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Discussion of "A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript" - Printable Version

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Discussion of "A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript" - Emma May Smith - 25-05-2019

Hmm, reading the GitHub page I see that your "self-citation text generator" has a number of problems:
  • It generates words which don't exist.
  • Over-generates rare words.
  • Allow words which typically occur at the start of the line to appear anywhere.
  • Certain bigrams have the wrong frequencies: lt (24 tokens) but lk (36 tokens), or oa (44 tokens) but ya (233 tokens!)
I can't say that the text really looks like the Voynich text.

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Torsten - 25-05-2019

(25-05-2019, 07:38 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hmm, reading the GitHub page I see that your "self-citation text generator" has a number of problems:
  • It generates words which don't exist.
  • Over-generates rare words.
  • Allow words which typically occur at the start of the line to appear anywhere.
  • Certain bigrams have the wrong frequencies: lt (24 tokens) but lk (36 tokens), or oa (44 tokens) but ya (233 tokens!)
I can't say that the text really looks like the Voynich text.

Please read the paper before arguing against something not said there.

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Emma May Smith - 25-05-2019

(25-05-2019, 07:53 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(25-05-2019, 07:38 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hmm, reading the GitHub page I see that your "self-citation text generator" has a number of problems:
  • It generates words which don't exist.
  • Over-generates rare words.
  • Allow words which typically occur at the start of the line to appear anywhere.
  • Certain bigrams have the wrong frequencies: lt (24 tokens) but lk (36 tokens), or oa (44 tokens) but ya (233 tokens!)
I can't say that the text really looks like the Voynich text.

Please read the paper before arguing against something not said there.

I would be happy to read the paper but the GitHub page is the only information available to me.

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Emma May Smith - 25-05-2019

It seems like the language network graphs are also wonky. Vietnamese look particularly bad, but it's easier to point out the errors on the Greek graph:
  • Multiple single letters are shown as being unconnected to anything despite two letter words which contain that letter existing elsewhere in the graph.
  • [ll] occurs at least twice unconnected by any chain.
  • [mn] occurs in two different networks.
  • [ma] and [mo] are unconnected to either of the two [mn] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [ot'] is unconnected to [tot'] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [de] is connected to, um, [de], but not to anything else.
  • [o] is connected to both [oe] and [ok], but not [ot].
Why is it full of errors like this?

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Torsten - 25-05-2019

(25-05-2019, 08:54 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems like the language network graphs are also wonky. Vietnamese look particularly bad, but it's easier to point out the errors on the Greek graph:
  • Multiple single letters are shown as being unconnected to anything despite two letter words which contain that letter existing elsewhere in the graph.
  • [ll] occurs at least twice unconnected by any chain.
  • [mn] occurs in two different networks.
  • [ma] and [mo] are unconnected to either of the two [mn] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [ot'] is unconnected to [tot'] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [de] is connected to, um, [de], but not to anything else.
  • [o] is connected to both [oe] and [ok], but not [ot].
Why is it full of errors like this?

Please look into the greek You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The text is using stress marks. What you interpret as [de] is in fact written as δὲ and δέ. Anyway, do you really believe that the picture for Greek becomes different if the marks are removed?

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Emma May Smith - 25-05-2019

(25-05-2019, 10:03 PM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(25-05-2019, 08:54 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems like the language network graphs are also wonky. Vietnamese look particularly bad, but it's easier to point out the errors on the Greek graph:
  • Multiple single letters are shown as being unconnected to anything despite two letter words which contain that letter existing elsewhere in the graph.
  • [ll] occurs at least twice unconnected by any chain.
  • [mn] occurs in two different networks.
  • [ma] and [mo] are unconnected to either of the two [mn] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [ot'] is unconnected to [tot'] despite an "edit distance" of one.
  • [de] is connected to, um, [de], but not to anything else.
  • [o] is connected to both [oe] and [ok], but not [ot].
Why is it full of errors like this?

Please look into the greek You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The text is using stress marks. What you interpret as [de] is in fact written as δὲ and δέ. Anyway, do you really believe that the picture for Greek becomes different if the marks are removed?

Hi Torsten, there are no such stress marks represented on the words in question, though they are represented on other words. Besides, that only accounts for one or my objections. Nor does it account for the weirdness in the Vietnamese graph.

This could all be very quickly cleared up if you gave us access to your paper. I'm keen to know if you're made any advance from five years ago, as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I'm sorry to judge your paper by your old research and the peripheral information, but you leave us no other choice.

Cryptologia will have given you a certain number of free to access papers you can share with your peers, and you also have the right to share preprint versions of the paper. Can you at least state that you will do this at some point in the future?

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Emma May Smith - 25-05-2019

Okay, I've given the paper a quick reading. There's a lot to be said but I'll give my initial thoughts: it's basically the same as we've seen from Timm before:
  • some interesting observations on the similarity of words;
  • a wild launch into the auto-copying hypothesis.
I would have a lot more time and respect for the observations about the similarity and co-occurrence of words in the Voynich text were they not continually served up with the same old theory. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. basically still stands, which is why I can't accept the conclusions of this paper.

I'll illustrate my problems briefly, with a few quotes from this year's attempt:

Quote:After all, the original VMS was not created by a computer program; the scribe had complete freedom to implement random personal esthetic preferences, spontaneous impulses, or even idiosyncrasies.

