Concepts or ideas you just can't get your head around?

[warp9]

Boom78 said:

andyxxx said:

Upinflames said:

There are 2.3 million cut stones, weighing up to 70 tons each. It was built in 20 years which is the official line.

That's a stone placed with perfect precision every 4 minutes for 20 years.

I'd say that's a bit of an ask.

The official line is nonsense imo
They have no idea how it was built
They don’t even know the tools used (copper chisels – give me a break)

I’ve never understood the myths and awe about the pyramids. Eg impossible to build, didn’t have the tech, stones weigh too much to be moved, perfect design.. it was aliens! etc.

There was a great documentary on BBC a while ago that basically explained the pyramids of Giza were the last in a very long line of pyramid attempts spanning many thousands of years. The first ones were small, cubed and pretty rubbish and through trial and error they learned how to build them. Having hundreds of thousands of slaves helped too! Impressive but achievable. There’s no mystery, no aliens, no time travellers. Some learned techniques, lots of gold, lots of whips, lots of people will do it.

There's a fascinating documentary series on Netflix called Ancient Apocalypse presented by Graham Hancock. He travels to various ancient civilizations around the world and shows numerous megaliths that were made 9,000ish years ago, well before the Egyptions even existed. He believes that there was an ancient advanced civalisation that lived at the end of the last ice age circa 12,000 years ago. It's a bit of a fringe theory and not widely recognised in main stream academia. Whatever you believe, at the very least it does show that there was a lot going on around the world, thousands of years before our current accepted understanding of the Egyption pyramids, stonehenge etc.

[Halmyre]

Pensions, pension funds, contracting in/contracting out. Doesn't matter how often my financial adviser goes through it with me, I am, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, "like a dog being shown a card trick".

[andyxxx]

Ken_Code said:

andyxxx said:

No we don't.

I have seen numerous suggestions how they were built and loads of utter twaddle about the copper tools used to build them.
I do not believe it was built in 20 years using slave labour and primitive tools – but that certainly does not mean I think there is an alien connection! (though that is little less fanciful than the timespan and tools I have mentioned)

Given that archaeologists don’t believe it was built using slave labour either what point are you making here?

You have to be a wind up merchant, but to clarify:

I do not believe it was built in 20 years.
I have seen the theories that it was not built using slave labour, but am not convinced. Slave labour can be well fed/housed
I do not believe it was built with primitive tools (do you need that breaking down further?)

[Boom78]

andyxxx said:

Boom78 said:

We know how and when they were built.

No we don't.

I have seen numerous suggestions how they were built and loads of utter twaddle about the copper tools used to build them.
I do not believe it was built in 20 years using slave labour and primitive tools – but that certainly does not mean I think there is an alien connection! (though that is little less fanciful than the timespan and tools I have mentioned)

There’s been loads of tests on how the blocks were cut and moved. Eg water makes the limestone softer and Easier to cut, even with copper tools. The fact the quarry was next to the pyramids and Nile tributary ran by the site. The fact they could call on hundreds of thousands of able workers as a tax payment during the flood season from farming. Don’t fall into the assumption that people of ancient civilisations were thick, incapable and backwards. Their brains, ambition, and determination was the same as modern man’s. They also developed science, surveying, finance, maths. If we can recreate and learn how to cut and move stones using basic tools then so could they. Especially over the many thousands of years they spent practicing it.

The 20 years was quoted by Herodotus who wasn’t contemporary. It was 30+ plus.

Edited by Boom78 on Wednesday 22 May 15:22

[xeny]

Halmyre said:

Pensions, pension funds, contracting in/contracting out. Doesn't matter how often my financial adviser goes through it with me, I am, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, "like a dog being shown a card trick".

If the adviser explained it so you understood it properly, what incentive would you have to pay the adviser?

[Ken_Code]

andyxxx said:

You have to be a wind up merchant, but to clarify:

I do not believe it was built in 20 years.
I have seen the theories that it was not built using slave labour, but am not convinced. Slave labour can be well fed/housed
I do not believe it was built with primitive tools (do you need that breaking down further?)

So you are skeptic all that it was made by slave labour and are skeptical that it wasn’t made by slave labour, and skeptical that it was made by the tools of the time.

How bizarre.

[LunarOne]

Halmyre said:

I am, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, "like a dog being shown a card trick".

I'm going to have to borrow that. I might let you have it back in 2050, when I shall be dead.

[Abbott]

boyse7en said:

Abbott said:

TUS373 said:

Loads of things befuddle me.

Inflation .... someone puts their price up for their goods. The person buying it puts their prices up to afford it...and so on. Crackers really.

Car values. E.g a Lambo/Ferrari is metal, composites and glass. Because it has a big engine and a different shape to other cars...it costs the same as a house

Range Rovers/Land Rovers...how they sell any. They cost more and are less reliable, yet people pay money every month to pretend they own one.

