RE: VMs: Personal Guess

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nick wrote:

> Hi GC,
>
> Lances up - another day of jousting begins... :-)

Not today, thanks.  Not that I have any fear of being knocked off my high
horse, mind you.  I'm well seated in this event. ;-)  Anyway, none of us
escapes without criticism, even when we consider ourselves friends.  You
played the devil's advocate yesterday, today I get to wear that set of
horns.

> (1) I assert (somewhat uncontroversially) that the VMS' appropriation of
> the Tironian notae "8" and "9" points to the VMS' alphabet designer's
> choices being informed by shorthand. In fact, I'd comfortably argue that
> this alone points to the VMS' not being a natural language in an invented
> alphabet: why would someone invent an alphabet that not only appropriates
> two of the few remaining Tironian notae in use, but frequently
> places them
> at the beginnings and ends of words?

There are several explanations for this statistic, some simpler and more
elegant than others.  Something as simple as "to make it look like Latin"
(as one of your misdirects), would also misdirect someone (like you) to
think the whole thing was shorthand or abbreviation, so go figure.  Have you
tried "Yourus turnus tous buyus theus beerus"?  That looks very Voynichese
to me, and it really is your turn...

> (2) I strongly suspect that just about every statistic gathered
> to date may
> have been misdirected - the strong implication of the pair cipher
> hypothesis is that statistics based on glyphs would be next to
> useless. If
> you also have misgivings about soft spaces vs hard spaces (or if you
> suspect some kind of space transposition cipher is in use), you'd
> have much
> the same kind of suspicion about "word"-based statistics. So: I
> don't have
> any statistical evidence - but I don't think that you do either.

I'd only like to point out once again that throwing VMS statistics out the
window without trying to explain them will only cost you time in the end.
If It's just for fun, it's no big deal, really.  I do like to hear all the
varying theories and different approaches, and all the peripheral reading
and research on the part of others has always been fascinating.  I'm here to
nail this sucker to the door, and go on to collect my pizza.  But the
journey so far has been one of the high points of my life.  Do continue.

As to word-based statistics, you're dead wrong that there's no statistical
evidence in this regard.  I'm not being contentious here, this is fact.
Word length statistics say that the text is not out of bounds of western
languages.  I don't find any evidence of abbreviation that can't be
accounted for by spelling variation.  I do think some of the rare wierdoes
inserted that are obvious 15th/16th century shorthand symbols may
occasionally act as an abbreviation, but I'm not certain of that.  They
serve as dating instruments, which doesn't say 15th century, as you know.

I've done non-spaced studies, and so have many others.  I'm certain Rene and
others would tell you that there is no evidence for word breaks occurring in
the middle of the visual "word" on the page.  (Oops, he already said that,
didn't he?)  In fact, when you venture onto that ground, you're in
statistical "white noise".

Here's something I've done that I haven't seen on the list, something to
suit my own interest.  I mapped the word lengths of the herbal I've posted,
in the order of the word.  Line 1 -  4,2,3,4,5,1,3, etc., and charted that
against VMS words.  If our author used alternate word breaks, he did it to
match natural overall sentence structure.  I had a special marker for nouns,
verbs, adjectives, etc.  Chart it yourself sometime - it's pretty cool.
It's funny how this study also aligns with the "rare" and "unique" words in
the VMS.  Words expected to contain specific informational content are
located in VMS lines and paragraphs where they would be expected to be in
natural language, in my view.  Something of this sort might also be
considered to be a "language specific" study, which was what was intended
from the start.  Chart it sometime yourself, it's pretty cool.

Glyphs are my thing, only because everything else leads to this. Statistics
say that the glyph is the individual unit of information transferrence, and
that transferrence is almost certainly a one-to-one with PT characters.
Defining the glyph as a unit then emerges as an important undertaking.  Are
you saying here that not only are the rest of us fooled and misdirected on
general VMS statistics, but that a study based on glyphs, due to the
author's habit of encoding his meaning in specific symbols is "next to
useless", the symbols we all recognize on the pages are now a misdirect?  Or
are you saying that the individual glyph is meaningless, that only the pairs
matter?  Either way, you're once again in a statistical limbo, but since VMS
statistics are misdirected, I guess I've a lot left to learn.

More importantly, I'd think about the number of professionals before me that
generated these statistics and offered their best guesses.  I certainly
don't see your pair hypothesis supplanting the common list of "what we do
know", and once again I must say, that any hypothesis must at least answer
for (if not to) the statistics you deem misdirected.  Dismissing current
thinking on VMS statistics requires proving them wrong, not just saying they
don't matter.

