Res Ipsa wrote:Honor, your point on battle of the experts is a good one. I think the independence issue can be explained in a way that avoids that problem.
It could, but I doubt the authors would accept it. It's ludicrous on the face that the authors are presenting 147 elements from ONE AUTHOR written in ONE BOOK on ONE TOPIC or spoken ABOUT THAT TOPIC, as related to ONE OTHER SINGLE BOOK all as fully independent experimental results.
Also, as i noted in my last post, removing the independency removes their result entirely.
(Sorry for the caps, it is just so frustrating that the authors would liken statements about a topic to independent dice rolls, and that the stats peer reviewer would think that is ok.)
Res Ipsa wrote:I didn’t include that in my list because I have no idea how accounting for the lack of independence affects the bottom line. If I understand Lemmie correctly, it is possible to adjust the math to account for dependence. If that’s the case, even an example of how the improper method could affect the bottom line would be, in my opinion, more persuasive than just saying that the method was improper.
Except that without the independency the entire multiplication collapses, which is the ONLY reason they get their result.
Suppose one element B generates the likelihood ratio .5. if the probability the second element occurs with the first is 1, then the likelihood ratio for elements 1 and 2 is not .5 x .5, it's .5 x 1.
Suppose every additional element is equally likely to occur with the first one, then the odds are not 10 ^ -131, (or whatever they got)
they are 0.5 x (1^146) = 0.5 x 1 = 0.5.
That's the extreme if all items are fully dependent.
Then posterior odds go from 1 billion to one against historicity, to one-half billion to one, still against historicity, instead of the billion billion billion, etc. odds in favor of Book of Mormon TRUE.
It destroys the whole argument to remove dependency.
Thanks Lemmie. That’s the kind of thing I was looking for.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:Thanks Lemmie. That’s the kind of thing I was looking for.
You're welcome, it was super quick and dirty which I know doesn't always help so I'm glad you see what i was going for. I'll try to clean it up but due to massive rain tomorrow it is mother's day today at the Lemmie Household and my fam is waiting to take me to my fav gardening place so I can indulge my love of plants!!
Res Ipsa wrote:Honor, your point on battle of the experts is a good one. I think the independence issue can be explained in a way that avoids that problem.
It could, but I doubt the authors would accept it. It's ludicrous on the face that the authors are presenting 147 elements from ONE AUTHOR written in ONE BOOK on ONE TOPIC or spoken ABOUT THAT TOPIC, as related to ONE OTHER SINGLE BOOK all as fully independent experimental results.
Also, as i noted in my last post, removing the independency removes their result entirely.
(Sorry for the caps, it is just so frustrating that the authors would liken statements about a topic to independent dice rolls, and that the stats peer reviewer would think that is ok.)
It’s got to be maddening. But it’s an important illustration of how shoddy the publication’s peer review is.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:Thanks Lemmie. That’s the kind of thing I was looking for.
You're welcome, it was super quick and dirty which I know doesn't always help so I'm glad you see what i was going for. I'll try to clean it up but due to massive rain tomorrow it is mother's day today at the Lemmie Household and my fam is waiting to take me to my fav gardening place so I can indulge my love of plants!!
I really appreciate your time and effort. Have a wonderful Mother’s Day!
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
honor wrote:While I tend to agree I suspect reality is most of us aren't up to seeing how self evident the issues are but end up viewing the use of Bayes in this case as a battle between experts. So long as those more expert in the tools appear divided it gives the impression to those who hild differing views that this isn't due to objective issues. I think this is a hurdle for the critique of the paper that sounds like it could be overcome.
I take your point, but "appearing" to be divided is the real issue.
It gets frustrating when one set of "experts" only posts on the Interpreter with their lack of peer review, and the other "experts" support every theoretical comment with mathematical support that is fully and totally settled as statistical knowledge, as well as comments from actual peer reviewed work.
That's why I don't make math comments on the Interpreter site. What would be the point?
As.of now it seems the authors have retreated from defending the paper which suggests the view of its significance will calcify into artillery style trench warfare where arguments are posted on different sources to be ignored or addressed as deemed most beneficial. It certainly seems frustrating. I appreciate your making it clearer. And happy mother's day!
