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So.. What should I actually be doing?

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So.. What should I actually be doing?
So.. What should I actually be doing?

eggyk > 06-02-2025, 01:52 PM

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, my apologies if it's formatted badly or a little disorganised in structure. I've been somewhat nervous to post, but I have a lot of things I want to talk about and no easy way to get them all out! So.. if this post is in the wrong section, or should be split into multiple areas please let me know!

I recently became interested in the VM and had no idea where to begin in regards to solving it. As i'm a total beginner with no expertise, I decided to read up on many of the theories, arguments, solutions, interpretations, and tasks that have been shared here (with many of these threads dating back 8 years!). I'm amazed some of these threads are still alive, and I appreciate the threads of banned users being archived and readable, they were rather entertaining to go through.

I have a few general observations, and a couple of ideas and theories, so I thought i would make a thread to go through them and (hopefully) be sent somewhere to catch up on what's been discussed/done already, to be told to keep my opinions to myself, or be sent out to do something useful so I can actually contribute something.
The main reason I am bringing any of these up is that I would like to avoid some the issues others have run into and decide which rabbit hole may be worth going into. I would love to contribute something worthwhile, if I am able. As for my suggestions, I am throwing them out on the off chance that someone finds them worthwhile/valuable.

1) Very few things seem to be generally accepted by most people
Almost everything is still up for debate, including the transcriptions into voynichese. If there are 6 different possible transcriptions/interpretations of the symbols on the pages, many forms of statistical analysis, frequency analysis, cipher cracking, and pattern tracking become "useless" in the eyes of many, even if perfectly excecuted. The best case scenario is that they will say "Your analysis is correct, but you have done it from an incorrect data set". If I were to go down that path, I would like to know what the baseline would have to be for it to be considered correct.

The motivation to finally post here was actually checking the "Positions we can all agree upon" section of the forum. It seems to me that everyone gave up on doing that long ago.

2) Many ideas and theories that led to nothing are hard to find
The forum has a "Solutions" section, which is great! I would love it if proposed methods or ideas were codified somewhere as well. For example, ordering and folding the pages a certain way to reveal a secret message, or removing a certain symbol from the text and then running frequency analysis, or drawing lines between gallows symbols to make a smiley face or map. None of these are claimed solutions, but it's useful to know it has been done. They may no be too awful to categorise (deciphering attempts, transliteration attempts, frequency and position analysis etc)

I have seen many instances of someone saying "I have done this thing over the last few months" only to be greeted by a helpful commenter or two that had already tried it and found nothing. If those instances could be reduced as much as possible, it's more likely that progress would be made. I certainly would like to avoid that happening to me.

3) Many threads get bogged down with mutually exclusive ideas
I would much like to persue ideas that could produce results that could be widely agreed upon, and not lead to huge "agree to disagree" territory. If someone thinks a rosette is the sea, another thinks that it's the embodiment of christ, a third thinks that its a naval map, and the fourth thinks its a description of the heavens and earth, I don't see much benefit to me chipping in and saying that its really a picture of constantinople without convincing proof that it's the case. In fact, my doing so may take attention away from someone else's theory when what the theory needs is deeper discussion.

4) People constantly seem to join the forum, claim to have solved it, do not listen to criticism and then leave
I would very much like to not be added to that list, if I can help it.

What things can I do, that are actually worth doing?

So this leads me to the post title, what should I be doing actually? What are the things that -if achieved- would actually be considered measurable, agreed upon progress on the VM?

A few I could think of:
-Finding voynichese text in another manuscript
-Finding a text match for a sentence or paragraph in another plain text manuscript (lords prayer, charm, recipe etc)
-Finding a 1:1 matching image/diagram in another manuscript
-Finding proof of ownership in the currently unknown time period
-Finding a signature/other marginalia match
-Creating a reproducable translation method that translates at least full paragraphs into meaningful text (not things like "apply forcefully candle goat king slowly moon") with very few degrees of freedom in how you choose the translated word (would even this be enough?)

Please tell me if there are any others.

