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A key to understand the VMS

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• A key to understand the VMS

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Davidsch > 08-02-2017, 07:12 PM

  On the other hand, if you take the 
  
  measured frequencies of letters
  the letter dependencies, 
  the word dependencies, 
  the average word length, 
  the average words per line, 
  average for short page with number of lines, 
  average for long pages with number of lines
  
  and you write a random letter generator which checks all that. It would be quite easy.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 08-02-2017, 07:23 PM

  (08-02-2017, 11:10 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So... The scribe sits at his desk, pen in hand, staring at a blank page. What happens next?

  
  For starting on an empty page it is necessary to invent some start words or to copy the first words from another page. In the case of the "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view." app any line of the VMS with at least eight words can be used as seed. 
  
  The following flow chart illustrates the main steps for generating a word with the app:
     
  
  The App is available via the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The code for the app is available via You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. An important class of the app is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with functions like chooseSourceGroup() or morphGroup(). Another important class is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This class contains arrays defining which glyphs can replace each other or which glyphs can follow each other.
  
  The entropy values for a sample text generated with this app are comparable with entropy values for the VMS:
  
       Currier A     Currier B      App (with line f103r.P.18 as seed)
  H0   4.46          4.46           4.39
  H1   3.82          3.88           3.81
  H2   2.11          2.01           2.21

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  nickpelling > 08-02-2017, 10:42 PM

  Torsten: the network of Voynichese words exists after the fact, not before it - its existence is not enough to prove anything useful by itself. No 15th century person could remotely have sat down and said "I'm going to create a dense network of words that follows a cleverly-thought-out set of transition rules".
  
  And your suggestion that the network probably came from a smaller (but now lost) network of words built up as "some drafts" by the same scribe is nothing short of saying that your chicken came from a marginally smaller chicken (and not via an egg).
  
  As far as eol goes, you don't seem to understand my point at all: you describe some transitions as being somehow preferential (e.g. air to ail) whereas others are much weaker (e.g. al to ail), but given that both have the same abstract edit distance yet greatly different statistics, to claim that it must be the network itself that drives these preferences is a pure post hoc argument.
  
  What is actually going on under Voynichese's hood is that a highly varied set of adjacency and writing rules - some combinative (e.g. al/ol/ar/or), some generative (e.g. av, aiv, aiiv, aiiiv), some fixed (e.g. qo, dy), some outright mysterious (e.g. Neal Keys), plus others we don't even have names for yet - is in play. These rules all work together to implicitly create the network you've worked so hard to document, in ways that we only glimpse via statistics.
  
  And so what I find most frustrating about your papers is that the study you have done on the statistics would be hugely informative and useful, were you not investing so much effort into linking them to a network-centric autocopying view of the manuscript which doesn't work as well as you think, and which - even if it were true, which it isn't - would only be sufficient to explain 10% of Voynichese's behaviours, and then only after the fact.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 09-02-2017, 01:34 AM

  (08-02-2017, 10:42 PM)nickpelling Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Torsten: the network of Voynichese words exists after the fact, not before it - its existence is not enough to prove anything useful by itself. No 15th century person could remotely have sat down and said "I'm going to create a dense network of words that follows a cleverly-thought-out set of transition rules".

  
  You misunderstand what I say. In my paper I wrote for instance that the network is an "unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.].
  
  

  Quote:And your suggestion that the network probably came from a smaller (but now lost) network of words built up as "some drafts" by the same scribe is nothing short of saying that your chicken came from a marginally smaller chicken (and not via an egg). 

  
  There is simply no need for a smaller network. All you need at the start is the script. The copying process results in the network and the observed strict word structure. All you have to do is to invent the first line of text for the first page. For my app I use a single line of the VMS with at least 8 words as seed to generate texts with 10 000 words with statistics similar to that of the VMS.
  
  See for instance all the similar word within the first paragraph of page f1r:
     
  
  I simply didn't think that the scribe has invented all the glyphs used in the script while writing the VMS. Therefore I find it only logical that the first drafts are not part of the VMS.
  
  

  Quote:As far as eol goes, you don't seem to understand my point at all: you describe some transitions as being somehow preferential (e.g. air to ail) whereas others are much weaker (e.g. al to ail), but given that both have the same abstract edit distance yet greatly different statistics, to claim that it must be the network itself that drives these preferences is a pure post hoc argument.

  
  I never said something like "it must be the network itself that drives these preferences". What I say is that the network of similar words is an unintended side effect of the text generation mechanism. 
  
  

  Quote:What is actually going on under Voynichese's hood is that a highly varied set of adjacency and writing rules - some combinative (e.g. al/ol/ar/or), some generative (e.g. av, aiv, aiiv, aiiiv), some fixed (e.g. qo, dy), some outright mysterious (e.g. Neal Keys), plus others we don't even have names for yet - is in play. These rules all work together to implicitly create the network you've worked so hard to document, in ways that we only glimpse via statistics. 

  
  Even if you call similar words combinative and generative they are still similar. Even if you call repeated gallows Neal Keys they are just repeated gallows. You are right by saying that they create the network of similar words. But in my eyes this was not done implicitly.
  
