The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans

[_honorentheos]

It is worth pointing out that the exchange between John Minor and Dr. Dale appears calculated to dismiss the majority of critical complaints aimed at the paper by demonstrating the critics aren't addressing the paper's basic approach. Why attempt to take on the many increasing heads of this hydra when one can effortlessly stab through it's heart? Of course that shouldn't go unaddressed.

[_honorentheos]

My response to the above, as three comments combined into one:

As noted further up in the comments, using the example of pearls being mentioned in the Bible but not The Maya, even the authors acknowledge references in one book that are missing from the other because they weren’t part of the culture or environment purportedly being described ought to carry some weight. Even more so when the Book of Mormon goes on to make the very mistake the authors note would count against the Bible by referencing Nephites wearing pearls or the resurrected Christ warning the people of the Americas against casting their pearls before swine when neither pearls nor swine would be familiar references to truly ancient Mayan peoples.

It isn’t a problem with those critical of the paper not comprehending the approach proposed. It’s that it wasn’t used consistently and especially when one looks to the other two control books. But also the authors seem to understand as soon as a competitive book such as the Bible is proposed for comparison.

In a sense, the paper presents the problem as The Maya/Coe representing a coin toss, and The Book of Mormon/Joseph Smith as calling the toss while it’s in the air. The paper suggests that Smith had so many correct guesses (131 out of what, 145 was it?) that the only explaination possible is he had supernatural abilities.

The reality of the approach is more like this: The Maya/Coe are a coin set to heads on the table. The Book of Mormon/Smith is presented as a coin toss of hits and misses. But rather than count actual hits and misses, the approach only counts when the coin comes up heads to match Coe, and then assigns a very subjective value to how likely it was that that particular instance of heads would be up heads.

Now, it’s even worse than that as Billy has rightly pointed out the so called hits are primarily superficial rather than culturally substantial matches. On top of which, the critical hypothesis isn’t comparable to a coin toss, but rather Smith using prior existing beliefs about the Hebrews and American Indian origins to composed a cohesive narrative. But be that as it may the complaint those critical of the paper itself are taking issue with the paper itself and it’s methodology independent of the broader issues.

To carry on with this point, the fact the authors had to look outside of The Maya to find examples where Coe explicitly pointed out misses to be able to include any at all should have told the authors their approach was flawed. Each of the misses explicitly pointed out by Coe when asked for examples would have been easily identified through comparing The Maya with the Book of Mormon but would have required recognizing one can’t simply look for superficialities but needs to look at specifics of the comparative societies and environments to consistently be able to do so. Coe provided a sample of inaccuracies in an interview or paper, and the authors failed to recognize that these should have provided a template for use in identifying the misses in a consistent and wholly internal comparison between The Maya and the Book of Mormon. Had the authors remained consistent with their methodology and kept to the Maya they would have found zero misses. I credit them for recognizing how untenable that result would appear to an outside audience though many would guess the mathematical conclusions in the paper are even worse than that and should have resulted in an equally introspective moment.

[_Lemmie]

Here's yet another reason why the paper needs to come down until it is re-worked:

Bruce E. Dale
on June 1, 2019 at 8:34 am said:

John,

That’s correct. We had a carefully limited scope. We compared the relevant fact claims of the Book of Mormon with corresponding fact claims in The Maya. It has been difficult to get some commentators to accept that scope and stick to it.

Bruce

Now why would commenters do that? Let's consider the paper itself:

If the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, then it is a work of fiction. It is simply false, as Dr. Coe obviously believes it to be. There are no other rational options. If the Book of Mormon is a piece of fiction, then some person or persons in the early 1800s made it up. If the Book of Mormon is fiction, then its author was guessing every time he wrote as fact something about the ancient inhabitants of the Americas.

The following sentence starts to go off-track:

This means we can compare reasonably these “guesses” in the Book of Mormon with the facts presented by Dr. Coe in The Maya.

One could, but the hypothesis used by the Dales does not follow that "limited scope":

The hypothesis (the question of interest to us) in this analysis is the factual nature of the Book of Mormon. The question of interest is: “Is the Book of Mormon a work of fiction, or is it a factual, historical document according to the cumulative, relevant evidence summarized in The Maya?”

they further emphasize this:

Pieces of evidence in favor of the hypothesis, that is, that the Book of Mormon is false...
Points of evidence in favor of the essentially factual nature of the Book of Mormon (called the converse hypothesis)...

Additional statements where the paper jumps from a book comparison to an overall conclusion about historicity:

We can assign a likelihood ratio or “Bayes factor” to each statement of fact given in the Book of Mormon and compare these statements with corresponding statements of fact in The Maya. This likelihood ratio is the strength of each individual statement of fact as a piece of evidence.

It is calculated as the probability that the statement is true if whoever wrote the Book of Mormon was guessing divided by the probability that the statement is true if instead the Book of Mormon is fact-based and essentially historical.
The likelihood ratio expressed in this way therefore represents the strength of the evidence in support of the hypothesis, that is, against the factual nature of the Book of Mormon.

