VMs: Declaration of WAR against EVA

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jacques wrote:

> Entropy is the unpredictability of "what comes next" and
> as such it is quite independent from whether a text is a cipher,
> and whether it makes sense. A musical score has entropy too,
> and so has a picture.

What you are basically saying here then is that 'entropy' as you
define the art, is the predictability of sunset colors blending
from yellow, to red, to purple, and beyond?  Don't get me wrong.
I fully understand 'entropy' when applied to known and unknown
languages.  I simply do not understand how such a general
calculation can aid in deciphering a cryptogram.  Please help.

> It takes no mathematical knowledge to see that spelling
> variations increase the unpredictability, e.g. "I am
> pretty sure that the next word is going to be 'night',
> but how is it going to be spelt? Night or nite?"

So you're saying that your interpretation of Voynich 'entropy'
gives no indication of spelling variation whatsoever, at a time
when its most likely composition included multiple spelling
variations?  Gosh, maybe its enciphered?  Please help.

GC:> >If the VMS is not encoded, I don't see how entropy itself
can
> >offer an explanation for the oddities it contains.
>
> It does not offer an explanation for those oddities.
> It only offers a _measure_ of unpredictability of
> "what comes next", and that unpredictability is very
> low. In other words, "what comes next" is highly
> predictable. Among other things, if the VMS is a cipher,
> this rules out a vast number of enciphering schemes--
> a polyalphabetic cipher for instance.

In your face, Jacques!  This is precisely why I'm going to be
drinking a tall stout and eating my favorite pizza while you're
sitting alone, sucking on cigars and wondering why you haven't
been invited.  My personal peeve?  You instigated the EVA
transcription.  An evil deed on your part, if evil is indeed
quantifiable.  'Nuf sayd'. "Your invitation is in the mail."  :-)

GC: >If the thousands of
> >examples of <sh> are seen my the vast majority of us a single
> >glyph, and we never write or separate the 's' from the 'h' when
> >referring to this glyph, then <sh> is an extremely poor
> >representation of what we're all seeing.

Jacques:
> On the contrary. Replacing <sh> by a single symbol destroys
> information. The decipherment of the Easter Island tablets
> brings a good example. Thomas Barthel, who was the first to
> publish the corpus of the hieroglyphic texts, elaborated
> a transcription system where each sign was represented by
> a number of up to three digits. What is sign is obvious to
> anyone who has looked at them: most of them are anthromorphic.
> They remind you of the "dancing men" of Poe's short story.
> More recently, though, Konstantin Pozdniakov has brought
> compelling evidence that those anthropomorphic signs are
> actually composed of up to five phonetic elements (head +
> four limbs). As a consequence, Barthel's system is utterly
> inadequate. It was inspired, BTW, of Eric Thompson's system
> for Maya.

So what you're telling me here is that writing the letter 'a' in
the English language may not carry the same information as that
contained in that letter's strokes?  So the word 'bad' written
'bad' is not as 'bad' as the word 'bad' written 'beid' as you
would in EVA?  'bad' I understand, and I even understand '8am', or
'8oe' or '8an', but now I'm supposed to expand the stroke of each
character, even though it's obvious by the thousands of times this
character is written that it is meant as an individual character?
Tell me truly, what more information can you derive from 'm' when
it its written 'in'?  'in' must be reinterpreted back into 'm' to
have the same meaning as 'm', if 'm' was the original intent.
It's understandable that you got on a train of thought, but that
train has long since derailed due to lack of evidence.  What
happened, did you get a bump on the head and suffer amnesia in the
wreck?

Get off my case, Jacques, and get on the train that heads home.
Thanks to Beinecke, I now have visual, factual evidence, that 8an,
8am, 8ae, 8oe, etc., are written exactly as they have been
transcribed since before 1945.  None of these things you represent
with multiple strokes are written with that intention, and that
basic evidence is all one needs to refute your transcriptions in
simple, and indeed in technical as well.  Your efforts have proved
to be the primary detractor from 'real' efforts for too long, and
I am standing up to put an end to this.

Let's just get clear about this, so there is no misunderstanding.
'Frogguy' was an attempt to make Voynich pronounceable, as if
anybody actually wanted to 'speak' Voynich.  EVA followed, stating
unequivocally that its intention was to 'make Voynich
pronounceable'.  Same ridiculous goal, same result.  The
linguistic connection is blatant.  "Alls Well that Ends Well", but
this is not the end!  Hell, it isn't even close to the beginning
of our understanding!  Where the hell did you people get off in
deciding that the Voynich needed to be 'pronounceable'?  It
certainly was an advancement for the 'language' theory, but what
did you sacrifice for the rest of us in serving your own ends and
propagating your theories above all others?  Jacques, your
disservice to the less gullible was outstanding, while your
service to our understanding must be measured in future
evaluations of the 'damage' caused by your 'contribution'.

There is no reason put forth, by Jacques, Gabriel, or Renee that
this transcription and its 'linguistic' interpretation should be
binding on any competent researcher, yet they don't miss a blink
in promoting this outrage.  I considered the EVA attempt bogus
from the outset, and my opinion hasn't changed an iota since my
first assessment.  I considered it a major step backward then, and
I continue to consider it in the same light.  Anyone with one good
eye can see the multiplicity of Voynich glyphs that, while whole
in their integrity throughout the manuscript, have been parsed and
redundantly obscured in the EVA transcription.  It's obvious
science and logic had no play in the Frogguy or EVA
transcriptions.

It is true that I am currently building my own transcription, but
this should not be seen as a plug for my efforts, which
undoubtedly are as flawed as the efforts of Gabriel and Renee,
which I routinely criticize.  My efforts are an extension of
Currier, and in accordance with principles set out by early
researchers.  I have taken into account only what I see, not what
someone else tells me I should see.  What I see is not necessarily
what you see, but at least we begin to get at the heart of the
problem, and cast off the obfuscations of Frogguy and EVA.

Ask yourself - are you satisfied with a transcription whose
primary purpose was to make the Voynich 'pronounceable', even
though it is unsuitable for even the most basic of mathematical
inquiries?  Do you enjoy having to type two, three, or even four
characters to represent a single common Voynich glyph?  Are you
going along with EVA simply because you believe the expertise of
the people on this list is 'beyond your reproach'?  Do you have
more consummate ideas of the Voynich glyph assessment than
depicted in the EVA presentation?

There is a sound methodology in a scientific 'war', as you may
experience.  I'd list it's benefits and detractions, but that
would be giving away too much at the outset.  In the end, the real
purpose is to determine and, in some instances, guide opinion.
The road to that end is the journey.

GC

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