Slashdot Mirror
AI May Have Finally Decoded the Mysterious 'Voynich Manuscript' (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Since its discovery over a hundred years ago, the 240-page Voynich manuscript, filled with seemingly coded language and inscrutable illustrations, of has confounded linguists and cryptographers. Using artificial intelligence, Canadian researchers have taken a huge step forward in unraveling the document's hidden meaning. Named after Wilfrid Voynich, the Polish book dealer who procured the manuscript in 1912, the document is written in an unknown script that encodes an unknown language -- a double-whammy of unknowns that has, until this point, been impossible to interpret. The Voynich manuscript contains hundreds of fragile pages, some missing, with hand-written text going from left to right. Most pages are adorned with illustrations of diagrams, including plants, nude figures, and astronomical symbols. But as for the meaning of the text -- nothing. No clue. For Greg Kondrak, an expert in natural language processing at the University of Alberta, this seemed a perfect task for artificial intelligence. With the help of his grad student Bradley Hauer, the computer scientists have taken a big step in cracking the code, discovering that the text is written in what appears to be the Hebrew language, and with letters arranged in a fixed pattern. To be fair, the researchers still don't know the meaning of the Voynich manuscript, but the stage is now set for other experts to join the investigation. The researchers used an AI to study "the text of the 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' as it was written in 380 different languages, looking for patterns," reports Gizmodo. Following this training, the AI analyzed the Voynich gibberish, concluding with a high rate of certainty that the text was written in encoded Hebrew."
The researchers then entertained a hypothesis that the script was created with alphagrams, words in which text has been replaced by an alphabetically ordered anagram. "Armed with the knowledge that text was originally coded from Hebrew, the researchers devised an algorithm that could take these anagrams and create real Hebrew words." Finally, "the researchers deciphered the opening phrase of the manuscript" and ran it through Google Translate to convert it into passable English: "She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people." The study appears in Transactions of the Association of Computational Linguistics .
The researchers then entertained a hypothesis that the script was created with alphagrams, words in which text has been replaced by an alphabetically ordered anagram. "Armed with the knowledge that text was originally coded from Hebrew, the researchers devised an algorithm that could take these anagrams and create real Hebrew words." Finally, "the researchers deciphered the opening phrase of the manuscript" and ran it through Google Translate to convert it into passable English: "She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people." The study appears in Transactions of the Association of Computational Linguistics .
STOP using this phrase in each bi-weekly story about this book only to say at the bottom of each article it "isn't really decoded".
It's "decoded" when the text is readable.
Citations sorely needed...
[citation needed]
Link to the results?
Especially since the indigenous peoples of North America didn't have any written languages.
What if they let loose the same AI on the Lorem Ipsum text that we know to be meaningless. Would it come to a similar conclusion? We humans want to see patters where there are none.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
...signals. God luck!
The book has been dated to around the middle of the 15th century. A native American language is highly unlikely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't translate it!!!
Your brain will turn into mush from colluding with the RUSSIANS!! RUSSIANS!! RUSSIANS!!
AI can't make sweet love.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Failing to find any Hebrew scholars who could help validate their findings, the researchers eventually resorted to using Google Translate,
(Source)
This "research" is a joke.
"Armed with the knowledge that text was originally coded from Hebrew, the researchers devised an algorithm that could take these anagrams and create real Hebrew words." Finally, "the researchers deciphered the opening phrase of the manuscript" and ran it through Google Translate to convert it into passable English:
Fuck no. This has presumably been written by a human who was in control of the process. You don't let something "impartial" like Google Translate at it which will not balk at making sense from noise. Instead you ask a Hebrew scholar to get a proper assessment of which actual language competency might be involved and reflected here (it's entirely possible that somebody created a joke using a dictionary but no language knowledge of his own to speak of, but even that can be figured out with human intelligence and knowledge).
Hi Al.
In brief, the manuscript says, "Dear World, this is my esoteric theory of the nature of the universe. I wrote it because I am very very smart, and you should pay attention to me, and shower me with honors. Because it is esoteric and holds the key to all metaphysical knowledge, I have written it such that only the most intelligent and worthy may know its secrets. However, if no one decodes it, I will die happy because it proves I was the smartest person alive. Sincerely, Yaddayadda."
