[split] An interview with Stephen Bax - 1 to 1 substitution discussion

[MarcoP]

For this reason the second order entropy for the VMS is lower then in other European languages.

To be strict, to this one should get a reply that the 2nd order entropy for the VMS is not actually the 2nd order entropy . In the first place - because we don't know the actual alphabet behind the observed script. I did not succeed, nonetheless, in "normalizing" h2 by way of decomposing or aggregating EVA symbols (I did not do plenty of checks, just a few most evidently suggestive). The other way, nonetheless, is the possible "expansion" of glyphs (say, such as o) into several underlay letters (say, Latin ab). This is something that is virtually impossible to machine-check due to the huge amount of possibilities. But that is something which moves us from the plain language to cipher.

Hi Anton,
if I understand correctly "expansion" will only increase entropy if it maps to different sequences. If you always replace, say o with [ab] the result will be even lower entropy (e.g. all low-entropy qo- sequences will be converted in even lower entropy qab- sequences). Is it so?

The other point that is unclear to me is why you say that this "moves us from the plain language to cipher". For instance, in Latin abbreviation, it was common to have symbols that expanded into more than one syllable. In the attached verse (from the bottom of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), a “crossed p” is used for both “par” and “per”. Is it really necessary to think of a cipher to consider similar possibilities? Could we maybe say that this "moves us from a plain phonetic script to some kind of abbreviation"?