21-10-2020, 04:44 AM
Believe it or not, I appreciate tavie's critical feedback very much. Seriously. You make many good points. Thank you.
It's true that I had a personal emotional reaction to Marco's earlier posts and comments. When he claimed that I am just interested in the obscenities, and not in the morphology and syntax of the language, I am offended by that claim and I take that personally. I am quite open-minded toward any possible content of the text, but the linguistics and the grammatical structure of the language of the text, that is what I am absolutely MOST interested in. That is precisely why I am interested in investigating hypotheses about specific actual natural languages and why I am not content to restrict myself to generic statistical observations that have proceeded for over a half century but have never yet gotten to the point of considering any actual real language. If someone wants to accuse me of being TOO interested in the grammatical structure and morphology and syntax of the specific languages I am researching, I can accept that criticism. It may be true. But to accuse me of ignoring or neglecting the morphology and syntax of the language, or to claim that my interpretations lack morphology and syntax entirely? Sorry, but that is an absurd and outrageously false claim to make against me. That is what motivated the comments that you quote from my post, as well as the long and detailed explanations of all the Slavic morphology and syntax that I considered in great detail in the course of working out my reading and interpretation of the text.
Your list of simple questions toward the end of your post is a very good one. I actually ask myself many of these questions all the time regarding my work. I will save this list of questions and refer back to it often. Thank you.
You are also right that five lines is not nearly enough to answer all of these questions adequately. I am well aware of this. I consider my research to be a work in progress. I don't believe I ever claimed anywhere in this thread that I have produced enough evidence to prove convincingly that I must be right. It is a theory, a hypothesis, a work in progress.
I will be honest: I detect a hostile, negative, malicious spirit in the tone of some of the critical comments on this forum. Some critics seem to take glee in their efforts to prove other people's theories wrong. I have a problem with that, a big problem with that. I don't believe that anyone who takes glee in the attempt to prove others wrong can actually be truly objective themselves, because in this case they have their own emotional investment in their opposition to the theory, just like the author of the theory has an emotional investment in support of it. This is unproductive on both sides, not only on the part of the supporter of the theory. Please note, I am not saying this about all people making critical comments, just some of them. I do not include your post in this category, tavie.
I also do not consider this Voynich Ninja forum to be a formal platform for academic publication. It's a nice resource that I appreciate, but I don't hold myself to the standards of an academic publication when I decide to post some of my thoughts and ideas as I have in this thread and in others. It's an internet forum, like the old Usenet newsgroups used to be. I happen to use my name here, but many people don't. One cannot hold the posts in threads in this forum to the same standards as those of a peer-reviewed academic journal. I try to share my ideas in the spirit of a brainstorming session. I wish others would share their feedback, positive or negative, in the same spirit.
Perhaps I may summarize my view of this discussion in this way: I am not yet claiming that my ideas and my theory must be right. By the same token, I believe that others with critical comments and feedback should not be claiming that my ideas and my theory must be wrong either.
One last thought: It is true that when I share my thoughts and ideas and theories, I do so with a spirit of great excitement and enthusiasm. I hope that no one mistakes this excitement and enthusiasm for a belief that I think I must be right. Perhaps some critically-minded people on this forum have a dislike or distaste for my enthusiastic approach to all of my ideas. It has been said that "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing one's sense of enthusiasm." I actually take this saying quite to heart in my approach to my research of the Voynich manuscript and the languages that I study in connection with this research. I truly hope that this spirit does not bother anyone, and if it does, I hope that you can set aside your emotional reaction to my enthusiastic spirit in order to conduct an objective discussion of the merits and flaws of the ideas that I present, just as I should set aside my own emotional reactions in the course of the discussion.
It's true that I had a personal emotional reaction to Marco's earlier posts and comments. When he claimed that I am just interested in the obscenities, and not in the morphology and syntax of the language, I am offended by that claim and I take that personally. I am quite open-minded toward any possible content of the text, but the linguistics and the grammatical structure of the language of the text, that is what I am absolutely MOST interested in. That is precisely why I am interested in investigating hypotheses about specific actual natural languages and why I am not content to restrict myself to generic statistical observations that have proceeded for over a half century but have never yet gotten to the point of considering any actual real language. If someone wants to accuse me of being TOO interested in the grammatical structure and morphology and syntax of the specific languages I am researching, I can accept that criticism. It may be true. But to accuse me of ignoring or neglecting the morphology and syntax of the language, or to claim that my interpretations lack morphology and syntax entirely? Sorry, but that is an absurd and outrageously false claim to make against me. That is what motivated the comments that you quote from my post, as well as the long and detailed explanations of all the Slavic morphology and syntax that I considered in great detail in the course of working out my reading and interpretation of the text.
Your list of simple questions toward the end of your post is a very good one. I actually ask myself many of these questions all the time regarding my work. I will save this list of questions and refer back to it often. Thank you.
You are also right that five lines is not nearly enough to answer all of these questions adequately. I am well aware of this. I consider my research to be a work in progress. I don't believe I ever claimed anywhere in this thread that I have produced enough evidence to prove convincingly that I must be right. It is a theory, a hypothesis, a work in progress.
I will be honest: I detect a hostile, negative, malicious spirit in the tone of some of the critical comments on this forum. Some critics seem to take glee in their efforts to prove other people's theories wrong. I have a problem with that, a big problem with that. I don't believe that anyone who takes glee in the attempt to prove others wrong can actually be truly objective themselves, because in this case they have their own emotional investment in their opposition to the theory, just like the author of the theory has an emotional investment in support of it. This is unproductive on both sides, not only on the part of the supporter of the theory. Please note, I am not saying this about all people making critical comments, just some of them. I do not include your post in this category, tavie.
I also do not consider this Voynich Ninja forum to be a formal platform for academic publication. It's a nice resource that I appreciate, but I don't hold myself to the standards of an academic publication when I decide to post some of my thoughts and ideas as I have in this thread and in others. It's an internet forum, like the old Usenet newsgroups used to be. I happen to use my name here, but many people don't. One cannot hold the posts in threads in this forum to the same standards as those of a peer-reviewed academic journal. I try to share my ideas in the spirit of a brainstorming session. I wish others would share their feedback, positive or negative, in the same spirit.
Perhaps I may summarize my view of this discussion in this way: I am not yet claiming that my ideas and my theory must be right. By the same token, I believe that others with critical comments and feedback should not be claiming that my ideas and my theory must be wrong either.
One last thought: It is true that when I share my thoughts and ideas and theories, I do so with a spirit of great excitement and enthusiasm. I hope that no one mistakes this excitement and enthusiasm for a belief that I think I must be right. Perhaps some critically-minded people on this forum have a dislike or distaste for my enthusiastic approach to all of my ideas. It has been said that "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing one's sense of enthusiasm." I actually take this saying quite to heart in my approach to my research of the Voynich manuscript and the languages that I study in connection with this research. I truly hope that this spirit does not bother anyone, and if it does, I hope that you can set aside your emotional reaction to my enthusiastic spirit in order to conduct an objective discussion of the merits and flaws of the ideas that I present, just as I should set aside my own emotional reactions in the course of the discussion.