The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[rikforto]

I apologize if this is repetitive, but to that point, I doubt this was created as a Bacon work to begin with. 

And I have noted that this hypothesis relies on degrees of freedom in Voynich's actions when it hits a snag like this one. Perhaps---and not even implausibly!---he changed tact in the middle of his scam. I would very much like some evidence for that which is not deduced from the conclusion it is meant to support before I give it any more weight than any of a number of other conjectures on this forum. And even if that is established, I will repeat that the question of his thinking behind the (pseudo?) cipher is a genuine puzzle and a loose end that would speak to his shifting motivations and potentially open a new line of evidence for modern origins if it could be answered. Why this hoax? is to my mind a very live question even if you establish through other means it was a hoax. I was hoping my original interlocutor would take that more seriously when I jumped into this thread.

You can continue to cite other lines of evidence and reasoning to establish plausibility, but I've been quite clear that I see your telling of Voynich's actions as speculative rather than implausible. If you cannot directly address the gaps in what we actually know about Voynich's motivations, and such a thing is admittedly difficult to do, then I would go back to my original point and say that I think the oddity of Voynich's supposed actions under the hoax theory should be taken seriously and this will be my last communication with you on that point. If you have been withholding direct evidence for how and why Voynich made this forgery, I'll be happy to consider it. Given that you already spoke to the great many uncertainties in the text, I think you should agree that this gap exists and recognize why many of us take it seriously when evaluating conjectures about Voynich's supposed motivations.

Finally, I notice that you have been very vocal and combative on this thread about the bounds of discourse and how people should engage, and I have found that very frustrating next to your attempts to refocus my point towards tangential lines of evidence I have not weighed in on and have indicated an unwillingness to expand the scope of our conversation towards. I don't want to debate the semantics of derailing exactly as that conversation would have been on the right thread by being here, but I have had to do a fair amount of work to keep this discussion from becoming a broad-ranging debate of every point you've ever made, all the while having limited success getting you to address my particular concern head on. Questions of how and where the moderators should intervene aside, I will ask you to consider why this kind of rapidly expanding and drifting scope might be frustrating for people trying to follow a specific point that does not readily fit your ideas about how best to approach the document.

Best of luck fleshing out this hypothesis going forward, I hope you'll give the gap I've identified some serious consideration on its own merits as it may prove fertile ground for finding new lines of inquiry around it.