Re: VMs: Testing Dr. Rugg's hoax theory

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- elvogt@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> > > Just out of curiosity -- what would you accept
> > > as proof that the VM (or any
> > > other coded manuscript) is a hoax?

For me, the problem with Gordon Rugg's hypothesis
is not that he proposes that the VMs is a hoax.
It could be one. It could be a meaningless text
without being a hoax. But Rugg's suggestion about
how it was done is not acceptable.

Jacques:
> > Take now the Codex Seraphinianus. Is it a hoax?
> > Think about it and tell us.

It depends on what the author claimed. Since I
don't think that he claimed anything, I would
say that it is not a hoax.
The recent 'mysterious' book that was sold at
Ebay and discussed on this list, however, is
one to me, although one could say that it is so
obvious that it hardly matters.

> *) How could one prove the validity of Rugg's
> approach?

What Rugg should have done at least is to show
(using  numbers) that the corpus of the VMs text
can be generated using a set of word fragments
that is signficantly smaller than the number
of words in the VMs. This is to estimate the
size of the tables that would have been needed.
This is necessary but not sufficient.

Now either he has not bothered to do this, or
he has tried and failed. Both are pretty bad
news for his theory and his method.

Seriously, the suggestion that all words of 
the Voynich MS can be built up from two or
three parts which are picked from a relatively
small set is a gross oversimplification of Stolfi's 
results: 

http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/00-06-07-word-grammar/

(Note that Rugg apparently did not use this,
but instead used the older version:
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/97-11-12-pms/
)

If he just read half the story of Stolfi's results
and took this half as the truth, he is in violation
of his own 'verifier approach'.

Cheers, Rene


		
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