Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_Uncle Dale]

...False positives.
...

Would that mean we should ignore the fact that Alma 5 and Alma 7
look like compositions of the same author to the eye -- and sound
like compositions of the same author to the ear -- and are credited
to the same author by the text itself?

If Bruce has scored a "false positive" in crediting Alma 5 and Alma 7
to the same writer, then why do those two texts cluster practically
on top of each other in his textual similarities tree and in his pc1
chart from last year?

Isn't this like your saying that two sons of the same mother possessing
the same brown hair, blue eyes, left-handedness, and long noses are
nothing but a random "false positive" reading of a truly non-shared origin?

UD

[_GlennThigpen]

...False positives.
...

Would that mean we should ignore the fact that Alma 5 and Alma 7
look like compositions of the same author to the eye -- and sound
like compositions of the same author to the ear -- and are credited
to the same author by the text itself?

If Bruce has scored a "false positive" in crediting Alma 5 and Alma 7
to the same writer, then why do those two texts cluster practically
on top of each other in his textual similarities tree and in his pc1
chart from last year?

Isn't this like your saying that two sons of the same mother possessing
the same brown hair, blue eyes, left-handedness, and long noses are
nothing but a random "false positive" reading of a truly non-shared origin?

UD

No to all of the above. I don't have the PCA charts, etc. and do not know how to read them. Bruce has indicated that they are not a tool fro determining authorship.

On the false positive issue, here is a quote from Bruce's paper:

"Chapters classified to Rigdon, Smith, or Cowdery appeared to occur essentially at random in the sequence of chapters. The texts classified to Rigdon, Smith, or Cowdery were on the fringe of the Book of Mormon cluster, and the classifications were likely due to multiplicity."

Random=no discernible pattern. Nothing more.

As you are well aware, these are still just relative probabilities.

Glenn

[_Roger]

Ben:

The model falls apart when we start to apply this to other texts. This was why I asked for an explanation of what might exclude someone. And it seems to me that you don't actually have an answer.

I would like to see an example of two texts that are not otherwise known to be related, BUT that share a number of parallels, AND that YOU have made the determination that the author of text B likely borrowed from text A. HOWEVER, I would like to qualify that by asking you to either:

1. NOT give the best example you can find, but instead to provide an example that contains the least amount of qualifiers that still allows you to draw the conclusion of reliance

or

2. provide examples of both the weakest and strongest cases.

The reason for this should be clear. I would like to see an actual example that meets with your minimum standards.

Thanks.

[_Dan Vogel]

Glenn, I have no argument with Vogel's contention that there is Joseph Smith autiobiograpical material in the Book of Mormon. However, it is primarily in I and II Nephi and Jacob, although there are sporadic accounts of frustration with treasure-digging later.

And Jockers found Smithian material in those early chapters, just like Vogel predicted.

One of the clearest biographical parallels to Joseph Smith's biography is found in Mormon chapter 1.

[Bedlamite]

Glenn, I have no argument with Vogel's contention that there is Joseph Smith autiobiograpical material in the Book of Mormon. However, it is primarily in I and II Nephi and Jacob, although there are sporadic accounts of frustration with treasure-digging later.

And Jockers found Smithian material in those early chapters, just like Vogel predicted.

One of the clearest biographical parallels to Joseph Smith's biography is found in Mormon chapter 1.

No doubt there are biographical parallels -- some of which appear to
extend backwards in time to a period before Joseph Smith could have
possibly appropriated contents from the text into his own activities.

But is that clearly the case in all such instances? Can we identify any
portions of the narrative which might not have originally come from
Smith's own experiences, but instead served as an influence upon Smith?

It is, of course, possible that back in 1827-29 Smith pictured himself as
one day leading men into battle, and thus patterned General Moroni
and other Nephite warriors after his own ambitions. But I think it would
be too much for my brain to accept, trying to believe that in 1827 Joe Smith
was already foreseeing himself at the head of "Zion's Camp" marching to
possess the land of his people's inheritance.

I would rather be inclined to believe that some of Smith's 1834 rhetoric
and paramilitary actions were borrowed from the Nephite record, and that
he need not have been the originator of all that heroic militarism.

