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submitted 1 year ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world
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[-] logicbomb@lemmy.world 168 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They give a bit more context in this video. (from 2017)

By the way, I got that link from an article in The Guardian, and I can't find anything in either of those two articles that really adds on top of what was known in 2017. It could just be hard for a layperson to understand, and so was oversimplified?

TLDW is that researchers have known for decades that this tablet showed the Babylonians knew the Pythagorean Theorem for 1000 years before Pythagoras was born. So, that part isn't new.

They seem to be saying that what's new is that they understand each line of this tablet describes a different right triangle, and that due to the Babylonians counting in base 60, they can describe many more right triangles for a unit length than we can in base 10.

They feel like this can have many uses in things like surveying, computing, and in understanding trigonometry.

My take is that this was a very interesting discovery, but that they probably felt pressure to figure out a way to describe it as useful in the modern world. But we've known about the useful parts of this discovery for forever. Our clocks are all base 60. And our computers are binary, not base 10, just to start with.

We overvalue trying to make every advance in knowledge immediately useful. Knowledge can be good for its own sake.

[-] Nougat@kbin.social 47 points 1 year ago

"Having many more right triangles for a unit length" would have an incredible benefit in constructing enormous triangly things.

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 year ago

Instead becoming more acute about triangly things... we were more obtuse and went base ten

[-] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Well yeah, who's got 60 fingers? I mean sure, there's Fingers Georg, but that guy's weird.

[-] jarfil@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People used to count 12 knuckles times 5 fingers for a total base 60.

Using only 5+5 fingers is the dumbed down version.

[-] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wasn't it the Sumerians that did use base 60 and just went to counting knuckles and joints to get to the base 60 system ... never fully understood it when I read about it either

Here is a demonstration

https://mathsciencehistory.com/2021/11/09/count-to-60-with-your-phalanges/

[-] jarfil@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Sumerians and Babylonians used the same cuneiform writing system with a base of 6Γ—10, but it seems like they also used to count to 60 as 12Γ—5... and what we're left with, is the simplified 5+5=10.

Also, we shall remember that:

π’€­ 𒐏𒋰𒁀 π’Žπ’€€π’‰Œ π’‚„π’„€ 𒍑𒆗𒂡 π’ˆ— π’‹€π’€Šπ’† π’ˆ  π’ˆ—π’† π’‚— π’„€π’† π’Œ΅π’†€ π’‚π’€€π’‰Œ π’ˆ¬π’ˆΎπ’†•

[-] 8BitRoadTrip@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Now I’m wondering why the Babylonians didn’t have giant triangle shaped orbital habitats.

[-] squiblet@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago
[-] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

They can math.

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Base 12 is a good compromise between math and meat imo

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[-] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago

That's very interesting. Thank you for giving us your insight on this.

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Maybe I'm an idiot but how would a base 60 system with "Cleaner fractions means fewer approximations and more accurate maths, and the researchers suggest we can learn from it today." make any difference when computers are powerful enough to generate solutions to answer with more accuracy than is ever needed in real world applications?

[-] LeberechtReinhold@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

None, in modern context we can work in any base we desire, all that basic stuff got generalized ages ago. No one is going to change computing systems to use babylonian-style. And the trigonometry stuff is the same thing we knew, but discovered earlier than the greeks.

It's a important discovery for sure, especially for our understanding of ancient Mesopotamian cultures, but everything else is the authors and the article going bananas with conclusions.

[-] I_Comment_On_EVERYTHING@lemmings.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's kind of what I figured. I wish journalism didn't need to be so incredibly sensationalist. I understand that it's because the majority of the populace has the attention span of a gnat but it doesn't make me feel any less annoyed by it.

[-] jarfil@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Computers still run different algorithms internally, some of which are more prone to having undetected errors than others:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

[-] SkyeStarfall 15 points 1 year ago

Computers use base 2, binary. Whether humans use base 10 or base 60 is irrelevant.

[-] SCB@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

The algorithms coded into computers are not in base 2, though. Only operating functions of the computer itself are in base 2.

You don't code in binary

[-] Tranus@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago

Every thing you code is binary. You may write '15', but the code your computer runs will use '00001111'. The base-10 source code is only like that for human readability. All mathematical operations are done in binary, and all numbers are stored in binary. The only time they are not is the exact moment they are converted to text to display to the user.

