Billy Shears makes a bet with Bruce Dale

[Lem]

This conversation reminded me: when the Dales first posted their article, I looked back into the Intepreter's history to see if any other articles used Bayesian approaches. There was one, and in the comment section, Bruce Dale, who at the time was developing his article, made this very telling comment:

Bruce on November 9, 2013 at 9:23 pm

There is another (but still equivalent) form of Bayes rule that might make this point more clearly and less controversially than the form in the blog above:

odds(H|E)/odds(H) = prob(E|H)/prob(E|H*)

We don’t need to guess individual values for any of the quantities here to show how Bayes’ rule can help us in thinking about The Late War and Book of Mormon authorship and influence questions.

This equation says that the ratio of (posterior odds of H to prior odds of H) is equal to the ratio of the [probability of a true positive (sensitivity) to the probability of a false positive (specificity)]. If a true positive is much more likely than a false positive, the posterior odds increases relative to the prior odds. If a true positive is about as likely as a false positive, the posterior odds stays about the same as the prior odds.

This is important in the Late War situation because there is not much information about how sensitive and specific the Johnsons’ procedures are. In my opinion, sensitivity is decreased and specificity is increased by at least two features of the Johnsons’ study:

1. the massive search model tends to produce false positives.
2. the dependence of weights on a randomly selected corpus (from books of many genres between 1500 and 1830) tends to affect sensitivity and specificity in unpredictable ways; I can conceive of ways in which sensitivity is decreased and specificity is increased.....

https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog- ... of-Mormon/

Note that a "true positive" would correlate to items in the Book of Mormon that he argues match the items in the Maya book. A "false positive" would correlate to his very small list of items mentioned in the Book of Mormon that Coe mentioned are not Mayan.

Notice he says "I can conceive of ways in which sensitivity is decreased and specificity is increased....."

And also the reverse, such as, having 130+ items in the numerator, and less than 20 in the denominator, and then assuming independence so elements in both can be multiplied.

I am simplifying the process a little, but I really think that Bruce Dale originally began this analysis because he was sure he had came up with a sneaky way to skew the results in his favor. I think he just didn't count on getting caught in such blatant manipulation.

You’ll notice Rasmussen’s entire analysis also relies on this gimmick, as Physics Guy explained in discussing KR’s strategy. It’s about as dishonest a way to use stats as one can come up with. But the Interpreter says all the works under discussion here passed their “rigorous” peer review with flying colors. No one wants to verify that, however. No surprise there.

[IHAQ]

I hope Billy Shears doesn't mind, but I'd like to quote a new, excellent response to Bruce Dale:

I bring this up because your paper does raise a serious academic question that would be of interest to the scholarly community. How did something that aspires to be a respectable journal go through “one of the most rigorous and demanding reviews that you have ever experienced,” yet still ended up publishing such a terrible paper? What happened? If you and the reviewers would be willing to be interviewed by a team of cognitive psychologists and give them your correspondence from the review process, a fascinating case study in cognitive biases and group decision making could be made. You should be interested in pursuing this—it has the potential to seriously improve your rational decision-making skills and improve the Interpreter’s peer review process. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll put you in contact with a cognitive psychologist who might be interested in leading the research.

[dastardly stem]

I'm so disappointed by the dishonesty by this Bruce Dale guy. Rigorous peer review and yet he can't find one expert to speak up and explain how his methods are credible? It doesn't sound like he has an idea what the review was that he and his boy went through. It apparently had nothing to do with their statistical analysis at all. Who reviewed and what were they concerned about? I'm certain he wouldn't/couldn't say.

It's the same with Kyler.

Behind the scenes "review & appreciation" by Oxford math postdoc and SeN regular, Dr. Kyle Pratt.

I think Kyle Pratt is the most damning evidence against Kyler Rasmussen's ridiculous apologetics porn show. Here's why.

Kyle supports and encourages Kyler's project, evidently, in the shadows. Dan Peterson, when announcing Kyler's Estimating the Evidence at the outset, called out one and only one person with appreciation for "generous effort" in reviewing Kyler's episodes.

And yet, Kyle Pratt is no where to be found when this project comes up online. He's a ghost. He's not commenting at Interpreter, nor at SeN. He comments on other things, at SeN, but not this.

I mean, what kind of "taffy pulling" chicken crap is that?

Seriously, Kyle Pratt is their most qualified "peer reviewer" and yet he's been utterly unwilling to stake an ounce of professional reputation on this project.

Why not?

Because Kyle Pratt knows better. He knows Kyler's Interpreter project is riddled with problems. He knows his academic career is over if he lifts a finger to defend this pseudoscience. Kyle Pratt knows that Kyler Rasmussen has not followed the essential rules of statistical analysis -- that he's skipped important steps, made non sequitur leaps, cherry-picked data, failed to articulate statistical independence. It is, from start to finish, non-scholarly garbage. And because of that, to publish such work is a violation of academic integrity. Maybe Kyler believes he's being honest, but his work is not honest. And as an expert, Kyle Pratt knows that in math, like in most scientific fields, dishonesty is easily detected and efficiently rooted out.

In other words, Kyle Pratt cannot defend Kyler's Interpreter project because it's indefensible, and he knows it.

Interesting. I have seen Kyler declare he has someone on his side. Why wouldn't this Kyle Pratt be singing the praises of these bayesian studies?

[Lem]

Rasmussen has posted Episode 15. I don’t even know how to approach this. How do you tell someone they have lost their damn mind? And that they have a career they need to not be destroying?

