8 ms·

Reading Ancient Scrolls

179 points by diodorus 3y ago

lukeboi 3y ago
Another contestant in the competition here. Really great stuff from Casey! I'd strongly recommend all those interested in more updates to join the discord server: https://discord.gg/6FgWYNjb4N https://discord.gg/6FgWYNjb4N Competition website: https://scrollprize.org/ https://scrollprize.org/
- exceptione 3y ago
  Don't join discord. There are plenty alternatives that do respect human freedom.
- andrepd 3y ago
  How much of that website is true and how much is fluffing his own project/research? It would be good to have at least some external or independent links on this topic. As it stands it reads more like marketing and less like research, which doesn't mean anything necessarily but does make me skeptical.
  - robbiep 3y ago
    I am not in any way qualified to assess the quality of his research as this is completely outside my scope of practice, but I am failing to detect any marketing in what is an interesting open source (and possibly forfeiting or foregoing the rules of the prize) disclosure of something that he believes is a progression of the subject under discussion, and will ultimately lead to further progression; or alternatively lead to dismissal if the methods disclosed turn up nothing of further benefit. Seems like someone who is pretty into the scientific method, and, more importantly, spirit, to me? Disclosure: I went to high school with Casey
lukasb 3y ago
Glad to see progress on this, hoping we find out just how badly Plato slandered the sophists. A lot of the images aren't loading for me in the post, though.
- vanous 3y ago
  I had to disable the Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox to see the images.
drallison 3y ago
Amazing work. <sigh/> A whole block of cool research to track. <grin/>
jimmychoozyx 3y ago
such a fascinating problem to solve. i am so glad to see it receiving funding and capable participants
ggm 3y ago
My dad, the eternal optimist, suggested I try doing a statistical approach to edge pattern matching of an eggshell as a project. His goal was to do the fragment reassembling for Hebrew scrolls. This was in the Vax 11/780 days. I think it would be more feasible now. (He did stylometry at Edinburgh uni as a hobby alongside more serious CS/VLSI work. I declined to try, the problem was too big for me)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
catnibbler 3y ago
What was the reason for using a density scanner then throwing GPUs at it, rather than just using a scanner that worked, such as 13C MRI ?
- angiosperm 3y ago
  MRI ought to produce better results. But do we have high-enough-resolution MRI scanners?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    I was under the impression that you can always get more resolution out of MRI by scanning for longer and giving the machine more compute and RAM.
- tgflynn 3y ago
  Has MRI actually been proven to work with similar carbonized scrolls ?
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    MRI has proven useful when the ink was made with iron compounds ("oak-gall ink"). But that was used mostly starting a few centuries later. These scrolls use carbon-based ink with composition much like the paper. But there might still be usable differences.
peterfirefly 3y ago
We clearly need to scan the scrolls differently. We can't use images that are almost all noise and no signal and expect miracles to happen.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I'd like to see the scan done with a CT scanner, but with perhaps 10 different photon energies. That should give plenty of information to separate different element concentrations in papyrus and ink
asar 3y ago
Very fascinating! For anyone interested, the article on the of books that might be uncovered at Herculaneum, is a great read as well! https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380 https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380
- nemo 3y ago
  I'm a Classicist (and non-Christian), hadn't heard of Richard Carrier before, it's an interesting list, though the guy's anti-Christian bias infuses it so much it's a little hard to take him seriously. He's got some odd conspiracy theories about Nero, for example. And for someone with his perspective you might imagine an intact copy of Josephus prior to the later Christian edits would seem like it would be #1 on the list, but since he's a Mythicist he doesn't mention Josephus at all, since in Josephus you have a few mentions of Jesus as a historic figure which is evidence against the Mythicist belief, esp. given the chronology.
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    Ancient Rome was such a hotbed of conspiracy theories that familiar tropes today, such as Nero's slaughter of Christians, stand on extremely shaky ground. The texts we have today were selectively preserved, and unreliably transcribed. We have exactly zero original manuscripts of any of what historians are obliged to rely on. Everyone writing the history preserved was biased, and much of it was doctored by medieval monks, often by accident. E.g., we now know, reliably, that a single-letter transcription error produced "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men" from the original (in Greek, of course) "peace on Earth for men whom God favors". Every last scrap of documentary evidence of the beginnings of Christianity was deliberately, openly, proudly torched by the early Church, so every conventional fact stands on extremely shaky ground. Consensus among current scholars not pledged to uphold Church doctrine is that the entirety of the New Testament, absent about half of Paul's letters, is wholly fictional. Paul, of course, had his own biases. It is still possible that some anecdotes are based on factual events, but we have no reliable reason to believe any in particular. Opinions vary. People invested in current consensus should want to have actually-reliable documentation for any factual basis for any of it. It is just possible that there really was a Jesus from Nazareth at the center of Christianity. It is even just barely possible that this Jesus was crucified, maybe even in something like the manner now believed. (Zombie dinner parties afterward, not so much.)
verisimi 3y ago
I'm sorry - I just don't believe a word of it! But there's a simple way to test it! Roll up a newspaper or some sheets of paper, bake it until blackened, then pull out the charred remains and have this fancy tech tell us what it sees. You could easily verify whether what it says is true and whether any of the interpretions" correlate in any way with the newspaper that went in. In fact, this would be the right way to iteratively develop your process, hone your software, etc - you would have some criteria with which gauge that this is viable. As opposed to a process that is bound to find something even in white noise. Alternatively, you could just get ai trained on ancient greek, give it some noise, get it to generate some text, and call it an amazing ancient greek discovery! > The entirety of the ancient corpus today can fit on a small bookshelf. This person hasn't been to the local bookshop - there are many bookshelves worth of ancient texts. There are bibles, other religious writings, ancient plays, ancient history, science, philosophical works, etc. Or, Casey is right... in which case, what is the provenance of all those purportedly ancient texts?
- verisimi 3y ago
  Its amazing to me that I think I'm stating the obvious - that you can't read burnt paper - and yet I'm downvoted, with no comment to explain why the downvote. I guess people like to live in a fantasy reality, where technology is capable of magic, and anyone who questions what sounds like a lovely story is just mean. Downvote!
  - angiosperm 3y ago
    People are encouraged to post facts, not lazy, random speculation. Please read the posting guidelines.
    - verisimi 3y ago
      At least you are expressing something about your discontent - so thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond. Perhaps its random speculation to you, but I cannot read what was written on burnt paper. I don't think the idea that some software/hardware fix can or ever could read what was written on burnt paper is viable. However, I'm not just criticising the purported facts. I'm also offering a suggestion whereby I can be shown to be wrong, as I suggest a verifiable way to prove this idea works. I'm saying that you should surely test this system out on something that you can prove works, before rolling the idea out onto actual historical artefacts and adding to the ancient works on the bookshelf. I just don't see what's objectionable to what I'm saying - it seems entirely based in common sense. However, I think it upsets people, as it snaps them out of a 'merry daydream' they have about how wonderful technology is.

