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Author Topic: The Voynich Manuscript, aka the Alien book, is not a hoax  (Read 10810 times)
Falconeer
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on: June 25, 2013, 06:41:52 AM

They don't actually know if it's alien or what, but the legendary Voynich Manuscript, which to me resembles a roleplaying manual sourcebook from another dimension, could actually have a meaning and not be just a prank as many who have failed to decode it had concluded in the past.


Mind, these quotes and claims are not from The Onion. At all.

Source: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-voynich-text-hoax.html

 
Quote
Theoretical physicist Marcelo Montemurro and colleague Damián H. Zanette have published a paper in the journal PLOS ONE claiming that the Voynich text is likely not a hoax as some have suggested. The two researchers along with others at the University of Manchester in the U.K. analyzed a digital copy of the text and say that computer assisted analyses of the "book" suggest it does harbor meaning, though what that might be is still a mystery.
 


The whole study is here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066344

Quote
The Voynich manuscript has remained so far as a mystery for linguists and cryptologists. While the text written on medieval parchment -using an unknown script system- shows basic statistical patterns that bear resemblance to those from real languages, there are features that suggested to some researches that the manuscript was a forgery intended as a hoax. Here we analyse the long-range structure of the manuscript using methods from information theory. We show that the Voynich manuscript presents a complex organization in the distribution of words that is compatible with those found in real language sequences. We are also able to extract some of the most significant semantic word-networks in the text. These results together with some previously known statistical features of the Voynich manuscript, give support to the presence of a genuine message inside the book.



« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 07:06:03 AM by Falconeer »

ghost
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Reply #1 on: June 25, 2013, 07:08:35 AM

I always thought that the pictures in this looked like they would be some sort of manual on herbalism and possibly witchcraft or ancient "doctoring" (which many times were one in the same, if methods were scrutinized).  We will probably find that it's pretty bland stuff, once they get it all translated out.
Falconeer
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Reply #2 on: June 25, 2013, 07:13:43 AM

The thing is that, if I remember correctly, it shows plants that are not supposed to exist on Earth.

Also, about bland:

[SFW?]


ghost
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Reply #3 on: June 25, 2013, 07:14:34 AM

No, I meant the text is probably pretty bland. 

I seriously doubt it's alien though. 
Falconeer
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Reply #4 on: June 25, 2013, 07:15:30 AM

Oh I doubt that too. Just to clarify.

ghost
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Reply #5 on: June 25, 2013, 07:20:21 AM

In that lower picture it looks as though the same word (golfedg?) is repeated several times per line.  I guess this is possibly the work of someone that got ahold of some magic mushrooms or was seriously psychotic.  I've seen similar rants and drawings done by schizophrenics.  I'm sure that disease existed many years ago, too.
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Reply #6 on: June 25, 2013, 07:35:39 AM

So they basically found the 15th century equivelent of Time Cube?

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Reply #7 on: June 25, 2013, 08:11:26 AM


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Reply #8 on: June 25, 2013, 08:13:48 AM

Oh look, it's the full Voynich Manuscript: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39720/books/Voynich.pdf

sample:
tazelbain
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Reply #9 on: June 25, 2013, 08:20:46 AM

Obviously a guide to making the Philosopher's Stone.  All the great Alchemists keep their notes encoded.

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Reply #10 on: June 25, 2013, 08:44:34 AM

The thing is that, if I remember correctly, it shows plants that are not supposed to exist on Earth.

I am not sure that means anything. I saw some exotic animal-books recently - from the time of Maro Polo - and while the images of rhinoceros were decently realistic (although with excessive 'armor plates') the book also featured unicorns. Including a description of the uses for its horn.

So it might be authentic and contain what passed as 'truth' for the author. Or maybe it was just an intellectual exercise by someone who liked ciphers and language.

Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic!
ghost
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Reply #11 on: June 25, 2013, 08:50:18 AM

Surely you're not suggesting that unicorns aren't real...  Ohhhhh, I see.
Rishathra
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Reply #12 on: June 25, 2013, 08:53:28 AM

Clearly it's the log of a 15th century scientist who was abducted by aliens/fell through a portal/discovered a stargate, and was transported to an alien world.  There, he learned the native language, and tried to keep a log of all the wondrous sites he witnessed.

Clearly.

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Falconeer
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Reply #13 on: June 25, 2013, 08:55:32 AM

I sense sarchasm there. Can you prove that's not what actually happened, Rishathra?

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Reply #14 on: June 25, 2013, 08:56:11 AM

The onus is never on anyone to prove what hasn't happened, but rather to prove what has happened. Skeptics are always the de facto winner until proven otherwise.

So, your question is sorta goofy.

Edit: This is why religious zealots (and just people who generally believe shit blindly) are a dying breed.
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Reply #15 on: June 25, 2013, 09:00:56 AM

This is why religious zealots (and just people who generally believe shit blindly) are a dying breed.[citation needed]

FIFY




Sorry!
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 09:02:36 AM by calapine »

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Reply #16 on: June 25, 2013, 09:04:45 AM

The onus is never on anyone to prove what hasn't happened, but rather to prove what has happened. Skeptics are always the de facto winner until proven otherwise.

So, your question is sorta goofy.

Edit: This is why religious zealots (and just people who generally believe shit blindly) are a dying breed.

As Sagan popularized, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 09:07:34 AM by sickrubik »

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Falconeer
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Reply #17 on: June 25, 2013, 09:05:14 AM

Except I WAS making fun of the religious zealots' faulty logic.  why so serious?