Rasmussen’s latest moves his needle by a magnitude of 20 toward belief in an authentic Book of Mormon.

The Tl:dr;

It seems unlikely that an allegedly fraudulent text could become more plausible after decades of intense critical examination.

Over time, critics of the Book of Mormon have unearthed dozens of anachronisms and alleged historical errors within the book’s pages. In their turn, faithful scholars have demonstrated that most of those criticisms are unfounded, leading the book’s plausibility to increase substantially as the decades have passed. A recent analysis by Matt Roper concludes that, as of 2019, 70% of all the anachronisms identified in the book had been overturned by new archaeological and historical discoveries, with many more trending toward confirmation.

Building on that analysis, I ask just how unexpected that trajectory of confirmation is.

Though we shouldn’t expect all of the book’s anachronisms to be overturned anytime in the near future, I estimate (using a reframing of current Book of Mormon evidence) that the probability of seeing that trajectory in a fraudulent text is p = 5.29 x 10-23. Even with a conservative estimate of the likelihood of seeing that trajectory in a true document, this evidence weighs heavily on the side of Book of Mormon authenticity.

Evidence Score = 20 (the evidence increases the probability of an authentic Book of Mormon by 20 orders of magnitude—a “critical strike” in the Book of Mormon’s favor)

The full list of 216 anachronisms, of which he considers 70% to be overturned, is in his appendix.

Here is item 200, the last “overturned” anachronism on the list, for a flavor of what’s driving the 20 orders of magnitude change toward Book of Mormon authenticity:

200
introduced: 2019

anachronism: Buildings

confirmed [no longer considered an anachronism]: Yes

Peterson, you can’t seriously be presenting this on your Foundation’s website. This is ridiculous.

[IHAQ]

Rasmussen…

If doesn’t take much to turn an authentic book into a fraudulent one—all you have to do is change its purported setting. If, for instance, I took the Popul Vuh and claimed that it took place in Outer Siberia, I’d instantly have a fraud on my hands. I could then document all the various problems that could have been leveled against that theory, and track how many of those criticisms would have been overturned over time.
We can do that with the Book of Mormon. For most of the Book of Mormon’s history people had assumed that, say, a small, archaeologically insignificant drumlin in upstate New York was the site of a massacre of hundreds of thousands of people. We can state rather confidently now that such isn’t the case. But what if that was still the dominant theory? What if the faithful consensus was that the Book of Mormon took place predominantly in the central or northeast United States? Various people have tried and continue to try to make that argument, while others have leveled criticisms against it. By taking a look at those criticisms, we can get a sense for how the Book of Mormon would be faring if it was an incorrect or fabricated document.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/estim ... idence-15/

What the f……..

[malkie]

Rasmussen…

If doesn’t take much to turn an authentic book into a fraudulent one—all you have to do is change its purported setting. If, for instance, I took the Popul Vuh and claimed that it took place in Outer Siberia, I’d instantly have a fraud on my hands. I could then document all the various problems that could have been leveled against that theory, and track how many of those criticisms would have been overturned over time.
We can do that with the Book of Mormon. For most of the Book of Mormon’s history people had assumed that, say, a small, archaeologically insignificant drumlin in upstate New York was the site of a massacre of hundreds of thousands of people. We can state rather confidently now that such isn’t the case. But what if that was still the dominant theory? What if the faithful consensus was that the Book of Mormon took place predominantly in the central or northeast United States? Various people have tried and continue to try to make that argument, while others have leveled criticisms against it. By taking a look at those criticisms, we can get a sense for how the Book of Mormon would be faring if it was an incorrect or fabricated document.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/estim ... idence-15/

What the f……..

Mr Watson, could you please send a letter for me.

[Dr Exiled]

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/con ... he-prophet

Roper's presentation is full of nice charts giving his conclusions about how, supposedly, 70% of the anachronisms are refuted. He doesn't show his work and not surprisingly talks a lot about faith.

My guess is that we would find a lot of wishful thinking and hasty conclusions if Roper showed his work and that the 70% number would come down a lot.

But why worry about details when a faithful conclusion awaits us? And Rasmussen again pulls numbers out of a hat to put a mathematical shine on the nonsense.

[Philo Sofee]

Rasmussen
As the coughing subsides and you again begin to fall asleep, one question reverberates in your mind. Could peoples like the ones described in this book have actually existed? And if so, how could this Joseph have guessed so much about them?

This isn't the Bayes Theorem set up or view of how evidence is thought of at all. He is simply in apologetic mode, which he has never left. Bayes Theorem simply doesn't enter his mind. BT doesn't give a flip about Joseph Smith's motifs, anymore than anyone using BT does. It only asks about the nature of the evidence and about its prevalence in any given situation. This is outdated Hugh Nibley apologetic mentality. No wonder I stopped reading his lame apologetic so many episodes ago. But yeah, I'm with Lem and Physics Guy all the way. Buildings for evidence.

[Dr Moore]

A = historical
B = anachronism-free

If A then B
B, maybe A
Not B, not A

Kyler’s logic:
Not B (but maybe less not B today than before), therefore A

B for style
F for logic

[Doctor Steuss]

200
introduced: 2019

anachronism: Buildings

confirmed [no longer considered an anachronism]: Yes

Peterson, you can’t seriously be presenting this on your Foundation’s website. This is ridiculous.

If I had to venture a guess, I'd wager (based on the above) that all it takes to get on this "anachronism" list is some obscure counter-cult ministry saying so in a transient leaflet.