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+--- Thread: [Interview] An interview with Stephen Bax (/thread-2094.html)
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - Anton - 16-09-2017
Exactly so. If Bax would like to once more discuss his arguments against Pelling's reasoning, or, vice versa, Pelling would once more discuss his arguments against Bax's reasoning, then, as I said above, we have plenty of subject threads, and new threads can be opened as appropriate.
As a side note, I don't understand what is BFF, shock jack and all that stuff, and whether I should regard the suggestion to stick one's forum as an offence or not. English is not my native language, and this is true for many other users. So it would be good if less English/American slang be used.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - VViews - 16-09-2017
I think that poor plant may have deliberately chosen to throw itself into the void rather than have to witness a reboot of the Bax vs. Pelling wars.
I respect both of these researchers. I don't think the goal of these videos is to make anyone feel offended.
Would it be difficult to edit out the offensive phrase? It seems to me that we would lose nothing of Stephen Bax's argumentation if it were gone.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - Koen G - 16-09-2017
I wouldn't feel good about censoring anything from the interviews - it's about the speakers' opinions.
Now we weren't talking about Pelling as a person for much time, and even what Bax said was his impression of Pelling's role in the Voynich community. His persona rather than his person.
Anyway, let's try to focus on the arguments about the manuscript. I'm planning to transcribe the interview in bits and make a new thread for each part - this should help, I hope.
PS: thanks for screenshotting David's new forum avatar
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - -JKP- - 16-09-2017
(16-09-2017, 12:51 PM)Stephen.Bax Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You need then to tell Michael Ventris, who deciphered Linear B and identified it as Greek, that his methodology was wrong :-)
I am not sure from your description that you have grasped the underlying principles of what I was trying to do.
And also you have definitely not understood how I was referring to Arabic. It is simply wrong to say that I "maps words like Taurus and Centaur/Centaurus and Coriander to Arabic"..... where did I map the word Taurus to Arabic? Or Coriander? I cannot see how you got to this interpretation.
Michael Ventris was deciphering a natural language. There is no evidence yet that the VMS is a natural language. You are not the only person who has tried the same methods as Ventris—they are widely known.
I grasp what you are trying to do very well. I can follow the video step-by-step and see exactly what you are doing. But what you are doing does not acknowledge 1) why your system does not generalize to the rest of the text and 2) the positional regularity and rigidity of specific VMS glyphs and 3) the reduced character set that is inherent in your system of mapping more than one glyph to related sounds.
As for the Arabic, do you want me to quote from your video word for word? Whether you call it Arabic or "possibly some extinct language possibly a Semitic language" (or whatever weasel/waffle words you want to use), you completely missed the fact that the words you chose map naturally (and better) to Latin than they do to your system.
I've noticed you almost never answer honest questions about the specific problems inherent in your system, which is what legitimate, sincere researchers usually do. What you do instead is turn the question back on the person asking it and imply that they don't "understand" you or your system.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - -JKP- - 16-09-2017
(16-09-2017, 02:05 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quite the contrary Nick. We put a very specific critique which you have made in the past to Stephen, and made it clear that we had taken the idea from your site. That is why your name was mentioned.
Apart from the tongue in cheek 'Voynich shock jock' comment Stephen made about you -and you certainly are not shy about making your feelings known about Voynich theories, in a way that is always amusing and insightful - I don't remember any personal attacks being made against you, or at least, none that aren't the same sort of accusations you make against Stephen.
Anyway, I suggested you made up with Stephen and you seem to be attacking me instead so I'm not sure where we're going with this.
Most of the time Pelling attacks the method, the assumptions, the problems with the idea. I know he occasionally gets frustrated and maybe crosses the line but I have also seen him show admirable restraint in "suffering fools gladly".
As for the video, Bax was asked a legitimate question and responded with a personal attack instead of answering the question. In a panel, Nick would have had a chance to respond and rebut (and probably would not have been so blatantly attacked).
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - Emma May Smith - 16-09-2017
I don't know why there is an idea that Bax's method is similar to Ventris's. It isn't. Ventris (and Kober) constructed a series of interlocking sound values for multiple characters before guessing a single word. It was this table of sounds values which allowed the solution to be both a) self-propagating by suggesting more sound values, and b) self-checking by rejecting forced sound values. Once Ventris had made a handful of correct guesses, the rest was history.
Also, Bax's solution isn't that much like Champollion's, before anybody suggests that.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - -JKP- - 16-09-2017
(16-09-2017, 07:52 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't know why there is an idea that Bax's method is similar to Ventris's. It isn't. Ventris (and Kober) constructed a series of interlocking sound values for multiple characters before guessing a single word. It was this table of sounds values which allowed the solution to be both a) self-propagating by suggesting more sound values, and b) self-checking by rejecting forced sound values. Once Ventris had made a handful of correct guesses, the rest was history.
Also, Bax's solution isn't that much like Champollion's, before anybody suggests that.
It was Bax who implied his method is similar to Ventris's, which unfortunately side-stepped honest and sincere questions about his own method that people would be interested in hearing about, but I'm glad to see you expanding on Ventris's method for those who aren't familiar with it.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - Koen G - 16-09-2017
I'm transcribing the interview into a few chunks. We started about marginalia: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - Stephen.Bax - 17-09-2017
(16-09-2017, 04:00 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Moved to 'news' forum.
Nick, you've said much worse things about Stephen, what was said in the interview shouldn't offend you. This much. Either way it would benefit the study if we could stick to arguments about the manuscript.
I would not object if you want to edit that part of the video out, in the interests of peace and harmony. I have no problem with that - but also you could offer Nick the right of reply and invite him to comment on my work, if you want to?
At the same time you could ask him what progress has been made on the 'cipher' hypothesis and how far that has developed in the past years? I feel that people would find that interesting?
RE: An interview with Stephen Bax - -JKP- - 17-09-2017
(16-09-2017, 10:44 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(16-09-2017, 10:13 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Whatever he may have said to Nick about bigraphs and trigraphs is not relevant until it's established that they exist.
I find this point of view peculiar. If you think everything that is not established is irrelevant, we can resume our conversation when the manuscript is fully translated.
Oh goodness, this is way off track.
I meant in the context of Nick's criticism. Not in general. Of course I don't think that unestablished facts are irrelevant, you surely know me well enough by now to know that.
Bax responded to Nick with irrelevant arguments about things that Nick obviously already knows and which were NOT part of the system he explained in the video, RATHER THAN ANSWERING THE QUESTION.
I have no problem with Bax having any theory he wants. That's not the problem. The problem is whenever you ask him to explain something that doesn't compute, he turns it around into another question or throws it back at the person or makes a personal attack.
it's not a professional way to do things and undermines his credibility by making it look either like he doesn't believe in his own idea (or believes so strongly he feels he doesn't have to defend it, which is also not very professional).