[-] SkyeStarfall 9 points 1 year ago

What do you mean algorithms are not in base 2? What else are they in?

Just because you have human readable code which uses base 10 doesn't mean it isn't all translated to binary down the line. If that's what you're referring to, of course. Under the hood it's all binary, and always has been.

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[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

So, I'm a writer, not a researcher, but I've found the more tools I have stuffed into my brain, the more likely it is that two different things clank against each other and create something interesting.

I don't think this is something unique to writing fiction--from my understanding of history, there's quite a few moments in science where two somewhat unrelated things bash against each other and spark a new idea.

Sure, computers can do things we already know how to do, but actual inventors/scientists/people making stuff still need to think up things first before you can computerize it.

It's possible that this WON'T do anything new in the realm of math, but it might create a string a researcher in a different domain--history, linguistics, whatever--can pull on to unravel something else. A diverse tool set leads to multiple ways to solve a given problem, and sometimes edge cases come up where one solution actually is better in some niche application because of something unique to the way it is shaped.

[-] IndefiniteBen@leminal.space 4 points 1 year ago

You're not wrong that people can take inspiration from many different fields, but wild speculation about what could happen can be done for any new development, which makes it pointless and tiring when overused.

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[-] psychothumbs@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Almost everything we think of as Greek innovations was actually the Greeks absorbing knowledge from the civilizations to their east. Greece is just when our records traditionally went back to.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago

Not to mention that a lot of greek texts that survived only did so thanks to the Sassanids (Persians), since the newly christian Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) began purging all that stuff because "god is all the knowledge you need".

Later on, those texts found their way back into Europe through the then Arab conquered Spain

[-] RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

A quick Google search shows that this is entirely incorrect (both that they were only preserved in arabic and that they made it back to Europe through al-andalus) and it's apparently a popular myth.

From multiple articles (there's a plethora of sources): Classical Greek texts were preserved in the byzantine empire and most classical Greek texts that are known today, are translations from texts that were preserved in Greek (mostly within the byzantine empire). There are a few texts that only survived for a time as Arabic translations, but according to what I read, those are only few compared to what was preserved in Greek.

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[-] steakmeout@aussie.zone 22 points 1 year ago
[-] davidgro@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Not significantly better:

"which scientists claim are more accurate than any available today."
No they obviously do not. Yeah the fractions are easier in base 60, but they are not more accurate than just using rational numbers or radicals in any other base.

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[-] Cthulu_but_gay@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I love history and discoveries like this fascinate me, but do they serve any functional purpose? Does knowing that Babylonians understood angles change anything in my daily or long term life?

Not trying to be critical, just a question I often pose myself but have yet to think of a reassuring answer for.

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It might give you new respect for the Babylonians, and act as a corrective to the modern tendency to assume superiority. It might enhance your sense of how similar we all are and how connected, and your kinship with people who lived millennia before you. If little discoveries like this make us just a little more sensitive to the transience of even the most sophisticated societies, the kinship of all people and the sheer length of human history compared to the shortness of our individual lives, it might make us just a little more considerate and respectful in how we treat our world and our peers. The value of such discoveries is their cumulative influence on our understanding of ourselves and how we fit into the world. It makes us wiser.

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[-] millie@lemmy.film 12 points 1 year ago

If you'd read the article you might have an answer.

[-] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Learning new stuff could be good for your brain. Sometimes you just gotta learn for the sake of learning!

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[-] oDDmON@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Article originally appeared 07/22/21. Any follow up?

[-] YeetPics@mander.xyz 8 points 1 year ago

Move I've Pythagoras, it's Nebuchadnezzar's show now!

[-] TubeTalkerX@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago
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[-] Goo_bubbs@lemmings.world 8 points 1 year ago

This is cool and all, but it's a 6 year old story.

[-] bossito@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I think you meant 3706 years old.

[-] Delusional@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Actually, history didn't change it's still the same as it always was. It can't change anymore since it happened in the past.

[-] lemmington_steele@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

actually history is just our collective understanding of the past, so if it changes, history changes

[-] theKalash@feddit.ch 4 points 1 year ago

The events that actually happened in the past didn't change. But history is not what happened. History is what we think we know happened.

If there is new information about events we didn't know about before, history changes.

[-] SomeRandomWords 4 points 1 year ago

I think it's fair to say that our understanding of history, something which can change because it's always in the context of the present, has changed.

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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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