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First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

scrollprize.org

101–110 of 218 posts

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#101

"He found a few dozen ink strokes - and some complete letters - that could be labeled and used as training data. Before long, the model was unveiling traces of crackle invisible to his own eye. Soon, these traces began to form letters and hints of actual words." This does not sound like a "Large Language Model (LLM)" or other large set of training data, like the sort hyped by so-called "tech" companies; this sounds r…

Indeed, it’s a machine learning model, but not a large one. Who called it large?

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#102
post #76

> Note that texts from this time didn’t use spaces, making it harder to determine word boundaries. Paging Germans

I often wonder how different personal computing and programming would be if we kept using Scriptio Continua or the particularly awkward Boustrophedon where every other line is written in the reverse direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

Imsurethatwedbeabletoreadtextswrittenwithoutspacesorpunctuationitwouldjustbeabitmoredifficultforbeginnerstoparsethetextbutafteryouvegottenenoughvocabularyitdbeprettystraightforwardtoreadthoughspellcheckerswouldprobablyhaveahardertimetheoneinmybrowseriscompletelydfreakingoutoverthistextanotherthingitwouldprobablyhaveaneffedtoniswordchoicesinceyoudhavetomakesurethewordsyouchosetoputtogethercouldntbemisconstruedorambiguous.

The idea of reading text backwards and

bɘɿoɿɿim ɿɘɈɈɘl ʜɔɒɘ ʜɈiw ,ƨbɿɒwɿoʇ

is absolutely nuts though. I'm definitely

.ɈɒʜɈ Ɉqobɒ Ɉ'nbib ɘw bɒlϱ

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What makes you think "myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I" is at all likely? It's not just Nicholas of Damascus that would reveal such information. Gaius Asinius Pollio, a multifaceted Roman figure known for his connections with literary giants like Virgil and Horace as well as Augustus himself, mentored Alexander, the…

I'm not sure why you think an explanation involving a vast empire-spanning conspiracy supported with widespread propaganda and centuries of silence and suppression even from its enemies is more likely than the usual naturalistic explanation "Jesus was a real figure who did the non-supernatural things ascribed to him." People love these conspiracy theories about religions but they're definitely not the simple or logic…

What are you even on about?

I'm talking about widespread suppression of Jews, whether Christianized or not, that is documented before and in the aftermath of the first Jewish-Roman war, which occurred 68-74AD.

There's no empire-spanning conspiracy lasting centuries, but a continual massage of what came before to justify the current status quo, an extremely similar dynamic as what is recognized by biblical scholars when treating the Old Testament.

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demographics refutes your last point. “by Constantine's Christianity“ is also an interesting reference, although he was just a politician realizing half of the population had adopted a revolutionizing family structure.

>Demographics refutes your last point. By all means, please explain.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/07/why-peopl....

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#105
https://scrollprize.org/ explains the original challenge/issue: other research showed "virtual unwrapping" based on CT scans was possible, but these scrolls had ink not clearly visible on CT/X-ray, so they had to go back to less visible structure (I'm not sure if it's the structure of the paper that changes or actually the ink being visible but less).

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#106

This might count as one of the most extreme stories of data recovery I've seen. I wonder if in another 2000 years we'll have a "first file discovered on discarded hard drive platter".

Reminds me faintly of this story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Fnd_in_a_Lbry#:~:text=MS%20....

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think an explanation involving a vast empire-spanning conspiracy supported with widespread propaganda and centuries of silence and suppression even from its enemies is more likely than the usual naturalistic explanation "Jesus was a real figure who did the non-supernatural things ascribed to him." People love these conspiracy theories about religions but they're definitely not the simple or logic…

What are you even on about? I'm talking about widespread suppression of Jews, whether Christianized or not, that is documented before and in the aftermath of the first Jewish-Roman war, which occurred 68-74AD. There's no empire-spanning conspiracy lasting centuries, but a continual massage of what came before to justify the current status quo, an extremely similar dynamic as what is recognized by biblical scholars wh…

Christianized Jews and Jews generally were spread throughout and beyond the empire. The persecutions, even postwar, were terrible but relatively localized and there is no reason to believe it involved the mass redaction of all existing documents (not even possible!) and then-unwritten oral histories (which then everyone, antisemites, Christians, pagans, all alike decided to maintain silence about even though they would have been delighted to show their enemies up with this evidence) except that it makes people feel clever to think so.

Even more incredibly, plenty of heretical documents did survive! People were one hundred percent successful absolutely crushing any leaks of a vast conspiracy to “justify the status quo” (why do you even think it needed justifying?) even against powerful groups that would not have wanted to…but couldn’t stop eg the Gnostics.

Most scholars don’t think that about the Old Testament either, although I have been learning lately it is very much in vogue on certain corners of the Internet. But at least that is in some respects at certain times more plausible depending on the specific text and time period being talked about, if very early. The Christianity conspiracy theories really aren’t. There’s no evidence for them whatever and yours in particular boggles belief, and is really not remotely feasible. This is basically the zeitgeist nonsense with a different spin.

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it might cost more than $700k in compute.

It certainly did. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36312385

Unfortunately some people are taking you seriously. The whole scrolls are a huge amount of data, but for this First Letters prize using more than one GPU would be overkill. The amount of training data available is actually too small for deep learning to even work well.

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#109
post #67
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illinois? What belief system is that? Anyway, Christian followers already expect science to bring faith into question. I'm one such follower who believes science and faith can describe the same truth, as long as the science and faith are both accurate. Both are systems of experimentation, trial and error. There is much we can learn from historical records!

Mormons believe that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates ) that he found near his home in upstate New York, which might be what OP's referring to.

I figured; it's just an important detail that "someone who lives in Utah" would know if they took the slightest bit of time getting to know or understand the religion that surrounds them. It follows that claims of "scam artist" and "magic plates" and "ancient Egyptians" may be dubious, as the person making the claim doesn't actually know the most basic story of the faith.

Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

#110
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illinois? What belief system is that? Anyway, Christian followers already expect science to bring faith into question. I'm one such follower who believes science and faith can describe the same truth, as long as the science and faith are both accurate. Both are systems of experimentation, trial and error. There is much we can learn from historical records!

Nauvoo, IL

Yes, that is where a temple was burned by arsonists and where the leader lived when he was murdered. But I don't think any church is claiming that "magic plates" where left there by Egyptians.

(I grew up near there and have visited the town many times.)

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