It's more like the Chess Turk phenomenon: it is really amazing what people can attribute to some mechanism given some steampunk explanation. If they had cracked this, there would be more than a single line making sense after Google Translate and a hopeful human not versed in Hebrew had a go at beating sense into line noise.
Is Mesoamerica considered a part of North America in English?
Ezekiel 23:20
you would think over time people would become less gullible, not more.
and sure, if you train an AI long and hard enough, it will probably be able to tickle out something that looks like meaning from that nonsense. just like if you train an AI to see dogs, it can identify weird dogs in literally any image.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
i could live a little longer in this prison
https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
its the puzzle that keeps on giving!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Is proof this is a fake. They ran their algorithm, got something almost sensible for the first sentence, and the rest was total gibberish but they needed to publish.
https://xkcd.com/593/
It is obvious when you think about it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's ... not NORTH America you shitflooding trolling idiot.
Doesn't it happen with people that sometimes you admire their work, only for them to later tell you that they had no idea themselves what they were doing?
Ezekiel 23:20
you would think over time people would become less gullible, not more.
One would think so, but Creationism is on the rise again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand the Voynich Manuscript. The apparently gibberish is extremely well-crafted, and without a solid grasp of linguistics most suggested translations will confuse a typical researcher's head. There's also the manuscript's occult outlook, which is deftly woven into its illustrations- its age-old philosophy draws heavily from Alchemy and Pagan allegory.
If it's contended that the words are encoded as alphagrams (e.g. the letters of the words are sorted in as specific order), all that's needed to disprove that is find a counterexample.
On the first fucking page, there's a word transcribed as "ro" followed a few lines later by a word transcribed as "chtor".
In other words, there is no consistent alphagram ordering. In one word, "r" comes before "o", while in another, "o" comes before "r".
I would be a lot more convinced if they listed their claimed alphabetical order and showed what percentage of "words" follow that order.
In short, Fuck computational linguistics. "Ooh, look at me! My field is so ill-defined, I can subscribe to any of dozens of contradictory models and still be taken seriously!"
I hear they are 3D printing a spaceship to take us to Mars.
Probably is Turkish or Indian in origin and is a medical text. It's probably not a cipher, just a dead language.
Since its discovery over a hundred years ago, the 240-page Voynich manuscript, filled with seemingly coded language and inscrutable illustrations, of has confounded linguists and cryptographers.
"of has confounded" - ?
Ah, I get it. It's not terrible editing, it's more mysterious encryption!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Wasn't it determined to be an encoded obgyn manual last year?
It's part of the North American continent.
Can AI help with your fat retarded ass?
... the text is really just gibberish, a practical joke created by the author, and the AI is just an ~infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters~ type of thing, eventually "finding" something that may make sense.
The Electron rocket has 3D printed metal parts in the engine.
Some new high end sportscar (forget which) has really organic-looking 3D printed metal brake calipers.
Sure they can. In Japan they only make love with AIs
it's just more religious fuckwittery from that part of the world.
Just what we need.
It hasn't. And if you actually read about it, it was a tool used to assist humans, it was not fed the manuscript like cookie dough only to spit out delicious cookies later on. Enough with the clickbait and the hyperbole.
fuck off, misogynist garbage.
i could live a little longer in this prison
They use a buzzword to get into news feeds and obtain relevance and further funding. There is no AI, they didn't use AI, all they did is write some software to compare pieces of text.
AI Superstar K. Christopher McKinstry's GAC could have solved this if he didn't end his own life.
The manuscript is intriguing, but we can't say it's important without knowing the message. It could be entirely meaningless.
-Dave
They "decoded" but don't know the meaning of it?
"Drink your Ovaltine" - a crummy commercial.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
The AI book that everyone should get is available for pre-order. "Artificial Intelligence For Dummies" by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.
"for dark is the suede that mows like a harvest" /sarcasm.
Wow, some pretty serious research here...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
does being against one woman mean he's against all women? are you a misandrist because you don't like him? cmon.
As if that wasn't coded enough
That's exactly what an AI would say. You're an AI, aren't you?
Thankfully she didn't win! She was horrible. Trump has been pretty good so far!
I was saying this just the other day about the Zodiac killer's coded messages.. what if the author made a coding error? It would be so easy to do and just a couple errors could render the whole thing totally useless.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's ambiguous, but acceptable use IMO (as an American).
