[Article] Cheshire at it again: "Palaeographic Instruction for the Ischia Manuscript"

[tavie]

The moment I initially saw he claimed to have solved the manuscript in 2 weeks through a combination of “ingenuity and lateral thinking”, it was immediately clear to me that the man has mental problems and anything out of his mouth is going to be bogus. Nobody spouts such meme material unironically when sober - and doubles down on it - without having a few screws loose.

I'm not so sure.  There's only one solution (not posted on this forum, and I won't link to it for the following reason) where I have found myself seriously wondering if the solver had a mental illness, and it was due to their explanation sounding like the way a paranoid schizophrenic might reason, not due to their grandiose claims of being the next Michael Ventris or Champollion.  

Most solvers likely come up with their system in a very short time like Cheshire, even if some may then spend longer refining it.  And most seem to take it for granted that they would have the genius insight that has eluded so many qualified people for decades, or at least they don't seem to question it or ascribe it to luck and hard work when presenting their solution.  He's definitely not the only one to proudly declare they would avoid reading any existing work on the manuscript so as to keep one's creative mind free of influence.

I think he just stands out because he boasts about his achievement and because of the unpleasant way he's behaved to some of the forum members and others.  So I don't think he necessarily has a few screws loose - it's just a particularly unfortunate combination of the Dunning Kruger effect, confirmation bias, and an ego that can't even seem to acknowledge and correct mistakes like "portfolio".