You are reading a single comment by @Wannabe and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Wannabe
No, I said look at any text of any significant size (bible, complete works of shakespeare, etc) and statistical probability will mean that patterns do emerge. By patterns, I do NOT mean mathematical patterns. The problem is that human bias means that if you look for patterns, you find them. If you find something that doesn't fit, and you desperately want it to be a code, you make up an exception. Rigorous mathematical analysis, will, in time, I am sure, demonstrate that this is all total balls.
The guy said "The result was amazing – it was like opening a tomb and finding new set of gospels written by Jesus Christ himself."
Anyone says that shit about my man JC, they better be rolling with fully argued mathematical proofs.
Except he isn't.
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/jay.kennedy/Kennedy_Apeiron_proofs.pdf
Read that.
He picks out passages and says "Socrates speech lasts 1/12 of the text, to within a fraction of a percent" and draws the conclusion that this is the significant figure of 1/12.
Firstly, it's either 1/12th (0.083 recurring) or it ain't. That's the bitch about numbers, they don't like "nearly" or "almost". Then, what about all the other speeches? Nothing. If you assume that any written text containing speeches has an even distribution of speech lengths, how many of the speeches will be 1/12th of the length of the passage? This, after how many mistranslations and copying errors? People criticise the text of the bible for not being accurate etc., but this is old shit too. What are the chances of such a delicate mathematical pattern surviving intact?
He says (p.8 of 32) that "The structure of arguments within individual dialogues is often organised around this scale of twelfths. Many examples could be given."
He doesn't give examples. Why is it important that SOME are organised that way? Why not thirteenths? Ninths? What about standard distribution? How many arguments will be 1/13th the length, or 1/2 the length? Without demonstrating, by statistical analysis, that the 1/12th thing occurs more often than any other fraction AND THAT THIS IS NOT MERELY DISTRIBUTION ATTRIBUTABLE TO CHANCE, then he's just a nutjob.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/29/the_plato_codes/