Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

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Gadianton
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Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Gadianton »

Recently, I was directed to a video wherein a senior-tier apologist discusses the new Hugh Nibley book. I only watched about 4 minutes of the video. The video had been tabbed for my viewing. I have to say, the couple of minutes beginning at around 39:25 are pretty enlightening. I only have audio on my tablet right now and YouTube is cumbersome, and so forgive the crude transcription:
An interviewee wrote:I've got a case going on right now where we have a set of articles for the blog at Interpreter...and they employ statistical analysis, what's called Bayesian analysis. And I just wanted to make sure this is all really sound. The person doing it is well-trained in it, but he's not a mathematician as such. And so I thought to myself, is there anybody we can get to make sure we're doing this right? Well, it turns out that I had somebody who had written to me just a little bit before...phd in mathematics and fairly fresh, doing a post-doc at Oxford, in England. And he had written to me and said, "look, you know, In my field, I don't know if there's anything I can do to help, but if there ever is, contact me. So he's gone through all of those things to make sure the mathematics is correct.
A fascinating development for sure. The subtext of the bolded parts reads as follows:
subtext wrote:The last time some guys convinced Interpreter to publish a Bayesian analysis, we put it out on the big Friday spread with a lot of ado, and we got our asses handed to us by both critics and believing members alike. No LDS mathematician dared to publicly support this embarrassment. We looked like utter fools. This time, we're hedging our bets and confining it to our blog for future deniability, should it blow up like the last time. Boy, last time, did we learn a big lesson. Up until then, we just laughed at the idea of "peer review" and let Allan do all the vetting. But we won't make that mistake again. Although this guy from Oxford is desperate to defend the Church and totally uncritical, we begged him to really go through this and make sure it's not a joke, "please pretend you don't believe for a few minutes and catch the mistakes before the critics do!".
Thank you, Interviewee, for finally admitting your errors, and that we were right all along. Let's see if you can correct them.

As this new information sank in, I realized the apologists are in a fork. If they produce a halfway reputable paper, then they've immediately thrown the Guesser paper under a bus. Analytics explained in a post now lost to tech issues on the old board, that his guy, Richard Carrier, when doing his Bayesian analysis on the historical Jesus, came to the conclusion that he was historical with 60% likelihood. (Or something similar, Analytics can correct me here)

A savvy apologist reading Analytics' post should have been thinking, the days are long gone where we can overplay our hand and prove the Church is so obviously true that only an idiot could believe otherwise. We need to sit down and work up a framework where we can fudge things here and there to get it in the range of more probable than not, rather than absolute certainty.

I also received a tip that somewhere on SeN, the apparent author the Interviewee had in mind had mentioned their work. I found the following from August of last year:
Kyler Ray Rasmussen wrote:"How often do we find text unrelated to the book of breathings....in the book of breathings?"

I don't know. How often do we find text unrelated to the Book of Breathings adjacent to or included with the Book of Breathings? My understanding is that it's pretty common.

"then for some mysterious reason..."

I'm not going to pretend to understand the scribe's reasoning, but I know that historical scribes rarely acted according to modern assumptions or record-keeping practices. Art wasn't exactly a common skill, so I can certainly imagine the scribe for the Book of Abraham borrowing, adapting, or referencing already-created images for the Book of Breathings and then transcribing or including a copy of the book alongside the Book of Abraham for reference.

"Why are apologetics always so concerned with the merely plausible no matter how far fetched while simultaneously ignoring the probable?"

It's funny you should ask. Give me a couple months and we can have this conversation again once I'm finished with my Bayesian probability analysis of the Book of Abraham evidence. It's important when you do that kind of thing that you take into account all of the evidence, and not just the stuff you agree with. I'll be taking a hard look at Ritner and Vogel and doing my best to compare that to what John and Kerry have to say, seeing how the probabilities shake out.

Plausible is fine when the alternative is decidedly improbable. So far that's how things have turned out for the Book of Mormon, and I'm not expecting the Book of Abraham to fall too far from that tree (at the very least, it's unlikely to overwhelm what I've found for the Book of Mormon).

Also, I'm glad you admit that my reading of the evidence is plausible.

"Overwhelming is usually enough."

*Looks over Vogel's proposed translation process*

*Looks over the rebuttals from Lindsay and Gee*

You have a strange definition of both "over" and "whelm".
He may not have taking a cue from Analytics, but he definitely "gets it". Kyler's posts have never stuck out for me, and so I don't know much about him. A quick glance at previous posts shows he is a Phd in something. This is quite disturbing for the Guesser paper. If Kyler's paper argues that either the Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham are "Plausible" or slightly more probable than not, then the Guesser paper is indicted as complete rubbish, arguing the Book of Mormon as Mesoamerican with 10 ^ 121 to 1 odds. Any backing by any apologist of this new paper will essentially be calling for the burning of the Guesser paper.

