Heavy Dragonplate or Extra Thin Tissue Paper?

[malkie]

Here's a prophecy kyzabee: Not a single BYU stats professor will ever publicly agree with any of your work.

But will they privately? Because that's all I really care about.

Have they been invited to do so?

And, if so, have they agreed?

[Gadianton]

Why you would feel congratulated under such an obvious conflict of interest is beyond me.

Being a self-styled expert Bayesian, you should think about this in Bayesian terms. So-and-so with a Phd says I'm right, privately. But so-and-so is also a dyed-in-the-wool Mormon who just committed to DCP to help the cause of apologetics in any way he can. It doesn't seem that you consider the alt hypothesis that so-and-so is blowing smoke out of commitment to the cause, rather than out of true professional support for your work. In fact, you even now admit to blocking out any line of thinking that that could invalidate the legitimacy of the accolades you've got from your silent experts.

If I were going to publish something in real life that many people were going to see, I'd sure as heck get a variety of opinions including and especially from sources who aren't ideologically aligned with my own beliefs.

Crazy man, the entire world must be wrong no matter what because a couple of experts who have made covenants with God to further their religious ideology have told you that you are right about a technical paper written to further the same religious ideology. And that is the only feedback you consider to even be valid. It's just amazing.

[Lem]

Rasmussen’s professional reputation is shot. How do you write the above and expect to be taken seriously?

It's true Lem. All true professionals are stodgy sticks-in-the-mud who never permit themselves a clever turn of phrase. I'll never be able to show my face in their smoke-filled faculty lounge ever again.

In what academic setting do you think there are still smoke-filled faculty lounges? Or is that an expression you think a typical Mormon who believes in us vs. them would use?

It’s interesting that you refer to your work as “a clever turn of phrase.” I was correct in my conclusion then that this whole endeavor is no more than tongue-in-cheek parody. If so, good on you. You can publish the whole thing later, how you, an experimental psychologist, spoofed an entire religion.

(I predict Dan won’t be so amused.)

[Lem]

And for some reason, twice that comment was deleted. Why am I not surprised.

Not sure why that was, Lem. Probably because you submitted two very similar comments before the moderator had a chance to approve one of them.

I understand that you disagree with me in terms of the independence question, but just to keep the conversation in one place I'll keep my substantive replies over on Interpreter.

Glad you've been reading!

“Substantive replies.” Oh dear. If you had those, I might be interested, but so far your record doesn’t show that. I’ll take a look at your response and post it back here later.

[Dr Moore]

The analysis is persuasive that the Book of Mormon was not written in a similar way to those other pseudo-Biblical books. That only implies it wasn’t written in the 19th century, however, if you assume that “19th-century pseudo-Biblical writing” is one particular thing with a fixed set of rules that are accurately exemplified by that handful of texts.

Rasmussen simply assumes, and has in no way shown, that any possible 19th-century effort at a Biblical-sounding book would have to be similar in style to his basket of examples. He assumes that if Smith had written such a book, its prose style would necessarily have resembled that of those other books.

Which were written for sale as entertainment rather than as a hoax, by educated professional writers, whose texts were edited for publication.

Gee. Could every single one of those major differences between the other books and the Book of Mormon perhaps all tend to make the Book of Mormon a lot more archaic in style than the others? Would the professional writers have been willing and able to keep their archaism down to an amusing flavor, fairly consistent with the King James Bible? In contrast, could an uneducated fraudster have clumsily ladled on every archaic stylistic quirk he had ever heard in sermons or hymns or Shakespeare or Bunyan, ham-handedly overdoing it wildly as he dictated to a scribe from his hat?

No, instead of that it is astronomically more likely that a native speaker of 16th century English composed the Book of Mormon while employing 19th century vocabulary and concepts. This is Rasmussen’s premise.

Thanks for reading, PG!

"however, if you assume that “19th-century pseudo-Biblical writing” is one particular thing with a fixed set of rules that are accurately exemplified by that handful of texts."

It's definitely an assumption at this point that Carmack's four examples are characteristic of attempts at biblical writing. But, then again, Carmack's up to 25 of those pseudobiblical works that all tend to employ similar syntactic patterns. At some point a black swan could show up, and I'd have to revise my estimate. But for the moment I can only work (conservatively) with the data I have available.

And if you think someone in the 19th century could end up with the Book of Mormon's Early Modern English (along with the extinct semantics!) via clumsy ladeling during the dictation, go ahead and try that method and see how it goes. I'd be very interested in the results.

None of the arguments or stats you’ve presented addresses the very basic non sequitur problem. Strange does not equal ancient. Unknown oddities are not evidence of a hypothesis when that hypothesis fails to predict any such oddity. Kyler your project has a lot of words and statistical presentations, but it’s riddled with process errors. You really should take it all down, find a group of statistics professionals who will give you a thorough peer review AND their names on the work along with you. Revise and republish what remains. A three yard run or two will be more valuable than this collection of Hail Mary passes.

