Researchers decipher an entire carbonized Herculaneum scroll for the first time using machine-reading techniques

Researchers decipher an entire carbonized Herculaneum scroll for the first time using machine-reading techniques · Digg

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One of the recovered passages, read for the first time in two thousand years: “Having…strained ourselves to the utmost through research and learning…possessing the same practical wisdom…”

Stewart Brand@stewartbrand

Herculaneum fused scroll read in full. https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

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Panta@thepanta82

@levelsio These Herculaneum scrolls are so cursed, because the library owner was a huge fan of some long dead cult and most of his library was just that stuff.

Imagine if the only writings to survive into 41st century was like Scientology and self help books.

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Thijs@thijsmakes

@levelsio Man this is so fking awesome https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

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Molotoff@RealMolotoff

Herculaneum is crazy because a plaque will read "This is the home of Felix who was a freed slave and became a successful baker..."

How could they possibly know that, come on

"...We know this because a chest in his room contained his annulled slave contract and a bakery lease"

It's astonishing to have have primary source documents just laying around.

The boatyard is pretty horrifying as well

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Grok@grok

atla_ The scroll (PHerc. 1667) is a ~2nd c. BC Stoic ethical treatise linked to Aristocreon (nephew/disciple of Chrysippus). It discusses human nature, moral progress through inquiry & learning, impulses, goods/evils & happiness.

Key fragments: “…we will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature…” “Having…strained ourselves to the utmost through research and learning…possessing the same practical wisdom…”

First full end-to-end virtual read (1.4m, ~22 columns) via Vesuvius Challenge AI + X-ray tech. Details: http://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

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Louis Libre ⚡️@LouisLibre

@levelsio Aristocreon is such a cool name also.

Sounds like a startup for luxury goods and services.

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Zbynek Drab@ZbynekDrab

@thepanta82 @levelsio That is largely what happened in late antiquity

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Simon@SimonTheNoob

@levelsio Honestly insane!

Also the original comment has one thing wrong, Romans and Greeks knew earth was spherical for a long time and speculated about other continents. At the time the original texts were written, they had already estimated the size of earth using sticks and shadows.

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Hendrik Krack@HKrackDev

@levelsio Wild that recovering ancient text is now an imaging and inference problem.

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Marcus 🦞@atla_

@levelsio @grok what's the content of this scroll can you give me a summary?

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Bengin | AI SEO for busy founders@bengincet

@levelsio insane, what else might have been there for so long and not read? I don't wanna fall into another huge rabbit hole taking my time honestly 😂

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Emre Arslan@AarslanEmre

@levelsio wild that we're reading something buried since 79 AD and the hard part wasn't the volcano, it was just figuring out how to unfold it without destroying it

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Aditya@adityawaslost

@levelsio imagine telling the author their work would survive a volcano, wait 2,000 years, and finally be read by a machine they couldn't even imagine.

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Tom @ The CS Book@the_cs_book

@levelsio Something related to BCI seems like the closest equivalent. I haven’t come across any sci-fi that addresses it (would love some recs) but if it works, it would change the human experience fundamentally

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Pranav Gajjala@pranav_gajjala

@levelsio the Aristocreon question cuts both ways. we probably can't imagine what's 2000 years out. but the gap between "writing thoughts on a scroll" and "thoughts instantly readable by the whole planet" happened because someone kept building the next layer.

that's the only answer.

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Panta@thepanta82

@ZbynekDrab @levelsio This was way before late antiquity afaik

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jp@jazzplane

@levelsio .@grok what did the scroll say?

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1863420&7@1863420_7

@thepanta82 @levelsio The 7 habits of highly effective Thetans.

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irshit@irshit0

@levelsio this is the coolest applied ml result in ages they never physically unrolled it they ct scanned the carbonized scroll and trained a model to detect ink from micro cracks in the layers reading 2000 year old text without ever touching it is wild

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Jake North@andmyjake

@levelsio Same vibe

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