RE: VMs: Proving Gibberish

["Marke Fincher" <markefincher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nick says:
> AIUI, Rugg argues that, to get his postulated grille-and-table mechanism
to
> produce what we see (but without any obvious mechanism-based
fingerprints),
> the grille must be moved randomly (ie *inconsistently*) over the table

If the grille WAS moved randomly over the table I don't think it would
produce
the number of exact word repetitions we see.  If the process that generates
one word is identical but independent to the generation of neighbouring
words
the expected proportion of doubled words would be 1/(p*p) and tripled words
1/(p*p*p) (given the chance 1/p of generating a particular word).  In
practice
the occurrence of multiple words in VMS is much higher than this.

Of course if the 'random process' was arbitrary human choice then this would
not apply, but then if the aim was to simulate meaningful looking text,
wouldn't
most people choose a different place on the table when they saw the same
word
(or beginning) coming out twice or three times in a row?   Unless they
couldn't
be bothered to check!  That seems unbelievably sloppy given the
sophistication
seen elsewhere in the work.  As does repeating words on laziness grounds.

Given that the multiple repeated words seem unlikely in any plain-text or as
the product of any cipher system, and occur more frequently than should be
expected by a random process, we could postulate that the repetitions were
deliberately inserted *just because* they are unnatural-looking.  They are
an
important part of the mysterious quality the VMS has and perhaps the
author(s)
knew that they would be!

Marke

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