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Reply #18 on: June 25, 2013, 09:32:52 AM

Probably a case of a fake language made up by schizophrenia with a good dose of hypergraphia. The repeated words are an interesting 'tell', if you ask me. The delusional construct is so abstract that the 'rules' of language itself dissolve in the mind of the author.

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Reply #19 on: June 25, 2013, 10:05:59 AM

Not sarcasm.  More like that would be totally cool if that's what it was, but yeah, most likely it's just some schizo.  In fact, my first thought when reading about it was 'cool, aliens!'

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Reply #20 on: June 25, 2013, 10:20:00 AM


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Reply #21 on: June 25, 2013, 12:35:32 PM

That's my favorite episode ever.  I was young enough that it genuinely creeped me out.
Surlyboi
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Reply #22 on: June 25, 2013, 12:46:13 PM

IT'S A COOKBOOK!

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
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Reply #23 on: June 25, 2013, 12:56:07 PM

I've seen those claims before, but until something substantive comes out of it I don't see what the point of it is.  The fact that letters seem to match real language patterns suggests it's not in any kind of complex code, but since it doesn't match patterns of any known language, and we don't even know what the topic is, we still can't know what it means, if anything.

The most worrying thing for me in the book is less the text and more the illustrations.  I don't know enough about botany to be able to back this up myself, but I've spoken with people who are pretty confident that a lot of the illustrations are just composites of various types of plant parts combined in weird ways, which suggests to me either the book is based on fantasy/hearsay, or deliberate intellectual dishonesty, neither of which really instill me with a lot of hope in the book being translated.

Skeptoid did an interesting article about it, if you want a good read (their take on these kinds of things is generally pretty interesting, I think).
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 12:59:35 PM by Kail »
jakonovski
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Reply #24 on: June 25, 2013, 12:58:20 PM

I don't know what it is, but I know it needs to be the plot device for a Ubisoft game.
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Reply #25 on: June 25, 2013, 01:26:02 PM

It's worth noting that PLOS ONE is not exactly at the pinnacle of scientific integrity. It isn't tabloid science by any means, but they cut some corners on the peer review process in some ways and also charge authors to publish, which to my mind creates a bit of a conflict of interest.

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ghost
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Reply #26 on: June 25, 2013, 01:42:46 PM

The repeated words are an interesting 'tell', if you ask me.

Well, there's that and then there's the crazy Pink Floyd video illustrations. 
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Reply #27 on: June 25, 2013, 01:54:01 PM


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Reply #28 on: June 25, 2013, 02:39:54 PM

I think that possibility has been investigated, and the conclusion was that because the script and "language" didn't seem to evolve over the course of the writing, it is probably not the product of a schizophrenic.  The letters and "words" are pretty much the same regardless of where they appear.

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Falconeer
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Reply #29 on: June 25, 2013, 05:07:00 PM


Kail
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Reply #30 on: June 25, 2013, 05:28:47 PM

I'm genuinely kind of curious about the alien thing, now.  I'm not super informed about the topic, but this is the first time I'd heard it mentioned in relation to this book.  Is it just "we don't know, therefore aliens" or is there an actual theory somewhere?  Do they think an alien wrote it, like, on parchment, with a quill pen or whatever?  Or someone went to an alien world and wrote about it, but for some reason could only write in Elvish?  There aren't pictures of aliens, or alien planets, or flying saucers, or anything obviously matching with the modern popular image of aliens, and we don't know what the text is saying, so I'm not seeing the alien connection... where is the alien connection?  WHERE IS IT?
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Reply #31 on: June 25, 2013, 06:43:13 PM


Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
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Reply #32 on: June 26, 2013, 12:32:20 AM

I love weird stuff like this. The fact that it exists is awesome, and if it's a hoax then kudos to the hoaxers.

vampirehipi23: I would enjoy a book written by a monkey and turned into a movie rather than this.
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Reply #33 on: June 26, 2013, 02:26:27 AM

I'm genuinely kind of curious about the alien thing, now.  I'm not super informed about the topic, but this is the first time I'd heard it mentioned in relation to this book.  Is it just "we don't know, therefore aliens" or is there an actual theory somewhere?  Do they think an alien wrote it, like, on parchment, with a quill pen or whatever?  Or someone went to an alien world and wrote about it, but for some reason could only write in Elvish?  There aren't pictures of aliens, or alien planets, or flying saucers, or anything obviously matching with the modern popular image of aliens, and we don't know what the text is saying, so I'm not seeing the alien connection... where is the alien connection?  WHERE IS IT?

There you go:

http://ancientvisitors.blogspot.com/2012/04/voynich-manuscript-could-be-ancient.html

http://skepticalhumanities.com/2011/02/19/is-the-voynich-manuscript-the-product-of-an-alien-intelligence/

http://reinep.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/new-analysis-voynich-manuscript-seems-to-be-written-in-alien-code/

http://thehairpin.com/2011/02/aliens-left-their-book-behind-in-the-1400s

http://bruhaspati.com/mysteries/mysterious-voynich-manuscript-written-in-alien-code.html

http://ancientvisitors.blogspot.com/2012/04/voynich-manuscript-could-be-ancient.html


... and so on.

Falconeer
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Reply #34 on: June 26, 2013, 02:29:17 AM

To balance out things a bit, here's a woman who claims to know the plants in the book and understand some of the code.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RxLFL80NB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f92RAhdgpx4

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