sweisman

You should have stopped at "My comment is indeed badly written."

You have not provided any clarity. It's a mishmash of bitterness and anger.

There is no "of course". You are ignorant of history.

In any case, there is no connection between "invented science" centuries or millennia ago and "all these Nobel laureates."

The documentary historical record is clear. Some of the Jews in my corpus pioneered things during the Renaissance period. One is a very early documented use of decimal numbers, as one example (https://arsastronomica.com/works/immanuel-bonfils-shesh-kena...). They pioneered empirical measurement centuries before Tycho. They invented instruments relied up for astronomy and navigation.

Further, Jews who are not ignorant know that the claim of Chosenness does not rest on intelligence or accomplishments.

By way of example, there are several comments by someone else noting a problem with terminology drift. This was genuinely constructive, and I fixed and repaired the problem, which I thought I had resolved months ago.

These are the kind of comments I also typically get regarding regressions. Problems with mostly mechanically repairable aspects of the translation, but not with the quality of the translation itself. From people who know of what they speak. That I do not put them on the record is not relevant, except to people like you. They are real, and their attestations are real.

I got to be honest too.

At least my name is public and on the record, along with my work. You are irrelevant. So is what you say.

You haven't read anything. Are you retarded or disingenuous?

Yes and know. The biggest problem I've experienced vis a vis hallucinations is tabular data. In prose, where context is anchored by surrounding words. Even the subtle points are conveyed appropriately.

Check out a work or two.

The biggest problem with hallucinations (or confabulations as Claude prefers haha) is from tables. Prose has context that anchors it.

Hebrew is also much worse than Latin, which uses Arabic numerals. Hebrew conventionally uses the letters for numeric representation too.

I am getting good (and improving results), but the token cost is heavy.

Thank you. Your comments are very helpful. I am working on updating the translation agents and fixing the issue in the existing works.

If you'd like, you can contact me privately and I will let you know when the updates are published. Or just check the site occasionally for updates.

No, because I don't know what spiky means.

Thank you. I have considered Arabic, as there a couple works I am interested in.

My queue of Hebrew and Latin works is already lengthy, and this is my focus for now.

Can you email me with more info? It is likely the distinctions you noted are from the source. There is a glossary maintained that keeps specific words or phrases consistent. But slightly different phrases can resolve in inconsistent ways.

The problem is not the AI, but rather a weakness in the design. In other words, a bug. Or a regression and we call them today. It is fixable.

Misleading in what way?

I know what I know from experience. You know what you know from nothing at all.

Numerous people have commented to me about Hebrew and Latin works, who know what they are talking about, and none has criticized the fidelity of the translation to the source. The criticisms proffered are minor, while the praise extensive.

A couple years ago, I shared your opinion. Now I don't. You are the one who won't change your mind. Like you said, it's "philosophical" for you, while for me, it isn't. If you insist on calling it shit regardless, you are retarded.

Judaism says revealed knowledge, as transmitted to us via our mesorah, is superior to empirical knowledge, such as that obtained via the scientific method.

That being said, Ralbag, as we refer to him, or Gersonides, as you do, was both a highly regarded (and controversial) rabbi and esteemed astronomer who pioneered empirical observation and measurement.

Copernicus and Kepler have both been translated to English. I am focusing on works that haven't been.

Gans met and wrote about his encounters with Tycho. It was these documented encounters that drove my interest in translating the work.

In chapter 25 of the same book I mentioned, on the famous Gemara where Chaza"l concede to the chachmei goyim in Pesachim, Tycho says the Jews were right and the goyim wrong, and the Jews were wrong to concede.

Gans also met Kepler.

David Gans, in Nechmad v'Na'im, the first book I translated, states as a matter of fact that any wisdom obtained by the nations regarding astronomy came from the Jews. Ralbag's treatise was so significant the Vatican commissioned a Latin translation.

In any case, my email is on the site and in every book. Feel free to contact me privately to continue the discussion.

Software development. I did work in an astrophysics lab decades ago, as one of my public repos documents.