> (3) My abbreviation hypothesis arose simply out of trying to explain the
> "curls" / "tears" / "question marks" accessorising the <ch> pair. Under
> what possible circumstances would a logical, well-thought-out, systematic
> mode of expression (ie the rest of the alphabet) need to be compromised /
> accessorised / altered by these (apparently) semi-improvisational marks?
> After a lot of deliberation, it seems highly likely to me that these
> represent disambiguation marks (or "hints"), designed to help the decoder
> guess the correct replacement word. So: I only see <ch> and the various
> forms of <sh> as abbreviations, but that isn't born of
> statistical analysis.

I'm certain I addressed this when I discussed the odd "sets of four" problem
I was having.  At the time, you were positive the VMS followed the Roman
Numeral track, so it's been awhile since I covered that "glyph" problem.  My
views haven't changed, but yours certainly have.  I'd cover this ground
again if it would help, but since glyph statistics are currently "next to
useless", I'll wait until they gain some respect. :-)

> As for what I mean by "abbreviated": you talk about "x" for "us", but
> that's a notae/nomenclature-like tokenisation (see the first
> cipher of the
> Milanese cipher ledger for an example of this kind of
> nomenclature gone crazy).
>
> Strictly speaking, abbreviation (rather than tokenisation) takes
> two forms
> - contraction and truncation. Let's look at the Radcliff/Ratcliff
> shorthand
> Lord's Prayer:-
>
>          Our Fth wch rt n hvn ; hlwd b y Nm
>          Y Kgdm cm Y wl b dn n rth z it s n Hvn
>
> What types of abbreviation are at play here? Clearly, many vowels
> are being
> discarded (contraction) and some words are being terminated early
> (truncation).

You typed a lot more on this issue, but I simply have to stop here.  VMS
statistics indicate that none of the above [or snipped] apply in this case.
A word is a word.  If there is anything going on, it is more along the line
of the occasional "x" for "us" than anything else, and certainly not
anything involving the removal of vowels, the use of a single symbol for a
common word, or word breaks secreted within the common VMS word.  Just
another set of misdirected statistics that you'll have to explain down the
road, but obstacles in your path just the same.

Re: Leonnel C. Strong -
> Put simply, late 16th Century cipher is what Strong was looking for, and
> late 16th Century cipher is what he thought he found. He didn't - and you
> don't - seem to cut the 15th century code-makers much slack: I think they
> were smarter than we give them credit for. After all, they practically
> invented modern cryptology.

That's some of the purest B.S. I've smelled since my last visit to Bush's
ranch! :-)  You've read some of my work on this subject, and you know that I
contend that the foundation of modern cryptography lies in the Qaballa, and
may date as far back as the 11th century in western terms of usage and
understanding.  This is not to throw off the general progression of
historical cipher, but to point out that once in awhile, evolutionary
abberations may have developed.  What have I missed in my understanding to
make you think I've not given 15th century cryptographers due credit, did I
lose the page on the entire 15th century?  They didn't invent modern
cryptography, any more than Al Gore invented the internet, but they were an
important stage in the development.  What the 15th century lacked over the
16th century is the open conflict necessary to bring about change, and
evolution is all about conflict and change.

So what major event brought about rapid change?  simple, the discovery of a
new land of riches by Christopher Columbus.  This discovery didn't create
the divide between nations, they were already there.  The granting of trade
routes to Spain and Portugal, and then assigning the New World to their list
of treasures.  Money, power and politics, always.  Look at Luther, what did
he do that was essentially different from hundreds before him?  He was in
the right place at the right political time to be useful, nothing more or
less.  but when conflicting ideas become open disagreements (much like what
you term "jousting" in this arena), each side brings their biggest guns to
bear.  Security extends beyond the individual to the state.  The time frame
you're referencing is when the conflict was fermenting, but had not built up
enough pressure.  The New World added enough pressure to pop the cork.  Take
a look at how the Catholic majority countries handled cipher after Luther,
and how it was handled in Germany and England. The best ciphers and
intelligence always win - always.  You and I are both a cultural product of
that success.

GC:
> >More than that - According to Strong, he spent over 500 hours of research
> >(on two pages) before the light broke. <snip>

Nick:
> I'm just talking about two pages' being an insufficient sample for Strong
> to derive a theory from. If he had been allowed to see "the bigger
> picture", I'm sure his ideas would have moved on.

