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From the publication: “The speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is hard to accept.” This

From the publication: “The speculation that the hand gesture herein presented is a freemasonry’s conveyed code is fascinating, but it is hard to accept.” 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?

runjake 2y ago
32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of. 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.
- fidotron 2y ago
  > 32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of. Would you actually be able to say it if they were?
  - flir 2y ago
    The other guard always lies.
    - runjake 2y ago
      Link to the logic puzzle that flir is referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves
      - nosmokewhereiam 2y ago
        Ask what would the other do and do the opposite.
        m463 2y ago
        I wonder if you could do that with tristate logic somehow. maybe with more guards or other variables.
        flir 2y ago
        Solve for the general case. Maybe you need num_guards-1 questions? I doubt you could solve for 50 guards with 1 question.
        judahmeek 2y ago
        If you're allowed to create a hypothetical question that translates a hierarchy of guards into Boolean logic, then it doesn't matter how many guards there are.
        flir 2y ago
        What are you thinking? I was wondering about dividing them into sets.
        saghm 2y ago
        "What would each of the other 49 guards would say the 49 guards other than them would do?" It would be a pain to do the deduction from all of that info, but it seems like it would be enough enough. Maybe it would make more sense to have that guard write down the answer (and throw in a pencil and a few extra sheets of paper)...
        flir 2y ago
        "Label the guards, 1 to 50, starting with you as 1, the guard to your left as 2, etc. For each guard, tell me what answer they would give if I asked them if your door was safe". 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.
  - runjake 2y ago
    I would just not comment, in that case.
    - nick238 2y ago
      Maybe that knowledge is unlocked when hitting 33°.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    Probably not, the Freemason Police patrol this internet web site daily, and he'd disappear in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Be sure to follow up on his comment history a month from now, to see whether he's said anything since.
    - labster 2y ago
      The last time the government found out about the Masonic Police, the leader mysteriously died right before trial and the other charges were swept under the rug. I definitely wouldn’t mess with those guys. https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-fraternal-police-20160419-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-fraternal-police-2...
  - rubyfan 2y ago
    Most of the secrets and symbols are available in publications and online for a very long time.
    - runjake 2y ago
      There's a surprising amount that aren't. 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.
      - endofreach 2y ago
        But what are they actually used for? The only things i heard about freemasonry were from conspiracy theorists. But i never really found out, what they actually do. And the secret handshakes are performed with strangers to tell each other secretly they're unknown brothers?
        ESTheComposer 2y ago
        [dead]
        tomcam 2y ago
        If he told you that, he’d have to… initiate you
        runjake 2y ago
        I hope he's comfortable with goats.
        motohagiography 2y ago
        we're not rude, we were just taught to be caustic.
        toast0 2y ago
        You gotta do the gestures to get the keys to the shriner cars. Source: my grampa was a mason, but didn't do any brickwork, and told me nothing.
- flir 2y ago
  > presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting. I wouldn't bet on it. Performative secrecy is very common in esotericism.
  - runjake 2y ago
    Touche. You are correct. In fact, a number of paintings of esoteric figures now come to mind where their hands are in a particular configuration.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Sometimes with these sorts of organizations their deepest secrets are the meaning of their public symbology.
  - Timon3 2y ago
    Do you have any examples you could share?
  - dpig_ 2y ago
    Source: Nicolas Cage
- temporarely 2y ago
  Sorry to break the news to you Jake but there are two orders. Those of "that era" are the actual power breakers, you guys are the peculiar but innocent window dressing. > And since, .. No, the meaning is the secret :) Oh dear.
- coliveira 2y ago
  What is secret is the meaning, not the gesture itself.
bgoated01 2y ago
Having been involved in peer reviewed publishing before, I wonder if this was an afterthought prompted by a peer reviewer's comments on the paper. Perhaps they quickly added this point just to get it to pass review. Sloppy, if so, but I've seen similar (though not as blatant) things happen.
- crdrost 2y ago
  I mean the whole paper is sloppy here. They kind of are writing to a biomedical journal and then say "well, it's NOT biomedical..." as kind of a little brush-off? And then they go through a couple explanations they have heard and dismiss them without really going through the evidence. (I especially liked the sloppiness of self-contradiction, in one section they're like "well there are no Hebrew letters that work for this" which is wrong, you could make decent arguments for both shin and tsadeh -- but then almost immediately after they're like "well this could be an M or W, W can symbolically be the Hebrew letter Vav...") 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?
  - burnished 2y ago
    The genius of your proposition is that you wouldn't have to be surprised, you'd just know
- karaterobot 2y ago
  There were enough basic grammatical errors in that article—not to mention a general lack of clarity and specificity—that I initially wondered whether it was a preprint, or maybe somebody's blog. But no.
panarchy 2y ago
This reads like it belongs in an episode of The Curse of Oak Island not an article.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 2y ago
I noticed that too. Eventually they drew the conclusion that people just copied each other to look cool. I have no idea whether there's more to the 'hidden meanings' conjectures or not, but if you're going to dig into a topic, dig in properly. Waste of reading time in my view.
marginalia_nu 2y ago
Could also be from some defunct offshoot off the freemasons or some other adjacent secret society. The rosicrucians are perhaps most well known, but secret hermetic societies were fairly in-fashion during the renaissance. Given the secrecy involved, it's probably very hard to know what is and is not (and has been) a significant gesture. 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.

