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A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

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61–70 of 116 posts

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#61

If you had bought this picture for $2 later to find out it's worth $5,000,000, would you feel an obligation to share some of the proceeds with the shop from which it was purchased?

If I had a good relationship with the store, or if it's a well-kept store that's a substantial boon to the community, sure. But otherwise it's like trading stocks - the seller was betting that the value is low and will continue to be low. Would you give money to the trader who sold you a stock that later dramatically rose in value?

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming there will be a technological civilization in 137 years, I give it more than 50% that archive.org will be present in some form directly descendent from the archive.org of today.

Why 50%?

Because I don't feel very confident in the result, I just feel it's more likely than not.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#63
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this. I don't see how they could possibly verify that this is actually an image of BtK when the face is so obscured and the provenance of the image so uncertain. Kagin's is being very cagey about it too: "Any qualified individual wishing to review the authentication dossier and discuss the potential acquisition of the Billy the Kid Croquet Match Tintype are welcome to contact..."

Yeah, it may only be "verified": http://www.truewestmagazine.com/billy-the-kid-experts-weigh-...

Nice rebuttal though. He has a point. Either show your proof refuting the claim or stfu. I get so tired of armchair experts discounting everything because they just know it can't be true, that it would be nice if someone put people like this in their place once in a while.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#64
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make sure that while you're mucking with the DNA that you build in a display mechanism. Future races will get curious as to why trees display pictures on their trunks.

Already happened. Consider peafowls as an extreme examples, but there are many other animals displaying so elaborate patterns that the most reasonable explanation seems to be that someone in the past long gone was playing around with embedding vector displays in DNA.

>the most reasonable explanation seems to be that someone in the past long gone was playing around with embedding vector displays in DNA

I think you're confusing reason with Star Trek. Elaborate, repeating patterns can emerge from any number of random or chaotic processes, that doesn't mean an intelligence tried to encode something in it.

And even if it were plausible, given the amount of DNA we've studied by now, the lack of any obvious discoveries of messages from aliens or our ancient ancestors would suggest that it's not that effective as a storage medium for arbitrary messages.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine, sometime, somewhere, someone got a written manuscript from Plato, or the Buddha, or another figure and just used it to make fire.

That might be unfortunate, but we've set fire to priceless manuscripts intentionally far more often. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_...

More recently, Napoleon's Egyptian Scientific Institute in Cairo: https://www.rt.com/art-and-culture/egypt-library-fire-herita...

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine, sometime, somewhere, someone got a written manuscript from Plato, or the Buddha, or another figure and just used it to make fire.

That might be unfortunate, but we've set fire to priceless manuscripts intentionally far more often. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_...

Also, sacking of Taxila/takshashIla [1] and Nalanda [2] in Indian subcontinent by Huns and Islamic marauders.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxila [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Decline_and_end

The other, brighter side of this coin is the many remarkable rediscovery stories, like that of the Archimedes palimpsest [3] in the 1990s and Indian statesman Chanakya's 3rd century BCE manuscript 'Arthashastra' [4] in the 1900s.

[3] http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthashastra

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#68

[Off Topic] I can't help but think this will help me win the internet. Here is a photograph of Billy the Kid playing croquet. Therefore my argument is valid.

Is reddit starting to migrate to HN or something? I've been seeing a lot of these types of comments recently.

There's some "accent" typical to Reddit comments that I've also been noticing more of here.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#70
post #5

You must have pretty specialised knowledge to look at that photo in the junk shop and say to yourself, "You know, that might be Billy the Kid. I should get this appraised."

Depends. You'd have to look closely at the photo to see him, but the stance and appearance are very close to the other, well-known photograph:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Billy_th...

I'm not anything like an expert, but looking at the enlarged portion, he was the one who came to mind.

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