[jacobolus]

There’s no empirical basis for the mystical claims about the golden ratio, and most of the examples from ancient buildings, famous artworks, attractive people’s faces, and so on are a result of selecting examples which match the pattern while ignoring those which don’t – yay numerology!

It just happens to be a fairly reasonable ratio for a lot of purposes (and happens to be the ratio ϕ = a/b such that ϕ = a/b = (a + b)/a), and sometimes therefore an easy rule-of-thumb. Use it or don’t use it. You won’t be missing some secret of the universe.