Let me take a guess: It might be that you are using "pyramid" in the literal sense...
Others might be using a much looser "definition" as something with a pointy top that rises out of a flat plane. ...
Clearly there is some wishful language employed. That's why I characterize my contribution here as a tangent. We talk about pareidolia, which is an unconscious phenomenon. But the suggestions that arise unconsciously in some people are then buttressed by fully conscious (and even pseudo-rational) exercises such as photographic interpretation, numerology, and rhetoric.
In geometry, a pyramid must have a polygonal base and a single apex. The proof that only a polyhedron can result from this construction is left as an exercise to the reader. The monuments at Giza are not perfect polyhedra, but they sure try to be -- regular, right pyramids, no less. Working backwards, the Bent Pyramid is putatively a polyhedron, even if it fails the geometric definition of a pyramid. We call it a pyramid by a more architecturally-motivated criterion. Even the cancerous pile of rocks at Saqqara tries very hard to be a polyhedron, and generally rises stepwise to an apex from a brave attempt at a polygonal base. It earns the title "pyramid" again because architecture reserves its own nomenclature, and because it's not at all hard to connect it culturally and historically to the shining examples at Giza.
The crux of the issue, which I failed to emphasize enough before, is how good is "close enough?" Hoaglandites can already point to things that don't strictly fit the Euclidean definition of "pyramid" but which are commonly called that. As I said before, we have ways of quantifying regularity objectively, but the comparative scores still require evaluation within the framework of tolerance. As exacting as the Giza architects tried to be, we can measure a degree of irregularity. My house was certainly architected by a human being, according to generally accepted techniques of mid-century construction. Yet I measure things that are not plumb, level, flat, or at right angles to an arbitrary degree.
Even after high-resolution photographs of Cydonia revealed that its "pyramid" is anything but regular and anything but polyhedral, we still refer to it as the Cydonia Pyramid. And this leads to an amphiboly that plays well into Hoaglandites' goals. Because we can so sloppily identify things as "pyramids," it's only a short hike to the insinuation that it's a "perfect pyramid," in Hoagland's commonly-applied interpretation. If it generally fits the definition, then they can sneak it toward something more rigorous.
We look at some apparent discontinuities in the Ceres feature and we can immediately see how some might consider them suitable for an informal appellation as a pyramid. There is a discontinuity from the surface to the left (brightly lit) side. This would suggest it rises abruptly from the surrounding floor. And there are three dark patches generally in a row that would seem to demarcate the left-facing facet from one facing the viewer.
But the extension from those observations to a "regular, therefore must be artificial" conclusion suffers from two factors. First, we've been fooled before by this level of resolution -- both spatial and in the quantization of light levels. The Face on Mars presented us with indistinct patches and plenty of error-diffusion smoothing that fooled us into thinking there were regular elements where there were none. And second, discontinuity -- even regularly-shaped ones -- are not unknown in nature. My state boasts some wonderfully formed cinder cones in its southwest corner, which satisfy many criteria of regularity yet are unquestionably formed by nature, up to and including their abrupt rise from the surrounding terrain.
The necessary adoption of informal definitions and fuzzy tolerances doesn't mean we get to throw all rigor out the window. You can call it a pyramid if you want, but that categorization doesn't mean you get to assume it's artificially regular.
), and ask about this "pyramid" there:
