Book of Mormon treasure Map

[_Uncle Dale]

It would take too long for me to explain right now --

But this is from the MaD Board, today -- and has some special
(serious) significance, in terms of Book of Mormon origins studies.



More later...

Uncle Dale

[_sock puppet]

Be sure, UD, to point out on the map where other gold plates are buried. I'd kind of like to retire now if I can find them gold plates.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
where other gold plates are buried.
...

Well, the brass plates of Laban and the small plates
of Nephi should be somewhere on the north island.
But the latter only have "the appearance of gold."

The large plates of Mormon are in the ocean, perhaps.

The 24 golden plates of Ether should be somewhere
on South Island, a little north of Manuscript Point,
by my calculations.

More anon...

UD

[_Infymus]

Put DCP's hairpiece in between somewhere and nowhere. Then, give clues that lead the person in circles. Meanwhile, browbeat that only faith can find the hairpiece.

[_Roger]

I prefer to post here where I can speak my mind freely, but found your thread on MAD:

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/ ... mogeneous/


So it seems I have indeed missed much while in self imposed exile.

You appear now to have your own PCA charts. Did you develop these yourself or did someone else produce them? And the $64 million question: Any reaction from Bruce?

For us really lay laymen... can you sum up what are the main differences between your chart(s) and Bruce's?

With regard to your treasure map analogy, I seem to notice a similar shoreline between your land masses and Bruce's. Yet you show Spalding and others inhabiting the mainland while Bruce has them out on fishing expeditions. Can we conclude the boat they are floating in was christened: Tongue of Rex James?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
it seems I have indeed missed much while in self imposed exile.
...

You walked in during the middle of the movie.

In scene #1, Bruce presented his pca chart, as a sort of roadblock
to any subsequent NSC classification analysis of potential 19th century
authors' contributions to the Book of Mormon.

In scene #2 Dale asked Bruce for his data tables, so that the various
plots on the pca chart could be labeled. Bruce declined.

In scene #3 some of Dale's friends got together and raised the needed
cash to hire a statistician -- who produced a new set of pca charts
very similar to Bruce's own output. The differences are minor ones,
resulting from a conscious effort not to duplicate Bruce's work, (to
the extent of violating his intellectual property rights, at least).

We are now part way into scene #4, in which Dale is unveiling the inner
contents of the "Book of Mormon cloud" of data plots on the pc1/pc2 chart.
While the results are not a perfect match, we can reasonably say, "touch
a data point near the bottom of the chart and it will be a Spalding chapter.

Touch a data point near the top of the "Book of Mormon cloud" and chances are you'll
be fingering a non-Spalding Book of Mormon chapter.

Of course our LDS friends say that there is no such thing as a "Spalding chapter"
in the Book of Mormon, and that Bruce's initial chart proves that Mr. Spalding
could not have contributed anything to the book's text.

Thus, all of Jockers' Spalding attributions are meaningless. He probably just got
hold of an early version of Bruce's chart, and decided to call all of the bottom-most
data plots "Spalding's texts."

Gotta watch those tricky anti-Mormons ---- some of them possess time-machines
which can take them back to the days when honest LDS are first writing down
the great truths concerning latter-day scripture.

UD

ps -- I take it that this week Bruce is on vacation to Mars, or somewhere.

[_MCB]

LOL My mind is working on something, Dale. Sometimes internet silence is a GOOD thing.

[_Roger]

UD:

okay.... so now I found your previous thread on MAD.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/ ... ge__st__20

How come you post all the good stuff on MAD? ; )

So the obvious first observation is that I would not have had to ask my previous questions if I had simply read that thread.

So... moving on....

Second observation.... I agree that the silence from the usual suspects is deafening. I distinctly note the absence of Bruce Schaalje on that thread. One that directly challenges his assumptions. One would think he would be eager to meet and refute the challenge--especially on MAD.

Nevertheless, even given that I am relatively familiar with this topic, much of what you posted still goes over my head and, I would assume, those of most casual readers as well. I do appreciate the times when you (like Joseph Smith) translate the data into standard English, but even then, the concepts can be difficult to follow.

Since you will have a very different reception on MAD than here, I am going to repost some of your mostly-English comments here for discussion.

First:

I forgot to mention that we have also performed some initial word-print
testing on the "Third Epistle of Peter," published by Sidney Rigdon and
his co-worker in an 1824 pamphlet; as well as the 1835 "Lectures on Faith,"
which have often been identified as Rigdon's probable writings.