Again, with Lehi's dream(s) -- I cannot not fully concede that none of
what was published in the Book of Mormon in 1830 could have possibly
influenced Mother Smith's biographical narrative fifteen years later.

What process can the reader rely upon, in order to sort out this apparent
chicken-and-the-egg difficulty?

UD

[_Uncle Dale]

...
Nothing more.
...

If somebody wishes to argue against the Book of Mormon, and say that
the two Alma speeches did not come from the same original speaker/writer,
I will not bother contest the issue.

But, if we attribute Bruce's assignment of Alma 5 and Alma 7 to the same
author, as being nothing more than a random error in the methodology, does
that also mean that there may be numerous such authorship attribution
errors in the "latent" identifications?

If there are about three dozen "false positives," where shared authorship
has been tabulated/charted, does that also mean that something like
three dozen of the "latent" attributions are "false negatives?"

UD

[_Roger]

UD wrote:

I think I understand the reason behind all of this, without even being a
statistician -- I compare the effect to the results we obtain when opening
a camera lens too wide, and admitting too much light into the camera. In
that case the contrast in the picture becomes so stark, and so washed
out, that only a few scattered dark objects remain to be seen, amidst a
sea of white light.

From my perspective, all the "latent" assignments in Bruce's recent report
are much like that white light flooding into the camera, and burning out
all of the subtle gray tones.

What do we see when looking at a blow-up chart rendered from the base
data that went into Bruce's "Fig. 11?" -- We see column after column of
100% attributions to "other" or "latent." This overexposure tells us practically
nothing about how one Book of Mormon chapter resembles another. What
we see instead is that Enos is as different from Jarom as mathematics can
possibly communicate. Surely this is a ridiculous oversimplification.

On the other hand, I fear that Matt Jockers' data depiction suffers from the
exact opposite effect -- that is, an under-exposure of the big picture, such
that every shade of gray and every color, hue and tone of the rainbow are
brought together in a possibly muddy landscape. I especially distrust those
chapters attributed to the pen of Parley P. Pratt, and strongly suspect that
his authorship attribution is the result of editing and multiple voices being
brought together within the artificial limits of a single 1879 chapter.

These NSC study reports are iceberg tips, poking out of a foggy sea which
remain largely unexplored.

When a proper, detailed and exhaustive language map of the book is finally
produced for study, we will be better prepared to decide whether those
iceberg tips of computerized studies represent great masses of relevant
information, or nothing other than floating hunks of pack ice masquerading
as icy mountains.

I'm still interested. One day that language map will be published. I wonder
if it will be within my lifetime?

Of course your camera analogy makes perfect sense to me, a videographer, but I wonder what Matt and Bruce would have to say about it. Matt is apparently finished with his online discussion career and possibly having anything further to do with the question of Book of Mormon authorship. Bruce, likely would simply say your analogy doesn't apply for whatever reason.

I think your analogy sounds reasonable. It is too convenient for Bruce to simply argue that his 19th century attributions are "false positives" while everything else isn't. I want to know what the factors are that produce such a "false positive." If I understand your analogy correctly, you are saying that in the case of Alma 5 & 7 the colors that were there to begin with were so vibrant that even when the lens is overexposed (in the case of Bruce) there is still enough color there to register over the white light. Is that more or less correct?

[_Uncle Dale]

...
If I understand your analogy correctly, you are saying that in the case of Alma 5 & 7 the colors that were there to begin with were so vibrant that even when the lens is overexposed (in the case of Bruce) there is still enough color there to register over the white light. Is that more or less correct?

Well, Roger, it all goes back to those pesky frequently occurring non-contextual
little words like "and," "it," "came," "to," etc.

For some reason or another, Bruce's application of NSC methodology recognized
something strongly connective between Alma 5 and Alma 7 (along with Alma 34,
and some other chapters also assigned to Rigdon in his report).

Now perhaps that connectivity was induced by the open set NSC analysis itself,
as Glenn is attempting to argue. Or, perhaps the connectivity was based upon
actual, hidden relationships between those pesky little words being examined.

I've already pointed out some additional evidence, indicating that Alma 5 and Alma 7
share language patterns that can be discerned through various other types of
computerized analysis, which results in charts where those two chapters plot
out adjacent to each other. They are, in effect, textual identical twins -- and
Alma 34 is their 9-month-older sister.

