Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

smithsonianmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 104 posts

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#91

Post by hilbert42 »

littlestymaar wrote: post #75
hilbert42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

At least you're not dead yet, which makes you a much better organism than him by biological standards ;).

"At least you're not dead yet,"

Right, not yet anyway. But one thing's pretty certain I won't be a household name 233 after I'm dead. ;-)

A great aspect about famous composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. is that they still remain household names several centuries after their deaths because their compositions bring immediate pleasure to us whenever we hear them.

Now, that's a lovely way to be remembered.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#92

Post by hilbert42 »

watwut wrote: post #68
hilbert42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

You lived like a normal person during that time. That should be actually ok.

Right, one's just another paid-up member of the passing parade.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#93

Post by flappyeagle »

lostemptations5 wrote: post #90

There are a number of people commenting about how Beethoven could hear music in his head, being deaf, and thus compose entire symphonies. But at that time the musical instruments of the day were incredibly "standardized". Basically it was all orchestral instruments such as violins, percuasion, and all the usual fair -- and by the time Beethoven went deaf he was intimately familiar with these such that he could IMAGIN…

I don’t think they’re astonished by his ability to imagine instruments. They are more remarking that he is considered the gold standard of music composition and he couldn’t hear what he was writing.

Most artists still need the feedback loop of do something, evaluate it, iterate.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#94

Post by flappyeagle »

littlestymaar wrote: post #75
hilbert42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

At least you're not dead yet, which makes you a much better organism than him by biological standards ;).

You die twice as they say, once when you physically die and once when you are forgotten

Mozart is immortal in that sense

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#95

Post by itslennysfault »

w-m wrote: post #20

I'm quite confused. I learned 20+ years ago that lead poisining from the wine was the cause, or at least the suspected cause of Beethovens deafness. It's great that they found lead in his hair (again?), but thoroughly weird that they don't mention that it was the go-to theory already. On a large tangent, I tried asking GPT-4o to check the article whether it mentions that previously that theory already existed (could…

I asked it yesterday if there were any baseball games in town this weekend. It hallucinated a false schedule against the wrong team complete with times, and even linked to the (correct) schedule. I told it I googled it and they're playing a different team this weekend and it then (without searching the web again) apologized and shared the correct schedule.

It seemed like such a simple question, but it just made up a very plausible, but entirely incorrect answer. I asked it several times in different ways why and how I could tell if it is correct and all it could tell me was to look it up myself and cross-reference which enitrely defeats the purpose of using it.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#96

Post by itslennysfault »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #54
w-m wrote: post #20

I'm quite confused. I learned 20+ years ago that lead poisining from the wine was the cause, or at least the suspected cause of Beethovens deafness. It's great that they found lead in his hair (again?), but thoroughly weird that they don't mention that it was the go-to theory already. On a large tangent, I tried asking GPT-4o to check the article whether it mentions that previously that theory already existed (could…

I spent the last 20 hours using 4o writing a tauri/rust desktop app. I don't know rust, so it was a LOT of pasting errors back in copying back to my code. But I'd say after about 14 hours it got very lazy. Does AI get tired like humans?

I've noticed that errors seem to increase the longer the chat goes. I think having too much previous context confuses it. I seem to have much better luck if I occasionally start a new chat.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#97

Post by sumtechguy »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #54
w-m wrote: post #20

I'm quite confused. I learned 20+ years ago that lead poisining from the wine was the cause, or at least the suspected cause of Beethovens deafness. It's great that they found lead in his hair (again?), but thoroughly weird that they don't mention that it was the go-to theory already. On a large tangent, I tried asking GPT-4o to check the article whether it mentions that previously that theory already existed (could…

I spent the last 20 hours using 4o writing a tauri/rust desktop app. I don't know rust, so it was a LOT of pasting errors back in copying back to my code. But I'd say after about 14 hours it got very lazy. Does AI get tired like humans?

AI can get 'stuck' in local optima. At which point it will hallucinate or repeat itself over and over or both. Easy way is to start over or you have to really feed a bunch of stuff to it to get it to move.

A good way to think of AI is like a cubic spline. The formula that pops out of all of the nodes strung together make a thing that resembles a cubic spline. Everything is valid along that formula but only at the nodes where it crosses the real spline. Everything else might be close +/- some error rate. But it can also create hills and valleys that you should not reach. But are perfectly valid for the spline. The more noes you add the higher the calculation is. But the more accurate it is. But that can also create wildly weird things between the valid points.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#98

Post by AlbertCory »

I think this was in Immortal Beloved (do I have the details right?). So touching.

At the premier of his 9th Symphony, he was off to the side of the "real" conductor, waving his baton while the orchestra ignored him. When it stopped, the audience went wild. The contralto gently turned him around so he could SEE the ovation, being unable to hear it.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#99

Post by lostemptations5 »

flappyeagle wrote: post #93
lostemptations5 wrote: post #90

There are a number of people commenting about how Beethoven could hear music in his head, being deaf, and thus compose entire symphonies. But at that time the musical instruments of the day were incredibly "standardized". Basically it was all orchestral instruments such as violins, percuasion, and all the usual fair -- and by the time Beethoven went deaf he was intimately familiar with these such that he could IMAGIN…

I don’t think they’re astonished by his ability to imagine instruments. They are more remarking that he is considered the gold standard of music composition and he couldn’t hear what he was writing. Most artists still need the feedback loop of do something, evaluate it, iterate.

Ok fair enough. Put that way it makes sense.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#100

Post by tdfirth »

hilbert42 wrote: post #89
Novosell wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a potentially unhealthy comparison.

I don't reckon so, we know a great deal about Mozart and that he was incredibly productive throughout his working career which spanned 30 of his 35 years. Thanks to Köchel and others essentially Mozart's entire life's work is very well documented and that over those 30 years he produced about 626 musical works most of which are of the highest standard, and of those some rank as works of sheer genius, not only have th…

This is a beautiful comment, and I couldn't agree more.

There is only one standard of accomplishment and it's set by people like Mozart.

Accepting that is humbling, but it's required to know yourself and grow. My contributions probably won't amount to much, but Mozart (et al) have shown us what good looks like and it's fun to strive.

Post reply on HN