ATTN Analytics I Read Nate Silver "The Signal and the Noise"!

[Analytics]

This was one major issue I discovered on my own thinking and belief, this darn thing exposes the details of my belief and exposes whether I actually am ok with believing what I thought. It just led me to the idea that hey, I actually do have to do some more thinking on all this man. Bayes does open ourselves to our own biases. That is what happened and happens. We can't anymore do so much ignoring of everything we just don't like or are uncomfortable with. Yes, your point is well established.

Right. The idea is to set up a couple broad, well-defined paradigms that cover the entire space of what's possible as much as possible. Then consider how well the evidence fits within each paradigm. This allows you to seriously consider the universe where God really did promise us that answers to prayers are a reliable way of figuring out the truth. Simultaneously, it allows us to cleanly and coherently consider the possibility that God really didn't promise that, despite what the Bible and Book of Mormon say about it. The prior beliefs provides the mathematics (and the ability to inductively reason) so that you can answer the question of which paradigm is more reasonable in light of the evidence.

[Analytics]

This certainly sounds like an interesting and valuable book. Philo, your comments help me understand why you are finding Bayes a useful device. You are pointing out that it can clarify thinking for the user. It perhaps sounds less useful to a post reader who reads, Bayes computation shows Book of Mormon is clearly a document of ancient historical reality.

Considering its use in a more problematic and controversial question, like was there a actual real person Jesus, can see the process of evaluating evidence both sides as valuable. Perhaps most valuable for the person assigning values.

Exactly. Bayes facilitates evaluating the evidence from competing paradigms.

Since you brought up Richard Carrier, his Bayesian approach is correct; in contrast to Dale and Dale, Carrier understood the subtleties and implications of the math. Not only did he correctly apply the formulas, he followed Nate Silver’s advice and set a range to each probability, rather than presenting a single number. That was excellent.

That said, it had some problems. The big one is the way he defines the problem. He defines the problem as whether or not Jesus existed historically. That is problematic; there were lots of historical guys named “Jesus.” Rather than asking that one question, he should have asked the following two questions instead:

1- Is the Gospel of Mark based on a historical figure named Jesus, or is the character in that book pure fiction?

2- Did Paul associate the Jesus he saw in a vision and worshiped with somebody he believed was the historical Jesus of Nazareth, or was his religion a mystic one, closer to the religion depicted in Ascent of Isaiah?

This probably sounds like I’m trying to avoid taking sides, but my suspicion is that historicists and mysticists are both right—I suspect there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, <i>and</i> Paul started a religion based on a mystical understanding of Jesus that did <i>not</i> have its origins in the movement started by the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the mystic Jesus were two independent movements that eventually merged.

After setting up his Bayesian model with the wrong question, Carrier’s biggest problem is disregarding the gospels as historical evidence. He disregarded them because they were tampered with and couldn’t be trusted. Yes, they were tampered with, but scholars have a reasonable understanding of what the original Gospel of Mark did and did not say. The reconstruction of that original text needs to be dealt with, not simply disregarded.

[Philo Sofee]

This certainly sounds like an interesting and valuable book. Philo, your comments help me understand why you are finding Bayes a useful device. You are pointing out that it can clarify thinking for the user. It perhaps sounds less useful to a post reader who reads, Bayes computation shows Book of Mormon is clearly a document of ancient historical reality.

Considering its use in a more problematic and controversial question, like was there a actual real person Jesus, can see the process of evaluating evidence both sides as valuable. Perhaps most valuable for the person assigning values.

Exactly. Bayes facilitates evaluating the evidence from competing paradigms.

Since you brought up Richard Carrier, his Bayesian approach is correct; in contrast to Dale and Dale, Carrier understood the subtleties and implications of the math. Not only did he correctly apply the formulas, he followed Nate Silver’s advice and set a range to each probability, rather than presenting a single number. That was excellent.

That said, it had some problems. The big one is the way he defines the problem. He defines the problem as whether or not Jesus existed historically. That is problematic; there were lots of historical guys named “Jesus.” Rather than asking that one question, he should have asked the following two questions instead:

1- Is the Gospel of Mark based on a historical figure named Jesus, or is the character in that book pure fiction?

