Carmack takes on the Late War

[Dr Exiled]

There are linguists who study the Appalachian dialect that included Palmyra and they say it could be close to Elizabethian or Early Modern English. https://daily.jstor.org/the-legendary-l ... an-holler/

This is such an important point. As a journalist, I have had to decipher different dialects in order to research stories. Has anyone who's read Carmack's drivel noticed whether he addressed this point?

It's a long-observed fact in linguistics that, due to their isolation, rural areas (especially before mass media) are sort of linguistic time capsules. They preserve archaic phrasings, pronunciations, and idioms.

Here's an article on Tangier Island, a small isle in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia with lots of interesting linguistic artifacts:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/arti ... que-speak/

I used to post over at MD&D prior to being banned and I brought up the above to Mr. Carmack. He never answered my questions. Clark Goble, a believing apologist who used to post over at Times & Seasons prior to his untimely death and at MD&D, leveled a similar criticism. Carmack didn't answer Mr. Goble's criticisms either. Mr. Carmack has never addressed spoken dialect and how it might have been more similar to Early Modern English than he allows. Spoken word always trails written word as far as changes and this might account for the archaisms Carmack supposedly finds. Clark suggested using court documents to perhaps find out what the spoken dialect was at the time. https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchiv ... of-Mormon/

Thanks for the article on Tangier Island. I remember that article and there was a 30 min program on how the apalachian dialect resembled elizbethian or Early Modern English. I can't seem to find the program. It was on PBS and was about the various enlish dialects here in the US. I think it was talking about the same island in one portion of the program. I wish I could find it.

[Dr Exiled]

Here is another article about an old dialect spoken on another isolated island:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/2019 ... an-english

[Alphus and Omegus]

It's a long-observed fact in linguistics that, due to their isolation, rural areas (especially before mass media) are sort of linguistic time capsules. They preserve archaic phrasings, pronunciations, and idioms.

Here's an article on Tangier Island, a small isle in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia with lots of interesting linguistic artifacts:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/arti ... que-speak/

I used to post over at MD&D prior to being banned and I brought up the above to Mr. Carmack. He never answered my questions. Clark Goble, a believing apologist who used to post over at Times & Seasons prior to his untimely death and at MD&D, leveled a similar criticism. Carmack didn't answer Mr. Goble's criticisms either. Mr. Carmack has never addressed spoken dialect and how it might have been more similar to Early Modern English than he allows. Spoken word always trails written word as far as changes and this might account for the archaisms Carmack supposedly finds. Clark suggested using court documents to perhaps find out what the spoken dialect was at the time. https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchiv ... of-Mormon/

Thanks for the article on Tangier Island. I remember that article and there was a 30 min program on how the apalachian dialect resembled elizbethian or Early Modern English. I can't seem to find the program. It was on PBS and was about the various enlish dialects here in the US. I think it was talking about the same island in one portion of the program. I wish I could find it.

This critical oversight and Carmack's utter refusal to address it is a perfect illustration of why mopologists cannot publish their faithful material in any peer-reviewed journal. It's specious nonsense and deep down, I think they know that it is.

If they genuinely believed in their methods and conclusions, they'd do much more than publish them in their neo-fundamentalist backwater blogs.

[Don Bradley]

Don, I think you may have actually strengthened Chap's point... the longer he lived, the more he connived, the more people saw it, and it appears he connived on many different parameters and events...

Hey Philo!

We should talk sometime, brother! We are years overdue...

To your comment--the method sketched above can be used to discern any motives--sincere, opportunistic, or whatever. So the only way to see mere description of the method as strengthening a certain conclusion--e.g., that Joseph Smith was an opportunist--is to import in other data that one thinks settle the question. The method itself is conclusion-neutral, as it should be.

I was of course raised with a heroic image of Joseph Smith--that he was a paragon of faith and righteousness, second only Christ in goodness. So, for me, as, I suspect, for you, for Chap, and for almost everyone here, it was an enormous and jarring inversion when I later came to see him as an opportunist. Think about what a huge change of perspective that was for you.

I pursued a model of Joseph Smith as opportunist for several years--something I'll return to shortly.

I'm in the current conversation primarily to agree with Chap that inference to the motives of historical figures is just an extension of the same sort of model-building of others' motives and mental words that we do all the time, such as in a discussion like this. I'm not looking to focus on my point of disagreement, but just to note it. During the several years I pursued a model of Joseph Smith as opportunist, I could explain a good deal with that model. The model focused me on certain aspects of his circumstances that ended up being illuminating.

