The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans

[_Arc]

Using professional credentials in an attempt to lend credibility to pseudoscience nonsense in the public domain, as the Dales have chosen to do with the Interpreter paper, is never a good idea. There can be real world consequences for scientists who are listed as authors.

Published and well respected scientific staff are a technology company asset. When these assets publicly damage their own credibility, they erode the reputation of the company they work for.

There can be problems all around if the poorly conceived and executed material they author, even as a hobby, attracts the attention of persons who may be clients, or potential clients, of the author's employer.

I read this literally ten minutes after reading this:

https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/05/22/do ... ists-14049

moinmoin,

In spite of what you might think or believe, what I posted here was not doxing. The Dales did that to themselves. I suggest you check the definition of doxing again - posted below from Wikipedia for your convenience.

Doxing on my part would be sending an email to Dr. Brian Dale's supervisor in Germany and suggesting that he or she to have a look at the paper.

I did not do that, and never would so that, especially to someone working for a German tech company. Just the opposite, I was attempting a kindness to someone naïve enough to use their professional credentials to lend credence to a publication so nonsensical that should have never seen the light of day.

This was done after posting comments on the Interpreter site about the paper and sending a PM to Dale Sr. regarding my concerns - all to no avail.

That being said, this last resort post can best be described as anti-doxing - that is, it is suggesting to the authors of the offending paper that it be retracted and pulled to reduce the (admittedly low probability) chance that someone would use it to dox Dr. Brain Dale.

I appreciate your concern, moinmoin, and suggest that it might be better directed toward the authors of the paper.

Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents) or doxxing, is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying information) about an individual or organization.

[_moinmoin]

In spite of what you might think or believe, what I posted here was not doxing. I suggest you check the definition again - posted below from Wikipedia for your convenience.

I didn't think you were doing anything other than making an observation on the issue in this thread --- an observation which I thought had an indirect bearing on the topic of the article I linked to. i.e., that people's writings can blow up on them professionally, as you pointed out.

That's it. I just found it interesting that that general subject came up again in another way in another venue.

As you point out (and which I already knew), doxxing entails aggressively trying to accelerate things by outing people or by contacting employers and trying to use writings to harm them in some way. Your observation in this thread was simply an observation, with some advice.

[Guest]

Oh. So you found it interesting and wanted to mention that you read an article titled "Doxxing, the newest strategy to destroy scientists" just before you read this thread, even though it is not discussing the same concept. What was your point in mentioning the unrelated article, then?

It was relevant to Arc's point about writings being used to attempt to cause "real life" consequences. They aren't a 1:1 match, because the article was talking about doxxing, and Arc was talking about blowback from having written a (name-attached) paper.

moinmoin,

Just saw your response to Lemmie's post, and understand that it was not your intent to accuse me of doxing. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

[_Lemmie]

Oh. So you found it interesting and wanted to mention that you read an article titled "Doxxing, the newest strategy to destroy scientists" just before you read this thread, even though it is not discussing the same concept. What was your point in mentioning the unrelated article, then?

It was relevant to Arc's point about writings being used to attempt to cause "real life" consequences. They aren't a 1:1 match, because the article was talking about doxxing, and Arc was talking about blowback from having written a (name-attached) paper.

It wasn't relevant at all. One discusses OTHER people using things entirely unrelated to a paper to cause damage, and the other was professional damage to one's reputation caused by oneself, due to the content of one's own writings.

It is not only not a 1:1 match, but not any kind of match. You posted it to imply an issue. Not much integrity in that move, and less now in your efforts to deny it.

[_moinmoin]

Just saw your response to Lemmies post, and understand that it was not your intent to accuse me of doxing. Apologies for the misunderstanding.

No worries! We're not always as clear as we think we are in online communication (or verbal either, for that matter), and I clearly needed to be more clear that I wasn't accusing anybody of anything.

All's well that end's well!

[_moinmoin]

It wasn't relevant at all. One discusses OTHER people using things entirely unrelated to a paper to cause damage, and the other was professional damage to one's reputation caused by oneself, due to the content of one's own writings.

It is not only not a 1:1 match, but not any kind of match. You posted it to imply an issue. Not much integrity in that move, and less now in your efforts to deny it.

Oh, brother. This is like your spat with Kishkumen, all over again.

Most here are decent discussion partners, and a few aren't at all.

You can believe what you want, Lemmie. Arc seems to have gotten it.

[_honorentheos]

Billy Shear's latest post took on one of the weaker supposed hits whose flawed logic seemed obvious. But it did so using an explicit approach to calculating the associated likelihood ratio which I sincerely appreciate:

Correspondence 1.6: City of Laman (Lamanai) “occcupied from earliest times”

Coe’s standard: “Far up the New River … is the important site of Lamanai, … occupied from earliest times right into the post-Conquest period” (p. 85).

Book of Mormon correspondence: See 3 Nephi 9:10. The strong tendency is for consonants to be preserved in pronouncing words and names. For example, Beirut (Lebanon) is one of the oldest cities in the world, settled 5,000 years ago. The name derives from Canaanite-Phoenician be’erot and [Page 102]has been known as “Biruta,” “Berytus” and now “Beirut,” while always retaining those three consonants “BRT” in the correct order, and with no intervening consonants.

