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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

#131

Post by ChainOfFools »

riffraff wrote: post #128
tysam_and wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding is a huge one as well. Funding is the wheel that drives the project (source, have been hanging around the project people for a little while). If you know anyone that would help chip in for the Phase 2 of the project (scaling up, please let Nat know! (not directly affiliated with the project management team, just pointing to him as a great contact for that.... <3 :')))) ) )

It seems "weird" none of the mega rich has committed a few million dollars for this, it looks like a very good way to build a legacy while benefiting humanity, and e.g. Bezos would probably find a million dollars behind the couch pillows.

it's almost nauseating to me that every month or so our nation deminstrates it is capable and willing to collectively chip in enough money to turn one random nobody into a near-billionaire, muvh of which gets promptly vaporized on drugs and tacky status symbol purchases for themselves and maybe some immediate family, when the same money would fund a hundred Vesuvius Challenges a year at several times the scale of this project.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#132

Post by jacquesm »

wl wrote: post #74
BlueTemplar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I wonder how far Italy will go once - if - they get rid of the mafia, it is like trying to drive a car with the handbrake on.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#133

Post by echelon »

xvector wrote: post #129
echelon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Absolutely insane the level of wizardry being applied here to turn a lump of blackened, charred scrolls into readable text. Imagine what we'll be able to do to brains, dead or alive, in 100 years. And in 10,000, maybe we'll be reconstructing the light cone. Maybe that's what we are right now. (Not serious, but it's a fun thought experiment.)

This is why I am going for cryopreservation if I ever have the luxury of choosing the way I die.

Well, that could go lots of ways. Maybe some rich trillionaire buys you and spawns you into an endless horror simulation. They might be into torture and get off on it.

("No real humans harmed.")

But if the future can reverse the light cone, nobody is immune to that fate.

Who knows what the future holds. These are just sci-fi flights of fancy.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#134

Post by ffgjgf1 »

Tronno wrote: post #41
tobinfricke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, there are large sections of Pompeii, which remain unexcavated -- left for the future.

Herculaneum, where these scrolls are from, is 75% unexcavated! And it will likely remain this way for some time, as Naples sits right on top of it.

The town of Ercolano sits on top of it. Of course effectively it’s a suburb of Naples these days

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#135

Post by verisimi »

verisimi wrote: post #86

I still think this methodology can be tested by creating equivalent carbonised scrolls, where you write some specific text and check the result against what you wrote. Ie you run your test artifacts through the scanner and software, and the process should return you your test text that you wrote before carbonising the scroll. At that point you can be assured that the process is not making stuff up from noise. But, wi…

I think this suggestion of mine was downvoted last time too, but I don't get why!

One would always want to test stuff in software development, especially if it was fraught and can easily be tested.

Mostly there are no tests to be undertaken in history -hence it it's so much hearsay. But here is an opportunity to gain some genuine certainty, in a way that is normally unavailable! The implementors of this method should absolutely test their process!

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#136

Post by ffgjgf1 »

digging wrote: post #91
kristopolous wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As much as I'd like to endorse study of the classics, I'm almost certain that AI will be better at interpreting the texts than humans very soon.

GPT 4.0 isn’t even remotely close to being useful at all in this case so I have some doubts about ‘very soon’

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#137

Post by riffraff »

digging wrote: post #95
r_klancer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not necessarily bad news. Everyone interested in this story should read Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve ( https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/stephen-greenblatt ). It traces the story of a Renaissance humanist who tracked down and translated the Epicurean philosopher/poet Lucretius' De Rerem Natura , which Greenblatt describes as portraying a strikingly modern way of seeing the world. In particular Lucretius and…

> Everyone interested in this story should read Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve ( https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/stephen-greenblatt ). It's interesting reading for a layperson, but as with any other pop-history book, one should read this with a heaping plate of salt at hand. (I'm... not sure what that metaphor actually means or if this is an appropriate way to extend it.) Things are always more nuanced than can be…

The "grain of salt" reference relates to some antidote, which contained a grain of salt. The reduction to "handle with care" is modern.

So the extended metaphor makes no literal sense according to the Pliny text, but it makes sense according to our interpretation of it, which is what matters.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#138

Post by ffgjgf1 »

verisimi wrote: post #135
verisimi wrote: post #86

I still think this methodology can be tested by creating equivalent carbonised scrolls, where you write some specific text and check the result against what you wrote. Ie you run your test artifacts through the scanner and software, and the process should return you your test text that you wrote before carbonising the scroll. At that point you can be assured that the process is not making stuff up from noise. But, wi…

I think this suggestion of mine was downvoted last time too, but I don't get why! One would always want to test stuff in software development, especially if it was fraught and can easily be tested. Mostly there are no tests to be undertaken in history -hence it it's so much hearsay. But here is an opportunity to gain some genuine certainty, in a way that is normally unavailable! The implementors of this method should…

AFAIK the scanning process is pretty expensive

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#139

Post by ffgjgf1 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #85
glfharris wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there are academics who would bite their own legs off for tax records from this period.

Isn't that what most ancient Roman texts we do have are? Tax records.

Do we have any or any significant number of Roman tax receipts? Most Roman/Greek texts that we have had to survive until ~1000 AD. If a text was available back then there is a reasonably good chance that we have it (or rather a medieval copy of it), why would anyone waste time copying tax receipts though?
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