And this from the Results of Analysis section:

...our strong skeptical prior hypothesis of a billion to one against the fact-based nature of the Book of Mormon still gives way to a much, much stronger posterior hypothesis in favor of the Book of Mormon. We conclude that the Book of Mormon is historical, and is based in fact, with odds of many, many billions to one that this statement is true.

So where is the "limited scope" in the actual paper?

Again, beating a dead horse, but peer review should not have allowed those expansions of scope that are beyond the facts of the paper if they were not intended. Waiting until after the fact when they are found to be insupportable reflects very badly on the experts doing the peer review.

[_honorentheos]

Thanks, Lemmie. Another great summary of contradictions in their own shared information without even needing to bring in other evidence. It makes it clear that every aspect of their approach is flawed. If the skeptical prior had been formed to match their approach, it would have asked what the odds were the Book of Mormon included superficial, overly broad commonalities with Mayan culture. I would put it as 1.0. Maybe a bit lower given there are bound to be some people critical of the Book of Mormon who would refuse even that basic point but no where near 1 billion to 1. Their skeptical prior isn't aligned with the hypotheses being considered, the hypotheses aren't exclusive or exhaustive as has been pointed out repeatedly, nor is the methodology consistent with the stated aim of the paper.

I made the comment very early on in the comment section that the paper is a reasonably accurate model of one thing: How Bruce Dale views this issue. I'm sure Bruce believes the evidence for the Book of Mormon is as strongly for the Book of Mormon being historical as calculated, and it is based on the superficial evidence and logic on display. In every other way it fails to model anything before it gets started.

[_Gadianton]

It is worth pointing out that the exchange between John Minor and Dr. Dale appears calculated to dismiss the majority of critical complaints aimed at the paper by demonstrating the critics aren't addressing the paper's basic approach. Why attempt to take on the many increasing heads of this hydra when one can effortlessly stab through it's heart? Of course that shouldn't go unaddressed.

Wow, this is actually mind-blowing; appealing to confirmation bias of the audience, betting the audience didn't grasp the Bayesian principles the very article teaches.

A professed Bayesian journeyman shows up on a blog and reviews a paper on the topic of Bayesian analysis that was written by an alleged Bayesian expert, pays a high compliment to the paper, and assures the author that the work is coherent and properly done, all with the most unspecific, general, and ordinary language imaginable, such that anyone, including a fraud or a legitimate yet supremely overconfident flight tester with no real stats background could have written it, and then the Bayesian expert graciously accepts the compliment as if it holds any kind of significance.

Are these two overconfident fakes, or experts at misleading? Maybe "John Minor" a.k.a. Billy Shears just threw a sucker punch and it connected dead on?

[_honorentheos]

That would be a masterful jujitsu reversal if it proved to be the case.

Going back to the EA quote from years ago regarding complicated v. simple explanations when knowledge alludes us, I suspect the odds of a professional Mormon with engineering/minor statistics experience voicing support for a pro-BoM paper in a way that adds nothing to the discussion are reasonable. I don't know Billy Shears. EA is prone to take on sock puppets and has a history of doing so here and other Mormon-related board that very rarely get exposed. So it's certainly possible an extraordinarily capable poster such as Billy Shears might do the same in this context. Is it more likely than an authentic Mormon behaving as John Minor behaved? By the numbers, I'd say not really. But with there already being said capable poster in the mix, I'm willing to wait and see.

[_Physics Guy]

If someone who is commenting on a grade school pupil's arithmetic homework actually mentions that they were able to follow the math, then you can be pretty sure that the commenter is not a mathematician. In the same way it's clear here that whatever John Minor's background in flight testing is, he is no statistician.

[_Gadianton]

If someone who is commenting on a grade school pupil's arithmetic homework actually mentions that they were able to follow the math, then you can be pretty sure that the commenter is not a mathematician.

great point. There were a couple other odd comments yesterday. I think the LDS Living turnip truck rolled through and lost a couple of riders.

[_Lemmie]

If someone who is commenting on a grade school pupil's arithmetic homework actually mentions that they were able to follow the math, then you can be pretty sure that the commenter is not a mathematician. In the same way it's clear here that whatever John Minor's background in flight testing is, he is no statistician.

Excellent point, Physics Guy.

What are the odds Dale is just calling in a favor?

[_Dr Exiled]

I just read through Dr. Dale's work again and obviously his sceptical prior is woefully inadequate. The nonsense starts with a claim that a seer stone is used to translate from plates that cannot be seen except by the more reliable dupes. Then, once the magic act is done, the plates conveniently disappear. Really, the sceptical prior should be ZERO chance of historicity. He got his ideas from the Bible and the mound builder myth. End of story folks.

However, because with Mormonism, there always is a chance, let's have the sceptical prior equal to 1 in a 10 x 10 to the highest number known to man (infinity minus the smallest number known to man?) chance of historicity. The good doctor should then use this sceptical prior in his work and see where the results land.