  

  Quote:And so what I find most frustrating about your papers is that the study you have done on the statistics would be hugely informative and useful, were you not investing so much effort into linking them to a network-centric autocopying view of the manuscript which doesn't work as well as you think, and which - even if it were true, which it isn't - would only be sufficient to explain 10% of Voynichese's behaviours, and then only after the fact.

  
  Statistics and observations are on itself informative and useful. We both talk about the same manuscript no matter what you or I think about it. I simply can't change the fact that the words 'daiin' and 'dain' exists seven and six times on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and that the words 'chol' and 'shol' exist five and four times on page f1v. In the same way your  statement "I don’t believe that 'oiin' would ever be correct Voynichese, i.e. it’s just a miscopied 'aiin'" [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.] doesn't change the existence of the words 'qokoiiin', 'qotoiin', 'otoiin', 'ytoiin', 'ykoiin', 'choiin', 'soiin' and 'soiiin' on page f37v.  
  
  If you are interested in the statistics and observations as you say why you refuse to discuss them?
  
  Only to deny is fruitless. It would be ok if you would say "I’m not convinced" like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but you can't argue that the autocopy hypotheses must be wrong without giving any reason for it. Also you need some examples  of not explained features if you want to say that the autocopy hypotheses would only be sufficient to explain 10% of Voynichese's behaviours.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  ThomasCoon > 09-02-2017, 03:15 AM

  Torsten, if you say "that the network is an 'unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process'" then I have to admit I misunderstood you also: I thought you were always arguing that there's no underlying meaning behind the text; it is just randomly copied. But you do believe there is a meaning "encoded" in the text?

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  stellar > 09-02-2017, 03:55 AM

  (09-02-2017, 03:15 AM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Torsten, if you say "that the network is an 'unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process'" then I have to admit I misunderstood you also: I thought you were always arguing that there's no underlying meaning behind the text; it is just randomly copied. But you do believe there is a meaning "encoded" in the text?

  
  I don't think Torsten is implying the text has meaning or that it is a cipher.  He has stated that the text is meaningless.  ThomasCoon Torsten is trying to explain something which is very complex to me maybe not to others, but I think you are making a play on words.
  
  I believe the words are similar, for a cipher which is in words as numbers.  
  
  If Torsten's auto-copy generator works flawless on generating the VMS text then he may have stumbled upon the algorithm which we all must see, because that would prove the text is meaningless in my eyes.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 09-02-2017, 07:48 AM

  (09-02-2017, 03:15 AM)ThomasCoon Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Torsten, if you say "that the network is an 'unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process'" then I have to admit I misunderstood you also: I thought you were always arguing that there's no underlying meaning behind the text; it is just randomly copied. But you do believe there is a meaning "encoded" in the text?

  
  There is a "or" used in the sentence. The full statement is: "How was it possible to construct a language with 'generated' words and to write a text containing over 37,000 words with determinable word frequencies? Was the scribe counting the words he was writing? This seems very unlikely. A better explanation would be the assumption that it is an unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process that similarly spelled words occur with predictable frequencies." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. This is a similar idea as in Nicks statement: "No 15th century person could remotely have sat down and said 'I'm going to create a dense network of words that follows a cleverly-thought-out set of transition rules'."
  
  If you want to know what I argue please read my papers. They are both available online: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Davidsch > 09-02-2017, 03:04 PM

  ...endless loophole detected

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  ThomasCoon > 10-02-2017, 03:01 AM

  (09-02-2017, 03:55 AM)stellar Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think Torsten is implying the text has meaning or that it is a cipher.  He has stated that the text is meaningless.  ThomasCoon Torsten is trying to explain something which is very complex to me maybe not to others, but I think you are making a play on words.

  
  I apologize if I sounded like I was making a play on words - I was just very curious, since I always thought (for about half a year now) that Torsten was arguing the text is meaningless. When I saw a reference to "encoding", it threw me off guard. That was my confusion.
  
  

  (09-02-2017, 07:48 AM)Torsten Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is a "or" used in the sentence. The full statement is: "How was it possible to construct a language with 'generated' words and to write a text containing over 37,000 words with determinable word frequencies? Was the scribe counting the words he was writing? This seems very unlikely. A better explanation would be the assumption that it is an unintended side effect of the manufacturing or encoding process that similarly spelled words occur with predictable frequencies." [You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.]. This is a similar idea as in Nicks statement: "No 15th century person could remotely have sat down and said 'I'm going to create a dense network of words that follows a cleverly-thought-out set of transition rules'."
  
  If you want to know what I argue please read my papers. They are both available online: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  
  Thanks Torsten. I did indeed miss the "or" in the statement. By the way, I've read at least one (if not both) of your papers

• RE: A key to understand the VMS

  Torsten > 18-02-2017, 08:00 PM

  (03-02-2017, 08:04 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I suspect that such a plot for a longer piece of text in Pinyin (either with or without the numerical tone indicators)
  might turn out very similar.

  
  I have calculated similar graphs for a text in Pinyin with 13 340 words and 3020 word types. The source for the text is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
  In Pinyin many smaller networks build a larger network. The reason for this is the use of many short words. It seems that the large uniform network of similar words for the VMS is unique.
  
     
  
  An enlarged part of the graph for Pinyin:
  
     
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