benbreen

32 ms·

421.
by benbreen 3y ago
Author here - yes, this is what I was getting at. The false promise of a rapid victory over the French via encirclement from the right flank (in the style of Hannibal) really was a major factor in justifying the risks of war for the German
422.
Historical maps probably helped cause World War I(resobscura.substack.com)
145 points by benbreen 3y ago|93 comments
423.
by benbreen 3y ago
Agreed, the style is strikingly crisp and witty in a way I associate with early twentieth century English writers, especially around Oxford/Cambridge (Isaiah Berlin, C. S. Lewis). The title is notably good too. I love how Haldane write
424.
On Being the Right Size (1926) [pdf](phys.ufl.edu)
77 points by benbreen 3y ago|47 comments
425.
The Destroyed Libraries of Louvain (2012)(libraryhistorybuff.com)
25 points by benbreen 3y ago|11 comments
426.
by benbreen 3y ago
I've tried using ChatGPT to translate Latin texts from the Renaissance. I know enough Latin (intermediate, but can figure it out with a dictionary) to check it, and it was very, very impressive. What blew me away was not just the fluen
427.
The industrial quasi-revolution of Song dynasty China(etiennefd.substack.com)
27 points by benbreen 3y ago|10 comments
428.
by benbreen 3y ago
I like it. Tried something similar early on, but decided it wasn't worth it because the ChatGPT context window is only enough to run for 10-20 turns anyway. But with Claude's 100k token context window, this should work great. Than
429.
by benbreen 3y ago
I found that results degraded too, but I was able to get it back up to the same level by changing my approach to prompting. I experimented with writing the prompt in pseudo-code for instance, which worked for awhile, then stopped — stuff al
430.
by benbreen 3y ago
Totally agreed about the bias toward friendliness and a conciliatory tone. Sometimes when simulating history this can be not just inaccurate but genuinely offensive (slaves and slave-owners getting along, etc). I experimented with adding la
431.
by benbreen 3y ago
Likely very little. But a merchant capable of writing (or paying a scribe to write) a formal cuneiform complaint about bad copper, then having it delivered, would know quite a bit more. Great question IMO - thinking critically about exactly
432.
by benbreen 3y ago
"I think it can be taken further; rather than "spot the errors that ChatGPT made", you could flip the script and make it "survive 20 turns of conversation without making a historical error", so you'd need to kn
433.
by benbreen 3y ago
Thank you! Re: gamification, I guess I finally found a use for all the time I spent playing Gemstone III when I was 12. It seems that MUDs or writing about them were well represented in the training data because preventing it from veering o
434.
by benbreen 3y ago
Author of the post here - happy to discuss and get feedback from HN readers. The examples I gave here are all using GPT-3.5 but Claude now seems to work at least as well using the same prompts.
435.
Historical Objects: The Bees of Childeric I(justhistoryposts.com)
44 points by benbreen 3y ago|1 comments
436.
Scent of the afterlife? Scientists recreate recipe for Egyptian mummy balm(arstechnica.com)
11 points by benbreen 3y ago|1 comments
437.
Bismarck’s War(historytoday.com)
66 points by benbreen 3y ago|109 comments
438.
Man, Myth and Magic(johncoulthart.com)
130 points by benbreen 3y ago|43 comments
439.
Evidence for Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue revealed by multispectral imaging (2022)(journals.sagepub.com)
56 points by benbreen 3y ago|2 comments
440.
Rodrigues Solitaire(en.wikipedia.org)
3 points by benbreen 3y ago|0 comments
441.
Hasanlu Lovers(en.wikipedia.org)
55 points by benbreen 3y ago|23 comments
442.
Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Pleistocene transition(science.org)
5 points by benbreen 3y ago|0 comments
443.
What can historical clothing reveal that other sources cannot?(historytoday.com)
46 points by benbreen 3y ago|16 comments
444.
Japan's abandoned villages(japantimes.co.jp)
171 points by benbreen 3y ago|126 comments
445.
How Tycho Brahe really died (2001)(ips-planetarium.org)
74 points by benbreen 3y ago|27 comments
446.
‘Here Begins the Dark Sea’ Review: A Map from the Future(wsj.com)
12 points by benbreen 3y ago|8 comments
447.
First United States Army Group(en.wikipedia.org)
11 points by benbreen 3y ago|1 comments
448.
How Indian artists transformed the Buddha’s absence into presence(washingtonpost.com)
49 points by benbreen 3y ago|92 comments
449.
The Frothy Saga of the Jacuzzi Family(nytimes.com)
33 points by benbreen 3y ago|24 comments
450.
Dark microbiome in Atacama fossil delta unveils Mars life detection limits(ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
65 points by benbreen 3y ago|26 comments

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