$30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

[Doctor Scratch]

Would it be possible to change the terms of the deal?

A new one could be outlined. What’s your proposal?

That Rasmussen would get to pocket the entire $10,000. He’s in Canada, no? Where the exchange rate would be favorable to him? And a family man? How useful would that dollar amount be to him? He’d be foolish to reject such a deal. If he truly stands behind his own theories, then let him prove it.

[Philo Sofee]

A new one could be outlined. What’s your proposal?

That Rasmussen would get to pocket the entire $10,000. He’s in Canada, no? Where the exchange rate would be favorable to him? And a family man? How useful would that dollar amount be to him? He’d be foolish to reject such a deal. If he truly stands behind his own theories, then let him prove it.

If he is a Canadian, then this most definitely is Edward Watson, the author of a book called "Mormonism." And he is a great guy. Sure he is confused, but he has a good heart. He tries so hard to assauge his guilt concerning stopping believing Mormonism, and now he's back to trying to make it work. Sigh...

[Doctor Scratch]

How could Rasmussen say "No" to $10,000 US? He's a husband and a father, no? That money could be put towards his kids' college fund, or used to pay down debts, or whatever else. He would have to be the very definition of a coward to turn down such an offer, and he would be betraying his own family if he said "No." Then again, if he says "Yes" and he's shown to be wrong be BYU stats professors, he will *also* be a traitor to his family because it will mean that he's sucked them into a Church that isn't actually true. Or, at least, he's keeping them attached to a church that he cannot intellectually defend.

[Dr Moore]

Actually, let me take myself out of the equation in this $30k challenge. And make it even more good-faith, despite having already been misleadingly attacked for misleading the public by Kyler Rasmussen.

If Team Bayes will have their papers reviewed and given publicly-signed statements of “clean process” when it comes to the statistical treatments, each by 2 current professors of statistics at BYU (or a higher ranked university), I will consider that good enough to award the prize for each paper.

Clean process in terms of:
- Proper setup and evaluation of the Bayesian conditionals
- Properly addressing statistical independence of multiplied probabilities

Prediction: they won’t do it, or else they will thank me for helping them out of the Mopologetic porn industry.

Doctor Scratch, I’ve modified the terms once already, to remove any accusation of my “bias” from the equation. And so far I don’t know if this change will be accepted. But it’s on the table for any of the Team Bayes projects.

In other fields, passionate authors seeking to deploy the tools of probabilistic analysis will have their work audited by statisticians. Not a casual “yup you wrote the Bayes equation right” type review by some theoretical math PhD, eg Dr. Pratt, but an honest to goodness applied statistician. It’s a tough job and if you want some good stories about high conviction people who are spectacularly wrong, talk with an applied statistician sometime. Quite often the statistician bears super bad news to principal authors after years of study: “sorry, but your process and/or data do not yield a statistically significant result.” OUCH!!!

So why do these Mopologists refuse to undergo the same? They must be afraid, ashamed, or intentionally deceptive.

I’m trying with all of my energy to encourage Kyler to seek this kind of rigorous process check, and I would very much like to see any truly insightful aspects of his work elevated by applying the proper statistical frameworks. Hand waving don’t cut it. So far, he seems to be somewhat defensive, arguing all sorts of reasons why his work should not be faulted for skipping critical steps of establishing valid statistical independence before multiplying probabilities.

It would be incredible to see KR do the work here — the real data work. And forget what I, or you, think that work should be. I mean, get a real statistician to review the process & tell them what’s missing, and then go do that missing work.

If Kyler can demonstrate statistical independence among his
multiplied conditional probabilities, we should all be thrilled. Doing so means he has found a way to show that each conditional Bayesian probability function on the “evidence” is statistically valid. That alone would be an epic, first time ever, achievement in Mopologetic study. Scratch, you should cheer this on with all your might. If Kyler is right then the game is really afoot. If he’s wrong, well back to the drawing board, but that’s a success in terms of process of elimination.

It wouldn’t be tax deductible to send the money right to him, but given that I’ve seen zero interest from Gee or the Dales in addressing this most basic request of statistical validity, I would be willing to modify the deal to award Kyler the $10k cash prize directly. In that event, the other two awards would be cancelled. One winner only.

He keeps minimizing the importance and/or reasonableness of my challenge. That’s a shame. I’m afraid it betrays his ignorance/naïveté, or else his intellectual dishonesty. I’m 100% confident he is committing statistical treason. If he would apply himself and is so certain of his arguments, then let him prove it.

[Gadianton]

So why do these Mopologists refuse to undergo the same? They must be ... intentionally deceptive.

exactly.

Here's the proof. Where I come from, they always say "there's no loose change on the floor". KR is a psych guy. Out of all the majors that require stats, psych teaches as the most rudimentary level. The basic framework though, is being taken from a history popularizers book, where such analysis isn't normally done. There have been thousands, if not tens of thousands of statistics experts in the Church in the last hundred years. It would take a stats expert about an afternoon to gloss over the work being done here, get the gist, and then output something better. Hell, the church probably has dozens of top-notch actuaries working in their employ. Given the result will presumably show the Book of Mormon true with greater certainty than than we have for the theory of gravity, if such an exercise were possible to do in an afternoon, it would have been done so already, long ago, by a real expert. Nobody would have left the gold under Fort Knox on the floor like this. That, in addition now to 30k -- easy.

that mere fact the "change" is left on the floor proves the fraud.

(I assume Dr. Moore requires any BYU faculty to publicly sign their name to any positive evaluation)

In other words: in my mind, those who do not take up this offer by Dr. Moore are essentially admitting to intellectual fraud.

