Since your post relied entirely on AI, here’s Claude’s rebuttal, produced using the exact same prompt (minus your attempt to reduce it to a single sentence). The full response is below, but here is it’s conclusion:
“The Mecca/Mount Hira golden ratio claim is a form of **numerology** — it relies on approximate matches (~0.1% error at best), arbitrary starting assumptions, cherry-picked measurement methods, and post-hoc selection of which “close enough” result to highlight. **It does not encode the golden ratio or the Earth’s ellipsoidal shape to any meaningful precision, and it has no basis in mathematics, geodesy, or physics**.”
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PROMPT: Does Mount Hira encode the golden ratio and the elipsoid shape of the Earth and to what precision?
This is a claim that circulates in certain religious/numerological circles, so let me search for what’s being asserted and evaluate it.
The claim is usually about **Mecca/Kaaba** rather than specifically Mount Hira (Jabal al-Nour), though Mount Hira is very close — it’s about 3 km from the Kaaba. Let me break this down critically.
# The Golden Ratio Claim
The argument goes like this: divide the 180° of latitude (pole to pole) by φ (1.618034…), and you get 111.246°. Subtract 90° to convert to standard latitude, and you get **21.246° N** (i.e., 21° 14′ 46″ N).
The actual coordinates:
* **Kaaba**: ~21° 25′ 21″ N (21.4225° N)
* **Mount Hira** (Cave of Hira on Jabal al-Nour): ~21° 27′ 25″ N (21.457° N)
* **Golden ratio latitude**: ~21° 14′ 46″ N (21.246° N)
# How Precise Is It?
The difference between the golden ratio latitude and Mecca/Kaaba is about **0.18°**, or roughly **20 km (12 miles)**. Mount Hira is even further off — about **0.21°** or ~23 km from the exact golden ratio latitude. **That’s not particularly precise**. In a band stretching 20,000 km from pole to pole, being within 20 km sounds impressive as a percentage (~0.1%), but many cities around the world sit at similar latitudes, and you could make similar numerological claims about any of them.
# The Ellipsoid / Distance-Based Version
Some proponents use surface distances rather than degrees, measuring along the Earth’s surface from each pole to Mecca. Because the Earth is an oblate ellipsoid (flattened at the poles), the pole-to-pole surface distance (~20,004 km) is slightly different from what you’d calculate on a perfect sphere. By choosing the right measurement method and the right reference point within the large city of Mecca, proponents can get the ratio closer to 1.618. But this involves selecting which measurement method, which reference point, and which pole-to-pole distance to use — and the result shifts depending on those choices.
# Key Problems with the Claim
**Arbitrary choices everywhere.** The latitude calculation only works north-south (not east-west, where there’s no natural origin for longitude). For longitude, proponents resort to overlaying golden sections on Mercator projections, which is entirely arbitrary — you can adjust the projection to make almost any point fit.
**The precision is overstated.** A ~20 km error is significant. The claim survives only because Mecca is a large city (~850 km²), so the golden ratio point can be said to fall “within city limits” depending on how you measure.
**Cherry-picking.** The golden ratio divides any line segment into two points (one at the φ position, one at the 1/φ position). With two hemispheres, that gives four candidate latitudes. With ~180° of latitude to play with, many significant sites around the world fall near one of these lines. No one highlights the misses.
**No mechanism.** There’s no physical or mathematical reason why the golden ratio would determine the location of a sacred site. The golden ratio’s appearances in nature (phyllotaxis, spiral galaxies, etc.) arise from specific dynamical processes — none of which apply to geography in this way.
# On the “Ellipsoid Shape” Encoding
The claim that Mount Hira or Mecca somehow “encodes” the ellipsoidal shape of the Earth doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. The Earth’s oblateness (flattening of ~1/298.257) is a physical property unrelated to the golden ratio (~1.618). These are completely different numbers. The fact that using ellipsoidal distances rather than spherical ones can be tweaked to get a slightly better fit to φ is a consequence of having an extra free parameter to adjust, not evidence of encoding.
# Bottom Line
The Mecca/Mount Hira golden ratio claim is a form of **numerology** — it relies on approximate matches (~0.1% error at best), arbitrary starting assumptions, cherry-picked measurement methods, and post-hoc selection of which “close enough” result to highlight. It does not encode the golden ratio or the Earth’s ellipsoidal shape to any meaningful precision, and it has no basis in mathematics, geodesy, or physics.
