The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[ololololo]

First, note that the generic Chinese Origin theory has now been superseded by the specific SPS=SBJ claim

Yes, I know. I try to criticize these theories (Chinese and SPS = SBJ) separately

That is a poor precedent for the VMS.  As expected from a book with secret "heretic" information, it has no illustrations.  The alphabet was derived from the Greek and Roman alphabets.  It is in German encoded with a rather simple substitution polyalphabetic cipher with nulls, a method that resulted in a large alphabet (~90 symbols) and was hard to crack but easy to decode once the key was known.  The nulls and the disguised word spaces resulted in an encrypted text that truly did not look like any natural language (not just European ones).

For example, Wikipedia mentions the speculation that it might have been steganography or even an artificial language. In other words, its perception was somewhat similar to VMS. But I don’t know how true it is…

Secondly, the cipher can be made very complex or literally unbreakable without any difficulty. There’s the Naibbe cipher, there’s the VBM cipher, and there are Roman numerals. I’m not a cryptographer, but it seems to me that without a clue, they would take a very long time to crack... 

Again: because it does not provide any plausible explanation for why the Author would have encrypted a book of that kind and size, with those illustrations, and that quite unusual alphabet.

If the book is encrypted, there was a purpose for encrypting it. There is no evidence that the addressee (the one to whom it was intended and who had the code) ever decrypted it even once. Overall, it’s quite simple and is essentially just a clever homophonic cipher.

And by the way, the great cryptologist William Friedman, for some reason, never came up with the Naibbe cipher. So, is he not a great cryptologist?

You shoud know why.  Because the coincidence that you showed, unlike those I have been showing, was very likely (indeed certainly) to occur by chance.

The example was illustrative. It shouldn’t be taken seriously.
It also contains implicit coincidences with errors and a lack of reference points (i.e., I can’t say how the author turned the word “triumpe” into qokeedy).

P.S. I wanted to write something longer, but I clicked the wrong thing and closed the answer tab  Here’s what I wanted to say in a nutshell.

---

Sorry, what do you mean?

Are such arguments applicable to the Chinese language?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

However, it appears as if you are considering each of those starting positions as valid, which is where this breaks down. You can keep changing the hidden variables for the dice roll scenario, but every time the dice is rolled there is a hypothetical set of assumptions that would be correct. In the case of the VMS, these variables are not changing this way, and if/when they do occasionally change it rightly has a big effect on all assumptions.

But please think again.  There is no such thing as the "correct" probability of something, because in the real world there are no probabilities.  In reality, either the die will show '3' or it will not show '3'.  Either the SPS is a copy of the SBJ, or it is not a copy of the SBJ. 

Again, the probability of a proposition is only a numerical way to express one's degree of belief that the proposition is true.  The proposition itself is either true or false.  Thus the probability is an attribute of the person, not of the proposition.

• "The changes made to the original SBJ are valid"
  

I don't know what changes you are referring to.  The omission of the flavor and other fields?  What do you mean by "valid"?

• "The matches found between the SPS and SBJ are valid and signficant"
  
• "The chance that these matches would occur at random is X"
  

These are the same thing.  The matches are significant if there is a low probability that they would occur if the SPS was a random text unrelated to the SBJ.

Well, astrolabium splits 1 thing into 30 seperately depicted single "things". As opposed to 1 thing split into 30 within a single diagram. Therefore it makes sense that the individual sections can be seperated without issue, which suggests splitting a circle in 2 wouldn't affect the content within.

Wait, do you mean that the Astrolabium splits the Zodiac into 30 parts of 12 sub-parts, instead of 12 parts of 30 sub-parts?  

If so, it is hardly a precedent for the VMS Zodiac. While both have 360 total sub-parts, the division is quite different.  

What is Alphonso's schema?

And if the solar terms splits into 24 equal parts of 15, why are only two split into 15, and the rest into 30?

The proposal is that the initial plan was to have two 15-"thing" diagrams per sign for all signs; but after Taurus the Author felt that it would use too much vellum, so he switched to the 30-"thing" format.

Agreed, this interpretation is not very convincing.  But the splitting of Aries and Taurus still has no known precedent, and it would be somewhat cumbersome.  Imagine a wall calendar where each month is split over two pages.  It seems unlikely that the Author would agree to the split, if he had only the Western view of the Zodiac.

But if the Zodiac section were based on the Chinese Solar Terms scheme, those splits would be natural.

That interpretation also trips on the fact that Pisces is in the "30" format.  Based on the styles of the nymphs, I believe that Pisces was drawn after Taurus 1, and maybe after Taurus 2; but my reasoning is complicated and it involves the Retracing theories...

