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First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by CS student

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

#151

Post by timschmidt »

russellbeattie wrote: post #102
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Imsurethatwedbeabletoreadtextswrittenwithoutspacesorpunctuationitwouldjustbeabitmoredifficultforbeginnerstoparsethetextbutafteryouvegottenenoughvocabularyitdbeprettystraightforwardtoreadthoughspellcheckerswouldprobablyhaveahardertimetheoneinmybrowseriscompletelydfreakingoutoverthistextanotherthingitwouldprobablyhaveaneffedtoniswordchoicesinceyoudhavetomakesurethewordsyouchosetoputtogethercouldntbemisconstruedorambigu…

Intentionally choosing words which could be misconstrued when written without spaces could make for some hilarious jokes.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

mholt wrote: post #137
lazide wrote: post #132

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by countrymile »

nataliste wrote: post #42

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. 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…

A first edition of the Gospel of John countering the modern version would be great but not sure that a Roman pagan library would bother storing such a thing, then you're left with someone's historical/pagan take on the first century AD. Some histories of Palestine or Christians causing trouble in Rome seem possible, or notes on a Herod's time in power that don't match the Christian narrative. but none of this seems too threatening, large swathes of Christian thought now treats the birth narrative as ahistorical. It might be another blow for the bible literalists, but they're a small group overall and those battles have been going on since the 2nd century. Another Josephus or Tacitus would be great. The big opportunity here is to dismiss the Jesus myth-ers by finding more evidence that a person called Jesus existed. The impact of this on questions around the divinity of Jesus seem rather moot, Tacitus and Josephus talk history from non-Christian perspectives, not theology.

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

#154

Post by countrymile »

QuercusMax wrote: post #34
hansoolo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same. He had the better results, but too late.

Or maybe the winner optimized his code, resulting in faster time to get results. Either one is equally plausible!

computed on his laptop whilst he was at a party apparently. Legend!

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

#155

Post by countrymile »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #125
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #46

"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…

He made $40,000 without needing a large data set. No proprietary, corporate LLM needed.

calculated on his laptop whilst at a party

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

#156

Post by jansan »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #144

I highly recommend getting into classical literature. It is incredible and beyond conception — I had a light scattering in my education, but only later and recently have I discovered how incredible it can be. Suggested Reading for beginners: * Life of Pythagoras, by Iamblichus * The Golden Ass, by Apuleius of Numenia (specifically, translation by Robert Graves) * Life of Alexander by Plutarch * Education of Cyrus by…

Can someone tell me if there is a German version of Life of Pythagoras available? I cannot find anything for some reason (only one bok on amazon that has only one review claiming it is an automated translation).

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

#157

Post by bb123 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #144

I highly recommend getting into classical literature. It is incredible and beyond conception — I had a light scattering in my education, but only later and recently have I discovered how incredible it can be. Suggested Reading for beginners: * Life of Pythagoras, by Iamblichus * The Golden Ass, by Apuleius of Numenia (specifically, translation by Robert Graves) * Life of Alexander by Plutarch * Education of Cyrus by…

> It is incredible and beyond conception

Could you elaborate a little bit about what you think gives it these qualities? I've dabbled in some classical literature before but I've always found them to be very difficult reads, so I rarely have the motivation to finish them. I am wondering if there is something I am missing about the genre.

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

#158

Post by lukeboi »

countrymile wrote: post #154
QuercusMax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the winner optimized his code, resulting in faster time to get results. Either one is equally plausible!

computed on his laptop whilst he was at a party apparently. Legend!

luke here, thanks!

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

#160

Post by radarsat1 »

terhechte wrote: post #15
sillysaurusx wrote: post #2

See 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

> if the method becomes scalable

the machine learning stuff is cool, but it's important not to discount the apparently pretty manual labour still involved in the virtual unwrapping:

> Early in the summer, a small team of annotators (the “segmentation team”) joined our effort. They began mapping the 3D structure of the scroll using tools initially built by EduceLab and improved by our community. By July we had segmented and “virtually flattened” hundreds of cm2 of papyrus.

So, it sounds like it was about a month or two of work, for a single scroll. Although, it probably could be partially or fully automated too, with some effort. Already they developed some tools to help, and I guess it's the kind of task that gets easier after you do it the first time.

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