Re: VMs: RE: GC's first reply

[Gabriel Landini <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gordon (and all),
On Tuesday 08 July 2003 09:16, Gordon Rugg wrote:

> The "hoax" theory is usually rejected on the grounds of what Dawkins calls
> "argument from personal incredulity", i.e. "I find it impossible to believe
> X".

I guess that Dawkins arguments works both ways :-/
I have this feeling that the hoax theory is one that some people tend to like 
based on the semi-accurate assumption that "famous codebreakers could not 
crack this ms.": if it cannot be cracked, it cannot be a language/code/cipher 
and (by default) it must be a hoax. 
It is a bit like "sour grapes".  :-)

Also think that if the 600 ducats information was not in Marci's letter, then 
the (old) value of the ms would be unknown and the "reward" for a hoax would 
not be an issue. Would the hoax idea be as strong? Of course it is difficult 
to speculate on things that haven't happened! :-)

> The problem with that is that expertise is brittle - the literature on
> expertise consistently reports that when experts move off their home
> ground, their performance drops rapidly to the level of lay people.

Well... experts *are* lay people which have an area of expertise! :-) but I 
would be more cautious when listening to an expert outside their area of 
expertise than listening to a non-expert on anything. Why? experts on 
something may have a better methodological approach to dissect a particular 
problem. Just think about Ventris' cracking of linear-B.

> As far as I can tell, we simply don't have much solid reported data about
> how easy or difficult it is to hoax any given feature of the VMS, so
> opinions about this are currently at the level of speculation.

What we know, though, (if one assumes that the ms was written in 1400s or 
thereabouts) that a number of its statistical properties are very unlikely to 
have been planned because their existence was not apparent at that time. One 
cannot design what one does not know.

Cheers,

Gabriel


______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list