runjake 2y ago

32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of. 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.

fidotron 2y ago
> 32° Freemason here. The images and descriptions do not match any masonic hand positions I am aware of. Would you actually be able to say it if they were?
- flir 2y ago
  The other guard always lies.
  - runjake 2y ago
    Link to the logic puzzle that flir is referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_and_Knaves
    - nosmokewhereiam 2y ago
      Ask what would the other do and do the opposite.
      - m463 2y ago
        I wonder if you could do that with tristate logic somehow. maybe with more guards or other variables.
        flir 2y ago
        Solve for the general case. Maybe you need num_guards-1 questions? I doubt you could solve for 50 guards with 1 question.
        judahmeek 2y ago
        If you're allowed to create a hypothetical question that translates a hierarchy of guards into Boolean logic, then it doesn't matter how many guards there are.
        flir 2y ago
        What are you thinking? I was wondering about dividing them into sets.
        saghm 2y ago
        "What would each of the other 49 guards would say the 49 guards other than them would do?" It would be a pain to do the deduction from all of that info, but it seems like it would be enough enough. Maybe it would make more sense to have that guard write down the answer (and throw in a pencil and a few extra sheets of paper)...
        flir 2y ago
        "Label the guards, 1 to 50, starting with you as 1, the guard to your left as 2, etc. For each guard, tell me what answer they would give if I asked them if your door was safe". 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.
- runjake 2y ago
  I would just not comment, in that case.
  - nick238 2y ago
    Maybe that knowledge is unlocked when hitting 33°.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  Probably not, the Freemason Police patrol this internet web site daily, and he'd disappear in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. Be sure to follow up on his comment history a month from now, to see whether he's said anything since.
  - labster 2y ago
    The last time the government found out about the Masonic Police, the leader mysteriously died right before trial and the other charges were swept under the rug. I definitely wouldn’t mess with those guys. https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-fraternal-police-20160419-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-fraternal-police-2...
- rubyfan 2y ago
  Most of the secrets and symbols are available in publications and online for a very long time.
  - runjake 2y ago
    There's a surprising amount that aren't. 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.
    - endofreach 2y ago
      But what are they actually used for? The only things i heard about freemasonry were from conspiracy theorists. But i never really found out, what they actually do. And the secret handshakes are performed with strangers to tell each other secretly they're unknown brothers?
      - ESTheComposer 2y ago
        [dead]
      - tomcam 2y ago
        If he told you that, he’d have to… initiate you
        runjake 2y ago
        I hope he's comfortable with goats.
        motohagiography 2y ago
        we're not rude, we were just taught to be caustic.
      - toast0 2y ago
        You gotta do the gestures to get the keys to the shriner cars. Source: my grampa was a mason, but didn't do any brickwork, and told me nothing.
flir 2y ago
> presumably the hand positions are secret, they're not going to be immortalized in a painting. I wouldn't bet on it. Performative secrecy is very common in esotericism.
- runjake 2y ago
  Touche. You are correct. In fact, a number of paintings of esoteric figures now come to mind where their hands are in a particular configuration.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Sometimes with these sorts of organizations their deepest secrets are the meaning of their public symbology.
- Timon3 2y ago
  Do you have any examples you could share?
- dpig_ 2y ago
  Source: Nicolas Cage
temporarely 2y ago
Sorry to break the news to you Jake but there are two orders. Those of "that era" are the actual power breakers, you guys are the peculiar but innocent window dressing. > And since, .. No, the meaning is the secret :) Oh dear.
coliveira 2y ago
What is secret is the meaning, not the gesture itself.

bgoated01 2y ago

Having been involved in peer reviewed publishing before, I wonder if this was an afterthought prompted by a peer reviewer's comments on the paper. Perhaps they quickly added this point just to get it to pass review. Sloppy, if so, but I've seen similar (though not as blatant) things happen.

crdrost 2y ago
I mean the whole paper is sloppy here. They kind of are writing to a biomedical journal and then say "well, it's NOT biomedical..." as kind of a little brush-off? And then they go through a couple explanations they have heard and dismiss them without really going through the evidence. (I especially liked the sloppiness of self-contradiction, in one section they're like "well there are no Hebrew letters that work for this" which is wrong, you could make decent arguments for both shin and tsadeh -- but then almost immediately after they're like "well this could be an M or W, W can symbolically be the Hebrew letter Vav...") 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?
- burnished 2y ago
  The genius of your proposition is that you wouldn't have to be surprised, you'd just know
karaterobot 2y ago
There were enough basic grammatical errors in that article—not to mention a general lack of clarity and specificity—that I initially wondered whether it was a preprint, or maybe somebody's blog. But no.

panarchy 2y ago

This reads like it belongs in an episode of The Curse of Oak Island not an article.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 2y ago

I noticed that too. Eventually they drew the conclusion that people just copied each other to look cool. I have no idea whether there's more to the 'hidden meanings' conjectures or not, but if you're going to dig into a topic, dig in properly. Waste of reading time in my view.

marginalia_nu 2y ago

Could also be from some defunct offshoot off the freemasons or some other adjacent secret society. The rosicrucians are perhaps most well known, but secret hermetic societies were fairly in-fashion during the renaissance. Given the secrecy involved, it's probably very hard to know what is and is not (and has been) a significant gesture. 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.