99 replies to this topic

[Ogul]

where is the nearest mcdonald's to the pyramids?

Measure it's height in feet, divide it by 73.4, multiply that by the circumference of pie (not to be confused with "pi", this is "pie" a fixed unit of measurement defined as a disc of 1.2ft in diameter), then walk due east a number of paces equal to the result times the address number of your birth home. At some point you should see a tour guide or taxi cab driver. Ask them.

[craggy]

mcdonalds pies are not round though, your math is flawed. and delicious.

[Lucian Von Dooom]

Well basically, if you have a math system that creates a coincidental result that's in miles, then that result would only mean anything at all if the people who made it used miles. For example, if I were to build a pyramid in which the dimensions in feet could be passed through a formula and then the resultant number in miles was the distance to the nearest McDonalds (Shock!) then you could perhaps speculate that I had intended that, that I made the dimensions of the pyramid were some sort of signpost to the nearest McDonalds or something. However, that would only make any sense if I used the foot and the mile as my forms of measurement. If, instead, I did all my math in the metric system, then the dimensions of my pyramid in meters would have no relation in kilometers to the nearest McDonalds. It would be akin to me leaving a secret message to you in Portuguese, which I do not myself understand.

So to claim that an ancient civilization somehow encoded patterns into their structures based on dimensions, but using a system of dimensions that they did not know of, makes no sense. That's why constants are important, if the code were based entirely on mathematical constants, values that while not every civilization discovered them, would remain true and available for discovery for any civilization, would be more likely to be viable despite the mathematical system used to decode them. Any code that used anything that wasn't a constant is only of any value when using the exact same measurement system that this ancient culture was using, and to believe that they just happened to use the completely, ridiculously arbitrary system of feet and miles that we use today would be the most massive coincidence of this entire theory, akin to saying that there was a tribe of jungle people in Patagonia that five thousand years ago all spoke perfect English. With a New York accent.

OK fair enough. Makes sense. But then how do you explain the use of pi and the Golden Ratio in the pyramids? They didn't know what those were, yet we find them everywhere in the Great Pyramids. Or is that kind of what makes them such a mystery? Along with the massive rocks...

[Ogul]

But then how do you explain the use of pi and the Golden Ratio in the pyramids?

I'm not certain that pi was used explicitly, but pi is a constant, even if you don't know what it is, if you're making arcs then pi will be involved and someone can later run numbers on what you made and find pi there. Similar with the golden ratio, it's basically a value that humans recognize as being in harmony, and it's found in any number of natural things, so it's quite possible for artists and engineers to independently stumble onto it.

[Lucian Von Dooom]

I'm not certain that pi was used explicitly, but pi is a constant, even if you don't know what it is, if you're making arcs then pi will be involved and someone can later run numbers on what you made and find pi there. Similar with the golden ratio, it's basically a value that humans recognize as being in harmony, and it's found in any number of natural things, so it's quite possible for artists and engineers to independently stumble onto it.

OK that's what I thought. Kind of like God's mathematical building blocks or how you can find the Fibonacci Sequence in nature.

[Jim Ohara]

I thought the Golden Ratio was a man-made number based on aesthetics. There's a few occurrences in nature, but it's not like Pi.

[garjones]

where is the nearest mcdonald's to the pyramids?

There's a KFC right next to them in Giza but I think you have to cross the Nile into the main part of Cairo to find a McDonald's. (This answer is not a joke, there is a KFC right behind the pyramids but no McD I could see).

[Paul F]

There's a KFC right next to them in Giza but I think you have to cross the Nile into the main part of Cairo to find a McDonald's. (This answer is not a joke, there is a KFC right behind the pyramids but no McD I could see).

There's also a Pizza Hut:

[garjones]

Yes Pizza Hut and KFC are owned by the same guys. There's one here where they share the same restaurant and you can order from either menu.

[craggy]

Yes Pizza Hut and KFC are owned by the same guys. There's one here where they share the same restaurant and you can order from either menu.

£"(% Atlanta, this is the best discovery of the day. Can you combine stuff from each menu also? I'll have a bargain bucket calzone please!

[Anders Espling]

Well basically, if you have a math system that creates a coincidental result that's in miles, then that result would only mean anything at all if the people who made it used miles. For example, if I were to build a pyramid in which the dimensions in feet could be passed through a formula and then the resultant number in miles was the distance to the nearest McDonalds (Shock!) then you could perhaps speculate that I had intended that, that I made the dimensions of the pyramid were some sort of signpost to the nearest McDonalds or something. However, that would only make any sense if I used the foot and the mile as my forms of measurement. If, instead, I did all my math in the metric system, then the dimensions of my pyramid in meters would have no relation in kilometers to the nearest McDonalds. It would be akin to me leaving a secret message to you in Portuguese, which I do not myself understand.