2- Did Paul associate the Jesus he saw in a vision and worshiped with somebody he believed was the historical Jesus of Nazareth, or was his religion a mystic one, closer to the religion depicted in Ascent of Isaiah?

This probably sounds like I’m trying to avoid taking sides, but my suspicion is that historicists and mysticists are both right—I suspect there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, <i>and</i> Paul started a religion based on a mystical understanding of Jesus that did <i>not</i> have its origins in the movement started by the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the mystic Jesus were two independent movements that eventually merged.

After setting up his Bayesian model with the wrong question, Carrier’s biggest problem is disregarding the gospels as historical evidence. He disregarded them because they were tampered with and couldn’t be trusted. Yes, they were tampered with, but scholars have a reasonable understanding of what the original Gospel of Mark did and did not say. The reconstruction of that original text needs to be dealt with, not simply disregarded.

Perhaps it could have helped him if he had made this about 5 or 6 smaller issues that all coalesced into the larger one of Jesus' historicity. I see it pretty much how you have explained after seeing all the back and forths. It still is a mighty important thing in my opinion for apologists of all stripes to start looking into on a quite serious note. Not that they have to come to Carrier's conclusion, I don't either, but the application and methods he used, the evidences he did and did not use were fascinating to see how he worked it. I can now see a little better how to apply all this to Mormon studies. Nate Silver's book just broadens the base enormously on how to use it in several different types of ways, which, cool enough, I can see helping me do wo with Mormon studies also!

[master_dc]

Nate and his team do a great job, i have learned a ton by following their work.

The Dale's paper is the reason I stumbled upon the old board. I read their paper and was thoroughly confused by it and wanted to see if my concerns with their approach and my understanding of Bayes were valid. The work by all of you, Analytics, Lem, and others was remarkable to follow.

This is all so relevant today. It seems like every few days there is a news article about vaccinated people getting sick with COVID... well duh, Pfizer and Moderna are 95% effective. So 1:20 vaccinated people exposed can still get it.

Critical thinking needs to make a comeback, though it may be that it never fully arrived in the first place.

[Physics Guy]

[M]y suspicion is that historicists and mysticists are both right—I suspect there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, <i>and</i> Paul started a religion based on a mystical understanding of Jesus that did <i>not</i> have its origins in the movement started by the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the mystic Jesus were two independent movements that eventually merged.

I completely agree. In fact I think this is precisely the traditional Christian theory.

The letters attributed to Paul, and the stories about Paul in Acts, are quite explicit that Paul never met Jesus in the flesh and that Paul's entire understanding of Jesus was based on visions and theology. The mentions in the New Testament of conflict between Jesus's Original Gangsters and Paul the interloper apostle are brief but telling. The merger of the mystical and historical movements went through because nobody could really put a finger on any specific conflict between them—if only because they had so little overlap—and because the mystical version was spreading well among gentiles. And perhaps because at a critical juncture Peter was impressed by a bizarre dream about a bundle of animals.

The historical movement didn't just get hijacked. It hitched itself to the mystical version and came along for the ride, and gentile Christians learned all those stories and sayings of Jesus. Without those cool stories and sayings, in fact, Paul's mystical doctrine of atonement and faith might well just have dissolved among the other first-century mystery cults. It was probably a true symbiosis in which the union was stronger, as a meme-set, than either part separately.

None of this is a revisionist secret that has to be revealed by any modern analysis. It's there in the New Testament on the face of the text. Everyone sees the giant split between the Epistles and the Gospels, how they're in totally different styles and appear to be talking about completely different things. The church kept both all this time, nonetheless, and never really tried to fuse them together into a unified whole. It's weird, but Christianity has always lampshaded it, by saying that Jesus had this earthly preaching and healing phase but then was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, because somehow he was God all along.

