Re: Re: VMs: Gordon Rugg's study follow ups

["jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello  Rene,
  
  
=======  You wrote:  

>
>Sorry for coming back to this, but this has _NOT_
>been demonstrated. It has been claimed. Some examples
>have been presented which are only very superficially
>similar to the VMs text.
>
>This is a key distinction.

Exactly - recently, when I visited Rugg's site,  I could see he  tried  to  rephrase 
his statements more carefully, i.e.  to do the half turn without changing the direction 
:-). He says ( with >>):

 >>I showed that it was possible to produce text very similar to ?Voynichese?, 
 with the same linguistic complexities, by using a modified form of a Cardan grille 
 and tables of gibberish syllables, to produce quasi-random meaningless 
 gibberish. 

What he did was rather  primitive reverse engineering: he chopped VM words in 
to pre-, mid- a suffixes, and mixed then to get "VM look alike words". The 
Cardan grill is of course just a red herring, he could have used magician's hat and 
his quasi-randomness is  quasi-nonrandomness as well, which proves 
nothing.

>>There have been some interesting debates about whether it's possible to prove 
that something is a hoax, as opposed to proving that a hoax is possible. From the 
Verifier point of view, this isn't important: the key point is that I found a possible 
explanation that had been previously considered practically impossible.

The sentence about the the Verifier is utterly faulty - let me use the example from
Gord's field of expertise, the computer  program verification: to prove
 "the computer program is working" or "the computer program is possibly working"
 makes the whole world of difference. 
To prove  the vague statement that something is "possible" is also 
generally useless, it is the probability of it which counts. Even 5 percent of probability
is a "possibility" while in reality it is 95 percent improbability. 
Another  logical lapse: how could have been his explanation "found previously impossible"
 if he was the first to find it?  :-). Also notice his obvious stress on first  person singular.

>>I think that several separate pieces of evidence point towards the manuscript 
having been produced by Edward Kelley, long considered the prime suspect.

Those pieces were  never presented by Gord and Kelley was never seriously 
considered the PRIME suspect.  This  is the stuff the dreams are made off :-).

>>So even if we could prove that Kelley did produce the Voynich manuscript, 
that wouldn't conclusively prove whether it contains code or gibberish ? either 
would be in character for him.

He must have read in our discussion that Kelley wrote more of  "sensical" text  than 
not, however he  is still wrong: how much  gibberish should Kelley really write in 
 his lifetime  to say it "would be in character for him" ? :-). It was hoax that was  in Kelleys 
character but not gibberish. Also  watch  how cleverly is he bringing the statements 
he can also  easily refute: why would anybody think  - except him,  of course - that to 
 prove gibberish we need to prove  it was Kelley?  And his hiden agenda?           
Well, it is obvious: there  is  no need now for him to prove it was Kelley!
He just brought him in as a bonus, that's all!  Unfortunately, it does not work: 
 it was his only "proof" for a hoax and he cannot  dismiss  him now. 

As you can see, the whole smorgasbord of  ideas works against him. It  
falls in pieces and they - individually  or in a whole -  simply do not make for any 
decent proof.

Jan
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