Re: VMs: Codex Seraphinianus...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rafal,

> > Sorry if I've blinked and missed something, but do we *know* the Codex
> > Seraphinianus to be nonsense?
>
> This is related to the most important problem of the hoax theory
> of the VMS. What constitutes a proof that a text is meaningless
> mumbo-jumbo? There will always be some signs of structure
> and suspect encoded meaning, as true randomness is impossible.
>
> So is the hoax/nonsense theory unprovable?

If Luigi Serafini had said it was a hoax, then that would satisfy some 
people (probably me included). If he then released the random-number 
generator (and Perl reformatter) he used to generate the text onto the 
Internet, then that would satisfy yet more people. If it become known that 
(say) a panel of mathematics and computer science professors had checked it 
through and it was valid, then that would satisfy yet more people again.

Personally, I wouldn't expect Serafini to allow details of its construction 
to be released until after his death... but you never know, hence my email 
(following Matthew Platts' email, which claimed it was nonsense). My guess 
is that Matthew had seen that claim on Francois Almaleh's site, and had 
taken it as fact (when it was actually just Francois' personal opinion).

For the VMS, hoax/nonsense-theorists face (as you describe) a quite 
different kind of challenge - they'd need to reproduce the methodology by 
which the VMS was generated... but that's good, as they wouldn't be hung up 
on details like "meaning" or "sentence structure", and so their lack of 
baggage might (perversely) give them a better chance of solving it than the 
rest of us. :-)

Even though that might, ultimately, disappoint them. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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