Any guesses as to where those texts' assigned coordinates will plot out
on a pca chart, similar to the Moroni/Rigdon example I just provided?

Closer to Rigdon's other texts' plots?
Closer to "Moroni?"
Far away from both the red and blue symbols on that chart?

Does it even matter...

I don't know how to downsize the graphic file so it is not so huge... but people can see the graphic on the MAD thread.

Yes, obviously it matters. I would say if it clusters anywhere near either one the results would be significant. Even more significant if it clusters somewhere in the middle. So do you have those results?

Then you write this:

I'll say a little more about that current controversy:

Attached are two interesting charts, derived from our
recently developed pc1/pc2 chart of Jockers' Book of Mormon authorship
attributions raw data. (Bruce posted something similar here
sometime back, as some of you may recall).

In the first chart, notice that the shortest "migration path" is
between Alma 48-49-50-51-52-53. This is what we might logically
expect to see if a single author wrote a narrative in sequence,
separating it into blocks of texts that were not subsequently
altered very much.

But not ALL of the migration paths between Alma chapters are
so short and simplistic as the Alma 48-->53 example. And I think
that the configurations exhibited in the second chart show why...

The "internals" of our pc1/pc2 chart's "Book of Mormon plot cloud,"
become clear as we begin to label its data plots in terms of Book of Mormon
chapters. Once we begin to do that we see that Jockers' 2008/2010
authorship attributions show up as "clusters" there also.

Think of it all as a group of actors having conversations. At home,
they speak in their normal voices -- but ON THE STAGE they assume
a few different vocal qualities. If the Nephite Record was truly
composed by 19th century authors, then those authors' contributions
within the Book of Mormon effectively put them ON THE STAGE (of archaic
English, repetitive speaking, limited subject matter, etc.) for our
entertainment.

The result is -- the same clusterings show up WITHIN the Book of Mormon cloud,
as OUTSIDE of it, but separated from our "actors" normal voices -- which
plot elsewhere (OUTSIDE the Book of Mormon cloud) in the pc1/pc2 chart. In the pc3/pc4,
etc. charts, those actors' stage-voices are muted a little, and we see their
clusters WITHIN the Book of Mormon begin to overlap their clusters OUTSIDE of it.

In the real world, we have additional cues to go on. Is it Mohammed Ali speaking or Will Smith acting like Mohammed Ali? We can usually figure it out from clues other than the words themselves. Here, it would seem, all we have to go on are the words themselves. So from the critic's perspective, how can we distinguish between Ali vs Smith if the words are the same or similar? That, I suppose, is exactly what non-contextual word-prints are supposed to do--but the entire concept is still difficult to grasp and appears to be bogged down in controversy over how to interpret the results.

Then you write:

I believe that Bruce is saying that his pca chart (of Jockers' data)
effectively ends 19th century authorship controversy & investigations,
because it shows the 19th century authors' writings to plot out as
being widely separated from Book of Mormon chapters. Thus, those 19th century
authors are very, very unlikely candidates for Book of Mormon texts contribution.

That I understand and I think you are right on the money. I think that is exactly what Bruce is attempting to say. Just look at the separation. Big distance is meaningful, small distance is not. Take my word for it. Don't bother looking into it any closer. End of discussion.

If I am reading you right, you're saying Bruce's chart is merely one frame in a motion picture about bee swarms. You are now able to add the preceding frames and we can now see that the bee swarms of Cowdery/Smith/Rigdon did cluster among Book of Mormon chapters in previous frames. Bruce's chart then, is the best possible frame he could have extracted from the movie to make his point--but one frame in a movie does not tell the whole story.

I'm now beginning to reveal that INSIDE of the Book of Mormon, the sections
previously (before Bruce's charting) attributed to those 19th century
authors ALSO cluster into succinct groupings identifiable by author.

We see this phenomenon most clearly in the development of Alma chapter
inter-relationships -- as I've shown with Cowdery/Smith & Spalding/Pratt
constellations. But we can obtain some similar results when we look
inside of the pc1/pc2 "Book of Mormon cloud" for details pertaining
to Mosiah, or for Ether-Moroni.

And ----> when we re-assemble ALL of the Book of Mormon individual book details,
into a composite, labeled with Jockers' authorship attributions --->
we see even stronger evidence for a "Spaldingish cluster," etc. therein.