All the best, --stolfi

[Jorge_Stolfi]

There is no such thing as the "correct" probability of something, because in the real world there are no probabilities.  In reality, either the die will show '3' or it will not show '3'.  Either the SPS is a copy of the SBJ, or it is not a copy of the SBJ.

By the way, this is precisely the point of the "rain probability gauge" joke in Science Made Stupid. There is no such thing as "the" probability that it will rain tomorrow.  

Tomorrow evening one will know whether it rained or not, but there would be no way to measure "the actual probability of rain", and no sense in saying "the forecast was 50% rain, but that was wrong -- I just measured it, and it was actually 70%".  

All the best, --stolfi

[eggyk]

Wait, do you mean that the Astrolabium splits the Zodiac into 30 parts of 12 sub-parts, instead of 12 parts of 30 sub-parts?  

It splits each zodiac sign into 30 seperate sub-parts, each with a header. My point is that these are effectively 30 standalone sub-parts that could have been presented in many different ways. It wouldn't matter because them being split into 4 squares per page was clearly just a matter of style and space. 

   

These could have been presented as two pages of 3x5 squares, and the content would effectively be presented in the exact same way. That is what I mean.

But please think again.  There is no such thing as the "correct" probability of something, because in the real world there are no probabilities.  In reality, either the die will show '3' or it will not show '3'.  Either the SPS is a copy of the SBJ, or it is not a copy of the SBJ. 

That is almost what I was saying, no? The underlying assumptions are what are "correct" and "incorrect". All I am doing is going one step further, which is to say "probabilities calculated from incorrect values are incorrect with regards to reality". 

So in my view, if someone calculates the probability that the sun will rise tommorow as 0% because they had a dream it would not rise, they are wrong, their assumptions are wrong, and so their calculated probability is (correctly calculated BUT) wrong. To say otherwise is splitting hairs, it really is.

• "The matches found between the SPS and SBJ are valid and signficant"
  
• "The chance that these matches would occur at random is X"
  

These are the same thing.  The matches are significant if there is a low probability that they would occur if the SPS was a random text unrelated to the SBJ.

One was meant as the accuracy of the match, and the other is the significance compared to random chance. 

"The matches found between the SPS and SBJ actually are matches", 
and then assuming that is the case: 
"The chance that those matches would occur at random is X"

The first calls into question the way you interpret the results, which multipliers you use, which error bars you use, which SBJ version you use, which parts you assume to be omitted and which not, which spelling variations you deem acceptable, which spaces you use, which paragraph breaks are used, which Voynichese transcription you use, and a whole host of other variables. Many of those aspects are debatable, and are what I want actually want to discuss. 

I genuinely don't see the use in continuing the philosophical debate on whether probabilities exist and how they exist. Let's just test/discuss whether the things you have assumed stand up to scrutiny. Surely you are open to the possibility that some of your assumptions may be shown to be misguided, or mistaken? Just as I am open to accepting them if you show them all to be reasonable.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Perhaps it’s just because I was in China and was literally bombarded with Chinese characters, but none of them looked like the ones in the VM.

Well, what can I say?  

I have never been to China, but once I stayed in Japan for a week, and I studied Japanese for a year or so, and at some point I knew several dozen hanzi, and my teacher once said that my Japanese handwriting was fine, and I knew how to count strokes (like, 口 = 3 strokes) and look a character up in the dictionary, and ...

... and to me those two weirdos, upside down, look pretty much like Chinese characters -- copied by someone who could not read them, and then copied again by someone who had never seen Chinese writing in his life ...

All the best, --stolfi

[Mauro]

I am Platonist -- I do believe that there is a single "real reality", but each of us can have only incomplete and often different knowledge of it.  
All the best, --stolfi

Sorry for the off-topic, but I always thought Plato believed that our common reality is the projection, the 'shadow', of a perfect, higher reality. In my count that's two realities (I'm surely not discarding the only reality I know to actually exist from the count!). Have I always been wrong?

[ololololo]

One can imagine that all of this works (I don’t see any contradiction in the fact that a special version of SBJ is used. If it has correspondences — fine). But then the question is: why can’t we map all the characters, but only daiin and chedy (and, apparently, oteey)? 
Why, for example, does the four‑character phrase correspond to only one word poarkeeo? What, then, is the essence of this comparison?

Returning to Carmen Arvale — I matched only one word, and you said that I didn’t match the excerpt. But from the comparison with the Red Rooster, you also got only a match for daiin, right?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I always thought Plato believed that our common reality is the projection, the 'shadow', of a perfect, higher reality. In my count that's two realities (I'm surely not discarding the only reality I know to actually exist from the count!). Have I always been wrong?

