I find it worrying that this was upvoted so much so quickly, and HN users are apparently unable to spot the glaring red flags about this article.
1. Let's start with where the post was published. Check what kind of content this blog publishes - huge volumes of random low-effort AI-boosting posts with AI-generated images. This isn't a blog about history or linguistics.
2. The author is anonymous.
3. The contents of the post itself: it's just raw AI output. There's no expert commentary. It just mentions that unnamed experts were unable to do the job.
This isn't to say that LLMs aren't useful for science; on the contrary. See for example Terence Tao's blog. Notice how different his work is from whatever this post is.
I'm especially suspicious of the handwriting analysis. It seems like the kind of thing a vLLM would be pretty bad at doing and very good at convincingly faking for non-experts.
Gemini 3 Pro, eg, fails very badly at reading the Braille in this image, confusing the English language text for the actual Braille. When you give it just the Braille, it still fails and confidently hallucinates a transcription badly enough that you don't even have to know Braille (I don't!) to see it's wrong.
That isn't what the claim is about. I mean I don't think the source is particularly convincing but the claim is that it figured out the significance of the text not the literal meaning of the words
The interesting claim is that this would be hard for an expert to do, which is basically unsupported outside of anonymous experts who spent an unknown amount of time on the question. It also doesn't quote any experts on whether Gemini's conclusions are reasonable.
I don't think you understand the word "knowledge". Just because an LLM spews out an answer doesn't mean it is correct. It needs to be verified by experts in the field, that's how it becomes factual knowledge. Lord help us that I need to explain this.
This is literally a "my two cents' worth" answer from Gemini Pro. It's a straightforward inference from the fact that "Anno Mundi" means "in the year of the world", thus especially in the "year since creation", and that the main text references Abraham's birth with conflicting dates. It's nifty that we now have automated means of extracting a sensible scholarly consensus of "what could this possibly mean" but there's absolutely no mystery here.
I think there’s something very interesting here and would be interested in hearing more about the date discrepancies- it’s a shame the article is mostly just the raw output of gemini instead of more commentary
I make no judgement on this particular claim, I have not checked it out.
But what immediately comes to mind from reading the title are all the "AI solutions" for the as-of-yet undecoded voynich manuscript that are posted with surprising (and increasing) frequency to at least one forum. They're all incompatible and fall apart on closer inspection.
One probably important distinction is that the Voynich manuscript was deliberately obfuscated. Puzzling it out requires context that may not even exist anymore (consider discovering an intact TLS log a thousand years in the future, without the private cert you'd never know it was just someone posting to HN!).
The notes in the linked article are presumptively-legible notes made in good faith, just not with enough detail for someone-who-is-not-the-author to understand . AI training sets are much broader than mere human intuition now.
Some data magicians unlocked the secrets of the Oculists are while back, which got me to finally dig into some occult literature and various secret societies. Hope this does the same for others.
My colleagues do this as well with AI and it fucks me right off.
They just present the raw output, in its long form an expect everyone to follow the flow. Context is everything, damn it.
Looking into it further there isn't really a mystery as to what they are, or at least none that I could find suggesting that its unknown. Especially given the context of the page.
Its great that gemini can do this, its a shame that lots of the ancillary "analysis" about the writing doesn't appear to be correct (humanist minscule I would suggest is too new, too heathen and too Italian for a german manuscript of the time https://medievalwritings.atillo.com.au/whyread/paleographysu...)
I find it worrying that this was upvoted so much so quickly, and HN users are apparently unable to spot the glaring red flags about this article.
1. Let's start with where the post was published. Check what kind of content this blog publishes - huge volumes of random low-effort AI-boosting posts with AI-generated images. This isn't a blog about history or linguistics.
2. The author is anonymous.
3. The contents of the post itself: it's just raw AI output. There's no expert commentary. It just mentions that unnamed experts were unable to do the job.
This isn't to say that LLMs aren't useful for science; on the contrary. See for example Terence Tao's blog. Notice how different his work is from whatever this post is.
I'm especially suspicious of the handwriting analysis. It seems like the kind of thing a vLLM would be pretty bad at doing and very good at convincingly faking for non-experts.
