This sentence concluded a very short paragraph that apparently aimed to explore whether the hand sign could have a Masonic meaning. But instead of giving any explanation for their conclusion, the authors merely postulate the above without any given reasoning. I’m surprised to find this in what appears to aim to be a scientific analysis. Even more so would it surprise me if any conscious reader found this conclusion satisfactory.
Any thoughts?
However, there were numerous other fraternities and secret societies during that era, although they were typically gender-specific. Seeing both men and women using the same hand signals suggests these were likely common societal practices of the time. And since, presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting.
Would you actually be able to say it if they were?
I wouldn't bet on it. Performative secrecy is very common in esotericism.
And after cursorily dismissing them they just say "therefore, it's an aesthetic meme. This is just what perfect hands look like, sorry."
A hypothesis that was not considered, for example: 'We asked people at school to imagine that they were going to be sitting still for the next three hours on a stool, and to sit on it in a way that was perfectly relaxed. We then prompted them "remember, in old times you'd have had to sit here for three hours, really relax." Finally, we then picked up their left wrist, turned it, and placed it on their chests saying "great, now can you just hold this hand here," and took a photograph. In 30% of these photographs we also see, even without syndactyly, that the two fingers get forced together just by the process of having your wrist twisted by an artist and then the fingers having to conform to the contours of the chest.'
I don't know what that percentage is, but I'd be surprised if it were 0%, right?
And even then:
1. Every Freemason knows what's on the Internet. Identifications have evolved.
2. The leaks lack... important contexts... about what they are.
> And since, ..
No, the meaning is the secret :) Oh dear.
"According to this hypothesis, the gesture was a secret sign used to recognize masonic followers each other"
I have never heard this verbiage before... Did an AI write this? Or, can someone explain to me how "used to recognize followers each other" is grammatically sound?
https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-fraternal-police-2...
I'd also personally not be surprised if hermetic symbolism cropped up around the Medici-adjacent artists in particular, given the Medicis' proximity to Pico della Mirandola who was fairly important in bringing together this new mix of christian, jewish, gnostic and neoplatonist mysticism.
Source: my grampa was a mason, but didn't do any brickwork, and told me nothing.
Maybe you need num_guards-1 questions?
I doubt you could solve for 50 guards with 1 question.
I recall when young, people were commenting on how most media came from centralized locations. That with newspapers, and then radio, and now TV, pronunciation was moving towards being less regionalized, diverse, yet also that the choice of words to use, the synonyms to use, was changing.
I also recall the same being said for a variety of things, such as spell checkers, and grammar checkers used in wordprocessors. Some grammar was "OK", but other forms were being pushed by (most especially) earlier wordprocessors, with grammatically valid text being marked with that wavy underline.
Now we have AI.
My point?
Kids are going to be raised in a world with AI. If it spends a decade or more spewing blather such as this, an entire slew of people will grow up, from 10 to 20 years old, 15 to 25 years old, learning to cobble together sentences in this sort of way.
Not only will they read it, but "helpful" assistants will change their normal prose, into this gibberish.
So I'm sorry mkl, it sort of will be grammatical. And no, I'm not happy about it.
I think you know an AI didn't generate the sentence because it's ungrammatical.
The publication in question (Acta Biomed) is oriented around "mainly national and international scientific activities from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries", so there's a reasonable chance none of the the authors speak English as a first language. This in no way excuses bad editing—the journal publishes in English, after all.
If all the guards say the same thing, you're talking to the lying guard. Otherwise the liar is simply the one that answers differently.
Would that work? I think so.