Discussion of "A possible generating algorithm of the Voynich manuscript"

[doranchak]

Rene,

Mainly, I'm just curious about the general problem of discovering the "text generating function" if it indeed exists.  For example, an experimenter could develop multiple generated texts, based on different rules, and having different statistical qualities.  These would constitute a test set.  Then, the rules are hidden away and an algorithmic search of some kind tries to rediscover the rules.  If this is successful for the test set, then if a similar rule set exists for Voynichese, there is some chance this approach might discover it.

I don't think it should be limited to stochastically self-generating texts such as Timm's algorithm.  In a general sense, we are looking for the function that turned the readable text into something unreadable.  So "self-generated" vs "encipherment or translation" are two broad categories of "rules" that could be explored algorithmically.  It is possible that come complex behavior that we observe in the text can arise from simplistic rules.  Wolfram's "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." comes to mind -- very simple rules that produce unexpected random-seeming number sequences, and remaining thus far as a uncrackable nut in mathematics.