Cipher vs Language

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Stolfi wrote:
For sure, the Human Rights declaration gives to
every man the right to
pick his own a prori probabilities; and then Bayes
gives him the
right to ignore an arbitrary amount of opposing
evidence.
Short of finding an "obviously correct" solution,
I don't know
how I could change people's "gut feelings", nor
why I should try to.

Still, it is strange that people find the Crypto
Theory more likely
than the Chinese Theory. Scores of professional
and amateur
cryptographers have tried to crack the "code" for
almost 90 years, and
have made absolutely *zero* progress. Worse, the
crpto camp cannot
even explain away the many arguments that point to
the VMS *not* being
a code.]                                    See
what I mean, John?!?

I had an instant "gut reaction" to this, until I
realized that this is simply your gut reaction to
people poking at Chinese all the time.  I have to
admit it's one of my favorite hobby horses, the
chink in your otherwise StolFwearthy scientific
armor (no pun intended and I apologize for smiling
ever so briefly), and I guess to you Crypto is one
of your favorites.  Why else would we have
"crypto-kooks", "crypto-wierdos", and other
slanderous terms that group a certain set of
philosophies into a single derisive label?

I could easily take your own words and rewrite
them briefly thus:

"Still, it is strange that people find the
Language Theory almost as likely
as the CryptoTheory. Scores of professional and
amateur
Linguists have tried to crack the "language code"
for almost 90 years, and
have made absolutely *zero* progress. Worse, the
Language camp cannot
even explain away the many arguments that point to
the VMS *not* being
language."

This has every bit the validity of your statement,
only the object of derision being changed to agree
with my current viewpoint.  Two sides are firmly
entrenched when they can use the very same words
to describe the other with equal validity, and
when it comes down to that level, no progress can
be made.

I am willing to open the discussion to a degree,
by offering that hundreds if not thousands of very
worthy people from all walks of life and education
have spent a great deal of time examining this
manuscript over the last 90 years, and we have yet
to see any major progress.  I will also offer that
some of the best cryptographic minds may have been
put off this study by Friedman's pronouncement
that it was not cryptography but artificial
language, and that many of the best linguistic
minds have been put off by the title "Roger Bacon
Cipher Manuscript".  It's fair in my mind to say
that the VMS has historically been a hot potato no
one of any credibility wanted to handle for very
long.  That you and I are discussing this subject
gives question to our credentials.  (As for me
I've let my crackpot license expire, so my
credentials are virtually non-existent until I go
down and pay the fee.)

Let's also not forget that the VMS was generally
not available for scholarly viewing while in the
hands of Mrs. Voynich and Ms. Nill, and not
purchased and donated to the Beinecke until the
early 60's.  This narrows the years for
examination from 90 to 40, and Beinecke is still
about as anal as any library can get about
releasing a good working copy of their most
requested manuscript.  From the scratches in the
microfilm, my copyflo was made on old celluloid
somewhere back in the silent film era.  I have
most of what was readily available to the average
cryptographer or linguist up to the late 70's and
early 80's, and I can tell you that there wasn't
much to work with in that regard.  That brings us
down to about 20 years of reasonable access to
this manuscript.  (I also have copies of the
photos that were circulating around NSA from
1972-1980, and they're few in number and of the
poorest quality.  I have some that belonged to RG
Kent, and they too are poor quality, probably made
off the same negatives as the NSA set.)  The
battle for good quality images of this manuscript
has been long and hard, fought against a center of
education that fully intends to copyright our
common human heritage.

Since the problems with this manuscript are
manifold and almost certainly linked to poor
copyflo, I don't blame Friedman, Strong, or anyone
else for not solving this thing.  This isn't then
however, this is now.  We have about 1/2 the
manuscript in photographs, and 1/4 of those in
good enough quality color scans to make some
difference, and all this in the last 2 years.
Wow!  We're from 90 down to 2!  I've been going
through my transcription with the color images,
and I remember how carefully I made the first
copy, using a 10x magnifying glass and looking
long and hard before I made my choice.  I invested
months in making the most accurate transcription I
could possibly make.  It pains me to see all that
work bleed red when I can now blow up a color
image that's actually in focus and see how badly
I've erred.  It's like trying to read an important
letter from a friend that's been rained on and
dropped in the mud.

