The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[eggyk]

I have said at length that that "match" is no such thing. In short, if you have to create a new critical edition of the Shennong Bencao Jing (where you delete the most common verb???), allow the edited characters to match 120 different Voynichese strings (not even orthographic words, conventionally understood), and only get a statistical match for a third of the entries you test, I don't think we can reject the null hypothesis that those cribs are spurious. I've said this, and other people have said most of this.

I don't really disagree with you on that, for the record. And i'm not trying to stop you from discussing these problems. 

The reason I posted the graphic was to show that two different versions of the same text, with completely different grammar (i assume) and different lengths have "matches" that look similar in accuracy to the "matches" Jorge first presented. If I had shown that graphic, but hypothetically presented it as voynichese vs classical chinese, and then said it's evidence of an Voynichese-"Art of War" equivalency, I assume the response would be very critical. The point is, though, that those matches really are matches, even though they look spurious. 

These problems would remain, albeit with less urgency, if I found the match convincing, but as things stand, I think they go to what a longshot this "match" is for exactly the reasons that Jorge has argued they are not problems

This is mostly what I was trying to say. However, my personal interest would be working out whether or not a convincing match is there before getting into the other issues.