"Not Deciphering The Voynich Manuscriptraft" by rba

Podcast: LessWrong (Curated & Popular) · LessWrong

Opublikowano: 2026-10-15

The Piltdown man was the most successful artifactual hoax of all time. The relevant skull was a chimeric melange of orangutan and human bone fragments from several individuals “discovered” in England in 1912, and meant to represent a transitional form between apes and humans. Given the intense interest in evolutionary biology, it took almost fifty years to discover the Piltdown fabrication. The study of human evolution was derailed. Adding insult to injury, a further sixty years was required to conclusively demonstrate the identity of the culpable fraudster. If you must look up the identity of this scientific blasphemer, go ahead, but we w...