Strong evidence of a structured four-phase system in the Voynich Manuscript

[Urtx13]

A random number generator (RNG) creates an arbitrary sequence of numbers.

When two people run an experiment that includes a random number generator, they will not get exactly the same results. When the process that is being experimented is well-behaved (not chaotic), the results will be similar but not the same.

If one wants to verify an experiment on a process, then one wants to make sure that two people get exactly the same results. This can be done in case both people set the same 'seed' (starting point) for the RNG. (Note that there are also RNG's for which this will not work).

So people here are invited to use the seed 1405 in order to get exactly the same result. Using other seeds can be interesting in order to check that it creates similar results.

Exactly. That’s precisely why I fixed the seed at 1405: not because it’s “magic,” but to ensure full reproducibility of the results.

This is also the approach I follow in the second paper, currently in preparation. There, I systematically alter the configuration: changing the seed, shuffling the input, removing variables, and switching transcription sources. The goal is to test the robustness and specificity of the pattern under different conditions.

One of the most telling results is that the same four-phase structure emerges even when using the Takahata transcription, which has fewer tokens and different segmentation rules. That reinforces the idea that we’re not dealing with a random artifact — the structure persists beyond the original data source.

So yes: setting a seed guarantees reproducibility, and breaking the configuration allows us to falsify the structure. The fact that it only holds under specific conditions is not a weakness. It’s the evidence.