Gemini 3 Pro, eg, fails very badly at reading the Braille in this image, confusing the English language text for the actual Braille. When you give it just the Braille, it still fails and confidently hallucinates a transcription badly enough that you don't even have to know Braille (I don't!) to see it's wrong.
https://m.facebook.com/groups/dullmensclub/posts/18885933484...
As far as I can tell, Gemini 3 Pro is still completely out of its depth and incapable of understanding Braille at all, and doesn't realize this.
Given how quickly it got upvoted, I also wonder how much of the upvoting itself may be from AI bots.
My first reflex when I see anything “solved” by AI is to go straight to the comments. This time again, I was not disappointed.
I feel sorry for people having to read the internet without the HN comments
You are anonymous too, so…
I am not announcing a scientific breakthrough.
Happens too often these days. Also, express an unpopular opinion and get downvoted.
"several experts who reviewed the page were unable to discern their meaning and thus their purpose had remained elusive"
I find this a little hard to believe.
why?
Because the experts weren't cited, and without provenance or review this is just "fancy slop".
this isn't a peer reviewed journal article though. do you have expertise in the field to say whether an expert would be able to decipher this?
I know experts who deciphered this. But I will not tell you their names.
The book is written in Latin, not exactly a dead language.
That isn't what the claim is about. I mean I don't think the source is particularly convincing but the claim is that it figured out the significance of the text not the literal meaning of the words
The interesting claim is that this would be hard for an expert to do, which is basically unsupported outside of anonymous experts who spent an unknown amount of time on the question. It also doesn't quote any experts on whether Gemini's conclusions are reasonable.
I don't think you understand the word "knowledge". Just because an LLM spews out an answer doesn't mean it is correct. It needs to be verified by experts in the field, that's how it becomes factual knowledge. Lord help us that I need to explain this.
This is literally a "my two cents' worth" answer from Gemini Pro. It's a straightforward inference from the fact that "Anno Mundi" means "in the year of the world", thus especially in the "year since creation", and that the main text references Abraham's birth with conflicting dates. It's nifty that we now have automated means of extracting a sensible scholarly consensus of "what could this possibly mean" but there's absolutely no mystery here.
I think there’s something very interesting here and would be interested in hearing more about the date discrepancies- it’s a shame the article is mostly just the raw output of gemini instead of more commentary
I make no judgement on this particular claim, I have not checked it out.
But what immediately comes to mind from reading the title are all the "AI solutions" for the as-of-yet undecoded voynich manuscript that are posted with surprising (and increasing) frequency to at least one forum. They're all incompatible and fall apart on closer inspection.
A collection of them can be found at https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-59.html .
One probably important distinction is that the Voynich manuscript was deliberately obfuscated. Puzzling it out requires context that may not even exist anymore (consider discovering an intact TLS log a thousand years in the future, without the private cert you'd never know it was just someone posting to HN!).
The notes in the linked article are presumptively-legible notes made in good faith, just not with enough detail for someone-who-is-not-the-author to understand . AI training sets are much broader than mere human intuition now.
Some data magicians unlocked the secrets of the Oculists are while back, which got me to finally dig into some occult literature and various secret societies. Hope this does the same for others.
tldr gemini asserts they are converted dates.
My colleagues do this as well with AI and it fucks me right off.
They just present the raw output, in its long form an expect everyone to follow the flow. Context is everything, damn it.
Looking into it further there isn't really a mystery as to what they are, or at least none that I could find suggesting that its unknown. Especially given the context of the page.
Its great that gemini can do this, its a shame that lots of the ancillary "analysis" about the writing doesn't appear to be correct (humanist minscule I would suggest is too new, too heathen and too Italian for a german manuscript of the time https://medievalwritings.atillo.com.au/whyread/paleographysu...)
[dead]
This is how you use AI.
For populating blogspam?
I mean its not.
There isn't verification, and its based on the assertion that this marginalia is a mystery. None of which appears to be backed up.
It then doesn't actually do any analysis of the output, any verification, just pastes the dumps at the end, with no attempt to make it readable.