So to claim that an ancient civilization somehow encoded patterns into their structures based on dimensions, but using a system of dimensions that they did not know of, makes no sense. That's why constants are important, if the code were based entirely on mathematical constants, values that while not every civilization discovered them, would remain true and available for discovery for any civilization, would be more likely to be viable despite the mathematical system used to decode them. Any code that used anything that wasn't a constant is only of any value when using the exact same measurement system that this ancient culture was using, and to believe that they just happened to use the completely, ridiculously arbitrary system of feet and miles that we use today would be the most massive coincidence of this entire theory, akin to saying that there was a tribe of jungle people in Patagonia that five thousand years ago all spoke perfect English. With a New York accent.

Brilliant, Ogul. Thanks!

edit: I am in no way being sarcastic.

Edited by Anders Espling, 19 June 2012 - 08:05 PM.

[Arjan Dirkse]

OK fair enough. Makes sense. But then how do you explain the use of pi and the Golden Ratio in the pyramids? They didn't know what those were, yet we find them everywhere in the Great Pyramids. Or is that kind of what makes them such a mystery? Along with the massive rocks...

Everyone who's ever drawn a circle uses pi.

Everyone who draws plans for buildings is probably going to sue the Golden Ratio at some point.

edit: not sue, but use. I'm drnuk.

Edited by Arjan Dirkse, 19 June 2012 - 10:09 PM.

[garjones]

£"(% Atlanta, this is the best discovery of the day.

I ensure I have answers for all the big important questions.

[David Meadows]

I thought the Golden Ratio was a man-made number based on aesthetics. There's a few occurrences in nature, but it's not like Pi.

It's exactly like pi. The Greeks decided it was aesthetically pleasing, but they didn't invent it, they found it already encoded coded into mathematics, just like pi. Both pi and the golden ratio (phi) arise naturally and inevitably from geometry. Build anything that contains triangles and you will be using these ratios, whether you realise it or not.

OK that's what I thought. Kind of like God's mathematical building blocks or how you can find the Fibonacci Sequence in nature.

In fact the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are basically the same thing, they can be defined in terms of each other.

[Ogul]

It's exactly like pi. The Greeks decided it was aesthetically pleasing, but they didn't invent it, they found it already encoded coded into mathematics, just like pi. Both pi and the golden ratio (phi) arise naturally and inevitably from geometry. Build anything that contains triangles and you will be using these ratios, whether you realise it or not.

Well, sort of. Pi is more or less inevitable, it's in every circle and semi-circle automatically. If you take two sticks and a piece of string to trace out a circle in the dirt, an outsider observer could calculate pi in your result, even if you had no idea what pi was. The golden ratio is less inevitable, more just "likely." You can build a thousand buildings and never have a golden ratio in play, it's just generally regarded that buildings that do display a golden ratio are more likely to appeal to the human eye, and numerous cultures have stumbled onto the concept at various times. It is a mathematically derived principle, anyone that either develops geometry or a pattern of activities that mimics geometry can find a way to employ the golden ratio, but it's not automatic.

One thing I noticed when looking up the golden ratio though is that there's a lot of urban legend involved in it. A lot of the natural and man-made structures that have been claimed to follow golden ratio or Fibonacci sequences actually don't. They sort of follow it, like in a rough sort of way, but not as exactly as it would need to be to be a mathematical curiosity (ie if you look at a nautilus shell and compare it to a Fibonacci spiral, they look similar, but if you measure the points along any actual shell they are all a bit off from the perfect spiral).

Edited by Ogul, 20 June 2012 - 09:46 AM.

[David Meadows]

Well, sort of. Pi is more or less inevitable, it's in every circle and semi-circle automatically. If you take two sticks and a piece of string to trace out a circle in the dirt, an outsider observer could calculate pi in your result, even if you had no idea what pi was. The golden ratio is less inevitable, more just "likely."

It is inevitable in exactly the same way. There are certain geometric shapes that must contain phi, and if you draw one in the dirt then an outside observer could calculate phi just as he could calculate pi from your circle.

Try drawing a regular pentagon, for example, that doesn't encode phi into it. If you can, your Nobel Prize for redefining mathematics will be in the post any day now.

[Ogul]

Try drawing a regular pentagon, for example, that doesn't encode phi into it. If you can, your Nobel Prize for redefining mathematics will be in the post any day now.