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Aaaaaaand that means what now?
ask it the same question about my 2013 Honda jazz
Since your post relied entirely on AI, here’s Claude’s rebuttal, produced using the exact same prompt (minus your attempt to reduce it to a single sentence). The full response is below, but here is it’s conclusion:
“The Mecca/Mount Hira golden ratio claim is a form of **numerology** — it relies on approximate matches (~0.1% error at best), arbitrary starting assumptions, cherry-picked measurement methods, and post-hoc selection of which “close enough” result to highlight. **It does not encode the golden ratio or the Earth’s ellipsoidal shape to any meaningful precision, and it has no basis in mathematics, geodesy, or physics**.”
————————————————
PROMPT: Does Mount Hira encode the golden ratio and the elipsoid shape of the Earth and to what precision?
This is a claim that circulates in certain religious/numerological circles, so let me search for what’s being asserted and evaluate it.
The claim is usually about **Mecca/Kaaba** rather than specifically Mount Hira (Jabal al-Nour), though Mount Hira is very close — it’s about 3 km from the Kaaba. Let me break this down critically.
# The Golden Ratio Claim
The argument goes like this: divide the 180° of latitude (pole to pole) by φ (1.618034…), and you get 111.246°. Subtract 90° to convert to standard latitude, and you get **21.246° N** (i.e., 21° 14′ 46″ N).
The actual coordinates:
* **Kaaba**: ~21° 25′ 21″ N (21.4225° N)
* **Mount Hira** (Cave of Hira on Jabal al-Nour): ~21° 27′ 25″ N (21.457° N)
* **Golden ratio latitude**: ~21° 14′ 46″ N (21.246° N)
# How Precise Is It?
The difference between the golden ratio latitude and Mecca/Kaaba is about **0.18°**, or roughly **20 km (12 miles)**. Mount Hira is even further off — about **0.21°** or ~23 km from the exact golden ratio latitude. **That’s not particularly precise**. In a band stretching 20,000 km from pole to pole, being within 20 km sounds impressive as a percentage (~0.1%), but many cities around the world sit at similar latitudes, and you could make similar numerological claims about any of them.
# The Ellipsoid / Distance-Based Version
Some proponents use surface distances rather than degrees, measuring along the Earth’s surface from each pole to Mecca. Because the Earth is an oblate ellipsoid (flattened at the poles), the pole-to-pole surface distance (~20,004 km) is slightly different from what you’d calculate on a perfect sphere. By choosing the right measurement method and the right reference point within the large city of Mecca, proponents can get the ratio closer to 1.618. But this involves selecting which measurement method, which reference point, and which pole-to-pole distance to use — and the result shifts depending on those choices.
# Key Problems with the Claim
**Arbitrary choices everywhere.** The latitude calculation only works north-south (not east-west, where there’s no natural origin for longitude). For longitude, proponents resort to overlaying golden sections on Mercator projections, which is entirely arbitrary — you can adjust the projection to make almost any point fit.
**The precision is overstated.** A ~20 km error is significant. The claim survives only because Mecca is a large city (~850 km²), so the golden ratio point can be said to fall “within city limits” depending on how you measure.
**Cherry-picking.** The golden ratio divides any line segment into two points (one at the φ position, one at the 1/φ position). With two hemispheres, that gives four candidate latitudes. With ~180° of latitude to play with, many significant sites around the world fall near one of these lines. No one highlights the misses.
**No mechanism.** There’s no physical or mathematical reason why the golden ratio would determine the location of a sacred site. The golden ratio’s appearances in nature (phyllotaxis, spiral galaxies, etc.) arise from specific dynamical processes — none of which apply to geography in this way.
# On the “Ellipsoid Shape” Encoding
The claim that Mount Hira or Mecca somehow “encodes” the ellipsoidal shape of the Earth doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. The Earth’s oblateness (flattening of ~1/298.257) is a physical property unrelated to the golden ratio (~1.618). These are completely different numbers. The fact that using ellipsoidal distances rather than spherical ones can be tweaked to get a slightly better fit to φ is a consequence of having an extra free parameter to adjust, not evidence of encoding.
# Bottom Line
The Mecca/Mount Hira golden ratio claim is a form of **numerology** — it relies on approximate matches (~0.1% error at best), arbitrary starting assumptions, cherry-picked measurement methods, and post-hoc selection of which “close enough” result to highlight. It does not encode the golden ratio or the Earth’s ellipsoidal shape to any meaningful precision, and it has no basis in mathematics, geodesy, or physics.