[Dr Moore]

Wow!! This is an incredible and devastating admission. To summarize, Kyler has set himself up like used car salesman, with multiple ways to get paid. Ask for a sticker discount, he makes it up on financing. Ask for a lower financing rate, he makes it up on a bundled warranty sale. His trade offs are Poisson parameters and consequent probability assumptions. It might work for the uninitiated, but to folks who’ve worked with large math models where many dials leads to greater errors, this is an absolutely revealing confession. I count this as fatal process error #8 that Kyler has admitted to. (yes I’m counting and yes each one is fatal)

I'm glad you're making a collection! You'll have to send me the list when you're done. I'll stick it on my wall.

Flippant confidence in your pornography is duly noted.

[Lem]

They already know you Lem. It's why they are absolutely terrified of letting you in on the discussion over there. Dr. Moore has demolished this guy. PG has done so, Billy has crucified him, and now you crucify him upside down as the explanation point! This has got to be the single worse thing Interpreter has ever produced! It even is worse than the outright debacle of the last Bayes Theorem paper they "published."

Thank you, you have put me in very good company! And yes, although I didn’t think it was possible, the math behind this endeavor is worse than the Dales. They are probably breathing a sigh of relief that something else finally is taking the academic spotlight off them.

The worst is still KR’s chart where he has assumed that every pro-LDS hypothesis supports one single hypothesis, namely: “Book of Mormon Authenticity.”

In this chart, he combines his bogus results with his completely inappropriate number of significant figures into a running probability. That’s why I’m still pretty sure he is spoofing the Interpreter. No professional statistician would seriously put his name behind that chart. It’s ludicrous.

[Dr Moore]

They already know you Lem. It's why they are absolutely terrified of letting you in on the discussion over there. Dr. Moore has demolished this guy. PG has done so, Billy has crucified him, and now you crucify him upside down as the explanation point! This has got to be the single worse thing Interpreter has ever produced! It even is worse than the outright debacle of the last Bayes Theorem paper they "published."

Thank you, you have put me in very good company! And yes, although I didn’t think it was possible, the math behind this endeavor is worse than the Dales. They are probably breathing a sigh of relief that something else finally is taking the academic spotlight off them.

The worst is still KR’s chart where he has assumed that every pro-LDS hypothesis supports one single hypothesis, namely: “Book of Mormon Authenticity.”

In this chart, he combines his bogus results with his completely inappropriate number of significant figures into a running probability. That’s why I’m still pretty sure he is spoofing the Interpreter. No professional statistician would seriously put his name behind that chart. It’s ludicrous.

No one with skin in the reputation game would. Is there any evidence in Kyler’s work that is predicted from the “ancient record” hypothesis? Maybe one or two. NHM, for instance, would be value added with proper Bayes, as I’ve not seen anyone tackle it yet. (but proper Bayes may not be as friendly as hoped). These others like long book, Early Modern English, witnesses, are all maybe predictable outcomes of various hypotheses, but not the one he force fits backward. Well like most Mopologetics, it adds to the massive volumes of junk science for which the required effort to thoroughly debunk is unequal to the rewards for doing so. Doesn’t change the fact that junk science eventually outs itself. Crowdsourced intelligence is miraculous that way.

[drumdude]

They already know you Lem. It's why they are absolutely terrified of letting you in on the discussion over there. Dr. Moore has demolished this guy. PG has done so, Billy has crucified him, and now you crucify him upside down as the explanation point! This has got to be the single worse thing Interpreter has ever produced! It even is worse than the outright debacle of the last Bayes Theorem paper they "published."

Thank you, you have put me in very good company! And yes, although I didn’t think it was possible, the math behind this endeavor is worse than the Dales. They are probably breathing a sigh of relief that something else finally is taking the academic spotlight off them.

The worst is still Kyler Rasmussen’s chart where he has assumed that every pro-LDS hypothesis supports one single hypothesis, namely: “Book of Mormon Authenticity.”

In this chart, he combines his bogus results with his completely inappropriate number of significant figures into a running probability. That’s why I’m still pretty sure he is spoofing the Interpreter. No professional statistician would seriously put his name behind that chart. It’s ludicrous.

He’s just academically riffing, get off his back man! It’s Bayesian Jazz!

Listen to the notes between the notes, the facts between the facts.

[Lem]

…Well like most Mopologetics, it adds to the massive volumes of junk science for which the required effort to thoroughly debunk is unequal to the rewards for doing so.

Definitely. I’ve put in a bit of effort, as have many here. It’s still interesting to do every so often, but after a while, and especially after such spectacularly and thoroughly insufficient responses such as those recently given by KR, you start asking yourself why you need to explain something, AGAIN, that is so simple, so obvious, and so well-accepted by actual academic and professional communities.

Doesn’t change the fact that junk science eventually outs itself. Crowdsourced intelligence is miraculous that way.