I think I have to sum up this little rant by
saying that what has passed is passed, and the
circumstances under which those conditions were
allowed to exist has also passed, or is at least
in the process of passing.  Not only do we have
better images than ever before (we can now plot
the surface of Mars down to the meter instead of
the kilometer), we have an orbiting satellite in
place nicknamed "Dana" that uses sophisticated
imagery software to identify individual attributes
of those single meter blotches and applies
cognitive algorithms to determine whether the mud
hut we're looking at is a hidden alien missile
silo or a simple mutant's shack.  As we're all
aware, the data has been streaming in in volumes,
and as yet no one has successfully attempted to
correlate that identification data with the
character imagery.

Two years ago I had a very good sense of what I
was looking at, but the level of static from my
own data was so high I couldn't reliably state one
way or another what I was looking at.  Couple that
with the "Head up the Ass"  syndrome (HUTA
syndrome for the medicos) I was then suffering
from extreme Voynich burnout, and it's no wonder I
took a breather.  I'm better now, thank you, and
as John so generously suggested, it's time to
start whittling away the ideas one factual
statement at a time.  (Okay John, I'm a prick.  I
was yesterday, I am today, and I will be tomorrow.
Factual enough? :-))

It occurs to me that the best person suited to
critique a Language belief would be a linguist,
and the best person to critique a Cipher belief
would be a cryptologist.  If it were "textbook"
language you'd have an army on your side, and if
it were "textbook" cipher, we'd have an army on
our side.  The one advantage a cryptologist has
over a linguist is that he sees patterns in
nonsense, and doesn't care what language that
nonsense is written in.  Linguists only look for
word patterns, patterns of communication, while a
cryptologist is obligated to inspect every single
character.  (Someone's going to argue this point,
and before you do I suggest you go back to all the
posts on language versus cipher, and all the
thoughts and considerations that went into setting
up the EVA transcription before you challenge
this.)

We clearly have different priorities.  A single
character misconstrued or out of place can ruin an
entire page for me, while a linguist would simply
consider it a misspelling.  My hope is to get the
initial three lines of text on every page without
error.  I need nothing more.  With our focuses so
different, our needs differ, and our
understandings differ by the approximate mean and
distance of average word length.

My intention was to begin by saying that I was
willing to weigh the pro's and cons of language vs
cipher, but I must admit from deep within my heart
that this is not true.  The crypto argument stands
on solid ground compared to the language argument,
and gains ground every day.  It did two years ago
and it still does today.  With every
identification of a western plant or astronomical
diagram or instrument, the Chinese argument falls
further in the hole and the Language argument
keeps charging more on its credit card that it
can't pay.

Okay, so it was somebody exposed to Chinese that
chose to use Chinese in a western herbal, without
including Chinese plants or characters.  Instead
he chose to base his character set primarily on
mirrored Latin and astrological shorthand.  The
system is written left to right, and the Zodiac is
western.  Certainly Bayes gives you the right to
arbitrarily ignore a certain amount of opposing
evidence, but I submit that this information is
the first evidence, the most crucial, and not to
be arbitrarily dismissed.  The list doesn't stop
there, it just keeps going, from Newbold, Kent,
Feely, O'Neill, Strong, and D'Imperio forward.  No
matter what you think of the authors, each has
valid points and observations that have nothing to
do with Chinese.  Look at D'Imperio's list of
clothing worn by VMS characters as a single
instance.  No one expert who has examined this
manuscript based on points other than language or
cipher has included a worthy note in support of
the Chinese theory.

Am I being argumentative when I said I wouldn't
be?  I don't know that I am.  John says to make a
series of simple statements of fact.  I've made
lump statements of fact here, but I'm certainly
willing to extend D'Imperio's list of facts to
include what we actually know to date.  I think
it's a good idea that a "what is known" list
actually lists what is known without playing party
politics.

I put it as simply as I can -  in order to pursue
a Chinese connection, you must first arbitrarily
ignore all the pictographic and character
information available that unanimously suggests a
western source and intellect.  In this case over
200 pages worth, each bearing similar if not
identical testimony.  Even the oddities are
western in character and thought, as the titles
written on the zodiacs testify.  If it were meant
for a Chinese audience, shouldn't at least one of
the annotating decipherers have used a familiar
character, such as the oladaba on f116v?

Chinese stands on script alone, without regard to
a host of other information, so who is guilty of
arbitrarily discarding opposing evidence?  Only in
the event that all other pertinent information has
been discarded does the "gut feeling" of Chinese
allow itself access and growth, I can see it in no
different light.  I'm sorry but that's how I see
it.

I just want you to know up front why I'm going to
be the one to eat your pizza, so there won't be
any hard feelings when I don't offer you a slice.
In appreciation I will do my best to learn the
word "no" in Chinese. :-)

GC