179 points by diodorus 3y ago

Another contestant in the competition here. Really great stuff from Casey! I'd strongly recommend all those interested in more updates to join the discord server: https://discord.gg/6FgWYNjb4N https://discord.gg/6FgWYNjb4N Competition website: https://scrollprize.org/ https://scrollprize.org/

exceptione 3y ago
Don't join discord. There are plenty alternatives that do respect human freedom.
andrepd 3y ago
How much of that website is true and how much is fluffing his own project/research? It would be good to have at least some external or independent links on this topic. As it stands it reads more like marketing and less like research, which doesn't mean anything necessarily but does make me skeptical.
- robbiep 3y ago
  I am not in any way qualified to assess the quality of his research as this is completely outside my scope of practice, but I am failing to detect any marketing in what is an interesting open source (and possibly forfeiting or foregoing the rules of the prize) disclosure of something that he believes is a progression of the subject under discussion, and will ultimately lead to further progression; or alternatively lead to dismissal if the methods disclosed turn up nothing of further benefit. Seems like someone who is pretty into the scientific method, and, more importantly, spirit, to me? Disclosure: I went to high school with Casey

lukasb 3y ago

Glad to see progress on this, hoping we find out just how badly Plato slandered the sophists. A lot of the images aren't loading for me in the post, though.

vanous 3y ago
I had to disable the Enhanced Tracking Protection in Firefox to see the images.

drallison 3y ago

Amazing work. <sigh/> A whole block of cool research to track. <grin/>

jimmychoozyx 3y ago

such a fascinating problem to solve. i am so glad to see it receiving funding and capable participants

ggm 3y ago

My dad, the eternal optimist, suggested I try doing a statistical approach to edge pattern matching of an eggshell as a project. His goal was to do the fragment reassembling for Hebrew scrolls. This was in the Vax 11/780 days. I think it would be more feasible now. (He did stylometry at Edinburgh uni as a hobby alongside more serious CS/VLSI work. I declined to try, the problem was too big for me)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

catnibbler 3y ago

What was the reason for using a density scanner then throwing GPUs at it, rather than just using a scanner that worked, such as 13C MRI ?

