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22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

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Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#91

Post by mmooss »

order-matters wrote: post #78
jfengel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could automate transcription, it would be an enormous boon to researchers. Reading the handwriting would be really hard, and it would be a massive effort to move all that paper. Just handling it is hard; it's not like flipping through mass-manufactured books. But I suspect that you could spend a few million dollars to revolutionize the field.

>automate transcription this also means trusting the LLM to decide what things mean. but there is very likely a great middle ground of having LLMs take their best guesses and then verifying the output on significant finds. the risk is in LLM understating something important, false negatives, leading to putting stuff at the bottom of the pile that appears mundane but isnt

That's why I suggest the output would be a prioritized list of documents for the researchers to review; the LLM doesn't get the final say, it just makes recommendations. Yes, things would be missed, but the resesarchers might in theory find much more value than their current search method.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#92

Post by CamperBob2 »

contingencies wrote: post #86
Digory wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had ChatGPT translate some old, handwritten French legal documents for family history purposes. It was far more accurate than I expected. At scale, with better models, we might have a way to clear out the old archives. Not only could you translate, you could ask it to triage the discoveries. "Would the average person find this noteworthy?"

I have a ton of handwritten German stuff from the 19th century. My grandmother could make a fair stab at it, but nobody left can read it. I've shown modern Germans and they are at a loss. Thanks for your idea, I will give it a look. Any tips on model/method/training?

Try both Gemini Pro and ChatGPT. They are both outstanding at reading almost-unreadable documents. Use the highest thinking level your account supports.

(If you want to post a sample or two here, I'll try it. I like to collect difficult out-of-distribution test materials.)

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#94

Post by isjcjwndkwmds »

datakan wrote: post #87
SoftTalker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore. I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Moza…

Cursive is only useful for fountain pens. It was a sign of its times and is totally pointless and even counterproductive today. I get really sick of people exclaiming how important cursive is today when everyone types and everything is printed. "Back in my day we taught the kids cursive!!" How many of them used fountain pens? I'm guessing zero. You just wasted their time instead of teaching them something valuable.

> I'm guessing zero.

There’s your problem: guessing.

Knowing how to write cursive is a useful skill even if underutilised, heck, it’s a useful skill even if just for the artistry of it. It might be niche, it might be unnecessary, but saying it is a “waste of time” is just ridiculous.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#95

Post by isjcjwndkwmds »

rob74 wrote: post #28
breezybottom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've named one composer who is. I don't see where the inductive step applies.

The composers who didn't have neat handwriting are forgotten today because nobody could read their (musical) notes...

Such as famously the forgotten composer Ludwig von Beethoven.

Please, let’s leave the made up arguments to the LLMs.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#96

Post by isjcjwndkwmds »

coliveira wrote: post #82
Arainach wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. Look at Beethoven's manuscripts for instance. https://guides.loc.gov/beethoven/manuscripts

That's one of the reasons why he spent several years to write a single symphony.

What? What does one thing have to do with the other? Heck, what is up with everyone here just making up bullshit arguments about classical composers? The heck is this nonsense!?

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#97

Post by nelox »

The podcast is in French, but you can hear the first public performance of the works here:

> Discovery of an unpublished manuscript by Mozart at the BnF: behind the scenes of an extraordinary operation

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/podcasts/l-invite-e...

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#98

Post by coliveira »

datakan wrote: post #87
SoftTalker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools used to spend a lot of time on penmanship. I visited a high school where they had a wall of notes left by each senior class. In the notes from the 1950s the writing was quite refined and looked very practiced, and notes left by kids in the 2020s looked like 2nd grade printing by comparison. I don't think cursive handwriting is really even taught/required anymore. I can imagine that in the time of Bach or Moza…

Cursive is only useful for fountain pens. It was a sign of its times and is totally pointless and even counterproductive today. I get really sick of people exclaiming how important cursive is today when everyone types and everything is printed. "Back in my day we taught the kids cursive!!" How many of them used fountain pens? I'm guessing zero. You just wasted their time instead of teaching them something valuable.

Cursive was and still is a fast way to write by hand. If you want to be illiterate without a computer, then you don't want to learn handwriting. But if you don't want to be illiterate without a computer, learning cursive is a fast and efficient way to do it.

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#99

Post by datakan »

isjcjwndkwmds wrote: post #94
datakan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cursive is only useful for fountain pens. It was a sign of its times and is totally pointless and even counterproductive today. I get really sick of people exclaiming how important cursive is today when everyone types and everything is printed. "Back in my day we taught the kids cursive!!" How many of them used fountain pens? I'm guessing zero. You just wasted their time instead of teaching them something valuable.

> I'm guessing zero. There’s your problem: guessing. Knowing how to write cursive is a useful skill even if underutilised, heck, it’s a useful skill even if just for the artistry of it. It might be niche, it might be unnecessary, but saying it is a “waste of time” is just ridiculous.

> Knowing how to write cursive is a useful skill

No, it's not. At all

Re: 22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'

#100

Post by datakan »

coliveira wrote: post #98
datakan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cursive is only useful for fountain pens. It was a sign of its times and is totally pointless and even counterproductive today. I get really sick of people exclaiming how important cursive is today when everyone types and everything is printed. "Back in my day we taught the kids cursive!!" How many of them used fountain pens? I'm guessing zero. You just wasted their time instead of teaching them something valuable.

Cursive was and still is a fast way to write by hand. If you want to be illiterate without a computer, then you don't want to learn handwriting. But if you don't want to be illiterate without a computer, learning cursive is a fast and efficient way to do it.

Literacy and cursive have nothing to do with each other.
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