If we think about how unexpected our change of perspective was going from the model of Joseph Smith as second-only-to-Jesus moral and spiritual hero to the model of Joseph Smith as opportunistic scoundrel, it shows just how unexpected [i/]future[/i] changes of perspective may be.

And this is how it was for me as I continued pursuing my model of Joseph Smith as opportunist and ultimately found that there was so much it couldn't explain. As I attempted to incorporate more and more of Smith's behavior into my model, and found things that didn't fit, I had to expand the model. I now have a larger model than can explain much more.

But I'm not here to try to lay out such a model. I'll do that in a range of future publications, and others can accept it or reject it on its own merits then.

Be that as it may, I certainly understand and respect those who have been willing to have their worlds turned upside-down by the best evidence they've uncovered. Kudos to you and Chap and others here for having the courage to embrace difficult conclusions when those difficult conclusions have followed from your evidence.

Don

[Don Bradley]

Don, I think you may have actually strengthened Chap's point... the longer he lived, the more he connived, the more people saw it, and it appears he connived on many different parameters and events...

Don’t be so sure, Philo. He agreed with the methodological point but not the conclusion. I, on the other hand, am not sure I agree with either. I think confidence in reading minds in this way can be useful for constructing models, but it should not be mistaken for actually knowing what happened for a certainty.

Hey Kish!

How much various models reflect underlying reality is an interesting question we can perhaps discuss sometime, but I think we are in a great deal of agreement on how to build and assess such models. I'm particularly impressed when models can account for seeming anomalies and when they have predictive power.

Don

[Kishkumen]

I am comfortable with disagreement. Predictive power is, of course, nice. Sometimes, however, our interpretive framework can render things more apparently predictive than they may actually prove to be on later reflection. I prefer thinking in terms of models, not because I don’t value them and their “predictive power,” but because I like to leave myself open for future possibilities including my own changing perspective.

[Lem]

I used to post over at MD&D prior to being banned and I brought up the above to Mr. Carmack. He never answered my questions. Clark Goble, a believing apologist who used to post over at Times & Seasons prior to his untimely death and at MD&D, leveled a similar criticism. Carmack didn't answer Mr. Goble's criticisms either. Mr. Carmack has never addressed spoken dialect and how it might have been more similar to Early Modern English than he allows. Spoken word always trails written word as far as changes and this might account for the archaisms Carmack supposedly finds. Clark suggested using court documents to perhaps find out what the spoken dialect was at the time. https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchiv ... of-Mormon/

Thanks for the article on Tangier Island. I remember that article and there was a 30 min program on how the apalachian dialect resembled elizbethian or Early Modern English. I can't seem to find the program. It was on PBS and was about the various enlish dialects here in the US. I think it was talking about the same island in one portion of the program. I wish I could find it.

This critical oversight and Carmack's utter refusal to address it is a perfect illustration of why mopologists cannot publish their faithful material in any peer-reviewed journal. It's specious nonsense and deep down, I think they know that it is.

If they genuinely believed in their methods and conclusions, they'd do much more than publish them in their neo-fundamentalist backwater blogs.

This is a difficult part of Carmack's theories. Carmack consistently refuses to consider any other explanations, and stands by his very weakly constructed and internally inconsistent statistical analyses. It completely explains not only his inability to have any of his arguments published anywhere other than pro-lds, non-peer-reviewed journals, but also his unwillingness to even try. He argues that he wouldn't get a fair analysis because historians are biased against Mormon ideas. Right. That's the reason.

[Philo Sofee]

Lem
He argues that he wouldn't get a fair analysis because historians are biased against Mormon ideas. Right. That's the reason.

I don't mean to derail here, this is fascinating, but in conjunction here it might be a trend all right. Since my interview with RFM a week ago, there are a couple apologists who continue to ask in the comments section why we don't realize the Egyptologists were refuted in 1914 (a rather enthusiastic ignorant Mormon Elder has brought out yet another theory of the translation of the Book of Abraham - what is that now, like 14 of them?!). I have challenged him to get his materials into the Egyptologists hands, not ours. It's them you want to convince, not us. He says they ignore him and don't interact because they are biased, an NO ONE in many THOUSANDS have ever refuted his materials! I tell him yes, keep on telling yourself that...

Mormons present any kind of theory to save Joseph Smith, and if scholars don't take it seriously, it's their bias and therefore this means the Mormon theory is correct! It's testimony time! If nothing else, it is a fascinating psychology at play here...

[Physics Guy]

Predictive power is impressive. Retrodictive power is less impressive.