I do not believe that all of this can be dismissed with a wave of the
saintly hand and a rolling of Provo eyes.

I'm sure you are right about that. If ignoring it doesn't work, however, no doubt they will be forced to resort to waving and rolling.

My contention is, that Bruce's own charting offers evidence that some
(or all) of those 19th century writers DID contribute to the Book of
Mormon --- but, INSIDE of that lengthy text, their individual contributions
are somewhat altered and disfigured by Book of Mormon archaic English, frequent
repetitions, biblical formulas, etc.

And so far, I have seen zero response to that contention.

Alice, on the "real world" side of the looking-glass is easily
identifiable as "Alice." But, once she has entered the realm of
the looking-glass, everything she does is reversed and distorted.
Although she may repeat the same sort of activities inside of
the looking-glass, as she did outside of it, her two sets of
actions are separated by the very fact of the looking-glass itself.

That is why we see the various 19th century authors' texts form
individual clusters OUTSIDE of the Book of Mormon "cloud" in Bruce's chart.
But, INSIDE the Book of Mormon those same contributors each retain enough of
their individual writing characteristics to again form some distinct
clusters INSIDE of the Book of Mormon "cloud" in Bruce's chart.

I have read that about five times so far... slowly it is sinking in. How would Bruce explain such clustering within the Book of Mormon cloud--if he were participating in this discussion? Sample sizes too small?

You walked in during the middle of the movie

In scene #1, Bruce presented his pca chart, as a sort of roadblock
to any subsequent NSC classification analysis of potential 19th century
authors' contributions to the Book of Mormon.

In scene #2 Dale asked Bruce for his data tables, so that the various
plots on the pca chart could be labeled. Bruce declined.

Actually I saw those parts. It's more like I took a bathroom break and missed Act 3:

In scene #3 some of Dale's friends got together and raised the needed
cash to hire a statistician -- who produced a new set of pca charts
very similar to Bruce's own output. The differences are minor ones,
resulting from a conscious effort not to duplicate Bruce's work, (to
the extent of violating his intellectual property rights, at least).

....so now, fully relieved, I am getting back to my chair at the climax:

We are now part way into scene #4, in which Dale is unveiling the inner
contents of the "Book of Mormon cloud" of data plots on the pc1/pc2 chart.
While the results are not a perfect match, we can reasonably say, "touch
a data point near the bottom of the chart and it will be a Spalding chapter.

Touch a data point near the top of the "Book of Mormon cloud" and chances are you'll
be fingering a non-Spalding Book of Mormon chapter.

Of course our LDS friends say that there is no such thing as a "Spalding chapter"
in the Book of Mormon, and that Bruce's initial chart proves that Mr. Spalding
could not have contributed anything to the book's text.

Thus, all of Jockers' Spalding attributions are meaningless. He probably just got
hold of an early version of Bruce's chart, and decided to call all of the bottom-most
data plots "Spalding's texts."

Gotta watch those tricky anti-Mormons ---- some of them possess time-machines
which can take them back to the days when honest LDS are first writing down
the great truths concerning latter-day scripture.

So where is our hero? Will the zombie-like Spalding theory that refuses to die be put to rest once and for all or will Uncle Dale, mad scientist that he is, once again resurrect it?

Film at 11.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
I am getting back to my chair at the climax:
...

Well, not quite -- there's still a lot of work to be done here.

But, I think we can break the history of modern S-R textual
research into three post-Brodie periods

1. 1975-2007: Vern Holley, Dale Broadhurst, etc. discover
"Book of Solomon" in Alma-Helaman -- document findings

2. 2008-2010: Matt Jockers' team publishes authorship
attributions for all 239 Book of Mormon chapters

3. 2010-2011 G. Bruce Schaalje discovers the Spaldingish
cluster of Book of Mormon chapters in a pca chart he generated --
with a "little help from elves" this discovery is publicized

We now have three different ways to compare the Book of Mormon
chapters to Spalding, Rigdon, etc. Three different means
of peering into the darkened hat of textual history.

And, thanks to Bruce, we now have our "treasure map."

"Avast, me hearties! -- Picks and shovels! Picks and shovels!"

UD

[_MCB]

LOL. Take an x-dimensional map of data points, and shoot one picture from one perspective which confirms your expectations, and publish it, ignoring the 99 others which support the opposition. Good job of doing the expected. No surprise from here.