New Post: "I Do Listen to the Experts. Do YOU?"

[asteckley]

Andrew,

in case there were an argument about whether any page in the Voynich MS was written by a left-hander or a right-hander, you have two more or less equivalent positions, in terms of likelihood. Both can be called theories, or hypotheses, I suppose.

No opinion -- maybe i missed this issue being brought up somewhere.

The question between genuinely old or modern fake is a completely different situation. Considering it a fake is a highly exceptional position, which
requires some convincing evidence before it can even be considered. I am quite surprised to see you use the term '15th century theory'.
This is not a theory, it is the default.

I have to consider it a theory still because I acknowledge that it hasn't been proven definitively, but i do agree
it is the default theory.  And the one, as I said, I would still put money on if I had to. (Although  I have enough
uncertainty, that given the option not to bet at all, I wouldn't)

It has been strongly reinforced by all the tests that did not show any unusual substances.

About the Marci letter, in addition to Lisa's response, indeed, there are quite plausible reasons why Marci would not mention Barschius' name,
but we don't know for certain, and guesses cannot be used to draw any further conclusions. Just to point out that it would be equally unusual for a
faker to leave out the name. This whole question has no impact on anything.

I agree it would be also unusual for a faker and so it has no impact.
However, if it has no impact for that reason, then the lack of unusual substances cannot at the same time "strongly reinforce".
The very same argument applies to both things if it applies to one.

If the Marci letter were radio-carbon dated, would that change anything?.

I agree that it would not change things if the vellum (of the letter) appeared to be from the same period as that of the manuscript. But it WOULD change things
if it showed that the Marci letter came from a much later period than its written date, as that would be evidence that the letter itself is a forgery.
(I would go so far as to say that that would be "proof" that it was a forgery.)
And that would mean the only remaining connection of the other letters to the VMS would be in their few descriptive phrases,
which are, aruguably, not as definitive as one might expect them to be.
(And if the C-14 tests placed the letter into the late 19th century, it would strengthen the case that Voynich himself was the forger.)
But all that is moot, since the letter is not vellum and not testable.

Already the dating of the MS itself is not stopping Rich from advocating his Voynich-faked-it theory

I think Rich's point about the C-14 dating was more about how it as interpreted and its relation to "listening to the experts" and
not as evidence that was not valid. I think he has said multiple times he accepts the 15th-century dating of the vellum.

The fact that almost all the sources confirming the information in the Marci letter is correct were in a completely sealed-off collection, not accessible to Voynich, and way too large to just stumble upon it, is also completely ignored.
Can you at least agree that Voynich never had this information? Honest and serious question.

And I'd give you an honest answer -- but I literally have not paid any attention so far to that particular set of evidence.
I've only just started looking the letters themselves and their translations in any detail.
(My attention until this thread started has been the statistical aspects of the Voynichese itself.  But I am finding
all this a compelling distraction.)

The evidence presented by Rich, that the letter should be a fake is the observation that it has too many (or unusual?) folds.
It is the same problem again: if this is unusual for an original, it is also unusual for a fake.
Basically, this is a complete non-sequitur.
The fact that it has multiple different folds does not lead to the conclusion that it is a fake.

I agree. I think it only adds evidence that something may be amiss. (One of those little red flags that is too weak to
mean anything, but has the potential to become significant in retrospect.)

That it is genuine is shown by the fact that the handwriting is the same as in a contemporaneous letter from Marci that only became available to non-Jesuits after 1930.

Please point me to that -- it sounds quite relevant.