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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

#151

Post by xinayder »

0x_rs wrote: post #72
iandanforth wrote: post #37

I 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…

A great example about lost work is that the insights we have onto Viking mythology was pretty much documented by a single guy, Snorri Sturluson. What we know about Norse mythology is just a tiny piece of their mythos, as they didn't have the habit of writing down their tales/legends/stories and most of it got lost after they converted to Christianism.

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

#152

Post by noduerme »

>> “as too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.” However, is it easier for us naturally to do without things that are plentiful? “Such questions will be considered frequently.”

This reminded me, since they're scarce but also abundant... Has anyone actually eaten these giant waterbugs at Nue in Seattle? Is that like, a reasonable thing to subject a date to?

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

#153

Post by namaria »

yourapostasy wrote: post #121
alach11 wrote: post #4

This 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?

I’m now wavering a bit on my earlier dismissal of people freezing their bodies for an indeterminate future revival. I could probably get into a science fiction story with this premise: Instead of relying upon machinery, some zillionaire has their body dry frozen and stashed in a lunar south pole crater, with a foundation funding interstellar propulsion research to move the body to the coldest stable points discovered…

I kinda wanna write an horror story about people freezing their bodies or heads only to be revived in the future bat shit insane from the excruciating experience of existing for several decades in a sort of limbo...

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

#154

Post by the8472 »

bee_rider wrote: post #31
clawoo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have too wild imagination sometimes. I picture him with a shocked look on his face, similar to what one of the modern 'thinkers' would have if they forgot to clear their browser history and somehow someone restored it in the future. "You recovered... uh... everything?"

That recovery is much easier though, it is using the device as intended. And of course, rm just unlinks, doesn’t actually delete, so even going a step further and recovering deleted content is hardly magic. This is more like if, sometime in the future, they somehow successfully reconstructed a snapshot of our computers’ volatile memory by examining the power supply, or something ridiculous like that.

> rm just unlinks, doesn’t actually delete,

On HDDs. On SSDs it'll lead to now-unusued space getting TRIMed which actually erases the blocks. Back to scraping the papyrus.

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

#157

Post by namaria »

imranq wrote: post #113

The methods are incredible, but it seems like the text is ordinary and nothing to write home about

We don't decipher ancient texts to have our minds blown about the universe but to know more about what life was like back then and to conduct historical research about it.

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

#158

Post by namaria »

gmd63 wrote: post #87

Given that AI is able to hallucinate, how can we be convinced the results are accurate? Did they create a new scroll, burn it, and compare the results to what was actually written?

Nobody used generative LLMs at any step of this process...

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

#159

Post by vjk800 »

I first looked at the results and thought "this is kinda cool". Then I proceeded to read about the whole competition and how thoughtfully it was organized and thought that "this is extremely cool". I wonder what else could be achieved with such a well designed incentive program.

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

#160

Post by namaria »

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…

You're being downvoted because they literally did what you suggest already.
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