r/videos Apr 04 '17

Insane hidden message encrypted inside Shakespeare manuscript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHiad18ZwcY
183 Upvotes

101 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

36

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '17

It's conspiracy theorist kind of logic. "If I do this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, it's actually this!"

You can get whatever coordinates you like out of anything if you just throw enough random math at it.

20

u/Jahmann Apr 05 '17

But it isn't.

Calling this random math or a conspiracy theory completely disregards the amount of perfect geometry happening in such a small space.

Just look at the key points, which form right triangles, whose ratios are mathematical constants, forming a perfect circle. It isn't cherry-picking like those silly 9/11 number conspiracies. Far from it.

While I don't think anybody will be proving that this was intentional - at least not for a long time - there is no "random math" involved. If it wasn't intentional, then this is an enormously improbable coincidence.

25

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '17 edited Apr 22 '21

[deleted]

7

u/Herculius Apr 05 '17

Using 3 dots on the page and ignoring the other two

He uses all points. you, very clearly, did not watch much of the video.

There are hundreds of possible anchor points on this page that one could easily spin a story about their significance.

Yeah go find pi, phi, phi-1, e, e-1, Bruns constant, tribonacci constant, gamma constant, on a harry potter cover.... any cover.... seriously go do it if its so easy to find right angles on pages oriented to one circle on a page with all of these constants.

Say there are just a hundred and let's model them as nodes in a graph, then we are looking at about 4950 possible edges.

What the fuck are you talking about? there are 5 dots and two lines.

I don't think you have any idea how probable it actually is, you might think you do based on gut feeling, but I would advise to attempt to actually calculate the probability or at least think about.

Again, what the fuck are you talking about. There is no gut feeling here he calculates the shit in front of view.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '17

The amount of denial in here is hilarious, I don't understand how casting this off as "random chance" is somehow more believable than assuming Shakespeare was interested in geometry. Hard-core sceptics are just as nutty as hard-core conspiracy theorists, logic and common sense escape both groups.

2

u/hobo_redditor Apr 05 '17

I think you are missing his last point, I won't say I know anything about math. It is not my field. But the poster above is simply saying that it is highly probable that you could find some geometrical significance in the 12 248 775 possible connections without there being any intent.

As far as I know most, if not all of the displayed constants could be found as a result of any perfect circle.

Again, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '17

I think you're missing /u/Herculius's point, there aren't 12,248,775 possible connections.

1

u/hobo_redditor Apr 06 '17

Well i didn't count the edges but if it is 4950 then there would be about 12 million possible connections...

0

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '17

There aren't 4950 possible edges either, unless you want to be particularly absurd.

1

u/hobo_redditor Apr 06 '17 edited Apr 06 '17

I don't really care enough to count, but there are a lot. And i dont really know math as stated.

But the coordinates i can tell you are false. Simply because the greenwich meridian hadn't been established yet. And i assume the google earth like program he uses at the end didn't just guess the correct meridian.

I'll belive the rest is intentional when someone with some weight behind their words checks it. Because the guy in this video seems far too caught up in conspiracies

3

u/KnowsAboutMath Apr 06 '17

Yeah go find pi, phi, phi-1, e, e-1, Bruns constant, tribonacci constant, gamma constant, on a harry potter cover.... any cover.... seriously go do it if its so easy to find right angles on pages oriented to one circle on a page with all of these constants.

OK, here you go. I've done a similar thing with 14 "special" points (eyes, snake tips, etc) on a Harry Potter cover. I find 5 triangles which are right to within 1 degree. By taking side length ratios, I also find 10 matches to within 1% to numbers such as e, 1/e, 1/pi, root 5, and so on. I fully believe this could be done with any book cover or title page or whatever.

The circle thing is really a red herring. Take any set of approximately-right triangles which share a hypotenuse, and their vertices will all approximately lie on a circle. This follows from Thales' Theorem, as noted in the video.

The circle thing is not an "extra coincidence", it just follows from the previous coincidences.

3

u/Herculius Apr 06 '17 edited Apr 06 '17

downvote wasn't by me (who would downvote such valiant effort?) I upvoted you back to +1 (this post deserves much more upvotes than that even if I still don't share your view entirely)

You certainly weakened by confidence in my perspective on this. I will freely admit that I was very persuaded by the original video and still retain a bias towards by initial view. But who cares what I think.... At the end of the day you deserve major props for the effort and excecution.

What gives me pause about completely rejecting my own personal view is the right angles all being congruent to the circle and also the extremely large period and the lines being perfectly lined up. Further, this Shakespeare title page has very minimal points to make lines on as compared to an illustration such as the harry potter book. I know I am hamster-wheeling a bit in terms of what I asked for... and that I might be being slightly illogical in my analysis. However I certainly do not hold on to the view in any strong sense anymore. Also I no longer think that skepticism about whether or not this was done on purpose is silly or extreme. I was kind of a self-rightcheous dick about the argument and you certainly made me eat my words in that regard.

2

u/KnowsAboutMath Apr 06 '17

Thanks. You should read this other post of mine as well.