Perhaps, but a regular pentagon is hardly an essential shape for design. No real golden ratio forms are absolutely essential. while it's certainly possible to make use of it without understanding or calculating it, you can develop a plenty advanced civilization without producing a single example of it. I get what you mean though.

[David Meadows]

I've just (literally, 30 seconds ago) made a pretty significant discovery regarding music and distance that I think will shake the foundations of scientific knowledge.


Modern Concert "A" (the note that every instrument in an orchestra tunes to) is 440 hertz (cycles per second).

One octave above this, "A" is 880 hertz.

One octave above that (this is the really amazing part) "A" is 1760 hertz.

Amazing because..... 1760 is also the number of yards in a mile!

This is pretty astounding, I think you'll agree. There are a lot of implications here:

1) One octave gap in music is equal to a doubling of pitch. Not tripling, not +100 to the pitch, not some random interval, but a doubling. Of all the ways that an octave can be defined, that one was chosen! And this was chosen by an ancient civilization who could not possibly have measured the cycles per second of the notes! I mean, their clocks were not accurate enough to measure 1/440th of a second......or were they???

2) The "mile", as we call it, is directly geometrically related to a musical note that is two octaves above modern concert A. Why was 1760 yards chosen? Of all the "arbitrary" number of yards they could have picked for a mile, it had to be that exact number. Surely not a coincidence? I think the ancients understood a fundamental relationship between music and distance that we still don't fully grasp today.

3) I've just seen something else, literally just seen it while I was writing this post and it's mind-blowing. I was struggling to explain why doublings were chosen for octaves, why not triplings or something else? Well, let's try going down the octaves (which requires halving, naturally) from 440Hz and see what happens. Down 1 octave = 440/2 = 220 Hz. Down 2 octaves... 220/2 = 110. Down 3 octaves... 110/2 = 55. That's the "A" three octaves below concert "A". Now quite clearly we can't go any lower than this because we would get into fractional numbers. So I will call this 55Hz the "fundamental A". Then I realised -- and this will honestly blow your mind -- that I am at this moment, as I write this, sitting exactly 55 degrees North of the equator!!!!!

I AM SITTING ON THE FUNDAMENTAL "A"

It's astounding how this has all fitted so perfectly together. There's no way any of it is a coincidence... nothing that perfect can happen by accident.

Can it?

Edited by David Meadows, 20 June 2012 - 01:52 PM.

[Todd Gross]

Actually, Atlantis is in the Bahamas and Dubai!

[craggy]

I've just (literally, 30 seconds ago) made a pretty significant discovery regarding music and distance that I think will shake the foundations of scientific knowledge.


Modern Concert "A" (the note that every instrument in an orchestra tunes to) is 440 hertz (cycles per second).

One octave above this, "A" is 880 hertz.

One octave above that (this is the really amazing part) "A" is 1760 hertz.

Amazing because..... 1760 is also the number of yards in a mile!

This is pretty astounding, I think you'll agree. There are a lot of implications here:

1) One octave gap in music is equal to a doubling of pitch. Not tripling, not +100 to the pitch, not some random interval, but a doubling. Of all the ways that an octave can be defined, that one was chosen! And this was chosen by an ancient civilization who could not possibly have measured the cycles per second of the notes! I mean, their clocks were not accurate enough to measure 1/440th of a second......or were they???

2) The "mile", as we call it, is directly geometrically related to a musical note that is two octaves above modern concert A. Why was 1760 yards chosen? Of all the "arbitrary" number of yards they could have picked for a mile, it had to be that exact number. Surely not a coincidence? I think the ancients understood a fundamental relationship between music and distance that we still don't fully grasp today.

3) I've just seen something else, literally just seen it while I was writing this post and it's mind-blowing. I was struggling to explain why doublings were chosen for octaves, why not triplings or something else? Well, let's try going down the octaves (which requires halving, naturally) from 440Hz and see what happens. Down 1 octave = 440/2 = 220 Hz. Down 2 octaves... 220/2 = 110. Down 3 octaves... 110/2 = 55. That's the "A" three octaves below concert "A". Now quite clearly we can't go any lower than this because we would get into fractional numbers. So I will call this 55Hz the "fundamental A". Then I realised -- and this will honestly blow your mind -- that I am at this moment, as I write this, sitting exactly 55 degrees North of the equator!!!!!

I AM SITTING ON THE FUNDAMENTAL "A"

It's astounding how this has all fitted so perfectly together. There's no way any of it is a coincidence... nothing that perfect can happen by accident.

Can it?

I think you're talking out your fundamental "a"