Mark Knowles > 04-12-2021, 04:12 PM
Mark Knowles > 04-12-2021, 04:16 PM
Mark Knowles > 04-12-2021, 04:21 PM
Mark Knowles > 05-12-2021, 01:40 PM
Mark Knowles > 05-12-2021, 01:48 PM
R. Sale > 05-12-2021, 10:57 PM
tavie > 06-12-2021, 01:47 AM
cvetkakocj@rogers.com > 06-12-2021, 03:12 AM
(05-12-2021, 10:57 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The contest is to turn VMs glyphs into a known language. Not to present a 'translation', but to demonstrate a methodology. So many ways to go wrong, but is there, was there originally, a way to go right?I believe the first step in solving the VM is to find the sources for the alphabet in the VM, in particularly the shapes of the letters and ligatures, not to guess the letters by assuming that a certain word means something in a particular language, because that same word can mean something different in a different language.
Mark Knowles > 06-12-2021, 04:20 AM
(06-12-2021, 01:47 AM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think you can classify theories/false solutions, and so I'd disagree that there is a "Cheshire" type that is easily distinguishable from other theories.
What we see is an array of symptoms that false solutions tend to display. Every false solution has at least a combination of these. Certain of the symptoms are seen in all theories; others may or may not be present, in varying combinations. And as these combinations likely overlap, I don't think there is a way of making a clean distinction and saying "this theory has Combination A symptoms so is Type A theory", etc. But it's probably true to say that the worse theories tend to have all or most of the symptoms; the better theories have fewer.
(06-12-2021, 01:47 AM)tavie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for the symptoms, a non-exhaustive list would include:
- Provides "translations" of isolated words, or at most sentences out of context
- Searches a dictionary and picks the word they like the most to fit their system, even if it is a rare or odd word
- No grammar: any sentences are a "word salad", with words chosen for how well they fit the system rather than whether they fit into a grammatical sentence. There is little or no attention paid to how well the "translation" matches up with the target language's grammar
- System has multiple degrees of freedom: in a blind test, two users of the system would not arrive at the same translation. The "translation" is not repeatable.
- Explains away difficulties by suggesting multiple languages are used, or says experts in the language are needed to provide a full translation. Keeps adding excuses for why a longer translation cannot be provided and/or for why the system stops working when applied to longer phrases
- Little or no thought given to how the author(s) would use this system in practice and whether the information is really recoverable
- Fails to explain certain or even all key Voynichese unlanguage-like behaviour (line start/end patterns, paragraph start/ends, letter positions, word break combinations, and this is not an exhaustive list). Many don't even know of these patterns since they haven't done their research.
Mark Knowles > 06-12-2021, 05:11 AM