[Dr Moore]

(I assume Dr. Moore requires any BYU faculty to publicly sign their name to any positive evaluation)

In other words: in my mind, those who do not take up this offer by Dr. Moore are essentially admitting to intellectual fraud.

Yes. I will choose a BYU stats professor (still TBD, I first need to learn who they all are) and will have to pay them consulting hours to do the validation work. And yes, if Team Bayes refuses, it is absolutely an admission to publishing academically bankrupt Mopologetic math porn.

[Philo Sofee]

(I assume Dr. Moore requires any BYU faculty to publicly sign their name to any positive evaluation)

In other words: in my mind, those who do not take up this offer by Dr. Moore are essentially admitting to intellectual fraud.

Yes. I will choose a BYU stats professor (still TBD, I first need to learn who they all are) and will have to pay them consulting hours to do the validation work. And yes, if Team Bayes refuses, it is absolutely an admission to publishing academically bankrupt Mopologetic math porn.

I sure hope Peterson encourages KR to go this route. I can't imagine why he wouldn't. I mean, they DO want actual credibility after the Dale's debacle I would presume. I really want to see the study of how Mormons use Bayes to demonstrate the probability of the Book of Mormon. I am quite serious.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Yes. I will choose a BYU stats professor (still TBD, I first need to learn who they all are) and will have to pay them consulting hours to do the validation work. And yes, if Team Bayes refuses, it is absolutely an admission to publishing academically bankrupt Mopologetic math porn.

I sure hope Peterson encourages KR to go this route. I can't imagine why he wouldn't. I mean, they DO want actual credibility after the Dale's debacle I would presume. I really want to see the study of how Mormons use Bayes to demonstrate the probability of the Book of Mormon. I am quite serious.

We can’t get there, unfortunately for them. The problem with Mopologetics is that it’s all smoke and mirrors, meant to give their turd ideology the veneer of legitimacy. We’ve been partaking in or observing online Mormophilosophy debates and discussions, on various platforms, for years. One thing I’ve noticed is they present their arguments as ‘presupposed’ on good logic and rhetoric, e.g. Bayesian whatever, instead of objective premises.

I’m going to attempt a ‘mormonus ponens argument’:

P: God communicates to us through prophets.
Q: Therefore God picked Joseph Smith to receive His word.
P -> Q
P is true, thus Q is true because P is true.

That’s as far as my brain can do the math, so to speak. Literally. The rest of the wiki page had a bunch of symbols and equations that instantly created an existential terror in my soul, mostly because I’m confronted by my own stupidity.

That’s neither here nor there. The point is I used “logic” and an “equation” to shoehorn bad logic into a deductive argument that doesn’t even work in the first place. Just the fact that I could type something like, “This argumentative form is stating that either P or Q is true: if P is true than Q is true, if Q is true then P is true.” is in of itself the goal. Whether this argument is valid and sound, or whether or not I even comprehend what I’m typing (I actually don’t, by the way) the Mopologist argument boils down to, “If you are not with us, you are against us" - which, assumes there is no alternative to supporting their cause, i.e., if you don’t agree with the Mopologist argument, then you hate Mormons, that’s the true goal, in my opinion.

I think they think learning a few rhetorical devices enhances their ability to express their arguments in an ‘academic sounding’ manner, and to counter arguments with panache, but no substance. Lolcows, basically. You can guarantee that as sure as the sun rises, every single Mopologist argument is simply a subjective premise (pEoPlE sAyInG sTuFf iS eViDeNcE!), emotive premise, or argumentum ad hominem. In other words, Sic et Non’s comments section and the Interpreter are object lessons in bad reasoning.

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

On the one hand a certain amount of fuzziness is just par for the course in theology. Expecting that we ought to have decisive evidence about things like the cause of the universe is just hoping that the key was dropped under the lamppost. Apparently, it was not.

If you'd rather have more reliable answers to less urgent questions, then you'll go into pure math. If you're more willing to accept uncertainty for the sake of saying at least something about questions you care about, you'll drift to biology or economics or metaphysics, depending on where your balance lies. If you land in biology, you don't keep complaining about how you can't afford a million knockout mice for your trial, the way those physicists can get trillions of identical atoms. Likewise if somebody is trying to say something about the cause of the universe, there's no point in complaining that they don't have objective evidence for anything. By all means ignore their whole subject if you want, but if you're going to listen in you have to accept the inherent constraints.

Just because the specialists don't talk much about the inherent constraints of their field doesn't mean the constraints are not there, though, of course. Suppose you pop up at a biology conference to point out that replicability is kind of a problem, they've got small sample sizes and 95% confidence is not high enough when more than 20 groups are researching the same thing. People won't sneer at you for not understanding their profound and technical subject. They'll sigh and say Yeah, and talk about the things they try to do to reduce the problem. Then after a while they'll go back to what they were discussing before. They don't accept that the problem is a showstopper for their whole subject, although you might think it is, but they acknowledge the problem is there and they do take it seriously.

That for me is the problem with these apologists: they're too unapologetic. Instead of acknowledging the limits of what they have but saying the best that they honestly can for whatever they do have, they seem to be intent on pretending to have something they don't. That's what gives it all this house-of-cards, bamboo-radar-dish character of elaborate bogusness. If they were more humble they'd get a better response, from me anyway.

[Dr Moore]

That for me is the problem with these apologists: they're too unapologetic. Instead of acknowledging the limits of what they have but saying the best that they honestly can for whatever they do have, they seem to be intent on pretending to have something they don't. That's what gives it all this house-of-cards, bamboo-radar-dish character of elaborate bogusness. If they were more humble they'd get a better response, from me anyway.

I agree, even their qualitative work would have more merit if some effort were made to honestly frame the strength of the arguments. But instead it's always the same thing -- conclusion first, find some data fit that conclusion, declare victory.