA to plaintext, but these never produce any interesting results.
Overall, as far as I can see everything you say is correct, except for the main premise that people are somehow dismissed because of some blind spots in the transliteration. They are dismissed if the solution itself produces a text with unrealistic entropy.
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - eggyk - 10-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 08:16 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The thread title "Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely?" implies a judgement (unwise) on those who rule out simple substitution (people like Marco, myself and many others). So this is the rebound of that. But let's remain friendly.
The first sentence of the OP states quite clearly that the thread was not to propose well thought out solutions but was to discuss and check the working assumptions around this issue. Note that I never stated that the current methods ARE wrong, but just called to discuss whether they could be. I really thought I made this clear in the OP, over and over again?
Unfortunately I can't change the title now. I wasn't intending to call the entire Voynich research community unwise or to call their compounded efforts wrong, or to insult anybody. You guys know more than I do by a long shot and I don't pretend otherwise for a second.
(10-02-2026, 08:16 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My answer to your question is this: we have ruled out simple substitution through the compounded efforts of many dedicated researchers. But you will only accept this when you experience it for yourself. So once again I encourage you to run some experiments and report on what you found.
Yes, well again unfortunately the title I chose wasn't exactly reflective of the discussion I was trying to create (which was more about the accepted entropy values/entropy problem when discussing the VMS and solutions such as basic substitution) I'm not looking to be convinced whether simple substitution is or isn't a viable solution. I'm looking to be convinced that nothing has been missed in the assumptions that lead to its dismissal.
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - Koen G - 10-02-2026
Right, I understand, and this is an important question to ask. Maybe we will never know whether we overlooked something or not. I think (and hope) it is possible that there's something nobody has noticed yet, that will look obvious in retrospect.
To simplify things, I believe the situation is as follows:
- You can change the transliteration system to increase h2. But with each step you take, you'll notice that you've just shifted the problem elsewhere. You can do this until you'll have to seriously mess with spaces, thereby abandoning simple substitution.
- You may opt to add in variety yourself, but this is kind of a "build your own Voynich" adventure...
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - ReneZ - 11-02-2026
(10-02-2026, 03:20 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yes, one can cherry pick a few similar things for certain languages, but in Voynichese they are systematic (hence the low entropy). Once a certain Jorge Stolfi even wrote a simple grammar that defines the constrained nature of most Voynichese words. I don't know about mandarin, but you cannot do that for European languages.
Also, you had to cherry pick bigrams instead of characters... this tells a lot
All agreed, but in Mandarin Chinese it is also systemic. The constraints may even be stronger than in Voynichese, but that is a subjective impression I have.
From what I know, Vietnamese is quite a bit less constrained, and Thai very significantly less. I know practically nothing about other SE Asian langauges.
(On a side note, Vietnamese and Thai are the only two languages I am aware of where 'ng' is happy to appear at the start of a word.)
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - Jorge_Stolfi - 11-02-2026
(11-02-2026, 02:20 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(On a side note, Vietnamese and Thai are the only two languages I am aware of where 'ng' is happy to appear at the start of a word.)
In Cantonese and Hokkien (two of the Chinese "dialects"), 'ng' can be a word by itself, and is even You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. And it can be pronounced with different tones...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Have we ruled out simple substitution unwisely? - Aga Tentakulus - 11-02-2026
If someone uses an @ for ‘at’ or a ‘9’ for us, then it is no longer a substitution. Or d = de.
Since it has been used in many situations, regardless of the language, the decision should not be difficult.
I've already seen Glar9 for Glarus, and that's a city.