VMs: Rugg bashing, was RuggWatch

[elvogt@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Thoughts about Rugg's ideas:

*) Why is everybody so keen on bashing his method? Folks with less substantial
ideas have been treated with way more politeness and respect on this list. Are
you afraid that Rugg's results may take away your toy by demonstrating there is
no code to crack?

*) Obviously it's impossible to prove that the VM is meaningless. (You may be
able to _show_ it -- this is what Rugg is trying to do, but that's no proof.)

*) Isn't the VM way too structured to be produced as a hoax?

This is a valid question. Obviously, the VM exhibits structures in a very
complex manner, probably more complex than any author of the Renaissance era
could have been aware of. Why would the author then include these features into
the VM?

Well, perhaps he didn't deliberately do so, but it was just a consequence of
using the grille method, which was moderately straightforward to employ. To
which amount these structures can rise from an otherwise "innocent" grille
method, is AFAIU what Rugg wants to explore.

*) Zitat von Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

...A hoax is
> fantasy deliberately and knowingly presented as truth.
> Therefore, in order to be a hoax, a text has to convey 
> meaning. Glossolalia, grapholalia if you prefer, is 
> something else again: it is meaningless.
> 
> Back to Rugg. The gist of his argument is that
> using a Cardan grid you can generate text with the
> same properties as the Voynich. Therefore, the
> Voynich is a hoax. That does not follow at all.
> Using an English dictionary and an English 
> grammar, you can produce stuff with the same
> properties as English. Therefore, anything
> written in English is a hoax? Humbug.
> 

Forgive someone who's not a native speaker of English, but my Merriam_Webster
online explains:

"Main Entry: 2hoax
Function: noun
1 : an act intended to trick or dupe : IMPOSTURE
2 : something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication"

Thus, the manuscript as such, the physical book, being produced from nonsense,
but made to look like having serious content, would qualify seriously for a
hoax. (The text itself doesn't.)

Besides, IMHO it's fairly pointless to argue whether Rugg's theory establishes
the VM as a "hoax", a "fraud" or a "forgery." In any case, Rugg's hpyothesis is
"no sensible content", and that's the crux.

Cheers,

   Elmar, who'd like to see more discussion of the VM again


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