I'm sure the original authors didn't expect to be incinerated by a volcano (and I'm also sure that the future legibility of their writings would be the very least of their concerns!), but it really bends the mind to imagine their reaction if they could have known how this would all unfold (unroll? Sorry...)
Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
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Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#72I was recently reading the Greek Myths series by Stephen Fry and he makes a point of how there are so many stories we know of but have been lost from ancient texts. Stories and authors that were famous enough to be mentioned by multiple other authors but which themselves have been lost. This collection of scrolls could contain some of those lost stories and the possibility of that is terribly exciting.
>stories we know of but have been lost from ancient texts
So many there's a lengthy list on Wikipedia about it. It's fascinating reading ancients casually referencing works that we otherwise know nothing else about. Without the careful, laborious copying (often imperfect) over the centuries most things would've been lost completely. There's also other works such as maps that did not survive, the Tabula Peutingeriana for example is thought to be a derivative work of one commissioned by Augustus of the known world at the time (to Romans) and of which there's a few mentions in some works by historians at the time.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#73This is amazing, sci-fi-like-reality. I wonder if they pull off an auto-segmentation breakthrough if the techniques might apply in other areas, like automating neuron mapping (eg. see EyeWire).
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big problem is that the Villa of the Papyri is underneath modern buildings. That doesn't mean that excavation without demolition is impossible (see the Scavi underneath the Basilica of Saint Peter), but it makes things far more difficult.
If the prospect is very high to multiply by several times the total remaining classical works, I doubt that the money will be particularly hard to find ?
David W. Packard (HP heir) has been trying to throw money at doing this for years, so the money isn't as much of an issue as you'd think. The larger issue is that the locals don't want digging underneath their buildings, no matter how careful the excavators are. Also, all the money that would be necessary to excavate has made the project a target for the mafia who wants to get their share.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#75This is the coolest thing I've read this year. It reads like science fiction. Who would even imagine it's possible to read text from a 2000 year-old rolled up burnt-crisp paper?
It’s a 270 year archaeological and technological culmination. The scrolls were dug up in 1752. It took the collective developments of the Industrial Revolution, the sciences all our engineering and manufacturing prowess to discover, preserve and scan the scrolls. Then the final cherry on top of the current AI revolution that can create inferences and connections that are beyond the human mind to even understand. And…
One other thing that was required: the patience not to ruin it.
So much has been lost to well-meaning archaeologists who dug up and threw away things that they didn't think were important. They tried cleaning and preservation techniques on artifacts without testing, sometimes ruining them in the process. They ripped things out of context, and "restored" them based on guesses that were sometimes flagrantly wrong.
Of course they couldn't be expected to know everything that would come in the future, so blame can sometimes perhaps be muted. But it's especially positive that they extricated these particular objects very carefully and just waited for a way to extract information that they could hardly have hoped for.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just works of fiction or mythology but also histories, and works of science and philosophy.
I want Aristotle's treatise on Comedy, and if I'm allowed to be terribly greedy, just one more play by Aeschylus. This is the most exciting thing in the world to me right now, these scrolls, along with the thought that there might be literally thousands more still in the ground.
Might want to put on a pair of gloves and a respirator if you find that Aristotle volume. Some people were pretty offended by it, I understand.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#77I was ridiculously excited when I first read about this in October (if I remember correctly) last year, when a few of the first results were beginning to pop out. I found the methodology fascinating. First of all the digital unwrapping of the scrolls, then the recognition that crackling in the paper was the sign of ink, and finally putting together a model to detect it, piece by piece. I need to look into the final r…
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Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#78When I first came across this project on HN (early last year), I was taken aback by how impossible the project looked and how smart were people working on this. Despite seeing a few intelligent names behind the project, I subconsciously believed that this would at least take 5-10 years before a breakthrough. Today I sit with the same amazement, taken aback again, appreciating how ridiculously awesome this is. Congrat…
So many things that look insane are becoming a reality. You look at those scrolls burnt to a crisp and the idea of reading them is nonsense. The fact I have a computer writing flowery alt text descriptions of my photos with unnerving accuracy is something I would not have predicted for another 20 years. But, here we are...
Right? Imagine trying to explain some of it to one of the ancients - so, you have this quartz sand, see?...
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#79Apparntly the bad news is that the remaining scrolls most likely contain yet more Epicurean philosophy, maybe largely from not-top-rated guys like Philodemus. (Apparently it's possible that the library actually is, or incorporates, Philodemus' personal library.) https://twitter.com/DrFrancisYoung/status/175453630645602754...
Probably true, but there are more rooms in the Villa yet to be excavated. What we have is essentially a bookshelf in a larger library. If it is sorted by alphabet, it might be representative, but what if it is sorted by topic?
Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
they likely would, Pompeii and Herculaneum are _still_ being excavated after two centuries, it's not like things are still. But we have only read 5% of this scroll and there are a ton more already excavated, it will probably take years before we manage to process what we already have.
> it will probably take years In the direction things are going ... maybe a few months :)
The biggest bottleneck is getting the experts to read it. You need a decade or so of graduate level education and interpreting things takes apparently quite a long time.
Maybe that's another AI application.