06-02-2026, 05:07 PM
I really have no doubt that what Jorge_Stolfi will share will be important and carefully explained. I like him a lot and he is one of the sincerest and most caring, humble, and contributive souls on this forum.
But fame has never gone well with scientific progress, since it becomes a distraction, and can take it away from truthful results. Even Einstein said, “To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." He was also bothered by and complained about being treated as a showman, having lost his privacy in the meantime.
To make a blank statement that showmanship skills increases scientific value is not helpful at all. The opposite can be equally argued and in fact proven. Often famed awardees of major prizes become so media glorified that they end up doing the opposite of what they were awarded for.
Regarding marginalia’s significance for understanding the Voynich manuscript, I think it has to be put in perspective. It could involve as much a misunderstanding and “hallucination” about the VM as some of our own tries today, AI assisted or not.
For example, whoever put the Zodiac month names in French on the VM must have been trying (mistakenly) to make sense of the chart’s associations with usual months, and in doing so I think has misled others down the line. The marginalia are important, of course, for their own sake, but the distinction needs to be always borne in mind.
But fame has never gone well with scientific progress, since it becomes a distraction, and can take it away from truthful results. Even Einstein said, “To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." He was also bothered by and complained about being treated as a showman, having lost his privacy in the meantime.
To make a blank statement that showmanship skills increases scientific value is not helpful at all. The opposite can be equally argued and in fact proven. Often famed awardees of major prizes become so media glorified that they end up doing the opposite of what they were awarded for.
Regarding marginalia’s significance for understanding the Voynich manuscript, I think it has to be put in perspective. It could involve as much a misunderstanding and “hallucination” about the VM as some of our own tries today, AI assisted or not.
For example, whoever put the Zodiac month names in French on the VM must have been trying (mistakenly) to make sense of the chart’s associations with usual months, and in doing so I think has misled others down the line. The marginalia are important, of course, for their own sake, but the distinction needs to be always borne in mind.