-Moved on to the solution?  I think you've stumbled onto something here,
Nick.  Two pages were indeed not enough to derive a theory from.  Strong
went the wrong direction on this, indeed.  Instead of separating the two
statistical pages, he finally attempted to combine them.  That doesn't
change the fact that each was worked out on its own, separate from the
other.  I state with all the confidence you express in your posts, that if
Leonnel C. Strong had seen "the bigger picture", you and I would never have
met, as the VMS would have been just another footnote in cryptographic
history, and he would have had several pages devoted to him in Kahn's book.

GC:
> >I'm not certain what you mean by "non-obvious".  The very nature
> of cipher
> >is to make the solution "non-obvious".

Nick:
> No, the nature of cipher is to make the solution mathematically hard (ie,
> you have to rely on statistics to help you get to the answer) -
> the nature
> of steganography is to make the solution non-obvious.

Forgive me for being a 20th century guy in a 21st century world.  Back when
I was plodding through five feet of snow in my bare feet just to get to
school, seven miles away, carrying my baby brother/sister on my back - as
our elder's stories invariably start.  Their point is that things were
different in the past, I guess.  Terminology must differ as well.  So let me
try to decipher your 21st century meaning and put it into 20th century
perspective, in terms of "cool", "far out" and "damned straight" that I can
relate to -

"the nature of steganography is to make the solution non-obvious."

Does the word "HIDDEN" ring any bells here?  Steganography, hidden writing,
is not designed to make the solution simply "non-obvious", rather to
*OBSCURE THE VERY FACT* that there is a message contained in the text.  200+
pages of blatantly obvious "hidden writing" makes no sense to me in terms of
"steganography".  How much has the definition of this term changed between
2000 and 2003? You've also asserted in past posts that "steganography" has
no mathematical underpinning, a point I challenged.  If you have something
specific in mind when you use this term, find the term that matches, because
your use of the term "steganography" is not in line with my under-developed
20th century understanding. Steganography is the art of concealed writing,
and a manuscript this size based on an unknown alphabet and an unknown
language is hardly "concealed".

"No, the nature of cipher is to make the solution mathematically hard (ie,
you have to rely on statistics to help you get to the answer"

If it's not "steganography" by definition, it's some other thing that
obscures the PT by means of confusion, thus making the solution
"non-obvious", but not "concealed".  Is there some nuance of difference
between "hard" and "non-obvious" I've missed? "Confusion" of text is
generally referred to as "cipher", since the method of "confusion" must have
some logical or mathematical basis in order to be recovered. Not knowing the
key, our only hope of eventual recovery is the use of statistics as a guide.
Has this working model also changed between 2000 and 2003?  And for what
it's worth, all experts in the field ruled out nomenclators rather early.
Do you have evidence that requires a rethink on this matter?

> I wish I had even 10% of your faith that current VMS statistics tell us
> anything about the coding system. Just because it's easier to
> look for your
> keys under the streetlight doesn't mean you dropped them there -
> here, I'm
> certain that the VMS' author constructed a system with a bright
> (steganographic) light, ready to be surrounded by (cryptological) moths,
> but which actually illuminates nothing.

Your use here of the word "certain" is telling.  So in essence, we're all
wrong?  I can accept that, as long as you can accept the consequences of
making such a blanket statement.  The reliance on statistics and numbers is
actually an absence of faith, as you should well know.  What you're
suggesting on your own behalf is indeed a matter of faith, as it does not
enjoy the backing of even the slightest VMS statistic.  We're on solid
statistical ground, and you're in statistical limbo, but you'd have us
believe the reverse is true.  Okay, Nick, anything you say, just put down
the hot dog and back away.  Drop the hot dog, NICK! :-)

GC:
> >I personally don't
> >think the VMS author knew or cared about a 'post-1912' world,
> and certainly
> >didn't think his manuscript would be the subject of so much
> discussion.  He
> >didn't write it to misdirect us, we're doing a good enough job
> of that all
> >by ourselves.  He wrote it for his own use, for personal reasons, and
> >couldn't have cared less about you or me.

Nick:
> What if (as I personally suspect) the exact opposite of every
> assertion in
> this paragraph were true? :-p

Cool!  I can certainly go with that.  Now would you mind putting down the
damned hot dog and stepping back?  This mustard is loaded and I'm not afraid
to use it if I have to.

> One of the reasons I enjoy this list is that I get to play the
> "thesis-antithesis" game with smart people like you - but perhaps one day
> (soon) we'll get to "synthesis"... game over! :-)

It's not a game to me, and one day soon, to be sure...

GC

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