Often North America refers to the whole Continent, but usually just US, Mexico, Canada, (Greenland?).
I believe the Mayans were into Mexico though, which is unambiguously North America.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I look forward to seeing the fully decoded text. Until now all indications were that it was a "spooky" coffee table book full of nonsense text.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If they can get coherent results using only machine translation, not understanding the base language themselves, this gives an even stronger claim in some ways that they have really cracked the code. We will know they aren't hand-tweaking the results to get what they want, because they don't actually know what they want. They only know what comes out the other end of the process.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
as an anti-Trump plot and then all the alt-right bros could parrot it in comments sections.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Have gnu, will travel.
It's a cookbook!
awesome First Post troll, look at all the biters
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It will be exciting to see this process applied to the untranslated Indus Valley Language and Easter Island glyphs.
http://content.time.com/time/w...
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Everybody knows that the Voynich manuscript actually describes how to bypass the booby-traps on Oak Island to recover the Ark of the Covenant hidden there by Mayan Templars. I saw a documentary about that on the History Channel, Rick Only offered $50 for it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well it's not South America, so which of the two American continents do you suppose it is?
Not sure what to make of the decoded title - "To Serve Man"
Once you translate a LONG text , then YES it means you have soemthing. but analyzing a few words / a single sentence ? Time and time again we get news somebody found out the code on the infamous manuscript, and it NEVER pans out. Heck, if they got so much success for 1 sentence, WHY oh WHY there is no report on translating a whole page which would be a good evidence ? Instead we get this report about one sentence. Reproducibility is key to demonstrate that the manuscript is translated. If they got a page call me. Until then raise your skepticism shield, this is research result N+1 into pretending they found a solution.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Which, strangely, doesn't seem to be helping with their birth rate problem.
Nonaggression works!
That's the biggest news since it was translated completely a year ago! Wow!
AI can only know what humans know. If humans consider something impossible then so does the AI.
All AI is doing is getting to answers faster than humans can.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Links needed
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Don't forget the 3D printed shower curtain rings.
As soon as you see "anagram" mentioned as part of the process to decode a cipher, you can stop reading, it's not a solution. If you allow for an arbitrary arrangement of letters or symbols as part of the solution, you can arrive at pretty much *any* text as the result, with no real connection to the cipher you started with.
Based upon the alleged translation, it sounds like the mystical writings of a religious nut. Those people are dedicated and have the time and motivation to produce such stuff.
I used to know one such person. She would involve you in her never-ending stream of consciousness conversation; you were never privy to the beginning, and you never saw the end either. You'd get dropped into the middle and struggle constantly to try to figure out the basic landmarks, characters and plot points. Mostly you wanted to limit your time in the crazy zone.
Makes sense to me. I vote that it was produced by some religious zealot.
Don't feed the Trump trolls. They are desperate for attention and you just gave it some.
Actually, I apologize.
I am very stupid, and was operating under the very stupid assumption that Central America isn't part of the North American Continent.
Perhaps, one day, I will not be so very, very bad at geography.
And flat earthers. Very strange, they were almost extinct. Similarly, conspiracy theorists seemed also to be on the decline but they're very common these days too.
I've heard rumors that APK is another persona for Christopher Reimer
Actually when it was decoded the researches found a url. They typed in the address and received the following message:
Penis.
Link
Slashdot history ... just search it. ...
Or google
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
citations are easy found via google, or other search engines.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Lol, from angel'o'sphere?
If they said the sky was blue I'd have to go outside and check.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
SLASHDOT history? Well at least that gives me more of a clue. But that's a reference nearly as bad as the Weekly World News.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I think you were thinking of this: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24987-mexican-plants-could-break-code-on-gibberish-manuscript/, which is about the drawings in the manuscript, NOT the words. I suggest you ask your doctor about age related dementia.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No, ... and that the people who speak the language in that manuscript lived around that area. ...
I'm not thinking about hat.