Additionally, if I have the basis of a plan or idea, is it acceptable to make a thread floating such ideas even if I have not been able to excecute that idea or need help to begin? I would use the search function of course, but many discussions only seem accessible/locatable through the links of people that remember where and when it was discussed.

Hopefully I can help in some way, i'd love to hear what you think.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

ReneZ > 06-02-2025, 01:58 PM

Hi!

First of all, you should have a clear idea about what you are interested in:
1) analysing the text
2) analysing everything else about the MS (for most people: the illustrations)

Secondly, you should not stop reading.
Check wikipedia.
Then check my web site ...
Then think again...
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

oshfdk > 06-02-2025, 02:25 PM

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So this leads me to the post title, what should I be doing actually? What are the things that -if achieved- would actually be considered measurable, agreed upon progress on the VM?

A few I could think of:
-Finding voynichese text in another manuscript

If it's not some random glyphs resembling Voynichese, but a word (or more) of indisputable clear Voynichese in a document from before the rediscovery of the MS by Voynich, I'd call this one of the most important findings, probably even surpassing in significance the radiocarbon dating.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a text match for a sentence or paragraph in another plain text manuscript (lords prayer, charm, recipe etc)

This one is tricky to evaluate. How can one be sure something is an exact match for a piece of Voynichese? Unless you know how to read Voynichese, of course.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a 1:1 matching image/diagram in another manuscript

I think this would be very important, but I'm not very savvy in comparative image analysis. I know there has been some progress recently, but there is always the problem of interpretation.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding proof of ownership in the currently unknown time period

Actually any additional proofs of ownership for before the XX century would be very handy. After all, the manuscript is most likely incomplete, who knows maybe it could be possible to track some of the missing pages.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a signature/other marginalia match

I think this is largely the same as the last one?

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Creating a reproducable translation method that translates at least full paragraphs into meaningful text (not things like "apply forcefully candle goat king slowly moon") with very few degrees of freedom in how you choose the translated word (would even this be enough?)

Aha, this is the famous Jobsean "there is one more thing...", isn't it? Yes, I guess being able to read the manuscript would be of some use, definitely.

Happy to see you here! I think this forum definitely needs more people with all kinds of ideas.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

oshfdk > 06-02-2025, 02:50 PM

Actually, I realized the question was not "what would be cool to find", but "what should one be doing". I think if you have some novel ideas or passionate about some area of investigation, it's much easier to start there. On the other hand, some of the tasks you mentioned appear harder than the others, so here's my perspective on the relative difficulty of the tasks you mentioned:

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding voynichese text in another manuscript

I guess this should be fairly hard if you don't have some exclusive access to a trove of undigitized manuscripts, preferably from the XV century Europe. Voynichese is quite easy to recognize, especially the gallows characters, and they do look remarkable, so the fact that no-one has found anything yet means it was not very popular and I'd say likely was created specifically for this MS.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a text match for a sentence or paragraph in another plain text manuscript (lords prayer, charm, recipe etc)

I'm not even sure how to approach this.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a 1:1 matching image/diagram in another manuscript

I think this one is more likely than finding Voynichese text. Again, access to a large number of contemporary manuscripts would help.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding proof of ownership in the currently unknown time period

I guess this would require access to some archives?

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Finding a signature/other marginalia match

I spent some time last year trying to find a match for the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. squiggle. I think I managed to track down about 50 signatures and 15 ex-libri of various persons of roughly the right time period with roughly matching first or last name. I haven't found a match, but learned a bit about the European history. It was fun.

If you have any leads or clues regarding some part of the marginalia, it could be not very hard to verify or disprove various ideas using existing online resources.

(06-02-2025, 01:52 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.-Creating a reproducable translation method that translates at least full paragraphs into meaningful text (not things like "apply forcefully candle goat king slowly moon") with very few degrees of freedom in how you choose the translated word (would even this be enough?)

This one should be quite hard, given a lot of people tried and failed so far. For starters, I think you should have some model of how Voynichese works, a model that would explain many peculiar features of the text, and you should be able to explain (to yourself in the first place) why this model hasn't been successfully identified and decoded so far.

