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Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

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Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#292
post #265

A very neat problem and result. I often find myself swinging between "It's so over" and "We're so back" - some days I roll out of bed thinking I could have Claude solve some random unproven OEIS sequence before breakfast; other days, I wake up in a cold sweat worried about the fate of humanity and what the world might look like in a decade. I think it's that I don't have a very high p(doom) or p(utopia), and I don't…

Confusion is because people are using the tool to get answers. Its how the edu systems trains most people in tool use. Heres a saw and here is a block of wood. Do x y z and you get a table. But if you are interested in why the saw looks like it does or the entire process behind generating that block of wood, or why x y z instead if a b c good luck to you using the current edu system. You have to live in an extremely…

Yes, asking a first-year physics student why they are studying a spring, and why its called Hooke's Law leads down a rabbit hole that ends with the entire British Empire.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of having multiple ciphers is that some will break. Did the world end with any previous one breaking? It’s incredible and awesome if AES GCM has a flaw found with an AI now, Chacha20 could be a direct or nearly-direct replacement. The sooner a cipher breaks, the better.

Sure, but in an era where major unsolved mathematics problems start getting knocked out one by one, what if attacks for all of them are identified in the space of a couple of years? I don’t doubt that we could come up with new crypto algorithms equally as fast, but how do you trust that they are resilient (or even just implemented correctly) without an extended vetting period?

What If…

Ima stop you there. Instead, you might be happy to be aware that outside of AI concerns, “quantum safe” (or assumed so) ciphers are all the rage. So this is already a likely solved problem with the next generation of encryption… until this are AI models running on quantum machines I guess!

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#296
post #55
post #8

Anyone pointed it at the Voynich manuscript?

Thousands. Every day a few AI "solutions" are spammed to the relevant forums

I (and too many others) have left voynich ninja because of it.

I appreciate that AI is helpful, but the low effort from the humans that wield it is very very annoying. If people at least: 1. read the solution they're about to propose and 2. instructed the AI to check the forum for past solutions, I think people wouldn't have been as tired of LLMs.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#297

I'm waiting for someone with enough tokens to ask 'Who is Satoshi?'

It's Adam Back.

You know, it could have been more than one person. At this point I don't think it really matters, unless he/she starts selling their coins.

Re: Fable 5.1 Solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher

#298
Prior to the "Elicitation" section, you'd think this article was written by a cryptographer or baroque historian who had been trying to solve this particular puzzle for years - failing embarrassingly until they presented the problem to Claude. However, as far as I can tell (I too am not a baroque historian), there isn't much reason to think this cipher was well-known or studied.

But as they do eventually explain, the LLM's task wasn't solely to solve this specific problem, it was to first identify an unsolved problem it could solve. That's potentially more impressive and difficult than solving the unremarkable cipher itself.

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