Hi Nick,
IMHO you are on the right track.Anything in the VMS environment (be it astrology, bilogy, art and so on) will enhance our understanding and maybe closer to a solution.But I think, an exact proof (in the mathematically sense) will be impossible.Looking at the VMS with my crytological cap on, I'm seeing to many different "words" in to few text.So I render the text as a dictionary code (encoded in number, ciffer or what ever).Until nobody finds the key book, it's unlikely to prove any deciphering.But someone very clever can up with a solution, nobody has thought of.And it's really not impossible, to write a clever program, which can reproduce the VMS "feeling" from arbitrarly text (any language you like).What you need is gawk, a dictionary, a long enough text and some computer generated maps (as shown before).
All we can do (and that's more than done before), is to put the VMS in time and place.
Claus
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Nick Pelling [mailto:incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Gesendet: Freitag, 20. Dezember 2002 10:59
An: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
Betreff: Re: AW: VMs: Random Text Generation
Hi Claus,
>I think, that VMS and proof are words which are mutally exclusive.Within
>the VMS context, you can "prove" anything you like.The only thing, you can
>do is guessing.But no proof.
Wearing my logician hat (it's a nice fit, though the style's a little
dated), it's clear that proof means different things to different people.
For example, a lot of what I've been doing is far closer to an "art history
proof" than a "smoking gun proof".
My idea (or perhaps conceit) is that, by working to identify the VMS'
probable time, place, context, and perhaps even its author, content, and
audience, we're collectively more likely to be able to build a smoking gun
proof on top of all that.
I certainly believe an art history proof is possible - for example, I've
been evaluating one particular hypothesis for the last six month, which
stubbornly resists my attempts at both falsification and verification. In
other words, it's truth state is the Intuitionist logic third value, "not
constructible".
Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....
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