You are probably right.  My knowledge of Plato's philosophy comes basically from a few minutes in a high school class.  

But anyway my view is what I wrote: the "shadows" on the cave wall are not really another real reality; they are just an imperfect view of the real one.  And each of us gets a more or less different view

So maybe instead of "Platonist" I should have said "Fourblindmenandanelephantonist"... 

All the best, --stolfi

[rikforto]

At one point we went around on this for awhile and the reason you are saying "things" is because you acknowledged that the interpretation of them as degrees was untenable in 1400.

I call them "things" because I do not know what those 30 labels+nymphs+stars represent. They could be Babylonian degrees of arc. They could be the 30 nymphs that preside each sign.  They could be the 30 girls that the Author planned to sleep with in each Zodiac period as soon as his mom would let him get out on his own.

We already went through that issue and it would be pointless to resume that discussion.  You can say that I still have no idea of whether the Chinese divided each of the 24 solar term intervals any further.  If they did, I don'k know how many parts went into each interval.  Thus I don't know what Chinese concept the 15 VMS nymphs would correspond to (but it could not have been those "Chinese degrees".)

But what the VMS nymphs represent is not important.  The important point is that the earliest pages of the VMS Zodiac -- Aries and Taurus -- apparently assumed a division of the Ecliptic into 24 equal "sectors".  Like the Chinese "solar terms", and unlike the common European scheme (a division of the year into 12 signs of slightly variable length in days)

What is interesting about this is what is not here:

If not degrees, what are they? A solar term divided the year, not the ecliptic, and did so based on time, not space. The division you are describing is based on work done with the Jesuits, and required a translation of Kepler's work. So, where is this pre-1645 example of dividing the ecliptic into 24 sections of exactly 15 "things"? 

It's not just that I have doubts that there could be some concept, it's that the entire idea of dividing the ecliptic with 24 evenly spaced solar terms didn't exist yet, and that making it exist required a scientific framework that wouldn't be invented anywhere for well over a century. You kinda do need to put up or shut up about that unless this is a theory about time travelling Jesuits. (I would love if this were a theory about time travelling Jesuits.)

There is a distinction to be had here between the linguistic difficulties you've been leaning on, that the hypothetical Author could not distinguish between words in spoken Chinese, and the kind of cultural reception these examples seem to reference, such as not knowing the exact context of hanging a rooster head on a gate. Your exposition might be providing clarity that is not in the text, but it seems like the text is understood from the way you are talking about it.

I don't get your point here. But the measurements strongly indicate that the Author did omit all the "flavor", "provenance", and "another name" fields from all entries, and the "amber is divine" and "hung chicken heads" and "chicken white grubs" comments from the "red rooster" recipe.  It would be silly for him to include those parts in his transcription; don't you agree?

What's interesting about this is what's not here. I asked:

I would like to see your sources on this reception, not because I think this is impossible, but because I want to be clear what exactly is being claimed.

Let me drop the politeness and the decision to preview my argument in the event it was genuine. Did you not reveal this is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.? Do you have a source on this?

I don't get your logic.  

"Do nothing" was also very much an option for Shakespeare when he considered whether he should write Hamlet.  It would have saved him a lot of hard work.  Does it follow that it is unlikely that he wrote it? Or that it is unlikely that Hamlet ever got written?

The SPS was written.  It strongly resembles a phonetic transcription of the SBJ.

Again what is missing here is interesting! 

It is still not clear to me whether or not you think The Author understood the dictation, and you certainly think it is full of errors that you have supposed were due to the difficulties the author would have had telling words apart. Why create that kind of record? Why write that?

I think it is clear that Shakespeare understood Early Modern English and that a playscript has a very clear social function. It is baffling to me in what way you think this addresses the key issues of my point

I am also not really sure I agree it strongly resembles a phonetic transcription of the SBJ, or how you would claim that given your statement that you cannot offer any phonological rules deduced from it.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

the entire idea of dividing the ecliptic with 24 evenly spaced solar terms didn't exist yet

 
You are quite wrong. The 24 solar terms were defined sometime around 100 BCE. 

Do you have a source on [the meaning of of the "chicken white grubs" phrase being unknown]?

No, I could not find any source that claimed that people did know what that phrase meant, in 1400 CE or any time later.  Did you?

Why create that kind of record? Why write that?

Scribes, scholars, and students in the Middle Ages would often copy books that they did not understand. 

Archaeologists still often copy inscriptions that they do not understand.

Linguists often write down stories told by natives in languages that they do not understand.

Why do they do it?