I'm thinking that I'm sitting in a mixed Mexican/Guamaltetic bar
And all this is known since a decade minimum
Improve your google foo?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why? /. you find about 4-5 stories, read them, filter for +5 comments. ... probably more easy than googeling (I admit google is a bitch these days)
Put the manuscript name into the search box of
Easy
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
After all, you can enter random meaningless strings of nonsense Japanese characters into Google translate and it will fit the closest English it can to what you entered. You end up with some semblance of real English, but the original text was literally nonsense to begin with. (Although the result can be genius in its own way -- a while ago I tried one random string and Google returned "bitches in the sky." Not bad.)
Eh. No. You're trolling.
I don't know if you knew this, but patent nonsense is also easily found via Google and other search engines. This is especially true of the Voynich manuscript. This is one reason why it is considered courteous for a person making an argument to give some pointers as to which information they believe supports that argument.
This is a random Internet comment section, so nobody expects a comprehensive literature review. But, you know, something.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
To translate Hebrew to English? These seem like serious scientists, unable to wait five minutes to get a hold of a rabbi before publishing...
A prank or something written by a madman. Even if it is highly plausible, knowing what the prank is about is interesting by itself.
It is noteworthy that it seems to follow patterns of natural languages (ex: Zipf law). So it is unlikely to be random.
didn't kabbala use to do something similar? Is this just a circular joke?
From Wikipedia :-
Linguistic mysticism of Hebrew
Kabbalistic thought extended Biblical and Midrashic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language and through the Torah into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible contain esoteric meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. Names of God in Judaism have further prominence, though fluidity of meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name.
Maybe it is someones godly remix?
Look, they didn’t “use an AI”, they ran it through a pattern matching
machine until they came up with a hit. And when they came up with a “hit”,
it was an 80% match. Match to what? The encypherment they are proposing is
alphabetically ordered acronyms.
That’s a stunningly stupid way of encrypting a text, especially if it’s a
reference work which you presumably want to read in real time, instead of
having to laboriously decrypt it. Especially when that text contains
technical terms and the encryption method is hugely lossy.
Example:
*Ahstt a gilnnnstuy dipstu awy fo ceginnprty a ettx, aceeillpsy fi ist a
ceeeefnrr korw chhiw ouy abelmprsuy antw ot ader in aelr eimt, adeinst fo
aghinv ot abilloorsuy cdeprty it. Aceeillpsy ehnw ahtt ettx acinnost
accehilnt emrst adn eht ceinnoprty dehmot is eghluy lossy.*
And it’s worse for Hebrew, because the triconsonantal root system it uses
means that for any given word, there will usually be several anagrams of it
which are also words. Oh, and worse again, because unpointed Hebrew doesn’t
encode short vowels, so you can also add vowels back into the “decrypted”
text until you get something you like.
This is *Bible Code* level nonsense. What they’ve done is find that if you
map the Voynich letters to one of any possible of the possible alphabets,
and rearrange those letters in any way you want,then there’s almost a match
to Hebrew, if you are allowed to pick which words you decrypt from the
myriad of possiblities, add the missing vowels as you please, then correct
the result until you get something meaningful out of Google Translate (and
that’s a whole *other* bucket of worms). Also, let’s just ignore that many
of the words in the Voynich manuscript don’t fit Hebrew word length
patterns, and also let’s just ignore the 20% of words which *don’t *fit,
even given the already extremely forgiving pick-and-mix method.
Much more interesting than all the totally predictable Russia trolls. If I didn't think Slashdot/Dice was so idiotic, I'd say the mass of Russia stories were a honeypot to gather IP addresses, linguistic analysis, etc. of the Russia trolls. But it's more believable to me they are just after traffic, any traffic. I wonder how many click on ads?
My guess is that there's a connection. Some of those that take this bible thing serious think that their book could in some way be wrong if the Earth wasn't flat, so it MUST be flat because the book MUST be right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Except that the book doesn't say that. Of course, when you get into people who are literalists then even obviously poetical statement is treated as literal truth.
Flat earthers in my experience seem to be much more politically minded than religious, believing there's a big conspiracy out there to hide the truth. They're individuals, they don't learn flat earth beliefs from their parents or community, it's something they pick up as an adult.
I've had my share of religiously motivated flat earthers. And yes, the bible actually talks about a firmament spanning above the earth and stuff, and for literalists this means that it cannot be a globe. Because on a globe, a "firmament above" is pretty much impossible.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope, I can't find what you are talking about. Must have been that worm in your Tequila.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Just did that, only one of the six articles that come up even mention the New World, and it's a link back to the article I posted on biologists recognizing some of the drawings and nothing about the language at all.