Yeah, but he didn't. He stuck to the "same rigid word structure" for the majority of the text. Even though the text likely took weeks, and possibly months or even years, to create. The differences between the word structure from beginning to end are not very great. He knew what the word structure was, inside his head.

Quote:An exact reproduction of all of his/her mental rules is not only most likely impossible, but would still leave the problem of unpredictable random (esthetic) decisions.

Basically, the writer's mind is a "black box": we're not allowed to look in and understand what's going on. The writer used the rules he wanted, when he wanted, or didn't if he wanted not to. Nothing is remotely satisfying about this kind of explanation.

Quote:The scope of this work is not the “elemental deconstruction” of the VMS to an exact (and complete) set of rules. We rather demonstrate the feasibility to algorithmically create a text as rich and complex as the VMS, using the strikingly simple self-citation method.

Modelling the text is not the same as explaining it, which I think the authors of the paper understand. But they really need to understand it: just saying what the structure looks like, and creating a computer program to recreate it, lack the kind of explanatory power needed to draw final conclusions. It can be informative and illustrative, but not definitive.

Quote:Of course, it is possible to pinpoint quantitative differences between the real VMS and the used facsimile text (most likely any facsimile text). An example is the quantitative deviation of the <q>-prefix distribution from the original VMS text. However, we are not aware of any statistical property of the VMS that qualitatively contradicts our proposed self-citation algorithm.

The text doesn't account for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. They're not even present as far as I can see. I think that is a qualitative failure of the algorithm.

Quote:Following Occam’s principle, this theory provides the optimal hypothesis available to explain all facts currently known about the VMS.

It's really uncool to wheel this out, you know? Cause everybody thinks they have this weapon in their arsenal. I mean, Occam's Razor says the text is a text: simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones. Doesn't it? (Don't argue against this point, just accept that it's a silly thing to put in a paper.)

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Torsten - 26-05-2019

(25-05-2019, 11:24 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would have a lot more time and respect for the observations about the similarity and co-occurrence of words in the Voynich text were they not continually served up with the same old theory.

That you can't accept a conclusion is not a valid argument against an observation. The additional materials contain in 1.3 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. You can choose a page and check yourself that indeed tokens with high structural similarity appear preferably in close vicinity.

(25-05-2019, 11:24 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He stuck to the "same rigid word structure" for the majority of the text. Even though the text likely took weeks, and possibly months or even years, to create. The differences between the word structure from beginning to end are not very great. He knew what the word structure was, inside his head.

The word structure is not as rigid as you suggest. The text is changing from Currier A to Currier B. See also the graph for Words preferred in Currier A and B in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

In the rest of your post you only cherry pick some sentences and argue against this sentences. But this didn't affect the argumentation given. For instance, to argue against Occam's Razor only makes sense if you accept that the theory provides a hypothesis to explain all facts currently known about the VMS.

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Emma May Smith - 26-05-2019

(26-05-2019, 12:58 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(25-05-2019, 11:24 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I would have a lot more time and respect for the observations about the similarity and co-occurrence of words in the Voynich text were they not continually served up with the same old theory.

That you can't accept a conclusion is not a valid argument against an observation. The additional materials contain in 1.3 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. You can choose a page and check yourself that indeed tokens with high structural similarity appear preferably in close vicinity.

I'm not arguing against the observations here. I think they're interesting and worth discussing. I'm simply remarking that I wish they could be discussed without the accompanying theory. The observations might well be valid for all researchers and stand the test of time. But I'm not going to be the only one who rejects your conclusions.

Torsten Wrote:
(25-05-2019, 11:24 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.He stuck to the "same rigid word structure" for the majority of the text. Even though the text likely took weeks, and possibly months or even years, to create. The differences between the word structure from beginning to end are not very great. He knew what the word structure was, inside his head.

The word structure is not as rigid as you suggest. The text is changing from Currier A to Currier B. See also the graph for Words preferred in Currier A and B in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Not words, but word structure. The word [qokeedy] might be common in Currier B and absent in Currier A, but it has the same overall structure as [qokeody], which occurs in both Currier A and B, or [chokody] which appears in both Quire 1 and Quire 20!

There's a deep structure (which I doubt we fully understand) to Voynich words. Your theory does not adequately explain or handle that word structure. We're reduced to believing either:
  • There is a formal word structure used to create a meaningless text.
  • There's an informal word structure inside the writer's head, but it's nothing more than his preferences.
Neither of these are intellectually satisfying. They absolve the theory from truly explaining the most interesting parts of the text. Word structure is such a massively important aspect of the text and your theory just shrugs it off as a concern.

RE: A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript - Torsten - 26-05-2019

(26-05-2019, 01:29 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm not arguing against the observations here. I think they're interesting and worth discussing. I'm simply remarking that I wish they could be discussed without the accompanying theory. The observations might well be valid for all researchers and stand the test of time.

You could start a new thread to discuss just the observations.

(26-05-2019, 01:29 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But I'm not going to be the only one who rejects your conclusions.

Even if many would reject the conclusions, they can still be true.

(26-05-2019, 01:29 AM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There's a deep structure (which I doubt we fully understand) to Voynich words. Your theory does not adequately explain or handle that word structure.

I wonder if you had read the explanation for the rigid word structure on page 10:
"The rules to modify a source word normally don’t affect the order of the glyphs. This is one reason for the observation that the words in the VMS share the same rigid word structure. Additionally, ..."