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

[Dr Moore]

The statistical case they make is extremely strong. Even assuming that they’re missing a substantial amount of evidence that doesn’t fit their narrative, the probability that Joseph produced those patterns by trying to copy biblical style are vanishingly small (p = 5.24 x 10-24).

That is an utterly nonsensical paragraph, starting with the untrue first sentence and ending with the imaginary final probability.

It’s so bizarre. Why does it have to be the Bible where Joseph learned a few bits of 15th/16th century language? He loved books and he loved stories. He had an incredible memory, as we know from his extemporaneous quotations in sermons. Unless you can trace everything he ever read and heard, there’s just no way to analyze anything about how language from 200-300 years earlier made it into the Book of Mormon. But KR keeps setting the goal posts just right, as in the quote above.

[dastardly stem]

My preference in this instance is that instead of referring to a ‘trickster god’ as critics are wont to do, that we look at Early Modern English as an example where we find so called ‘Easter eggs’ as little gems that shine out in the midst of the text that let us know, simply, that there is something going on that defies easy explanation. We are then left to ourselves to come to the conclusions that we do. Faith is left intact as a result. And doubt is in the running also, if we so choose. This example that you refer to is perfectly orchestrated, just as so many other things are having to do with belief in God. We are always left with a choice, AND there are, more often than not, always two sides of the coin.

I get tired of hearing ‘god tricked us’. There are other ways of approaching it.

Regards,
MG

Sounds like you have some believing-level concern with Dr Rasmussen's take. Interesting. Thanks, MG

[dastardly stem]

I had to go see if episode 9 is out. It is.

Kyler evaluates whether Joseph could have written the book because there is the presence of Early Modern English in the text. Somehow the text including language from a couple centuries before Joseph means it was written anciently, in his eyes. A huge win, he delares:

What? In an Interpreter blog entry 9 months ago, Carmack and Skousen retracted the majority of their Early Modern English findings. From a thread discussing it that was posted here:

…but just as a reminder, based on the recent retractions published by the Interpreter, here is the count as it currently stands:

Section 1, Archaic Vocabulary: 26 proposed as archaic [out of 41 originally proposed, 37% have been retracted]

Section 3, Archaic Phrases: 14 proposed as archaic [out of 29 originally proposed, 52% have been retracted]

Section 4, Archaic Grammar: 2 proposed as archaic[out of 15 originally proposed, 87% have been retracted]

Section 7, Archaic Expressions: 7 proposed as archaic [out of 37 originally proposed, 81% have been retracted]

For an average retraction of 60% of previously published results, most or all included in the sales of hardcover, expensive publications.

I haven’t read Kyler Rasmussen’s stuff yet, so I will be interested to see if his conclusion is based on the Early Modern English findings, pre- or post- redactions. Either way it doesn’t support a 23 magnitude jump. For something with zero credibility outside of Mormon apologetics? That’s ridiculous.

Thanks, Lem. This is what I was thinking about. I'm guessing Dr Rasumussen wrote up his piece before the shrinking data set was discovered. Or he didn't consult Carmack and Skousen. Doesn't sound good.

[Dr Exiled]

This Early Modern English theory really needs to be jettisoned. However, I guess so much money was spent on motivated reasoning that it's hard to back out now. Even so, the theory is a joke and should be a cause for embarrassment, but belief in magic rocks still persists. So, why not bring out more nonsense for our enjoyment?

Let me guess without having read Dr. Rasmussen's latest. He picks numbers out of his _______ (ones that work of course) and then voila Early Modern English is a success story.

[MG 2.0]

My preference in this instance is that instead of referring to a ‘trickster god’ as critics are wont to do, that we look at Early Modern English as an example where we find so called ‘Easter eggs’ as little gems that shine out in the midst of the text that let us know, simply, that there is something going on that defies easy explanation. We are then left to ourselves to come to the conclusions that we do. Faith is left intact as a result. And doubt is in the running also, if we so choose. This example that you refer to is perfectly orchestrated, just as so many other things are having to do with belief in God. We are always left with a choice, AND there are, more often than not, always two sides of the coin.

I get tired of hearing ‘god tricked us’. There are other ways of approaching it.

Regards,
MG

Sounds like you have some believing-level concern with Dr Rasmussen's take. Interesting. Thanks, MG

Easter eggs found where one might not expect to find them are interesting to say the least.

Regards,
MG

[Dr Moore]

This Early Modern English theory really needs to be jettisoned. However, I guess so much money was spent on motivated reasoning that it's hard to back out now. Even so, the theory is a joke and should be a cause for embarrassment...

As a theory to prove ancientness or mystical origins, the Early Modern English theory is truly a joke. If there is an easter egg in Early Modern English, it's an easter egg Joseph put there to fool people. He'd have practiced it with his Captain Kidd tales from yore dayes on those 20+ treasure digs. How else do you think he convinced so many people of his scrying exceptionalism? Treasure stories would suck without a bit of mystical language and great proper nouns.

No matter how much time those Early Modern English guys spend laying down the "wowness" of finding olde-tyme words and phrases, what none of their work can do is answer the very basic question about what books, stories and terminology Joseph Smith encountered and kept spinning in that imaginative mind of his. The material was all around him, and he was swimming in the material. The end.

[MG 2.0]

This Early Modern English theory really needs to be jettisoned. However, I guess so much money was spent on motivated reasoning that it's hard to back out now. Even so, the theory is a joke and should be a cause for embarrassment...

