04-02-2017, 02:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-02-2017, 03:34 PM by Torsten.
Edit Reason: small change
)
Hello Rene,
thank you for your productive response.
I argue that 1 is unintended side effect of 2. Since the words are copied from each other no other outcome is possible. If the words are copied it doesn't matter how many glyphs where changed while copying a word. In fact most times the scribe has changed two or more glyphs or he has used parts of two or more words to generate a new word. But as more complex the ruleset for generating a word is as more unlikely it becomes that it is possible to generate this word again. Therefore such a ruleset would probably result in a word used only once (hapax legomena). On the other side as more simple a rule or feature is as more simple it is to repeat it. And since the words are copied again and again each copied word increases the change that this feature was copied again. This is the reason that words with many similar ones are frequent and words for which no similar ones occur only once.
It is not required that the VMS is meaningless for the autocopy hypothesis. In fact even for the autocopy hypothesis it is possible that the VMS contains meaning. For instance with the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it would be possible to use autocopied words to transport information. For such a cipher it is for instance thinkable that a word could stand for a plain text letter.
There are other arguments speaking against meaning for the VMS. The first feature is the weak word order. Even if one word stands for a letter it is expected that repeated plain text words would result in repeated sequences of VMS-words. But such sequences are missing for the VMS. For a text using language the words should be used because of their meaning, and relations between words should be expressed by grammatical rules. The only relation I was able to found for the VMS is that similarly spelled words are used near to each other. If a words in VMS is only written because it is similar to a previously written one this speaks against meaning in my eyes.
Another argument is that the autocopying method is only efficient for generating a text if this text has no meaning. To copy a word and to add some meaning to it is less efficient and not fail save.
Last but not least the author of the VMS has done some effort to hide that the words are copied from each other. This indicates that he wanted to hide that the VMS is full of similar words only.
Yes, changes can be made be arbitrarily, but it is only possible to copy one word at a time. It is an error to assume that all changes can be copied at the same time. Every decision to copy a particular word has some influence to the text. This is the case since every word is at the same time the result of the copying process and it is also a possible source for further copying steps. Therefore it is an error to assume that all the changes you are able to think of must exist in the VMS. During writing the VMS the scribe generated a network of 6837 similar words. To argue that he has missed to add the words 6838 and 6839 which you would add to the network is not a valid argument in my eyes.
thank you for your productive response.
Quote:The 'auto-copying hypothesis', as far as I understand it, argues that both 1 and 2 are intentional.
I argue that 1 is unintended side effect of 2. Since the words are copied from each other no other outcome is possible. If the words are copied it doesn't matter how many glyphs where changed while copying a word. In fact most times the scribe has changed two or more glyphs or he has used parts of two or more words to generate a new word. But as more complex the ruleset for generating a word is as more unlikely it becomes that it is possible to generate this word again. Therefore such a ruleset would probably result in a word used only once (hapax legomena). On the other side as more simple a rule or feature is as more simple it is to repeat it. And since the words are copied again and again each copied word increases the change that this feature was copied again. This is the reason that words with many similar ones are frequent and words for which no similar ones occur only once.
Quote:The auto-copying hypothesis would also seem to argue that the text is meaningless.
It is not required that the VMS is meaningless for the autocopy hypothesis. In fact even for the autocopy hypothesis it is possible that the VMS contains meaning. For instance with the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it would be possible to use autocopied words to transport information. For such a cipher it is for instance thinkable that a word could stand for a plain text letter.
There are other arguments speaking against meaning for the VMS. The first feature is the weak word order. Even if one word stands for a letter it is expected that repeated plain text words would result in repeated sequences of VMS-words. But such sequences are missing for the VMS. For a text using language the words should be used because of their meaning, and relations between words should be expressed by grammatical rules. The only relation I was able to found for the VMS is that similarly spelled words are used near to each other. If a words in VMS is only written because it is similar to a previously written one this speaks against meaning in my eyes.
Another argument is that the autocopying method is only efficient for generating a text if this text has no meaning. To copy a word and to add some meaning to it is less efficient and not fail save.
Last but not least the author of the VMS has done some effort to hide that the words are copied from each other. This indicates that he wanted to hide that the VMS is full of similar words only.
Quote:However, the objection of Emma does not apply in this case. Changes can be made arbitrarily, at any point.
Yes, changes can be made be arbitrarily, but it is only possible to copy one word at a time. It is an error to assume that all changes can be copied at the same time. Every decision to copy a particular word has some influence to the text. This is the case since every word is at the same time the result of the copying process and it is also a possible source for further copying steps. Therefore it is an error to assume that all the changes you are able to think of must exist in the VMS. During writing the VMS the scribe generated a network of 6837 similar words. To argue that he has missed to add the words 6838 and 6839 which you would add to the network is not a valid argument in my eyes.