Based on this, I wonder if the main challenge has already been solved.
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
131–140 of 218 posts
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Do you have any counter cites? Because it seems pretty close!
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
The location was actually in New York. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
And the history of why the temple got burned was basically ‘because he was stealing all the women’. According to the angry mob that burned it. If I remember correctly.
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#134I wrote this for a different community (filled with semiliterate sophists), but this is absolutely huge and could upend huge swathes of understanding about the last two thousand years. You can avoid the longform essay below if you want. The short of it is there are several potentially common works possibly in the library that could directly prove or disprove what is found in the New Testament and the predicates of Ra…
> I wrote this for a different community (filled with semiliterate sophists), but this is absolutely huge and could upend huge swathes of understanding about the last two thousand years. Surely writing an essay isn't a good way to convince them if they're illiterate? Maybe they can use TTS.
I wonder how the Sophistry will play out over teletype.
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> would still put me most of a decade ahead, financially I think that might be the kind of the crux of it. Saving this money to get a decade "ahead" might help your retirement life (assuming things don't collapse before then), but not your current life. Whether that's considered "life-changing" might be in the eye of the beholder.
No one can not consider that life changing in that context?
> No one can not consider that life changing in that context?
Money only changes your life when you do something with it. If you just just let it sit (for retirement or whatever) and continue living as before, then your life hasn't changed (yet).
If you dispute this, then consider the most extreme case: what happens if you (say) die before you have a chance to use that money during retirement? Did that money change your life then? In that case your entire life was (by definition!) the same as before; only your retirement account ended with a higher balance than it would've otherwise. The only thing that changed was your expectation for the future, not your reality.
And you can imagine other situations where the money ends up not changing your life in any significant way... like the money getting stolen before you use it, creditors taking it during bankruptcy, hyperinflation rendering it effectively worthless, etc.
Point being, as long as the money hasn't actually changed anything in your life, it... hasn't been life-changing. (I guess in some sense this is a tautology.)
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#136See also Nat’s twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1712470683207532906 $700k is a life changing amount of money. I admit, it’s tempting to drop everything and go devote myself like a monk to the pursuit of ancient enlightenment via modern ML. I wonder where we’d start… It’s also funny that the scroll might just be a laundry list.
I don’t think people in those days wrote bullshit. You had to know how to write, and if you did, no one was entreating you to write grocery lists.
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Do you have any counter cites? Because it seems pretty close! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
Primary sources.
The only references to Egypt are in relation to the language, not actual Egyptians: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/search?query=egyptians&typ...
i.e. the plates were written in a language reformed from original Egyptian -- which makes sense, as ancient Hebrews would sometimes write in Egyptian characters when enscribing was difficult (metal plates!) because the Egyptian script was more concise. It became reformed after a thousand years on the other side of the world, far removed from original Egyptian land and culture. No Egyptians were ever involved with burying the plates. That would have been a native American, technically a Jew, whose ancestors came over from Jerusalem / ancient Israel.
As for magic plates, there's nothing in the historical record claiming that the plates themselves were magic: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/search?query=magic&types=d...
I guess anyone could say anything they want about them, but those who actually saw and handled the plates never claimed they were "magic" as far as I can tell.
Then as for scam artist -- I suppose that is a matter of personal judgment, since no fair trial ever occurred or made a guilty verdict before he was murdered.
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's likely somehow a reference to the Emperor. Purple cloth was extremely rare and expensive, and it was the colour worn by the Emperors. Indeed, it eventually became a capital crime for people outside the Emperor's family to wear it. I don't know if that was yet true at the time of Vesuvius, although Wikipedia claims Caligula may have had someone killed for wearing purple.
> Indeed, it eventually became a capital crime for people outside the Emperor's family to wear it. Similarly, various Emperors far away in China had a similar enforced color-monopoly, except it was on yellow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture#Yello...
Interesting. Does that mean the Yellow Turbans choose Yellow to demonstrate a lack of legitimacy for the Eastern Han emperor?
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#139See also Nat’s twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1712470683207532906 $700k is a life changing amount of money. I admit, it’s tempting to drop everything and go devote myself like a monk to the pursuit of ancient enlightenment via modern ML. I wonder where we’d start… It’s also funny that the scroll might just be a laundry list.
This is one of more than 600 scrolls that could be read afterwards if the method becomes scalable. What's more: "excavations were never completed, and many historians believe that thousands more scrolls remain underground." [0] [0]: https://scrollprize.org
Being able to virtually unroll the scrolls within reasonable time/effort/cost will hopefully encourage the Italian government to approve further excavations of the villa for more papyri. If Vesuvius erupts again we don't know how much of the present excavation will survive.
Re: First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any counter cites? Because it seems pretty close! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_plates
Primary sources. The only references to Egypt are in relation to the language, not actual Egyptians: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/search?query=egyptians&typ... i.e. the plates were written in a language reformed from original Egyptian -- which makes sense, as ancient Hebrews would sometimes write in Egyptian characters when enscribing was difficult (metal plates!) because the Egyptian script was more concise. It…
QED