This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
An efficient (if kludgy) ley-searcher written in Python confirms the combinatorial explosion, and appears to show that the estimate in the formula given is, if anything, conservative, as it does not allow for any "wriggle room" for the two end-points. -- The Anome 13:33 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
===Excuse me for being a little dismissive, but isn't all this based on the assumption that the earth is flat? In reality the world can be considered as a battered geoid, so any attempt to use Euclidean geometry is, what we call BTP!
Harry Potter 23:55 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
===P.S. I read this book once that used the example of Telephone boxes, as they had a suitable frequency on maps. The author then showed that lines could be drawn linking them up. But it was only when I went to Dulwich Picture Gallery that I realised what was going on. The Gallery is a shrine to Bourgeois art, and at the bcak where the bodies are buried there is alittle turret which was used as the shape of the traditional red British phone boxes. Like Alfred Watkins I had a spiritual experince when I realised that the coountry was covered with a web of these, mathematically proven to be organised in leylines all centred on the decaying corpse of old Mr Bourgeois!!! Harry Potter 00:03 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Incidentally, the newly added line "Others have argued that ley lines are artefacts of chance alignments, stating that these alignments are much more probable than suggested by intuition. " is just a rewording of what has already been stated. It adds next to nothing. GRAHAMUK 11:53 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
User:Harry Potter wants to move the stuff on how ley lines can be expected to occur by chance to a seperate page. I think it's by far the most important point to be made regarding ley lines and should be here. Thoughts? Evercat 18:45 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
A distinction without a difference. Evercat 23:25 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think the article is fine. In particular, the diagrams make the point perfectly clearly. What's also clear is that your attempts to remove this stuff are because it so devastatingly refutes your current pet pseudoscience. Evercat 11:16 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)
The map availability theory is an interesting one, and worth considering. This whole thing dates to the early days of the ramblers, and the recreational interest in the landscape (as opposed to those too busy trying to live in it) On finding ley-lines, it took me a while to hunt it down, but this is a passage I remembered from John Crowley's excellent novel Ægypt:
Star temples and ley-lines, UFOs and landscape giants, couldn't they see what was really, permanently astonishing was the human ability to keep finding these things? Let anyone looking for them be given a map of Pennsylvania or New Jersey or the Faraways, and he will find "ley-lines"; let human beings look up long enough on starry nights and they will see faces staring down at them. That's the interesting thing, that's the subject: not why there are ley-lines, but why people find them...
Actually I think the point of the statistical argument was that proponents quote extremely low probabilities that the alignments that they find could have arisen by chance: but out of the set of all possible alignments selected from (semi-)random points, there will be a number (perhaps a majority) of low probability ones.. "Million to one chances turn up nine times out of ten". -- Malcolm Farmer 00:07 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---
Seems to me that the major problem with the article is that the section under dispute (the probability section) overwhelmingly trumps the arguments in favor of "genuine" ley lines. The first half of the article is (to me) meandering and unclear, while the second half makes a strong case for ley lines being a mere curiosity of probabilistic principles. The statement about "Many Chaos magicians delight in this..." is odd, and has no backing arguments. Why do Chaos magicians think that this mathematical demonstration helps the case for the existence of ley lines? And why is it mentioned in the "skeptical critiques" section, of all places? Also, I know of no person with any mathematical knowledge who would say they "expect" 5 heads and 5 tails on a single toss of 10 coins. Probability expectations only apply in the long run - that over time the number approaches 50/50. -- Wapcaplet 17:08 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
An efficient (if kludgy) ley-searcher written in Python confirms the combinatorial explosion, and appears to show that the estimate in the formula given is, if anything, conservative, as it does not allow for any "wriggle room" for the two end-points. -- The Anome 13:33 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
===Excuse me for being a little dismissive, but isn't all this based on the assumption that the earth is flat? In reality the world can be considered as a battered geoid, so any attempt to use Euclidean geometry is, what we call BTP!
Harry Potter 23:55 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
===P.S. I read this book once that used the example of Telephone boxes, as they had a suitable frequency on maps. The author then showed that lines could be drawn linking them up. But it was only when I went to Dulwich Picture Gallery that I realised what was going on. The Gallery is a shrine to Bourgeois art, and at the bcak where the bodies are buried there is alittle turret which was used as the shape of the traditional red British phone boxes. Like Alfred Watkins I had a spiritual experince when I realised that the coountry was covered with a web of these, mathematically proven to be organised in leylines all centred on the decaying corpse of old Mr Bourgeois!!! Harry Potter 00:03 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Incidentally, the newly added line "Others have argued that ley lines are artefacts of chance alignments, stating that these alignments are much more probable than suggested by intuition. " is just a rewording of what has already been stated. It adds next to nothing. GRAHAMUK 11:53 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
User:Harry Potter wants to move the stuff on how ley lines can be expected to occur by chance to a seperate page. I think it's by far the most important point to be made regarding ley lines and should be here. Thoughts? Evercat 18:45 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
A distinction without a difference. Evercat 23:25 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think the article is fine. In particular, the diagrams make the point perfectly clearly. What's also clear is that your attempts to remove this stuff are because it so devastatingly refutes your current pet pseudoscience. Evercat 11:16 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)
The map availability theory is an interesting one, and worth considering. This whole thing dates to the early days of the ramblers, and the recreational interest in the landscape (as opposed to those too busy trying to live in it) On finding ley-lines, it took me a while to hunt it down, but this is a passage I remembered from John Crowley's excellent novel Ægypt:
Star temples and ley-lines, UFOs and landscape giants, couldn't they see what was really, permanently astonishing was the human ability to keep finding these things? Let anyone looking for them be given a map of Pennsylvania or New Jersey or the Faraways, and he will find "ley-lines"; let human beings look up long enough on starry nights and they will see faces staring down at them. That's the interesting thing, that's the subject: not why there are ley-lines, but why people find them...
Actually I think the point of the statistical argument was that proponents quote extremely low probabilities that the alignments that they find could have arisen by chance: but out of the set of all possible alignments selected from (semi-)random points, there will be a number (perhaps a majority) of low probability ones.. "Million to one chances turn up nine times out of ten". -- Malcolm Farmer 00:07 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)
---
Seems to me that the major problem with the article is that the section under dispute (the probability section) overwhelmingly trumps the arguments in favor of "genuine" ley lines. The first half of the article is (to me) meandering and unclear, while the second half makes a strong case for ley lines being a mere curiosity of probabilistic principles. The statement about "Many Chaos magicians delight in this..." is odd, and has no backing arguments. Why do Chaos magicians think that this mathematical demonstration helps the case for the existence of ley lines? And why is it mentioned in the "skeptical critiques" section, of all places? Also, I know of no person with any mathematical knowledge who would say they "expect" 5 heads and 5 tails on a single toss of 10 coins. Probability expectations only apply in the long run - that over time the number approaches 50/50. -- Wapcaplet 17:08 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)