The merger of mystical and historical has always been in Christianity's headline. I don't think that traditional Christianity has ever even tried to deny it, but on the contrary has been in everyone's face about it since 100 CE. One can certainly doubt the Christians' claim that their two halves fit together and stick, but I don't think one can fairly accuse them of concealing the join.

[huckelberry]

[M]y suspicion is that historicists and mysticists are both right—I suspect there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, <i>and</i> Paul started a religion based on a mystical understanding of Jesus that did <i>not</i> have its origins in the movement started by the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the mystic Jesus were two independent movements that eventually merged.

I completely agree. In fact I think this is precisely the traditional Christian theory.

The letters attributed to Paul, and the stories about Paul in Acts, are quite explicit that Paul never met Jesus in the flesh and that Paul's entire understanding of Jesus was based on visions and theology. The mentions in the New Testament of conflict between Jesus's Original Gangsters and Paul the interloper apostle are brief but telling. The merger of the mystical and historical movements went through because nobody could really put a finger on any specific conflict between them—if only because they had so little overlap—and because the mystical version was spreading well among gentiles. And perhaps because at a critical juncture Peter was impressed by a bizarre dream about a bundle of animals.

The historical movement didn't just get hijacked. It hitched itself to the mystical version and came along for the ride, and gentile Christians learned all those stories and sayings of Jesus. Without those cool stories and sayings, in fact, Paul's mystical doctrine of atonement and faith might well just have dissolved among the other first-century mystery cults. It was probably a true symbiosis in which the union was stronger, as a meme-set, than either part separately.

None of this is a revisionist secret that has to be revealed by any modern analysis. It's there in the New Testament on the face of the text. Everyone sees the giant split between the Epistles and the Gospels, how they're in totally different styles and appear to be talking about completely different things. The church kept both all this time, nonetheless, and never really tried to fuse them together into a unified whole. It's weird, but Christianity has always lampshaded it, by saying that Jesus had this earthly preaching and healing phase but then was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, because somehow he was God all along.

The merger of mystical and historical has always been in Christianity's headline. I don't think that traditional Christianity has ever even tried to deny it, but on the contrary has been in everyone's face about it since 100 CE. One can certainly doubt the Christians' claim that their two halves fit together and stick, but I don't think one can fairly accuse them of concealing the join.

Physics Guy, I am left puzzling about what all you see separating Paul from the Jerusalem Christians. Clearly one group adhered to Jewish law and Paul thought that faith took the place of that. I am puzzled as to why you would then refer to Paul as mystic in some sort of contrast to to James or Peter . It almost sounds as if you mean nobody believed in Jesus's resurrection until Paul had a mystical experience of Jesus and shared that mysticism with others. Do you really think Paul started that sort of mysticism? That would be an unusual reading I think. Do you mean the kind of spiritual unity with Jesus that is faith? In the gospels that idea is presented ,'" this is my body..." or through king and subject or marriage imagery.

One could consider that the gospels are all created after Paul so could have absorbed his mystic Jesus. It would be a remarkable amalgamation I think. It is clear that the New Testament contains a variety of views and understanding. Paul is differnet than Matthew, who is differnt than Luke or John etc. You present a big divide between mystical and original believers. Can you clarify what you see those original prePaul Jesus followers to be about, after he died.

Curious, puzzled, uncertain, hopeful might be a characterization of followers in his life. A good deal of that could have continued on after he was executed.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Nate and his team do a great job, i have learned a ton by following their work.

The Dale's paper is the reason I stumbled upon the old board. I read their paper and was thoroughly confused by it and wanted to see if my concerns with their approach and my understanding of Bayes were valid. The work by all of you, Analytics, Lem, and others was remarkable to follow.

[snip]
Critical thinking needs to make a comeback, though it may be that it never fully arrived in the first place.

Unfortunately, Silver seems to have missed the biggest problem with probabilistic analysis which is that if the formulae are not including all of the significant variables, then the range will be off. He got burned bigly in this regard in 2020 because he did not factor in unreturned mailed ballots in his presidential race calculations. I will be publishing something to this effect in a little while. As a result, his probability windows were shifted too far in several states toward Joe Biden and underestimated the chances of Donald Trump winning states such as Florida and Iowa.