As a theory to prove ancientness or mystical origins, the Early Modern English theory is truly a joke. If there is an easter egg in Early Modern English, it's an easter egg Joseph put there to fool people. He'd have practiced it with his Captain Kidd tales from yore dayes on those 20+ treasure digs. How else do you think he convinced so many people of his scrying exceptionalism? Treasure stories would suck without a bit of mystical language and great proper nouns.

No matter how much time those Early Modern English guys spend laying down the "wowness" of finding olde-tyme words and phrases, what none of their work can do is answer the very basic question about what books, stories and terminology Joseph Smith encountered and kept spinning in that imaginative mind of his. The material was all around him, and he was swimming in the material. The end.

The Joseph was a genius theory crops up again. And at the same time folks want to see him as an uneducated ploughboy. So now along with bringing Swedenborg and all the other outside influences that Joseph was swimming in as he was living the life of a hard scrabble farmer, now we have him purposefully planting Easter eggs throughout the Book of Mormon so that we ‘moderns’ could later point them out as anomalies in language patterns, etc. Okay. Oh, and while he was doing that he also did the Chiasmus thing to also impress those that would come along 130+ years later. Got it.

Regards,
MG

[Lem]

This Early Modern English theory really needs to be jettisoned. However, I guess so much money was spent on motivated reasoning that it's hard to back out now. Even so, the theory is a joke and should be a cause for embarrassment, but belief in magic rocks still persists. So, why not bring out more nonsense for our enjoyment?

Let me guess without having read Dr. Rasmussen's latest. He picks numbers out of his _______ (ones that work of course) and then voila Early Modern English is a success story.

It really does. In fact, KR’s rendition of it even worse than just asserting there is Early Modern English language. This is his actual hypothesis:

…But there are a couple things that would be required here to be consistent with the Early Modern English evidence. The first is that Joseph is not involved in producing the wording of the text, or at least any of the words that involve Early Modern English syntax or word meanings (which, when you get down to it, covers a very large proportion of the book).

“Very large proportion is NOT true, by Carmack and Skousen’s own latest admission.

The second is that the text is not actually a true Early Modern English text. Regardless of how the text was produced, the hypothesis is that it’s been filtered or managed in some way so that the words and spellings themselves would remain recognizable to nineteenth-century readers.

This would explain how the underlying syntactic structure of the text could show Early Modern English forms, and how many recognizable words could have truly archaic meanings, while sparing us the true strangeness of Early Modern English.

Oh. So… NOT Early Modern English. A “filtered or managed” version. For example, like how a story teller in Smith’s time would try to make his story sound ancient, while mostly retaining his own language so that his contemporaries can understand?

So that’s his hypothesis. More later, I have to go but really, this is just getting worse and worse.

[Dr Moore]

The Joseph was a genius theory crops up again. And at the same time folks want to see him as an uneducated ploughboy. So now along with bringing Swedenborg and all the other outside influences that Joseph was swimming in as he was living the life of a hard scrabble farmer, now we have him purposefully planting Easter eggs throughout the Book of Mormon so that we ‘moderns’ could later point them out as anomalies in language patterns, etc. Okay. Oh, and while he was doing that he also did the Chiasmus thing to also impress those that would come along 130+ years later. Got it.

What a surprise. I happened to click to show the latest message on this thread and it's MG's, and behold a substantive comment. What a lucky day.

So the "uneducated ploughboy" story isn't argued by any informed critics I know of. But the church sure seems intent on hanging onto that version of things, a version by the way that the church has upheld in its official narrative for decades. I guess it's important to bolster miraculous appearances.

What is very clear, if you're taking time to do the reading, is that current scholarship -- faithful and critical -- on Joseph's translation projects demonstrates an intelligent person who was well read, creative, and brought this complex bricolage into the dictations. This isn't really even a theory any more. Read Bushman again if you're uncertain. Better yet, read last year's compilation Producing Ancient Scripture. There you'll find faithful BYU scholars showing instance after instance of Joseph borrowing from his surroundings in incredibly complex, creative ways, to infuse his dictations with informed ancientness.

So again, only the church wants its members to buy into a "hard scrabble farmer" theory of Joseph's intellectual faculties in 1829. If you see a discrepancy, that's cognitive dissonance over the false narrative which the church insists on telling and retelling.

Chiasmus served as an oral navigation tool and in that sense, is genuine expression of Joseph's sermonizing and storytelling in the Book of Mormon, like walking through a home and then walking back out the same way.

I stand by the very simplistic and realistic explanation for Early Modern English. Joseph found some old books he liked, found some old language he liked, and turned that on when it was story telling time.

There isn't any inconsistency that I can find in modern scholarship that would discount Joseph as a unique sort of savant. Like all such people, the outcome is self-selecting and hard to explain for regular people, but nonetheless real.

[Lem]

…..Keep in mind, too, that this work is ongoing, and in the year or so since I first drafted this essay the corpus of evidence in favor of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon has only expanded.

Approximately 9 months ago, Skousen had the Interpreter publish a pre-print wherein he and Carmack retracted 60% of the items they had previously published as examples of Early Modern English.

Rasmussen knows about the retractions, as he linked to one of them. The statement above is patently untrue, given the published works arguing Early Modern English. What exactly is going on?