Edit-Distance computational attack idea

[Psillycyber]

His theory didn't really explain anything.  He would basically just take two lines of similar text and assert that one was copied from the other.  Of course, the similarity could be for any other reason (such as similar vocabulary or grammar in a meaningful text).

Could a similar vocabulary or grammar in meaningful text really generate the same level of similarity? To some it seems plausible, to others it doesn't. Like I said, this question really needs to be attacked rigorously and computationally in order to settle it. If all known natural languages have much larger average edit distances than the VMS, then I would find it implausible to hold out hope that some other unknown natural language might suddenly fit the bill of having the much lower edit distance to match the VMS.

That English or other European languages don't have this property does not prove that no natural language does.  Also, well-developed theories regarding what properties natural languages may or may not have basically do not exist.

One could test as many natural languages as one's heart desired, and I suspect (don't know yet, but suspect) that the same would apply to most any plausible language candidates (although, for example, from what I have read, Hawaiian and some Polynesian dialects happen to be more repetitive, and possibly their average edit distances might be shorter...but I don't think that the rest of the evidence about the VMS matches up with being from that part of the world).

If you concede that a valid constructed language could have this property, then you would also need to show that such a language could not have arisen naturally.

I actually don't know whether a constructed language could have this property either. That remains to be shown. I don't rule it out that someone could construct something that matched the edit distances of the VMS.

But I know that most natural languages don't have this property. A natural language with very low edit distances between words would be incredibly prone to mis-hearing and mis-interpretation when spoken. Words in languages tend to disambiguate themselves from each other (or rather, the speakers of those words tend to accentuate differences between words over time and explore the entire phonological space available to the phonemes of that language). Yes, there are homophones, but those are the exception. What you don't find among natural languages is any entire vocabulary that is a slight variation of one of three roots. It would be like if all English words were close-relatives to the words "sling," "apple," and "tuck," and we only found words in English like "slorng" and "agtel" and "tulk" but nothing like "question" or "language."

But that's how the VMS "language" is. Torsten Timm's paper makes a good initial argument that the VMS does not explore the entire space of word constructions that one could construct with the Voynich characters. Voynich words tend to be very similar to a couple of "roots" such as "chedy," "ol," and "aiin." How exactly similar remains to be rigorously calculated and compared with words from other languages. Perhaps the difference is not all that significant. That's why we really need to do the computational attack detailed above.

That the VMS is not encrypted is basically proven by the low second-order entropy of the text, since virtually all ciphers increase entropy.  The main exception, verbose ciphering, is ruled out by the lack of repeated strings (no long words and no repeated sequences of short words).

Would a verbose cipher really require long repeated strings? What if there was significant degree of freedom in how to encode the same plaintext in multiple ways? One could have significant freedom to inject meaningless superficial variation while keeping the underlying cipher intact. That's exactly what I explored recently with my "Voynich puzzle" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I think that is mainly because Torsten's hypothesis implies that the whole stuff is meaningless, while there are many tiny obstacles to the meaninglessness of the text. To name my favourite one:

otol and odaiin are the two most frequent "Voynich stars" (labeled objects in f68r1 and f68r2), and they are both mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (supposed to serve for some introduction or summary).

Once again, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I explore the possibility that a largely auto-copied text might not necessarily be meaningless. If there are multiple ways of encoding the same information, and if the underlying plaintext is something like with words encoding single letters as represented by a number, then that would allow an encoder to "cut corners" by using convenient repeats copied from above that happen to convey the same essential underlying ciphered letter. Yet, one could also easily avoid repeating long strings by adding the occasional meaningless null character or stroke here and there.