Comment by InsideOutSanta
21 hours ago
> would be unlikely to have emerged from someone who was just putting gibberish on the page
People often assert this, but I'm unsure of any evidence. If I wrote a manuscript in a pretend language, I would expect it to end up with language-like patterns, some automatically and some intentionally.
Humans aren't random number generators, and they aren't stupid. Therefore, the implicit claim that a human could not create a manuscript containing gibberish that exhibits many language-like patterns seems unlikely to be true.
So we have two options:
1. This is either a real language or an encoded real language that we've never seen before and can't decrypt, even after many years of attempts
2. Or it is gibberish that exhibits features of a real language
I can't help but feel that option 2 is now the more likely choice.
For some reason your comment reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU-wH8SrFro
Japanese psychedelic band Kikagaku Moyo writes lyrics that are basically Japanese baby talk / babble.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=idfOZFdTM-8&t=2m39s
https://genius.com/Kikagaku-moyo-dripping-sun-lyrics
And let’s not forget “Ken Lee”
https://youtu.be/vUAaHkGpJy8
Or Dead Can Dance, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEVPYVpzMRA .
It's harder to generate good gibberish than it appears at first.
Creating gibberish with the statistical properties of a natural language is a very hard task if you do this hundreds of years before the discovery of said statistical properties.
I'm not sure where this claim keeps coming from. Voynichese doesn't exhibit the statistical qualities of any known natural language. In a very limited sense, yes, but on balance, no. There is too much repetition for that.
Those statistical properties are inherent in how the human brain works.
Why?