In the case of the city Lamanai (Laman), all three consonants, and only these three consonants, namely LMN, are found in the correct order and are the same consonants as given for the city of Laman mentioned in the Book of Mormon. This seems to be a “bullseye” for the Book of Mormon. How did Joseph Smith correctly “guess” the correct consonants, and only the correct consonants in the correct order for the name of an important city “occupied from earliest times?”

Analysis of correspondence: The correspondence is specific, detailed and statistically unusual. Likelihood = 0.02

I would like to use this point as an illustration of the correct way to calculate likelihood ratios.

According to the mnemonic major system, there are ten basic consonant sounds (t/d, n, m, r, l, sh/ch, k/hard-c,f/v,b/p,s/z/x/soft-c). If we assume that on average Mayan names have five consonants, then the chances of guessing the consonants to any five-letter location is about 1/100,000. Some have more and some have less, and some letter combinations are more likely than others, but we’ll say that the probability of successfully guessing that there was a Mayan city with the consonants L-M-N in that order is 1/100,000.

However, he didn’t make one guess at the name of one specific city. There are about 250 Mayan sites with known pre-Colombian names, and any of them could have been correct with this guess, so the probability of matching something is 250/100,000, or 1/400.

However, Joseph Smith didn’t take a single guess—there are about 100 names he made up for the Book of Mormon, each of which is an independent guess that could match any of the 250 actual cities. Therefore, the probability of getting at least one guess right is one minus the probability of getting every guess wrong, or (1 – (399/400)^100) = 0.22.

The Dales correctly defined the likelihood ratio as, “the probability of the evidence assuming that the hypothesis is true divided by the probability of the evidence assuming that the hypothesis is false.” Above we calculated the probability of the evidence assuming the hypothesis (that Joseph Smith guessed) is true (0.22). Now, we need to calculate the denominator—the probability of the evidence assuming the hypothesis (that Joseph Smith guessed) is false.

So, let’s go ahead and assume that the Book of Mormon is historical and estimate the probability of the evidence in that scenario. As the Dales said in their paper, “The strong tendency is for consonants to be preserved in pronouncing words and names.”

Let’s assume that this strong tendency is 10%. In other words, there is a 10% probability that the consonants of cities from Book of Mormon times would survive the way the city Laman did. If that is the case, what is the probability that only one Lehite city (Laman) exhibited this “strong tendency”? If there are 100 named Book of Mormon cities and the probability of a name sticking is 10%, then we would expect that 10 Mayan cities would have names that could be traced back to their true Book of Mormon historical roots. The probability that only 1 does is about 0.13% (this was calculated by approximating the binomial distribution with a normal distribution).

So, dividing the probability of the evidence assuming the hypothesis is true by the probability of the evidence assuming the hypothesis is false is the likelihood ratio, which for this point of evidence is .22/.0013 = 170. In aggregate, this point weighs against historicity. In other words, while it is unlikely that with only 100 blind guesses at a dartboard with only 250 targets that Joseph Smith would correctly guess the name of a Mayan city, it is even more unlikely that that only one name from Book of Mormon times would have been preserved in a historical record, given the strong tendency of consonants to survive.

Everybody should agree that something unlikely happened—the point of likelihood ratios is to evaluate which scenario is less unlikely.

[_Res Ipsa]

Well, that answers my most recent question: you account for the number of guesses when formulating the numerator or denominator of the LR. The contrast between the proper application of Bayesian analysis to what the Dales actually did is stunning.

[_Physics Guy]

Okay, sign me up for the Billy Shears fan club, too. A good point well explained. Maybe we can all relax and just let Billy get this.

The only thing that worries me is that the probability for preserving consonants being only 10% doesn't sound like such a "strong tendency". He clearly picked 10% because it's about the smallest probability that could possibly be consistent with a "strong" tendency.

And in so doing he gave the authenticity of the Book of Mormon the largest possible benefit of the doubt. If he had interpreted the "strong tendency" as anything higher than 10% then the chance that only Lamanai would have survived out of all those Book of Mormon names would only have been lower—making the case for an authentic Book of Mormon more doubtful.

So my worry is not that Shears's 10% figure is misleading. Shears's example really shows that even when you bend over backwards to see things the Dales' way, the numbers just will not help them. My worry is that the Dales or their partisans may not appreciate that, and may attack Shears's 10% figure as unrealistically low without realizing that Shears was doing them a big favor by setting it so low.

[_Lemmie]

It wasn't relevant at all. One discusses OTHER people using things entirely unrelated to a paper to cause damage, and the other was professional damage to one's reputation caused by oneself, due to the content of one's own writings.

It is not only not a 1:1 match, but not any kind of match. You posted it to imply an issue. Not much integrity in that move, and less now in your efforts to deny it.

[nonresponse. ]

So, just more deflection through personal attacks and still no discussion of the point! And still no answer to the question:

Oh. So you found it interesting and wanted to mention that you read an article titled "Doxxing, the newest strategy to destroy scientists" just before you read this thread, even though it is not discussing the same concept. What was your point in mentioning the unrelated article, then?