angiosperm 3y ago
MRI ought to produce better results. But do we have high-enough-resolution MRI scanners?
- londons_explore 3y ago
  I was under the impression that you can always get more resolution out of MRI by scanning for longer and giving the machine more compute and RAM.
tgflynn 3y ago
Has MRI actually been proven to work with similar carbonized scrolls ?
- angiosperm 3y ago
  MRI has proven useful when the ink was made with iron compounds ("oak-gall ink"). But that was used mostly starting a few centuries later. These scrolls use carbon-based ink with composition much like the paper. But there might still be usable differences.

peterfirefly 3y ago

We clearly need to scan the scrolls differently. We can't use images that are almost all noise and no signal and expect miracles to happen.

londons_explore 3y ago
I'd like to see the scan done with a CT scanner, but with perhaps 10 different photon energies. That should give plenty of information to separate different element concentrations in papyrus and ink

asar 3y ago

Very fascinating! For anyone interested, the article on the of books that might be uncovered at Herculaneum, is a great read as well! https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380 https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/23380

nemo 3y ago
I'm a Classicist (and non-Christian), hadn't heard of Richard Carrier before, it's an interesting list, though the guy's anti-Christian bias infuses it so much it's a little hard to take him seriously. He's got some odd conspiracy theories about Nero, for example. And for someone with his perspective you might imagine an intact copy of Josephus prior to the later Christian edits would seem like it would be #1 on the list, but since he's a Mythicist he doesn't mention Josephus at all, since in Josephus you have a few mentions of Jesus as a historic figure which is evidence against the Mythicist belief, esp. given the chronology.
- angiosperm 3y ago
  Ancient Rome was such a hotbed of conspiracy theories that familiar tropes today, such as Nero's slaughter of Christians, stand on extremely shaky ground. The texts we have today were selectively preserved, and unreliably transcribed. We have exactly zero original manuscripts of any of what historians are obliged to rely on. Everyone writing the history preserved was biased, and much of it was doctored by medieval monks, often by accident. E.g., we now know, reliably, that a single-letter transcription error produced "peace on Earth and goodwill toward men" from the original (in Greek, of course) "peace on Earth for men whom God favors". Every last scrap of documentary evidence of the beginnings of Christianity was deliberately, openly, proudly torched by the early Church, so every conventional fact stands on extremely shaky ground. Consensus among current scholars not pledged to uphold Church doctrine is that the entirety of the New Testament, absent about half of Paul's letters, is wholly fictional. Paul, of course, had his own biases. It is still possible that some anecdotes are based on factual events, but we have no reliable reason to believe any in particular. Opinions vary. People invested in current consensus should want to have actually-reliable documentation for any factual basis for any of it. It is just possible that there really was a Jesus from Nazareth at the center of Christianity. It is even just barely possible that this Jesus was crucified, maybe even in something like the manner now believed. (Zombie dinner parties afterward, not so much.)

verisimi 3y ago

I'm sorry - I just don't believe a word of it! But there's a simple way to test it! Roll up a newspaper or some sheets of paper, bake it until blackened, then pull out the charred remains and have this fancy tech tell us what it sees. You could easily verify whether what it says is true and whether any of the interpretions" correlate in any way with the newspaper that went in. In fact, this would be the right way to iteratively develop your process, hone your software, etc - you would have some criteria with which gauge that this is viable. As opposed to a process that is bound to find something even in white noise. Alternatively, you could just get ai trained on ancient greek, give it some noise, get it to generate some text, and call it an amazing ancient greek discovery! > The entirety of the ancient corpus today can fit on a small bookshelf. This person hasn't been to the local bookshop - there are many bookshelves worth of ancient texts. There are bibles, other religious writings, ancient plays, ancient history, science, philosophical works, etc. Or, Casey is right... in which case, what is the provenance of all those purportedly ancient texts?

verisimi 3y ago
Its amazing to me that I think I'm stating the obvious - that you can't read burnt paper - and yet I'm downvoted, with no comment to explain why the downvote. I guess people like to live in a fantasy reality, where technology is capable of magic, and anyone who questions what sounds like a lovely story is just mean. Downvote!
- angiosperm 3y ago
  People are encouraged to post facts, not lazy, random speculation. Please read the posting guidelines.
  - verisimi 3y ago
    At least you are expressing something about your discontent - so thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond. Perhaps its random speculation to you, but I cannot read what was written on burnt paper. I don't think the idea that some software/hardware fix can or ever could read what was written on burnt paper is viable. However, I'm not just criticising the purported facts. I'm also offering a suggestion whereby I can be shown to be wrong, as I suggest a verifiable way to prove this idea works. I'm saying that you should surely test this system out on something that you can prove works, before rolling the idea out onto actual historical artefacts and adding to the ancient works on the bookshelf. I just don't see what's objectionable to what I'm saying - it seems entirely based in common sense. However, I think it upsets people, as it snaps them out of a 'merry daydream' they have about how wonderful technology is.