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An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

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Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#31

Post by dylan604 »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16

When I read translations like these, I always wonder if the tone is translated. Did the writer mean to convey a very formal “to the utmost”, or was it a more casual “to the max”. How much of the translators bias makes these seem like academic papers instead of social media posts.

Sending a tweet is free and takes zero thought to make it (as the vast majority of tweets prove). Writing something on a scroll would take a lot of effort and would not be free. If these were tweet level content in the scrolls, I'd have to totally reevaluate a lot of things to the point I might as well just become MAGA

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#32

Post by helterskelter »

tokai wrote: post #7

I'm really hoping that the library contains some lost older Greek works. But its going to be awesome what ever we find.

I'm hoping for a complete(ish) Heraclitus. Also Eratosthenes, whose methods have been described but we don't have the original work where we calculated the circumference of the Earth. Also Hipparchus and Thales.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#33

Post by pimlottc »

verditelabs wrote: post #20
helterskelter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the current rate of progress, how long do you think it will take to decipher the entire collection?

That's a tough one to give a strong estimate of. Some scrolls are easier or harder to unwrap and read for a multitude of different reasons, mostly due to how damaged the scroll was in the eruption, and how easy or not the ink is to read. IIRC from what we've scanned of the herculaneum collection, none of the ink is easily visible via spectrum alone, so we have to use a lot of ML and physically based rendering techniq…

Do you think this particular scroll is easier or harder to read that the others will be? Or about average?

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#34

Post by IAmBroom »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #17
tokai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but its the potential scale that is important. There are also more scrolls still in the ground, which would make sense to dig out if they could be read.

Of course! But the title is misleading and gives people the impression that we don't already know the library is just full of Epicurean texts.

It's also technically incorrect. The texts have been read; this particular text was read for the first time in the modern era.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#36

Post by colechristensen »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16

When I read translations like these, I always wonder if the tone is translated. Did the writer mean to convey a very formal “to the utmost”, or was it a more casual “to the max”. How much of the translators bias makes these seem like academic papers instead of social media posts.

Sometimes there is very little to go on, but we really do have a lot to work with from the late republic and early roman empire.

Latin is also a very rich language and this is no snippet.

Translation is always hard, especially from a couple thousand years ago BUT this kind of translation comes with a lot of confidence.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#37

Post by forshaper »

clickety_clack wrote: post #16

When I read translations like these, I always wonder if the tone is translated. Did the writer mean to convey a very formal “to the utmost”, or was it a more casual “to the max”. How much of the translators bias makes these seem like academic papers instead of social media posts.

This is why I like literal translations & etymological dives, paired with asking what activities would constitute a life in that time. Ie, you may not need to be a competent archer, but it is a little easier to understand someone who used a particular style of bow if you can play around with that type of bow for a bit.

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#39

Post by Dzugaru »

verditelabs wrote: post #2

I am on the vesuvius challenge team that did the segmentation, unwrapping, and ink detection, so feel free to ask any questions.

Outstanding work! I've participated in the challenge, but didn't get far. One of the questions I had at the time was - if I'm going to use ML to detect ink, could it invent hallucinated letters, or even parts of text, and how to prevent that?

Re: An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time

#40

Post by verditelabs »

Dzugaru wrote: post #39
verditelabs wrote: post #2

I am on the vesuvius challenge team that did the segmentation, unwrapping, and ink detection, so feel free to ask any questions.

Outstanding work! I've participated in the challenge, but didn't get far. One of the questions I had at the time was - if I'm going to use ML to detect ink, could it invent hallucinated letters, or even parts of text, and how to prevent that?

Yes, it's quite possible for ML to hallucinate ink, though it is on a much more local scale, like predicting a slightly longer stroke, filling in more of a character than is actually in the data, etc. Perhaps enough to change a reading of a character or show where ink isnt. It is difficult for ink detection to hallucinate grammatical and idiomatic greek and latin.
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