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
So far I've not had a comment blocked at the Interpretor though they appear to be limiting comments that aren't furthering the discussion now. I posted this earlier this morning but it's still awaiting moderation I guess. I didn't want the point to be lost if it doesn't make it out.
honorentheos, on the Interpreter site, wrote:Hi Mark, what you see as the insurmountable strength of the paper is a product of a misapplication of Bayes according to a number of highly qualified specialists. Now my impression is you and I are not able to verify that one way or the other. I’m not anyway, and recognize there is a certain faith based bias that is involved if I were to simply point to what is being described as almost fatal flaws with the application of Bayes to arrive at the unfathomable results and declare nothing more need be said. I suspect it’s the mirrored bias you point to above, acknowledging issues with a point here or there but chosing to accept the expertise and claims of the authors as final resulting in a knockout blow to a claim the Book of Mormon is fiction because it fails to accurately represent the historical context of the Americas at the time it claims to cover.
Because of this I think those like myself, and perhaps you, for whom the underlying methodology is outside our experience and knowledge, would do well to let the the debate play out before claiming any certainty is warranted.
In the meantime, I do think there are many issues related to the attempts to map the Book of Mormon onto The Maya that are much more impactful than you are allowing. I think one could start at the beginning and point them out with minimal occurrence of acceptting what was proposed in the paper at face value. For example, starting on 1.1 in Appendix A, Coe describes the Maya society as organized around city-states without a central form of government over all of the people. But rather than accurately distill the key characteristics from Coe, the authors made the arbitrary decision to rely on the absence of nation being used to describe the Nephites or Lamanites to claim the lowest probability exists Smith could have guessed this detail about Maya social organization. But the Book of Mormon does describe both the Nephites and Lamanites as having a central form of government. And it uses Nephites, Lamanites, the people of the Nephites, and other phrases that serve the same purpose as using nation would serve. But directly, had the authors simply listed out all the characteristics of Maya society independently and then answered the question of how or if the Book of Mormon described that characteristic this should have been an example of Smith getting it wrong.
And it goes on like this, point after point. What the analytic tools ultimately have to say once the dust settles will be it’s own thing and likely render these other points less consequential to how the legacy of this attempt is seen in the future. But it matters and is something I think most interested parties have the requisite background to appropriately assess without relying on someone else’s word to judge their implications.
I’m sure this has attracted enough attention, and is water in the desert for many who longingly recall days gone by before critics and apologists siloed themselves off, that it won’t remain in balance for very long before more definitive critiques of the methodology are presented for the authors to respond to if the interest remains one of scholarship above partisanship. We’ll see.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
IF I took the same points from Coe's book and the hits/misses from the study and applied it to Game of Thrones - would we be able to declare that the Game of Thrones is likely historical?
Do dragons in the wrong place weigh more than horses?
The correlations are so generic and so abused.
The Sparrows have confession, penance and forgiveness. Hit! Westeros has a narrow neck of land. Hit! Westeros is divided by the land north and land south. Hit! There is effectively no centralized government (ongoing civil war). Hit!
This study is an exercise in absurdity.
It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener at war.
Some of us, on the other hand, actually prefer a religion that includes some type of correlation with reality. ~Bill Hamblin
A note to all who might wish to comment. Most of the recent comments have not been approved because things have devolved into yes-it-is/no-it-isn’t statements that have no new content and don’t move the conversation forward.
Please feel free to comment, if you have some substantive interaction with the article.
Brian Dale on May 11, 2019 at 1:36 pm said: Hi Billy,
You said “The null hypothesis should be that he was trying to create a coherent story of a civilization”. We did apply our method to two other contemporary books that were trying to do essentially that. It turns out to be not as easy as you might think.
Our evidence shows that such stories are empirically distinguishable from the Book of Mormon. While I accept your point that the separate pieces of evidence are not independent, we tested “coherent stories”, and the Book of Mormon was substantially more accurate.
One of the reasons that similar Bayesian methods are used in other contexts to identify deception is that it is far more difficult to get two fictional stories to agree than it is to get two factual stories to agree. I believe that our results reflect that.
Interesting. So the authors understand and accept that the statements they tested are NOT independent.
Additionally they now admit they were actually testing for something else, "identifying deception."
Who peer reviewed this? I wouldn't even let a student of mine turn this in.