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Priceless to whom ? How many hindsights are we really going to gain from that ? How many people are even going to benefit from it. No, how many will even hear a

Priceless to whom ? How many hindsights are we really going to gain from that ? How many people are even going to benefit from it. No, how many will even hear about it or will effectively access this ? We have tendency to consider that all knowledge is precious. That all information, especially from the past, should be treasured. It's sounds more anchored in a collector mindset that in any real assessment of the value of the discovery. We can't save everything. We don't have to save everything. As usual, we need to evaluate the cost vs the reward. Now the hard part is to put a value on knowledge and potential, which I agree is very hard and controversial. But stating we must save things as soon as we discover it doesn't help.

simias 9y ago
You might only discover that something had value in hindsight. Discriminating between what's a priceless heirloom and trivial garbage can be very difficult. Storage is cheap nowadays, if we can afford to archive petabytes of cat videos I'm sure we can collect endangered cultural artifacts. Who knows what we could've learned from the destroyed works of the library of Alexandria? All those things we don't know we don't know...
- monsieurbanana 9y ago
  Your argument about cheap storage misses the point. The difficult part is finding/protecting/retrieving/sorting the data.
- sametmax 9y ago
  > You might only discover that something had value in hindsight. I completely agree. But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak. > Who knows what we could've learned from the destroyed works of the library of Alexandria? This is a totally different scale. As I say, we must assess the potential winning vs the cost. Currently, the science enthusiasts are saying yes to everything, and the people with money are saying no to everything. I find it harmful both ways.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    "But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak." I can imagine someone saying this in the early 20th century. And then the decipherment of Hittite and discovery of Tocharian completely rewrote the history of the Near East and Central Asia. Just a few years ago, Werner and Vajda’s work on Ket finally connected a Siberian population with a Native American one. In fact, I could really go on for hours about how much Central and Northeast Asia history has been drastically revised in just the last 20–30 years from this kind of work. Digitizing manuscripts and analyzing data collected from little-known languages is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways (especially compared to digs) to gain major historical insights.
    - sametmax 9y ago
      I don't mean it's not valuable. I mean that which should always balance the cost instead of jumping on it.
- panglott 9y ago
  This is in fact an article about discoveries in palimpsets, where an older manuscript was erased and used to write a new manuscript over it. Lots of similar discoveries in papyri re-used to wrap mummies, as well. It's the ancient equivalent of re-using old newsprint as trivial garbage, but a valuable discovery today.

simias 9y ago

You might only discover that something had value in hindsight. Discriminating between what's a priceless heirloom and trivial garbage can be very difficult. Storage is cheap nowadays, if we can afford to archive petabytes of cat videos I'm sure we can collect endangered cultural artifacts. Who knows what we could've learned from the destroyed works of the library of Alexandria? All those things we don't know we don't know...

monsieurbanana 9y ago
Your argument about cheap storage misses the point. The difficult part is finding/protecting/retrieving/sorting the data.
sametmax 9y ago
> You might only discover that something had value in hindsight. I completely agree. But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak. > Who knows what we could've learned from the destroyed works of the library of Alexandria? This is a totally different scale. As I say, we must assess the potential winning vs the cost. Currently, the science enthusiasts are saying yes to everything, and the people with money are saying no to everything. I find it harmful both ways.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  "But we have data about many, many languages, lost and current. The chances that those newly discovered ones bring something more than "oh that's nice and interesting" on the table are quite weak." I can imagine someone saying this in the early 20th century. And then the decipherment of Hittite and discovery of Tocharian completely rewrote the history of the Near East and Central Asia. Just a few years ago, Werner and Vajda’s work on Ket finally connected a Siberian population with a Native American one. In fact, I could really go on for hours about how much Central and Northeast Asia history has been drastically revised in just the last 20–30 years from this kind of work. Digitizing manuscripts and analyzing data collected from little-known languages is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways (especially compared to digs) to gain major historical insights.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    I don't mean it's not valuable. I mean that which should always balance the cost instead of jumping on it.
panglott 9y ago
This is in fact an article about discoveries in palimpsets, where an older manuscript was erased and used to write a new manuscript over it. Lots of similar discoveries in papyri re-used to wrap mummies, as well. It's the ancient equivalent of re-using old newsprint as trivial garbage, but a valuable discovery today.