I haven't read the neo-fundamentalist papers on the Book of Abraham, so I will defer to others in this regard, but it would seem to me that their Bayesian analytics are not factoring in non-Egyptian text samples. If that is the case, then anything they generate is a case of GIGO, garbage in garbage out.

[Analytics]

[M]y suspicion is that historicists and mysticists are both right—I suspect there really was a historical Jesus of Nazareth, <i>and</i> Paul started a religion based on a mystical understanding of Jesus that did <i>not</i> have its origins in the movement started by the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the mystic Jesus were two independent movements that eventually merged.

I completely agree. In fact I think this is precisely the traditional Christian theory.

The letters attributed to Paul, and the stories about Paul in Acts, are quite explicit that Paul never met Jesus in the flesh and that Paul's entire understanding of Jesus was based on visions and theology....

Interesting. Just to make sure we are on the same page here, have you read The Jesus Puzzle, or On the Historicity of Jesus? Just to lay out the pieces, they assert that there was this mystic belief of "Jesus" descending through various levels of heaven to a low level of heaven (not to Jerusalem or Nazareth or Bethlehem, but to a low level of heaven), being crucified by demons (not by Romans), resurrecting, and the ascending back to heaven. According to mysticists, these events all took place in a different realm and had nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. The weird little book "The Ascent of Isaiah," corrected for meddling by later Christians, is our best reference that this belief even existed.

So yes, everyone agrees that the religion of Paul was quite different than the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. But when Paul said we were saved by faith in Jesus Christ crucified, who was he referring to? Did he have in mind Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified by Romans around AD 35? Or was he imagining a mystic Jesus who was crucified by sky demons?

[Analytics]

Unfortunately, Silver seems to have missed the biggest problem with probabilistic analysis which is that if the formulae are not including all of the significant variables, then the range will be off. He got burned bigly in this regard in 2020 because he did not factor in unreturned mailed ballots in his presidential race calculations. I will be publishing something to this effect in a little while. As a result, his probability windows were shifted too far in several states toward Joe Biden and underestimated the chances of Donald Trump winning states such as Florida and Iowa.

As an example, Silver's final forecast for Florida is that Trump had a 31% chance of winning that state. With 20/20 hindsight we now know he had a 100% chance of winning Florida. But before the election, did we know that?

The way I interpret this is that when Silver said Trump had a 31% chance of winning Florida, he was making a statement about the limits of his own ability to accurately predict the future. Trump winning Florida is totally consistent with the 31% chance of winning that Silver gave him.

The way to measure Silver's forecasting prowess on its own terms is to look at multiple races. If he says candidate X has a 70% chance of winning a race, that candidate should win about 70% of the time and that candidate should lose about 30% of the time.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Unfortunately, Silver seems to have missed the biggest problem with probabilistic analysis which is that if the formulae are not including all of the significant variables, then the range will be off. He got burned bigly in this regard in 2020 because he did not factor in unreturned mailed ballots in his presidential race calculations. I will be publishing something to this effect in a little while. As a result, his probability windows were shifted too far in several states toward Joe Biden and underestimated the chances of Donald Trump winning states such as Florida and Iowa.

As an example, Silver's final forecast for Florida is that Trump had a 31% chance of winning that state. With 20/20 hindsight we now know he had a 100% chance of winning Florida. But before the election, did we know that?

The way I interpret this is that when Silver said Trump had a 31% chance of winning Florida, he was making a statement about the limits of his own ability to accurately predict the future. Trump winning Florida is totally consistent with the 31% chance of winning that Silver gave him.

The way to measure Silver's forecasting prowess on its own terms is to look at multiple races. If he says candidate X has a 70% chance of winning a race, that candidate should win about 70% of the time and that candidate should lose about 30% of the time.

Before the election, I was able to construct a model based on aggregated polling averages which factored in standard unreturned mailed ballot rates. My model predicted that Trump was more likely to win Florida than lose it.