Hacker News

I found a seashell in the middle of the desert

118 points by Hawzen 2 days ago | 29 comments

saaaaaam 25 minutes ago

“A brief tale of how I got AI psychosis after I mistook pareidolia for a fossil”

I’m more interested in the giant face carved into the rocks in the second photo. Does this person not realise they’ve discovered a previously unknown sculpture of Yahoo-Wahoo?

colechristensen 15 minutes ago

Huh? Plenty of places have geology where the rocks were formed under ancient oceans and are full of sea fossils.

saaaaaam 11 minutes ago

Maybe. But I don’t see anything in this piece that says that it’s a fossil, rather than something that resembles this person’s idea of a fossil. It doesn’t look like a fossil to me. It looks like a piece of rock that’s been bashed about a bit.

And given the whole premise of the piece is “this should not be here!” I don’t really understand the point you’re making. The author says it’s a strange find in that area - so either they have a valid point or they don’t.

I don’t know if it’s a fossil. It doesn’t look like a fossil to me. I’m not a fossil expert. The only way to tell if it is a fossil is to do some analysis on the actual specimen before writing screeds about what it might or might not be based on visual similarity.

colechristensen 5 minutes ago

If we're going to rate annoying takes on the internet, "some guy who knows nothing about a topic being snarky because AI was involved" is far worse than somebody doing something with AI.

hendry 47 minutes ago

I found a sea shell in a visit to Latamber in Pakistan (NWFP): https://www.flickr.com/photos/hendry/73369720/

Gemini says "As the crow flies (Straight-line distance): Approximately 900 to 920 kilometers (roughly 560 to 570 miles) directly north of the coast at Karachi"

tokai 22 minutes ago

Maybe some geology buffs can correct me, but as I understand it there has been three periods with ocean on top of the crust we call Pakistan today. The Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys, and Tethys Ocean. Many hundreds of millions of years of being ocean.

colechristensen 10 minutes ago

Because of the Indian subcontinent colliding with the Eurasian plate there's a wide variety of origins for the surface geology in that region.

An incredibly detailed and descriptive map:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/1964_Pak...

analogpixel 50 minutes ago

I guess He didn't see the Reddit post in R/SaudiArabianDesertLostandFound

> "if anyone finds my lucky seashell that I lost, could you please return it. I think I lost it near the Alghat desert while I was sledding down a sand dune.

Cockbrand 2 hours ago

She sells seashells in the Sahara was my first association, but then the article clearly states that we're talking about a different desert.

throw310822 13 minutes ago

Looks like ampullospira, documented in Saudi Arabia. Age (middle-upper Jurassic) and actual location also match.

d--b 7 minutes ago

Snails have shells too. Just saying

muenalan 2 hours ago

land snails ?

croisillon 2 hours ago

couldn't it be a snail?

markdown 60 minutes ago

What a ridiculous place to put a blog. Why is this on github?

mik3y 59 minutes ago

Because the repo includes the tool authored for, and discussed in, the "blog"?

markdown 56 minutes ago

The tool is on his own website https://shell.hawzen.me/

tokai 33 minutes ago

Not saying its a good idea, but blogging on github has been a thing for much over a decade by now.

charcircuit 2 hours ago

I don't understand why the author didn't put all of these pictures and information of where he found it into an AI like ChatGPT. That should be the first thing one should try.

tomstuart 58 minutes ago

Among a strong field, this is the single most depressing comment I’ve ever read on Hacker News. Several grim components but it’s the “I don’t understand why” which seals the deal.

orf 43 minutes ago

Why? Calling a reasonable thing grim without any follow-up isn’t the hallmark of a good comment either.

Azantys 2 hours ago

I trust a proper solution (even though I can be certain how accurate it is), which compares to a known dataset much more than just giving it an AI. For identifying current living species it is probably fine but this is something to nice for an AI to be trustable. Also this path is much more fun and you learn sonething along the way!

ry-grah 2 hours ago

but, from my understanding what the author was really wanting was an adventure and to learn new things. he gained so much more than just learning what type of shell it is

cyclopeanutopia 60 minutes ago

Maybe he's not an idiot?

saaaaaam 24 minutes ago

Who says the whole analysis isn’t AI inspired?

sam_goody 58 minutes ago

The AI would confidently give him the wrong answer, since it has no way to provide the correct answer, and doesn't know its own limitations. (Or however you wish to describe "hallucinations", which is about as accurate as my description ;))

And he would think he has the right answer, perhaps write up an essay about his findings, which later AI bots will read and learn from, propgating the mistake...

CamperBob2 35 minutes ago

The AI would confidently give him the wrong answer

There is irony here that does not sleep.

sublinear 18 minutes ago

Is this example of vector search not "AI" enough?

addandsubtract 14 minutes ago

GenAI is the new AI, now, unfortunately. PapersWithCode died for this.

paradoxyl 32 minutes ago

When a coder does it, it matters and must be posted on HN. Get off yourself.