A case for Gibberish

[MichelleL11]

I agree with you that the switch to fiction prose for English rather than sticking with the Bible feels like cherry picking.

If "cherry picking" implies intentionally twisting data, I don't think this is the case. I believe it is just confirmation bias at work: Schinner's reading of Schenkel and Kokol's works happened through the lenses of the idea that Voynichese is gibberish. He was unable to see those parts that point in a different direction.

Oh, I don't think he intentionally twisted any data.  It just strongly appears that he intentionally chose particular data to include (and by implication) chose particular data to not include.  That's what cherry picking is.  You can't tell me that he didn't run the English language version of the Bible as well and then for one or more reasons chose to not include it.  He may very well have "innocent" reasons for switching to Alice in Wonderland for the English control (the English language Bible experiment didn't go well or whatever).  Although it is entirely possible that if the alpha result was different than about 0.5 alone that could have be seen as the reason to exclude it, with confirmation goggles on.

You have to admit it is very, very fishy that he used three other Bible translations and "chose" to not use the Bible for English.  Why not?  Certainly that is wayyyyy easier to find than Latin, German, or Pinyin Chinese.  And if you look a couple of citations back this has been done (indeed, was the first "showing" that this calculation could be used to evaluate language) and the result found then, if it repeated, would undermine the conclusions that he makes?

Of course, there are differences in how Schinner ran his experiments and how Schenkel et al. did so it can never be known for sure.  And that is precisely what scientists who "cherry pick" rely upon. 

You may not be certain of your results, but I trust your work, Marco, and it shows what I think is the case -- the VM and the English King James Bible have very similar results under these types of experiments.  You confirmed what was done by Schenkel et al. even though you had to have used slightly different approaches. 

And it may be scandalous but I would take it even further, that the random walk experiments are a further example of statistics that have been held out as being able to distinguish "meaningful" from "meaningless" language and this simply isn't true.  I might be feeling uncharitable at the moment -- but what passes as "conclusions" just aren't holding up.

And you're absolutely right, it is all run by confirmation bias.

[-JKP-]

Oh, I don't think he intentionally twisted any data.  It just strongly appears that he intentionally chose particular data to include (and by implication) chose particular data to not include.  That's what cherry picking is. ..

Right. Cherry-picking is selectively including or ignoring (picking out the ripest cherries). It can happen consciously or unconsciously. It often happens unconsciously by people who don't fully understand empirical methods or the logic behind them.

It is also one of the biggest problems with most Voynich substitution solutions. Picking out a few words that seem to work and ignoring those that don't (or calling them filler or gibberish or polyglot without any demonstrable evidence of this being the case) is a very prevalent (and flawed) strategy.

[farmerjohn]

I have a general comment about the "gibberish/autocopying" theory of the Voynich ms text and the debate about it:

If we compare the decryption of the Voynich ms text to the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis in mathematics, then the "gibberish/autocopying" theory would be comparable to the claim that the Riemann Hypothesis is false. But the many failed attempts to prove the Riemann Hypothesis do not at all mean that the hypothesis is false, nor do they actually constitute any serious evidence that it is false. They simply show that it is very, very hard to prove. In mathematics it is understood that one needs just as rigorous evidence to prove a hypothesis is false as one needs to prove that it is true. The same standard should apply to the gibberish/autocopying theories.

I don't think that proving gibberishness is similar to proving/disproving a mathematical theorem (Riemann Hypothesis in particular), because in case of theorem we at least know what to expect. It is either proof (which is well-defined concept ) or counterexample (in case of RH it's just a number).

What the proof of gibberishness will look like is very hard to imagine. One might think that developing the algorithm that prints the text of VMS does the thing, but it's not because one should also prove that there is no other way to generate it.

[geoffreycaveney]

I don't think that proving gibberishness is similar to proving/disproving a mathematical theorem (Riemann Hypothesis in particular), because in case of theorem we at least know what to expect. It is either proof (which is well-defined concept ) or counterexample (in case of RH it's just a number).

In some cases a disproof may simply be a proof that a counterexample must exist, even if the actual number remains too large and thus too difficult to calculate and identify explicitly. A famous example was Andrew Odlyzko and Herman te Riele's disproof of the so-called You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in 1985: They proved that a counterexample number must exist, but even 35 years later an actual such number defies calculation. It is known that the smallest counterexample must have less than on the order of 10 duodecillion (100 quintillion squared) digits.

[ReneZ]

Thanks Marco, I didn't remember the part about the bits, but as you say, the factor 5 does not make a major difference.

Just for the sake of completeness, here is the updated plot:

   

[Anton]

Although I appericate the inclusion of my favourite "otol test" under number 6, without delving into details, there's the common sense argument against gibberish.

A team of several scribes would not be assembled to make a not-for-sale product filled by gibberish.

[Linda]

I tend to agree, gibberish gets old fast, that is a lot of time to spend on it.

[RobGea]

For 600 Ducats I would write gibberish all month long

[Linda]

For 600 Ducats I would write gibberish all month long

... a hundred and fifty years later...?

[davidjackson]

there's the common sense argument against gibberish.

Logic is a marvellous thing, but it's no substitute for common sense