On the other hand, this is my personal favorite, so I certainly won't argue that it's pointless, etc... One just has to bear in mind that the success here is quite improbable and all the odds are definitely against any specific person achieving this. On the other hand, I think that the chance of somebody finding the right approach is quite high. So, the more people try, the better the overall chances are.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

eggyk > 06-02-2025, 03:01 PM

(06-02-2025, 01:58 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi!

First of all, you should have a clear idea about what you are interested in:
1) analysing the text
2) analysing everything else about the MS (for most people: the illustrations)

Secondly, you should not stop reading.
Check wikipedia.
Then check my web site ...
Then think again...

I appreciate the advice! I have read some of the pages when you have linked to sections in past threads, it's extremely helpful.

My heart lies in analysing the text, but my head says more information is needed to do so accurately. I have serious doubts about the underlying details/axioms for any potential analysis on the text. People have claimed everything from turkish to scottish to gibberish, and I think the underlying issue is a lack of certainty on the background of the VM. Not to mention the issues around languages A and B. If we knew where it was written, or even had a good guess, the text analysis may hold more validity.

This is why most of my list was made up of "Find x" tasks, instead of novel analysis theories. If a match for an image was found (for example) in a manuscript containing latin, german, and greek, the resulting analysis could take that into account. If it was in a turkish or arabic work, it would be quite different.

For example, comparing the letter distribution between the VM and another manuscript on pages that may have similar meaning, such as the zodiac or moon cycles. Or searching for matches for the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which appears to have both voynichese and (german/latin?) plaintext.

I'm not sure which category that fits into, i suppose "2 so we might do 1". Or the "think again..." section.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

eggyk > 06-02-2025, 03:18 PM

Thank you for both of your replies.

(06-02-2025, 02:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I guess this should be fairly hard if you don't have some exclusive access to a trove of undigitized manuscripts, preferably from the XV century Europe. Voynichese is quite easy to recognize, especially the gallows characters, and they do look remarkable, so the fact that no-one has found anything yet means it was not very popular and I'd say likely was created specifically for this MS.
(06-02-2025, 02:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think this one is more likely than finding Voynichese text. Again, access to a large number of contemporary manuscripts would help.

Is the implication that all of the currently digitised and accessible manuscripts have likely already been looked over by the people here? I'm not sure how the digitisation process goes; how often they are publically released etc.

(06-02-2025, 02:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the other hand, this is my personal favorite, so I certainly won't argue that it's pointless, etc... One just has to bear in mind that the success here is quite improbable and all the odds are definitely against any specific person achieving this. On the other hand, I think that the chance of somebody finding the right approach is quite high. So, the more people try, the better the overall chances are.

I feel similarly to this honestly. I would love to sit there and test some of my showerthought induced hunches, but the chances are that even if it leads to something, it will lead to me being convinced I am right and the rest are wrong.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

Koen G > 06-02-2025, 03:53 PM

(06-02-2025, 03:18 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I feel similarly to this honestly. I would love to sit there and test some of my showerthought induced hunches, but the chances are that even if it leads to something, it will lead to me being convinced I am right and the rest are wrong.

If you have these reflections, you already show a better grasp of confirmation bias and its implications than all Voynich solvers combined.

As for what to do... I had the same feelings when I started researching the MS many years ago. It's hard to give good advice because everyone's interests and motivations are different.

I would definitely advise to keep an eye on things people have said and published about the MS. This will give you a better idea of any problematic areas. Then you will become interested in something after a while, and you will have the drive and passion to dig into it and perhaps add to the research. Some things people say and repeat are based on old, flawed or incomplete research that could be added to or revised. Some things haven't really been looked into at all.

But again, this all depends on what motivates you. Some people find it interesting to focus for weeks at a time on just one word of the marginalia. Learning more about that won't necessarily bring us closer to a solution, but it might be a rewarding effort that can be built upon.

I tend to focus on such smaller tasks. Things that can be phrased as an answerable question. Where did swallowtail merlons appear before 1450? What are the defining features of the Zodiac's bull and can we find those in other manuscripts? Where do we find the phrase "so nim" in other sources and how is it used? Asking such questions almost guarantees that any result found is an actual result (that can still be disputed, of course) rather than speculation.

