There is another significant way you can increase the search space. If we’re only considering either latitude or longitude and throwing out the other variable, we get to draw lines all the way around the planet when looking for a site of interest:
That is, we can search: - a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° N - a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° S - a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° E - a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° W
Then you could search another 4 lines at 2.99792458° N/S/E/W.
With this we drastically increase the places we can look for meaningful / coincidental intersections.
But that line has an infinitesimal chance of intersecting with any point as significant as the Great Pyramids? Scott’s argument about Uganda and Tanzania seems wrong for the same reasons
Agreed, there is an infinitesimal chance of intersecting something with such large significance as the pyramids. My point was to show that by leaving 1 of only 2 chosen variables open AND having a variable that can be set to many different values along a continuum, you significantly increase optionality for how you could retrospectively jump through hoops to assign importance to what is just a coincidence.
One further thought would be this example chose a single hypothesis a conspiracy theorist may try to prove, when in reality they will be looking for these ‘proofs’ in many different places. If they don’t find the connection in one place they’ll just keep looking.
There is another significant way you can increase the search space. If we’re only considering either latitude or longitude and throwing out the other variable, we get to draw lines all the way around the planet when looking for a site of interest:
That is, we can search:
- a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° N
- a line around the whole planet at latitude 29.9792458° S
- a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° E
- a line around the whole planet at longitude 29.9792458° W
Then you could search another 4 lines at 2.99792458° N/S/E/W.
With this we drastically increase the places we can look for meaningful / coincidental intersections.
But that line has an infinitesimal chance of intersecting with any point as significant as the Great Pyramids? Scott’s argument about Uganda and Tanzania seems wrong for the same reasons
Agreed, there is an infinitesimal chance of intersecting something with such large significance as the pyramids. My point was to show that by leaving 1 of only 2 chosen variables open AND having a variable that can be set to many different values along a continuum, you significantly increase optionality for how you could retrospectively jump through hoops to assign importance to what is just a coincidence.
One further thought would be this example chose a single hypothesis a conspiracy theorist may try to prove, when in reality they will be looking for these ‘proofs’ in many different places. If they don’t find the connection in one place they’ll just keep looking.