Re: VMs: Codex Seraphinianus...?

["Francois Almaleh" <francois.almaleh@xxxxxxx>]

I have written two times to Luigi Serafini to know how he had made his book.
No answer. I think he wants to keep his secret.
But Timothy C. Ely has explained his creation in his book "Flight into
Egypt" (www.almaleh.com/flight-e.htm)

Francois
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Pelling" <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 6:37 PM
Subject: Re: VMs: Codex Seraphinianus...?


> 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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