TV programmes that come down the bell wire of a phone line.

I think you are mixing up Cost and Price in your point about Car Values. The Brand is what makes the difference in the selling price of a car. A stronger brand can get a higher selling price and bigger profit.

Not entirely. Back in the day a 1600cc Mondeo or Vectra was cheaper than the 2000cc version, despite the engines being identical apart from bore/stroke. Both engines need the same amount of machining, as a bigger piston is the same to make as a slightly smaller one, cutting the bores takes the same time whether big or small...
Never understood why a bigger engine was more expensive other than the "because we can"

I do not believe it is as simple as that.
The manufacturer needs to make some estimate of how many of the various models they think they can sell. The costs for the component parts going into the engine may not be that different but they will be different and affected significantly by the number of parts to be made due to amortisation of tooling and machinery. A 1600 engine and 2000 engine are not the same thing and both will need to be subjected to separate development and validation testing which again should be amortised and allocated against each product.
I appreciate that these comments are only based on the cost. The manufacturer will come up with all sorts of sales arguments to convince the public that they should pay a lot more for the more powerful and sporty car.

[Jasandjules]

That bees fly. Their little rotund bodies look faaaaar to heavy for those wings and yet......

[crofty1984]

Lotobear said:

I'll raise you - differentials, kugelmotors

On differentials, there's a really good video from (I think) General Motors back in the 30s explaining how a differential works. Can't search youtube at work, but it's easy enough to find.

Edit: I see Budgie beat me to it.

Edited by crofty1984 on Wednesday 22 May 17:00

[crofty1984]

STe_rsv4 said:

Space travel and time dilation due to extreme gravity.

I've spent too many nights in bed dozing of to YouTube videos such as Kurdigsadt etc.
I just cant get my head around it.

If you're familiar with Pythagoras (a^2 + b^2 = c^2) there's a really good section in "why does E=MC^2" by Brian Cox that explains it brilliantly.

[98elise]

ikarl said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

Same goes for blind from birth I suppose. Without any base line, what do they see, if anything. is it all black? all white? all brown? would they be able to explain it in terms we could understand? what does absolutely nothing look like?

I spoke ot someone who was blind from birth and they explained they had no input whatsoever, it was hard to get my head round it until they suggested I tried to move a chair with my telekinesis ability..... when I said I couldn't do that as it didn't exist they said that was exactly what sight was like for them.

This. People that are totally blind do not "see" anything.

Imagine everyone else has a 6th sense which perceives radio waves (not visible light). You're not sensing the radio wave equivalent of black or white, you're simply not sensing them at all.

[ajprice]

Related to the blindness, colourblindness. If someone is colourblind to a certain colour what do they see? Is it just grey or does it blend in with a similar they can see, so blue and purple things are all just blue? (I saw the film IF a few days ago, the big furry purple thing is called Blue because the kid who was their friend was colourblind).

[Doofus]

ajprice said:

Related to the blindness, colourblindness. If someone is colourblind to a certain colour what do they see? Is it just grey or does it blend in with a similar they can see, so blue and purple things are all just blue? (I saw the film IF a few days ago, the big furry purple thing is called Blue because the kid who was their friend was colourblind).

To that point, do we all see the same colours? Frinstance, I know what red is, because I've been taught that it's red, but seen through somebody else's eyes, might it look what I'd call blue?

[Upinflames]

Boom78 said:

andyxxx said:

Boom78 said:

We know how and when they were built.

No we don't.

I have seen numerous suggestions how they were built and loads of utter twaddle about the copper tools used to build them.
I do not believe it was built in 20 years using slave labour and primitive tools – but that certainly does not mean I think there is an alien connection! (though that is little less fanciful than the timespan and tools I have mentioned)

There’s been loads of tests on how the blocks were cut and moved. Eg water makes the limestone softer and Easier to cut, even with copper tools. The fact the quarry was next to the pyramids and Nile tributary ran by the site. The fact they could call on hundreds of thousands of able workers as a tax payment during the flood season from farming. Don’t fall into the assumption that people of ancient civilisations were thick, incapable and backwards. Their brains, ambition, and determination was the same as modern man’s. They also developed science, surveying, finance, maths. If we can recreate and learn how to cut and move stones using basic tools then so could they. Especially over the many thousands of years they spent practicing it.

The 20 years was quoted by Herodotus who wasn’t contemporary. It was 30+ plus.

Edited by Boom78 on Wednesday 22 May 15:22

The quarry wasn't next to the pyramids. It's 400 miles away. 2.3 million blocks is a block every 4 minutes at unbelievable precision, night and day, for 20 years.

You think that's what happened?