Crap in comments is just so much bragging, and is not to be taken seriously.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Which company will adapt the manuscript for TV? It has lots of words and stuff, but I need more visuals.
Yes, there are Mayan cities (and modern speakers of Mayan languages) in the states of Chiapas and Yucatan in Mexico, and (I'm guessing here) in states in between. I would think it shouldn't be hard to rule out Mayan languages for the Voynich ms, though, since their phonologies (and in particular their sets of phonemes) are quite different from typical European languages, or from Hebrew for that matter.
BTW, in case anyone is wondering, the Aztecs (up in central Mexico) also had "books" (usually called codices), but the consensus is that until the arrival of the Spaniards (particularly the Spanish missionaries), these did not contain written language, only pictures and pictograms. Given that the Mayans a few hundred miles to the SE of the Aztecs had true writing, I suppose that if the Spaniards hadn't shown up, Nahuatl (the Aztecs' language) would have eventually gotten written down.
As for the OP, I think the response here is quite correct: citation needed. Afaik, the Voynich ms has *not* been decoded (at least until now), and it almost certainly is not in any Amerindian language. And given that it's been dated to before 1440, and doesn't in the least resemble any Mayan or Aztec codices, it is highly unlikely to be in an Amerindian language, decoded or otherwise.
It is a still living middle or south american language, and the plants are from there, too.
I don't remember if the script was invented by the author was also an old existing one.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
On an old iPad that is not so easy, as when you google in one tab, and come back to the /. awnser tab, it reloads the tab and you lose the message you have typed so far. ... while there are now to many hits about the last 'finding' the older hits are still to find ... /. already 3 or 4 times ladt 5 years ...
Why don't you google 'voynich manuscript language'
The plants are most certainly meso american, the question is still anout the language, some think arabic, some think a variant of an Aztec language. That was covered on
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The articles I found said nothing about the script, only about the plants. If you have something different, post a link.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
THIS is the vaunted wonderful user interface of the Apple-o-Sphere? By the four balls of Jesus Mary and Joseph, but that is laughably bad! I know that I got rid of my Apple device because I didn't like the user interface ... probably before the iPad physically existed (thinks - I still had my Psion with a touch screen and two week battery life) ... years ago nonetheless. But for fuck's sake, you;d hope that thy improved the UI/UX somewhere in the intervening years.
If there was an iDevice seller in town, I'd be half-tempted to go there to have a laugh at how bad they still are.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Well, it is an old iPad 2, running iOS 8. ... but the iBrooks App still is not back on its old level. The rest does not interest me much. ...
I did mot upgrade because the newer iOS versions were for a while plain ugly.
E.g. the iBook reading App on this iPad still looks like a book. But Notes and Calendar are already plain ugly.
From time to time I check newer iPads
Both google maps and apple maps are close to unusable for what a traveler is doing with a map app
I have an Lenovo Yoga Book. Does not mount as USB drive ... the package description was unclear about the fact that it does not take a phone sim card ... the UI is ... well 'primitive?'
I simply can not get it that Apple and Android developers create Apps that try to look like a 'Minority Report' future UI and are close to unusable ...
E.g. on an iPad you can mot correct an incorrectly typed mail address. You have to delete it and type it again. Or copy paste it into the mail text, edit it there and copy paste it back.
Android has no 'looking glass' to position the cursor if you want to correct some typing. But they have that "use the space bar as a scroll bar' to position the cursor. Some /. poster told me about that. Obviously on my Yoga book it only works with the on screen keyboard, and not with the watcom keyboard.
The watcom keyboard includes a mouse pad. But multi touch to scroll and zoom does not work. Randomly however it scrolls down. Never made it to scroll up.
Then again I read a few month ago that a certain browser (don't remember the brand) 'finally' added one screen down scrolling by pressing 'space'.
A few weeks ago I realized my 'yoga book touch pad is scrolling down' comes from me accidentally hitting space.
I never used in in any browser space bar to scroll a page. So when I read that a few weeks ago I tested it, as I could not believe it. For what actually do we have PgUp and PgDown?
Anyway, so much to modern user interfaces ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.