When it comes to the best way to actually solve the text... well, your guess is as good as mine.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

oshfdk > 06-02-2025, 03:57 PM

(06-02-2025, 03:18 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(06-02-2025, 02:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think this one is more likely than finding Voynichese text. Again, access to a large number of contemporary manuscripts would help.

Is the implication that all of the currently digitised and accessible manuscripts have likely already been looked over by the people here? I'm not sure how the digitisation process goes; how often they are publically released etc.

Not necessarily by the people on this forum. But given a highly unusual appearance of Voynichese it kind of stands out. Normally you would be curious if you find an inscription in an unknown language, identifying Voynichese shouldn't be hard. But this is just my guess. I'd say randomly stumbling upon Voynichese when looking through medieval works seems unlikely. On the other hand, if you have a specific theory regarding the origin or especially authorship, then of course it makes sense to check other works by the same author or originating from the same place.

(06-02-2025, 03:18 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(06-02-2025, 02:50 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.On the other hand, this is my personal favorite, so I certainly won't argue that it's pointless, etc... One just has to bear in mind that the success here is quite improbable and all the odds are definitely against any specific person achieving this. On the other hand, I think that the chance of somebody finding the right approach is quite high. So, the more people try, the better the overall chances are.

I feel similarly to this honestly. I would love to sit there and test some of my showerthought induced hunches, but the chances are that even if it leads to something, it will lead to me being convinced I am right and the rest are wrong.

I think no matter what solution you publish, people will first assume you are wrong. Even if you are right, initial reaction of any sane person to "I've cracked the Voynich cipher" would be "haha, you wish". So, there is nothing specifically wrong with thinking you are right and the rest are wrong, as long as you are ready for a constructive discussion and do not expect a round of applause the moment you share the solution.

Unfortunately, a lot of current ideas and solutions fall into the grey area between "not strong enough to be clearly right" and "not bad enough to be provably wrong". So, a lot of authors are stuck in the limbo of being sure they are right, but having no means to persuade others. In which case I think it's up to the author to try and make a better case of their idea.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

Koen G > 06-02-2025, 04:34 PM

(06-02-2025, 03:57 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Unfortunately, a lot of current ideas and solutions fall into the grey area between "not strong enough to be clearly right" and "not bad enough to be provably wrong". So, a lot of authors are stuck in the limbo of being sure they are right, but having no means to persuade others. In which case I think it's up to the author to try and make a better case of their idea.

Most, if not all solutions are demonstrably wrong. One way this happens if when the solution implies a one-way cipher, one that loses so much information that the original meaning is actually lost. In this (common) case, the proposed readings are by definition a fantasy.

From the point of view of the authors, of course, the limbo situation is correct. Which leads to a lot of the behaviors we see in Voynich solvers.
RE: So.. What should I actually be doing?

oshfdk > 06-02-2025, 04:54 PM

(06-02-2025, 04:34 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Most, if not all solutions are demonstrably wrong. One way this happens if when the solution implies a one-way cipher, one that loses so much information that the original meaning is actually lost. In this (common) case, the proposed readings are by definition a fantasy.

Maybe there is a difference between "demonstrably" and "provably". Take any solution like "Voynichese is just a form of vernacular Basque using a mix of Latin and Georgian alphabets, heavily influenced by Arabic, EVA t is actually either m or n or b depending on context, sometimes it's also a null". Now, you can demonstrate that one can generate hundreds of solutions like this. However, it's almost impossible to prove that this particular solution is wrong. There is nothing anachronistic or geographically impossible in it.

(06-02-2025, 04:34 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.From the point of view of the authors, of course, the limbo situation is correct. Which leads to a lot of the behaviors we see in Voynich solvers.

This is exactly the point of view that we have been discussing, what to expect if you wish to put forward your theory. Unless you want to remain in the limbo, you need to strengthen your case, and you need to be prepared to provide good arguments. Basically your attitude should be "a solution is only as good as other people believe it's good". The history has shown that a good theory can fool a lot of people, but a theory that no-one but the author accepts is unlikely to be mature enough. I think.
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