Edit - 30 plus tears. Oh so a block every 6 minutes then. From 400 miles away. Absolutre joke. Impossible.

[andyxxx]

Ken_Code said:

andyxxx said:

You have to be a wind up merchant, but to clarify:

I do not believe it was built in 20 years.
I have seen the theories that it was not built using slave labour, but am not convinced. Slave labour can be well fed/housed
I do not believe it was built with primitive tools (do you need that breaking down further?)

So you are skeptic all that it was made by slave labour and are skeptical that it wasn’t made by slave labour, and skeptical that it was made by the tools of the time.

How bizarre.

You are bound to think it’s bizarre because you don’t seem to have read my posts properly.

It was obviously made by ‘tools of the time’ – but if you read my OP the mystery to me is we don’t know what they were – certainly not only copper chisels (there seems evidence of precision cutting and core drilling) which would not be possible with the known tools

[Boom78]

Upinflames said:

The quarry wasn't next to the pyramids. It's 400 miles away. 2.3 million blocks is a block every 4 minutes at unbelievable precision, night and day, for 20 years.

You think that's what happened?

Edit - 30 plus tears. Oh so a block every 6 minutes then. From 400 miles away. Absolutre joke. Impossible.

The limestone was quarried locally in Giza and granite came from Aswan on the Nile by barge. You’re making the assumption that great pyramids are made 100% out of solid blocks rather than block and rubble. Also, you’re dismissing the thousands of years they spent perfecting the technique, skills and manpower. To quote someone else:

“No one has ever actually counted 2.3 million blocks: they just assumed it was solid and did the math based on its dimensions. Only very recently has scanning technology become advanced enough to tell what type of material is present at every layer. If the shell/rubble hypothesis is correct, it could be a few as 500,000 blocks that had to be cut and transported. But even if it's solid, 2.3 million blocks could most definitely been accomplished.

Able bodied men roughly account for 15% of a population. Egypt had 1.5 million people at the time of the pyramids. If only half those men were paying their taxes in labor during flooding season, that's a workforce of more than 100,000 men avaliable 9–10 hours a day for 4 months a year for 30 years. That's 3.5 billion work hours avaliable. In the quarry experiment, it took a team of three 2 days to cut 1 stone. That's only 50-60 work hours. Even if the thing is solid, 2.3 million blocks, that still comes out, at 4 months a year for 30 years, to needing about 16,000 guys in teams of 25 hauling one block a day and 5,000 guys in small groups cutting 1 block every 2 days. And yes, with enough men to cut and pull quickly, and an efficient ramp system, I totally believe the blocks were coming up one after the other minutes apart.”

[Ken_Code]

Upinflames said:

The quarry wasn't next to the pyramids. It's 400 miles away. 2.3 million blocks is a block every 4 minutes at unbelievable precision, night and day, for 20 years.

You think that's what happened?

Edit - 30 plus tears. Oh so a block every 6 minutes then. From 400 miles away. Absolutre joke. Impossible.

Why are you conflating the frequency of arrival with the distance?

Given you seem to think the standard explanations are wrong, what are you going for?

Magic, or aliens, or something more prosaic?

Edited by Ken_Code on Wednesday 22 May 20:17

[andyxxx]

Boom78 said:

There’s been loads of tests on how the blocks were cut and moved. Eg water makes the limestone softer and Easier to cut, even with copper tools. The fact the quarry was next to the pyramids and Nile tributary ran by the site. The fact they could call on hundreds of thousands of able workers as a tax payment during the flood season from farming. Don’t fall into the assumption that people of ancient civilisations were thick, incapable and backwards. Their brains, ambition, and determination was the same as modern man’s. They also developed science, surveying, finance, maths. If we can recreate and learn how to cut and move stones using basic tools then so could they. Especially over the many thousands of years they spent practicing it.

Edited by Boom78 on Wednesday 22 May 15:22

I have seen numerous ideas and suggestions about water (and sand to make a ‘cutting’ paste) but I am sceptical that would enable the quantity of precision blocks in the necessary time frame.
I certainly don’t think early civilizations were thick/backwards – on the contrary.
After all the pyramids were built, so they obviously did learn to cut and move the stones.
All I am saying is, much of how it was done is a mystery.

[hungry_hog]

Uni Maths is mental to me.

My friend did Maths at Cambridge and it's so abstract. I have a Chemistry PhD, I think I could study the Maths tripos for 10 years and not understand the first year of the course.
I think it's one of things you get or don't.

Further Maths A level is apparently covered in 2 weeks at the start, in a more rigorous form. If you didn't get A* and Maths, Further Maths and Physics (and probably a 4th subject too!) with minimal effort you are dead in the water.
The people getting First classes in that course are off the scale clever (academically anyway, may not be street smart or good at pulling birds!)