The Voynich Manuscript’s positional entropy collapse

[tavie]

Happy Thursday, everyone.  Let's try to avoid the thread needing to be locked.  A general plea first to all who are reading - please avoid using LLMs to compose your posts (as opposed to producing a strict translation of something you've already written).  We can often spot this way easier than you think even without the notorious em dashes thanks to the unnatural cadence/rhetorical devices they employ.  It just isn't great for back-and-forth discussion.  It can make people reluctant to engage with you out of worry you're a mere postbox between them and an LLM, and it may also increase the risk of slop.  

Two specific points here:

1. OurYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are clear.  Ad hominem comments and flaming are prohibited.  Dunsel, your response to Torsten You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. looks like flaming to me.  There was the option to thank him for spotting any typos and make the point that a private email would have been kinder and more appropriate. You've chosen to escalate this issue in an angry way, and there was no need at all to start swearing.  Nor was there any need to attack the forum.  I do not believe that "all too often" we criticize references rather than papers.  

2. I think we can all agree that typos and similar minor errors are not worthy of discussion here and would be better dealt with via private correspondence.  But at least one of the references that Torsten disputes does not seem to be a typo, and yet it's been defended as a typo.  I find that concerning.  There is a big difference between: 

• Benett, 1971, "Scientific and engineering problems of the Voynich Manuscript, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115(5):395–412
  
• Benett, W. R., Scientific and Engineering Problem-Solving with the Computer, Prentice-Hall 1976.
  

If Torsten is right that the first is entirely incorrect because there is no mention of the Voynich manuscript in that journal; and the pages cited do not correspond to any article in that journal; and that the correct citation is a section in a book and not a journal...that is going to provoke questions because LLMs are known beyond the Voynich for providing references that are partially or wholly fictitious. 

Like you, Dunsel, I lack Torsten's enviable access to certain journals, so as far as I'm concerned, there could well be an alternative explanation.  e.g. perhaps you made a typo for the volume number and Benett actually published a journal article in pages 395-412 of volume 115(6) as well as the 1976 book.  But I did just spend 30s checking the bibliography in Claire and Luke's free access entropy article, and their citation of Benett is for the book:  

• Bennett, W. R. (1976). Scientific and engineering problem-solving with the computer, chapter 4. Language, pages 103–198. Prentice Hall series in automatic computation. Prentice Hall, Engle wood Cliffs, N.J.
  

So I have to ask:  did you use an LLM to provide the bibliography without checking up on it?  If not, can you please quickly explain why the reference appears so wrong, and then we can all move on from this and start discussing your paper's conclusions?