[Movie] Is the Voynich Manuscript an Elaborate Medieval Hoax?

[Torsten]

The argument of "no corrections" is obviously also flawed. We can't read the script and we don't know which variations in glyph shape are meaningful. Who knows how many times one shape has been turned into another. Or maybe mistakes are simply left in, or maybe they swiftly copied from a prepared example. As long as we don't understand the text, I don't think a perceived lack of mistakes can be used as an argument.

Sledge uses the term corrections to refer to the absence of cross-outs or scratchings. See for instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

The best argument he used in favor of medieval hoax is probably that the text's statistics point away from simple substitution. If the text is encoded, they must have used a method unknown to medieval times. And still unknown to us. This is definitely something to keep in mind. But there is a flaw in that argument as well: if the text was generated, this was done by an equally unknown method!

Actually Sledge is referring to such a method. He also argues that this method would reproduce the statistical key properties of the Voynich manuscript. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

So why would we assume that the VM makers could come up with a novel and highly efficient method of pseudo-text generation, and not a novel encoding method? 

See the experiment executed by Prof. Bowern with 40 of her students to write some pseudo text. Bowern reports that after writing about just 100 words the students found it increasingly difficult to find ideas for new words. They now began to repeat themselves. Some systematically reused word components or modified words. For example, one student repeatedly used words that had similarities to 'kadaya' or 'gebuni'. So the reason might be that the author of the Voynich text had the same idea as Bowerns students. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I'll just add for clarity that this is exactly the point I was trying to make. Comparing the original makers' situation to the Rudolf sale makes as much sense as comparing it to Voynich and Kraus' situation.

Sledge point is only that even an unreadable Voynich manuscript would had some value in medieval times and would therefore had been worth some effort.

It's simply a very weak argument. As well-researched and well-presented the video is, the arguments are all flawed or easily countered.

The main line of argumentation is based on text properties like the high number of repetitions, the network analyses for the Voynich text (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), the existence of statistical distinct dialects, the low entropy values, the binomial word length distributions etc. (see Timm & Schinner 2019). Did I understand you correctly that you dismiss all this statistical arguments as flawed and say that there is no need to talk about them?