But there's more. It turns out Billy Shears, who single-handedly cleaned the floor with Dale Sr. in the Interpreter comments section over the statistical errors in the Guesser paper, also offered to review the paper.
Billy Shears wrote:Is your Bayesian analysis for your own edification, or is it something that you plan on publishing? Personally, I'd love to see this make it into, say, Interpreter.
Kyler wrote:Unless you want a sneak peak, in which case I'm happy to throw drafts your way.
Billy wrote:Sure. If you are interested in my thoughts, feel free to send me a draft at
Dan wrote:In other words, I expect, BS is eagerly anticipating a season of attacking whatever you come up with, along with Interpreter for publishing it.
Billy wrote:You expect falsely. I am a fan of Bayesian analysis because it helps clarify the arguments being made. I would hope that the article is well thought out and compelling and causes me to learn something new.
LOL! Dan is really too much. What planet does this guy come from? Here is the opportunity for his person, to get feedback from the person who embarrassed his sorry ass the most over the Guesser paper, and within his own comment section, and he's hesitant for Kyler to proceed? Shouldn't he he beg for Billy to review it? Get a glimpse of how the critics will respond, and they can circulate that within their Mopologist community, and figure out how they'll need to play it from there. Is Dan able to drop the hostility for long enough to ever be strategic? Don't blame the critics for the "attack" of the Guesser paper given that it was thoroughly a load of dog crap, laughable, and proved James Bond right that Interpreter had failed by 2014 if by 2019 that's the level of garbage they were trading in. It's nuts.

Anyway, if he got Billy's feedback in addition to the overachieving believer at Oxford, he should be positioned pretty well to produce something worth considering. And if it's worth reading, at once, the Guesser paper is relegated to the rubbish bin. Hopefully, the authors of the Guesser paper see the writing on the wall, and will take the appropriate offense to their colleagues for abandoning them.
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Res Ipsa »

Well, that's about what we expected was the nature of "peer review" at the Interpreter.

And something that is improbable, even decidedly improbable can still be plausible. So, my best guess (although I am certainly not the Best Guesser) is that there will lots of fun for folks around here once this Bayesian analysis of "Book of Abraham evidence" is published.
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Philo Sofee »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Sun May 02, 2021 10:40 pm
Well, that's about what we expected was the nature of "peer review" at the Interpreter.

And something that is improbable, even decidedly improbable can still be plausible. So, my best guess (although I am certainly not the Best Guesser) is that there will lots of fun for folks around here once this Bayesian analysis of "Book of Abraham evidence" is published.
I have also put out a paper on the Bayesian ideas on the Book of Abraham, so I am brushing up on my Bayesian matters now for that BofAbr issue also. I am curious if they will even attempt to include the angle I had on it in my paper on the net. I may now have to re-read it as well. If now an apologist is doing Bayesian analysis it will be instructive for me to see if I was even in the ball park with it. Fun times ahead, and here just a month ago I was all out of gas on the BofAbr.......such are the times we live in.
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Philo Sofee »

OMG! I know who the contributor is on the Bayesian Analysis posts they want to put on the blog... It's going to be Ed Watson... I talked to him about a year ago and he told me he was turning it into the Interpreter of his Bayesian Analysis. I can't remember where I put it, but I have his paper! I asked him point blank why not get it polished up to put it in a real professionally peer reviewed journal? He said he couldn't live long enough to make all the revisions they are going to have him do. He doesn't have a lot of time left in life to publish professionally as it takes too much time, so he is going to see if its good enough for Interpreter! I betchta that's what Peterson is talking about. I am going to go see if I can find Watson's paper he sent me.....I just bet that's the one. I told him don't do it this way, but he was sure its going to be all right to do it through Interpreter. He was sure his Bayesian analysis was spot on, and I am sure it is definitely problematic.

He told me it destroys atheism as well, and after skimming through it I said there is no way it does that but he was adamant that it needed to see the light of day.
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by malkie »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Sun May 02, 2021 11:44 pm
OMG! I know who the contributor is on the Bayesian Analysis posts they want to put on the blog... It's going to be Ed Watson... I talked to him about a year ago and he told me he was turning it into the Interpreter of his Bayesian Analysis. I can't remember where I put it, but I have his paper! I asked him point blank why not get it polished up to put it in a real professionally peer reviewed journal? He said he couldn't live long enough to make all the revisions they are going to have him do. He doesn't have a lot of time left in life to publish professionally as it takes too much time, so he is going to see if its good enough for Interpreter! I betchta that's what Peterson is talking about. I am going to go see if I can find Watson's paper he sent me.....I just bet that's the one. I told him don't do it this way, but he was sure its going to be all right to do it through Interpreter. He was sure his Bayesian analysis was spot on, and I am sure it is definitely problematic.

He told me it destroys atheism as well, and after skimming through it I said there is no way it does that but he was adamant that it needed to see the light of day.
You have me a bit confused here, Philo.

Are you referring to the first Watson paper, or is it the second Watson paper that you can swear you saw, but is perhaps lost on your desk somewhere?

And, by the way, can you critics not have an original thought at all? :lol:
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Philo Sofee »

No, not that Watson, Edward Watson is a Mormon author who wrote a book defending Mormonism and the CES rejected it for publishing as it was too intellectual so he became disgruntled, but is now attempting to use Bayes Theorem as his in point to truth. He has decided based on that that Mormonism is valid. He's a very nice guy, but misguided in my opinion.
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by malkie »

I guess you missed the smiley. :lol:
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Re: Will Interpreter throw the "Guesser" paper under a bus?

Post by Philo Sofee »

malkie wrote:
Tue May 04, 2021 3:07 am
I guess you missed the smiley. :lol:
Oh yeah, it's all good! Bayes Theorem is always good to get the juices flowing on things, so this might help give Sic et Non an uptick in visitors and discussion...
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