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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

#531

Post by throwaway173738 »

fsckboy wrote: post #517
jackeee1 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

how many humans would invent writing without being taught in school? how about algebra? how about arabic numeral-ing? and you have no idea how humans reason, but LLMs are neural networks, what do you think neural refers to?

Nobody invented writing. Various people probably independently started making marks on things to signify amounts of stuff. Some people drew likenesses of things. This continued for millenia and became more and more elaborate. It wasn’t born from someone’s head on a single fateful day. All human endeavor is like that, from the most minute thing like carpentry nails to the most elaborate. All of it is the result of collaboration between us and our ancestors.

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

#532

Post by anfogoat »

omnicognate wrote: post #389

That's pretty cool, especially the fact that it chose the problem itself. The uncovered text, though: > O GOD UPHOLD KING CHARLS THE SECOND AND MAKE HIM THE SUPREME RULER OF THIS LAND That's like working out a cereal box cipher and finding the message is "Do your homework and tidy your room".

Must have chafed him some this went unsolved for the rest of his time. On the other hand, if it wasn't going to get solved during my lifetime, then I definitely would have liked to have thought it will take centuries and a non-human form of intelligence.

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

#533

Post by sigmar »

geraneum wrote: post #400

> Various people attempted to decipher it, but it seems they were missing one crucial hint. They tried methods like frequency analysis, substitution, and homophonic substitution, and none of these approaches worked. That’s because they missed one easy clue. It appears that is not true. Someone here [1] has found a [German] blog [2] writing about this cipher. There are two comments (Jan and Helmut) from 2014 under the…

>lists a few methods that are quite similar to what’s proposed in the comments under that post, except for those two comments.

Is today the first time you've heard of a book cipher? Those blog comments didn't provide much progress.

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

#534

Post by kenjackson »

geraneum wrote: post #400

> Various people attempted to decipher it, but it seems they were missing one crucial hint. They tried methods like frequency analysis, substitution, and homophonic substitution, and none of these approaches worked. That’s because they missed one easy clue. It appears that is not true. Someone here [1] has found a [German] blog [2] writing about this cipher. There are two comments (Jan and Helmut) from 2014 under the…

It does appear there have been some people who have looked at this before but it’s unclear how many(here’s an example of a request from readers in 1927 https://toebes.com/Flynns/Flynns-19270813.htm).

That said there is another controversy brewing with this that is best summarized here: https://vera-wren.github.io/posts/2026-09-11-the-key-is-a-pr...

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

#535

Post by philsnow »

> The answer was simple in hindsight. It just kept looking until it found it

This is how I usually characterize AI to friends who have no background in computers: it's an indefatigable (that is, not able to be fatigued) employee who has read nearly everything in the world, who does make mistakes, but who never lacks for motivation.

Most humans would become discouraged after being told 20 times that their work fell short, but AI agents will persevere en masse until the oceans are boiled, for better or for worse.

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

#536

Post by mastax »

philsnow wrote: post #535

> The answer was simple in hindsight. It just kept looking until it found it This is how I usually characterize AI to friends who have no background in computers: it's an indefatigable (that is, not able to be fatigued) employee who has read nearly everything in the world, who does make mistakes, but who never lacks for motivation. Most humans would become discouraged after being told 20 times that their work fell sh…

Well, AI do lack motivation unless you use goal mode or whatever.

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

#538

Post by fsckboy »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #531
fsckboy wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how many humans would invent writing without being taught in school? how about algebra? how about arabic numeral-ing? and you have no idea how humans reason, but LLMs are neural networks, what do you think neural refers to?

Nobody invented writing. Various people probably independently started making marks on things to signify amounts of stuff. Some people drew likenesses of things. This continued for millenia and became more and more elaborate. It wasn’t born from someone’s head on a single fateful day. All human endeavor is like that, from the most minute thing like carpentry nails to the most elaborate. All of it is the result of col…

you restated "humans learn from other humans, and slowly at that" so I guess you are indicating that computers do it faster, this activity of learning from other humans.

I said the same thing you mean, "no human will invent writing, they can only use writing as a productivity tool because they learned it from other humans. Therefore, in the context of my comment, saying "they learn from humans" is not a valid criticism of LLMs because humans also learn from humans, or live like cavemen"

you are agreeing with me, just hot under the collar about it.

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

#539

Post by semiquaver »

qoez wrote: post #430
geraneum wrote: post #400

> Various people attempted to decipher it, but it seems they were missing one crucial hint. They tried methods like frequency analysis, substitution, and homophonic substitution, and none of these approaches worked. That’s because they missed one easy clue. It appears that is not true. Someone here [1] has found a [German] blog [2] writing about this cipher. There are two comments (Jan and Helmut) from 2014 under the…

Seems like another case of LLMs taking credit for their training data without giving proper attribution, similar to the navier stokes case.

The goalposts will continue moving until morale improves.

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

#540

Post by klysm »

philsnow wrote: post #535

> The answer was simple in hindsight. It just kept looking until it found it This is how I usually characterize AI to friends who have no background in computers: it's an indefatigable (that is, not able to be fatigued) employee who has read nearly everything in the world, who does make mistakes, but who never lacks for motivation. Most humans would become discouraged after being told 20 times that their work fell sh…

This is funny because I regularly run into Claude claiming it is fatigued
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