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Jorge_Stolfi · (This post was last modified: 16-10-2026, 02:41 PM by Jorge_Stolfi.)

(15-10-2026, 11:11 AM)hensing1 wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.They think the manuscript was made to fool a wealthy collector or merchant. If someone actually translates it, their theory is wrong.

If the statistics or combinatorics showed large drifts and jumps along a text, one could take that as evidence suggesting (but not proving!) that the text was gibberish. The drift would then be explained by a humane Author who did not care to be consistent in the application of his chosen gibberish generation method.

However, there are no such large drifts and jumps in the VMS text. The statistics, including of lexicon use and word structure, show the combination of consistency and variation that one would expect from a collection of 4-5 meaningful booklets on very different topics and styles. Even the differences from Language A to Language B are quite consistent with a slight change in the encryption method, a "spelling reform", the use of sources in slightly different dialects, or even just a change of topic or style.

In such a situation, it is mathematically impossible to prove that a text is gibberish. While some statistics can rule out any "European" language with a simple letter substitution cipher, there is no test that can rule out a more complicated cipher. Including a verbose cipher that embeds the message into some mechanically generated "filler". (Or the hardest kind of cipher there is: a language that is unrelated to any language one knows.)

And while "gibberish" is always a theoretical possibility, historical and common sense arguments say that it is very unlikely in the case of the VMS.

Therefore, if that paper concluded that Voynichese is (or is likely to be) meaningless gibberish, we can confidently say that it is mistaken, even without analyzing its arguments. The authos apparently fell for the same fallacious reasoning that has led many people to the same wrong conclusion about many other manuscripts, like the Book of Soyga or the Rohonc Codex: "I cannot decipher its meaning, therefore there must be no meaning".

All the best, --stolfi