18-11-2021, 03:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 18-11-2021, 04:08 AM by Mark Knowles.)
(17-11-2021, 08:05 PM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For me, the balance of having a prize on solving the VM would be positive if this would attract more academics to the cause. If the only effect it had would be to increase and intensify the crazy, I would be against it.
The next logical conclusion would be that the prize should be substantial in order to also appeal to academics.
Who would decide if it was solved? Now already there are a few dozen people who claim the honor of being the one who solved it. This will get even worse if there's money on the line.
Moreover, I think "cracking" the VM will be done by someone who can build upon the work of many others. Imagine after ten years of work you decide to publish everything you found so far, without actually cracking the code. And this is enough for someone else to realize how it should be cracked, even though he did only 10% of the work. It is your life's work that made this possible , but the other person will be the one getting a million.
Many of the problems that you highlight apply equally well to Mathematical or other prizes and they manage to resolve them, so there is no reason to think they could not be resolved with respect to the Voynich.
I think a prize would increase the interest from academics and non-academics. And clearly we know from the history of Voynich research that both academics and non-academics have sometimes produced flawed theories. I think a prize would increase both the crazy and the sane research. It would also increase publicity for the Voynich so attract good researchers and bad. I know it would motivate me to try even harder, which from the point of view of some others may or may not be a good thing.
I think initially any size of prize be it €100 or €100,000 would be of value. A rich individual could create such a prize, but it could also be crowdfunded.
Often prizes can be shared across multiple people be it a relatively small number of people.
It seems to me that a non-solution is not too difficult to identify, especially as they have the same kinds of flaws.