John Gee's FAIR Presentation

[_Fence Sitter]

One critical error can really affect the outcome. Just think if Joseph Smith really knew how to translate Egyptian how different the Book of Abraham would be. When I adjust for that error and line up his translation next to the papyri it comes out quite close to what the papyri actually says.

[_Stormy Waters]

He stated simply that he had presented that portion as a teaser for Chris and Andrew; that these were their errors, and that they could identify these errors themselves.

I think that was it.

Regards

So he is just going to assert that others are wrong without proof? I think scientists should adopt this method. Wouldn't that be great? String theory is flawed, but I won't explain why because it's your mistakes to figure out. Maybe philosophers could adopt it as well!

Hell, everyone should adopt this method. From now I will only reply to posts by saying, 'You're wrong, but I won't explain why."

[_J Green]

Thanks, J Green.

The errors, whatever they were, actually originated with Gee. As the publication of Andrew's forthcoming response in Dialogue will show, our method produces accurate predictions when applied to the Toronto scroll.

Could be, Chris. I look forward to the paper, but I'll have to admit up front that I'm one of those who can't really follow the arguments very well. I couldn't even make it through the math in your paper, so it's hard for me to evaluate the arguments for myself, and I usually hate to draw any conclusions unless I can. But I do know that I appreciate your good nature and the way you conduct yourself through the discussion.

Cheers

[_Joe Geisner]

The most satisfying explanation comes from a real Egyptologist.

Dr. Ritner writes:

"As a result of this uniformity, the original size of the papyrus is not in doubt. With textual
restorations and the now lost Facsimile 3, the papyrus will have measured about 150–155
cm. #27

With foot note #27 having: For mathematical refutation that the scroll could have contained a further text, see Cook and Smith 2010."

No matter how Gee and Muhlestein want to play the game, real Egyptologist have been consistent in their analysis and measurement of the papyri.

[_Kishkumen]

I await the proof in the pudding. We have awaited a solid rebuttal from the MI and its stable of scholars for some years now, only to receive the usual noise about upcoming publications that will explain what was inadequately adumbrated in the presentation. It looks like all so much smoke and mirrors, and it probably is.

[_Mortal Man]

ETA: Serious question: have any Egyptian funerary papyri been found that are significantly larger (longer) that the extant Joseph Smith papyri?

Yes, the Toronto scroll is one of them.

If not (and I think not but don't know for sure) how can Gee reasonably stand on the assumption that the original Joseph Smith papyri unrolled to room (rooms) length?

There is no reasonable set of assumptions that allows any more than 60 cm of missing papyrus.

[_Mortal Man]

Thank you, J Green, for your detailed report.

Dr. Gee's remarks hit a number of topics, and this issue was simply one of them, and he didn't spend much time on it. He talked briefly about the formula he had used for predicting the lenght of a scroll and then contrasted it with the one that Chris and Andrew had developed.

He has only ever reported using the Hoffmann formula, so I assume that's what he's talking about here. Gee does not realize that his formula and ours are mathematically equivalent; i.e., properly applied they give identical predictions for the missing length.

He then stated that while formulas are all well and good, there can be problems with any of them, including the one he used.

The formula (there is only one, despite its different expressions) is exact; there are no "problems" with it.

So he proposed using the Toronto scroll as the control group. He stated that based on using these two methodologies against the Toronto Scroll, he felt that there were five errors in Chris and Andrew's paper: four of them had to do with errors in their formula,

There are no errors in the formula, it is exact for an Archimedean spiral, we merely wrote it in a simpler form than Hoffmann did.

while the remaining error consisted of asssumptions about the Joseph Smith Papryi. (This may be the "scalar" issue, but I don't remember that he used that word, so I can't comment on it.)

We didn't make any assumptions about the papyri, we simply measured the windings.

Dr. Gee then showed a graph that depicted the length of the Toronto Scroll in linear fashion, with a line far below it that he said represented Chris and Andrew's formula that drastically under-predicted the length of the Toronto Scroll.

That sounds like the plot in his paper. He put the wrong inputs into the formula; i.e., it strongly appears that he misapplied the data from the Hor scroll to the Toronto scroll.

The line representing his own formula was fairly close to the actual scroll length.

Was that line different than the lines in his paper (click on the pdf link)?

Gee then showed another graph where Chris and Andrew's formula line was now fairly close to the actual Toronto line. Gee stated that one of Chris and Andrew's errors in their formula was critical enough that fixing that one error alone would bring their prediction into close proximity of the actual outcome and that he was showing their "corrected" line with this one error being fixed. He then circled three spikes and depressions in this "corrected" line (which criss-crossed the actual Toronto scroll line at several points) and said that the other three errors were minor issues that caused these specific spikes and depressions.

It sounds like he's played with this some more since publishing his paper.

At that point he reiterated that the fifth error had to do with assumptions about the Joseph Smith Papyri rather than with the formula itself.

And I'll just reiterate that we never made the assumptions he imputes to us.

This was a fairly short point that was one of a baker's dozen of points he wanted to make about the Book of Abraham, and it went by fairly quickly. He did not provide any documentation or details about these errors. As the presentation is underway, those in attendance are invited to write questions for the presenter on 3x5 cards, which are then given to Scott Gordon, who presents them to the speaker. The speaker can choose to read them or not and/or answer them or not. Among many other questions presented to him on other aspects of his presentation, Dr. Gee read one that asked him to provide more detail about the errors. He stated simply that he had presented that portion as a teaser for Chris and Andrew; that these were their errors, and that they could identify these errors themselves.

Did this strike you as convincing?

[_dblagent007]

We didn't make any assumptions about the papyri, we simply measured the windings.

Maybe Gee is referring to your assumption that Joseph Smith wore away the portion of the papyri that had Abraham's signature by continually pointing to it. Otherwise, I can't figure out what assumptions Gee is talking about.

[_Fence Sitter]

Is there a consensus on where the missing portion occurs, like between PSJ X and PSJ XI or do people disagree on where as well as how much is missing?

[_Mortal Man]

We didn't make any assumptions about the papyri, we simply measured the windings.

Maybe Gee is referring to your assumption that Joseph Smith wore away the portion of the papyri that had Abraham's signature by continually pointing to it. Otherwise, I can't figure out what assumptions Gee is talking about.

Whatever happened, it is certain that those characters wore off after the scoll was unwound (they are preserved in the KEP). We simply dropped that data point in order to avoid making assumptions about it. Gee makes no mention of this in his paper.