So, he's commenting on something he didn't read and compares it to shit? Good to know. I'll ignore him. I understand his point. Still, obviously my rhetorical question had in mind that what I do is good enough quality to make the question worthwhile. Better than a "first draft". As mentioned in another comment, some works were translated up to four times as I refined the process.

Yes. The rules vary worldwide. Do your own research. I did, before asserting copyright.

Manuscripts are doable but tougher than printed works. Hebrew likewise is tougher than Latin.

This is not what I use to translate. It was the first version to create usable output, and intentionally implemented in a code-free manner (today I have an extensive body of code in addition to the Claude Code harness instructions). Read my origin story, linked to in another comment, for more background.

It's good enough for me. I'm not publicizing his name without permission. He is quite well-known and until I moved recently, was a neighbor of mine.

I can assure you this is not a thin wrapper. Even the public repo of the first workable version of it is not a thin wrapper.

You are welcome to try. It is not rocket science, but what I developed would take much effort to reproduce.

I wrote an origin story about how I got started: https://aicentral.substack.com/p/pipeline-to-the-past

It describes some of the added value and lessons learned.

Professional translators don't throw around the word "impressive" like that.

You don't, yet I still stand by my work.

I translated some books up to four times as I refined the process. The default behavior is repeatedly to not attempt to translate text it can't resolve for whatever reason. AIs do have a tendency to hallucinate, and I expended a lot of effort on minimizing this problem to the point it can be considered mitigated.

A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive".

Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations.

AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?

Thank you.

Your suggestion makes sense, and you are not the first to offer it.

Maybe someday, although probably not CC licensed.

I built Ars Astronomica to make historically important works on astronomy, calendrics, and related sciences accessible in modern English. The project combines OCR, AI-assisted translation, editorial review, and publication into a workflow that can handle book-length works while preserving diagrams, mathematical notation, and references.

The site currently includes English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin works, including texts that have never previously appeared in English and others that survive only in manuscript form. All editions are released under a Creative Commons license.

I'm interested in feedback from historians of science, classicists, medievalists, digital-humanities researchers, and anyone interested in AI-assisted scholarly publishing.

I wrote the test harness in Forth for a physics experiment launched on the Space Shuttle.

https://github.com/sweisman/cass-edi

Early 1991 snapshot of Forth program to control the test harness of the Electron Drift Instrument of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at UCSD, later launched on the Space Shuttle.

There are regular posts about Forth, including regular mentions of its use in the space program, but little on actual production code.

As expected, it is extremely terse and difficult to unravel, but there are numerous explanatory comments.

This site has saved my bacon more than once.

My understanding is that NDAs only apply to settlements, not to actual judgements. Also, no one wants to settle.

To understand what is going on, a summary of the legal repartee going on is as follows, written by Vox Day, who formulated the legal strategy and to my understanding, basically wrote all the legal briefs.

The crazy thing is that neither the lawyers nor the Trust & Safety people even read the Terms and Community Guidelines. I mean, one can excuse the gammas and the armchair lawyers for not knowing what the relevant rules and laws are, they're mostly reacting to what they've seen floating around the Internet.

But it's downright bizarre to me how the freaking lawyers don't even know what they're talking about. They'll write dozens of filings all based on the same false premise.

WE KICKED OWEN OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON OUR PLATFORM!

No, he didn't.

OKAY, WE KICKED HIM OFF BECAUSE HE POSTED HATE SPEECH ON INSTAGRAM AND WE POLICE OFF-PLATFORM SPEECH TOO!

Instagram is free.

WHAT? SO WHAT?

So Owen's Patreon account didn't fund his Instagram posts. Instagram is free.

WELL, UM, WE DID IT BECAUSE HE POSTED SOMETHING ON FACEBOOK!

Facebook is free too.

TWITTER?

That's free too.

WELL, HE MADE VIDEOS! ON YOUTUBE. HE FUNDED THOSE ON PATREON!

No, he didn't. He was monetized directly on YouTube and he never created a Patreon video project.

WE CAN KICK OFF ANYONE WE WANT FOR NO REASON AT ALL!

Allow me to introduce you to the Unruh Civil Rights Act of 1959....