Epic fail

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/

Well done. You skimmed it. Read the whole thing.

Sorry, that sounded prickish. The answers to your questions (and corrections of your mistakes) are in the paper.

And by corrections, I mean corrections of your interpretations. I don't mean corrections in terms of correct thinking. The guy may well be wrong.

Yeah, **really **read it. Carefully. On the third or forth read, you'll start to see some patterns emerge.

Or just the twelfths. If you have to skim, skim smart.

Plato was quite bright, maybe he did put a musical scale in his writings. He believed in Platonic Love, i.e. love of the divine reflected in the mortal. It seems befitting.

Lots of shit about the Greeks recognising the golden ratio/fibonacci series, which, knowingly or not, is the basis of many great pieces of music.

I agree that it's easy to see patterns where there are none, particulaly to see relationships where there is only coincidence.

But, the fact this guy retrospectively found patterns seemingly by trial and error, doesn't in itself disprove his assertion. That this seems to factor in human ingenuity does not matter. On the other hand, if he had predicted the code, in a seemingly astonishing fashion it would be no more proven.

*The problem is that you cannot test his assertion, *unless you apply it to an as yet undiscovered piece of Plato's writing.

The validity of a theory doesn't lie in how it was concieved, but in how it survives scrutiny

Well done. You skimmed it. Read the whole thing.
I did, but clearly not as carefully as you if...

Sorry, that sounded prickish. The answers to your questions (and corrections of your mistakes) are in the paper.

And by corrections, I mean corrections of your interpretations. I don't mean corrections in terms of correct thinking. The guy may well be wrong.

I didn't think I was interpreting it so much as trying to understand how the 'nearly' and the 'almost' bits were in fact part of the pattern, and it's ok that it doesn't quite line up because...

This definitely isn't my area, though, so I'll just keep schtum.

Yeah, **really **read it. Carefully. On the third or forth read, you'll start to see some patterns emerge.
ha!

Plato was quite bright, maybe he did put a musical scale in his writings. He believed in Platonic Love, i.e. love of the divine reflected in the mortal. It seems befitting.

Lots of shit about the Greeks recognising the golden ratio/fibonacci series, which, knowingly or not, is the basis of many great pieces of music.

I agree that it's easy to see patterns where there are none, particulaly to see relationships where there is only coincidence.

But, the fact this guy retrospectively found patterns seemingly by trial and error, doesn't in itself disprove his assertion. That this seems to factor in human ingenuity does not matter. On the other hand, if he had predicted the code, in a seemingly astonishing fashion it would be no more proven.

*The problem is that you cannot test his assertion, *unless you apply it to an as yet undiscovered piece of Plato's writing.

The validity of a theory doesn't lie in how it was concieved, but in how it survives scrutiny

Firstly, so what? Why should it be important that plato's works vaguely or less vaguely follow pythagorean, musical, or any other pattern? Is there a secret coded message about aliens? That's what the scientists should be working on. The aliens.

Anyway, the theory and theory testing thing. I am not a mathematician, statistician or a teacher, but neither do I care about explaining things badly or being wrong, so here goes...

A brief example is cancer and power lines. Some people are convinced there's a link, others the opposite.

If cancer occurs randomly, then the geographical distribution will be random. Part of random is clustering. Your iphone/ipod random song function isn't random at all, because it would piss you off to have the same song fifteen times in a row. And even with a massive song library, a truly random track selector WILL eventually do this to you, if you listen long enough (although lifespan is probably the limiting factor in that last one).

So you have random clusters of people getting cancer. If they live near a power line, before you sue the electric company / the government you have to exclude the possibility that the cluster is simply part of greater randomness. People don't. They look at the pins scattered into the map, draw a circle around a group of sick people, and drum up a lawsuit.

Poor explaining, I know.

Back to fail, although this one is dangerously close to win, and inspired by the how to carry bikes thread...

I saw some guy break down on his motorbike, then load it onto a a regular rickshaw, sit beside it and get a lift home.

If youve ever been on a normal rickshaw you would know the seats are small and precarious, this was quite some feat, but the guys (including rickshaw puller) didnt seem fazed.

Check out the guys face in the second pheasant photo.

http://www.barnorama.com/animals-attack-people/

is that keith richards?

did that guy punch a panda???

Those animal photos are ace, this is one of my favourites:

And the one with the fish flying out of the water at the camera

punching a panda has just made my life to do list.

The baby Polar Bear looks like a right knut

Not so cute once he grew up a bit

channel 4 right now

the real fail is that you were trying to watch big brother

channel 4 right now

so camp blond boy talking crap for a minute to hoards of booing teenagers and i turned on tv for that?

all round fail

i was going to +rep and ask why i was in caps, then i was just going to -rep and boast about it but then i decided to not rep and just ask but then i accidentally +rep'd for nothing. curses!

good lad. Your in caps cos your special to me.

Hahahaha!

^^Now, how can I put that onto a tshirt?

Justin Beiber doesn't seem to be the most liked individual in the world, except for North Korea it seems.

repost again and again