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And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify - what an amazing future. Alternatively, we will only understa

And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify - what an amazing future. Alternatively, we will only understand anything in ancient Rome if we understand Latin and other languages because the NPC stay true to that. The biggest issue would be that Romans viewed certain things so different to us, so our ability to understand would need heavy support to work.

taneq 3y ago
Aw man, this is gonna be like Civilization with hyper-aggressive Gandhi all over again.
chpatrick 3y ago
> And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify - what an amazing future. That's already the case for most of history. Many events were only written down centuries after the fact by biased historians. Even further back in time we can really only make vague guesses from archeological evidence. Whether it's AI or a human coming up with historical fiction, it will never be exactly as it was. On the other hand an AI can be trained on everything we know about a given period, which is very unlikely for a human fiction author.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > That's already the case for most of history. Many events were only written down centuries after the fact by biased historians. Even further back in time we can really only make vague guesses from archeological evidence. And that's assuming you spent significant effort learning history on your own, acquiring knowledge from contemporary and past historians. If you're relying just on history lessons from schools, then that has an extra layer of political and cultural bias on top. That extra layer is fortunately the easiest one to deal with - it peels off once you start diffing your history books with equivalent ones from a different country (or even from your own country, but couple decades earlier). But it still requires some investment (time, knowing another language), and hardly anyone tries it.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Yes, which is why it is important to understand the gaps and biases in sources. Extrapolating into them (AI or not) is tricky.
orbital-decay 3y ago
> And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify How is it different from the popular history you have now? Unless you've spent years on studying actual facts, most of what you know is the opinionated interpretation by someone else who did. And even if you did, most sources about Rome are either secondary or of dubious quality.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Not that different for a lot of people. Btw., sources on Rome and everyday life in Rome are actually plenty and from the time.
infecto 3y ago
My own curiosity, what did they view so different? While I have read a number of translated texts I was unfortunately never exposed to stark differences.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Their moral views were quite different from ours. For example, they would have trouble viewing depictions of something as "bad"/moraly corrupting (the corruption would be in the mind always, not in the picture which is passive), so our concepts there would be quite alien (thinking about the Late Roman Republic). Similar for violence in some areas - much more opportunitistic there (not quite the right word, they were kind of hard-nosed pragmatists in a way).

taneq 3y ago

Aw man, this is gonna be like Civilization with hyper-aggressive Gandhi all over again.

chpatrick 3y ago

> And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify - what an amazing future. That's already the case for most of history. Many events were only written down centuries after the fact by biased historians. Even further back in time we can really only make vague guesses from archeological evidence. Whether it's AI or a human coming up with historical fiction, it will never be exactly as it was. On the other hand an AI can be trained on everything we know about a given period, which is very unlikely for a human fiction author.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> That's already the case for most of history. Many events were only written down centuries after the fact by biased historians. Even further back in time we can really only make vague guesses from archeological evidence. And that's assuming you spent significant effort learning history on your own, acquiring knowledge from contemporary and past historians. If you're relying just on history lessons from schools, then that has an extra layer of political and cultural bias on top. That extra layer is fortunately the easiest one to deal with - it peels off once you start diffing your history books with equivalent ones from a different country (or even from your own country, but couple decades earlier). But it still requires some investment (time, knowing another language), and hardly anyone tries it.
RandomLensman 3y ago
Yes, which is why it is important to understand the gaps and biases in sources. Extrapolating into them (AI or not) is tricky.

orbital-decay 3y ago

> And we will believe all the lies AI will tell us about the past because we have no way to verify How is it different from the popular history you have now? Unless you've spent years on studying actual facts, most of what you know is the opinionated interpretation by someone else who did. And even if you did, most sources about Rome are either secondary or of dubious quality.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Not that different for a lot of people. Btw., sources on Rome and everyday life in Rome are actually plenty and from the time.

infecto 3y ago

My own curiosity, what did they view so different? While I have read a number of translated texts I was unfortunately never exposed to stark differences.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Their moral views were quite different from ours. For example, they would have trouble viewing depictions of something as "bad"/moraly corrupting (the corruption would be in the mind always, not in the picture which is passive), so our concepts there would be quite alien (thinking about the Late Roman Republic). Similar for violence in some areas - much more opportunitistic there (not quite the right word, they were kind of hard-nosed pragmatists in a way).