Glenn is obviously unprepared to address the issue. Ben would be a better bet
on that score -- if he took enough of an interest to look into the matter.

Since Jockers attributes Alma 5, 7, and 34 all to Oliver Cowdery, I'm currently
examining them (and their adjacent chapters) as a set. We shall see what
textual oddities that inspection uncovers. You'll recall that Ben already pointed
out that Alma 5 and Alma 34 share the peculiar "go no more out" phraseology.
Perhaps we can discover what else these separated Alma texts share.

UD

[_MCB]

One of the clearest biographical parallels to Joseph Smith's biography is found in Mormon chapter 1

LOL perceptions perceptions. There mey be somewhat of that. However, it could be Old Sol's relationship with the young Redick McKee. Have you read McKee's testimony?

[_Dan Vogel]

Roger,

I think I indeed thought Whitmer said "every word" but I think I must have been confusing that quote with another, probably the Joseph F. Smith quote you mention. Regardless, Knight says "the whole" whether he was in a position to know that or not. He is a witness and he is claiming "the whole." And I think the same thing is implied in Whitmer's statements. I'm trying to remember the phrase you used... Oh yeah: "which is exactly what he says without being specific." (I like that!)

Bottom line is that you have no way of rejecting Whitmer’s testimony besides speculation that depends on assuming what you are trying to prove—in other words, begging the question. You can’t use something Knight said against all witnesses. You are not reading these sources historically, but polemically.

Okay one of at least two ways:

1. Whitmer's word is not reliable and he will claim anything (like if you believe my Book of Mormon testimony then you also need to believe Joseph is a fallen prophet)

or

2. Whitmer was a dupe and saw what they wanted him to see. Smith could either have memorized text or used a hidden manuscript or the bulk of the real work was done off site.

Now you’re getting silly. No one has to accept Whitmer’s conclusions about Joseph Smith to accept his observations. Observation of events is not the same as an interpretation of them. None of this proves Whitmer was lying about the translation. You have no evidence for your second assertion, which can only be proposed by believing the first. I hope you realize you haven’t overturned the multiple witnesses on this matter.

I've reread this several times in an attempt to make heads or tails out of it. Again, clarification of what exactly you mean when you say "if not from the stone" would be helpful. I do not believe words appeared in the stone. I think the stone was a prop similar to a crystal ball. If Joseph was seeing anything in his hat, it was either in his mind or coming from the opague light filtering through the white hat. So I think if he used a stone, he used it as a prop to pull off a trick that was designed to fool people. If everyone in the room knew what was going on there would have been no need to use the prop. If not, then sure, he "used the stone" but the variants did not come from it; rather they came from his mind--either after he had memorized or was blatantly looking at a Bible.

But that is NOT what I think happened.

What I think happened is that the variants came from Sidney Rigdon working to replace those sections from Ohio. I think whoever made those changes was under the impression that the King James italics represent a corruption of the underlying truth and that God was now directing the modern day seer on how to correct those errors. The most likely candidate for this is Rigdon, not Smith, in my opinion.

What evidence is there (other than the Book of Mormon) that Smith cared deeply about the theological implications of the King James italic "errors" in 1829? I see Rigdon as a better candidate. Rigdon would have cared about the theological nuances that would result by the subtle changes to KJVB italics. Smith, on the other hand, seemed to be more interested in wonder tales, buried treasure, dreams, Spanish ghosts, seer stones and writing himself into prophecy at that point.

I don’t mean that anything actually appeared in the stone. It was just a prop. What I’m saying is that the variant readings were undoubtedly said to have come from the stone. Rigdon was not responsible for those variant readings because he wasn’t there in Fayette at the time. The revelations Joseph Smith dictated through the same stone, as well as his letters at the time, show that he was steeped in KJV language. To characterize Joseph Smith as a mere magician is an indication that you don’t know much about him. My biography of him discussed at length why religion was important to him.

The point, any way, is that your assumption that use of the Bible means the stone was not used is probably not correct. The Isaiah chapters could also be said to have been translated by the power of God.

But another problem for your (memory substitution) theory is that we actually have both the Spalding manuscript that had to have been what they were actually exposed to and we have the Book of Mormon, which in most cases is much closer to their actual testimonies. The mind can play tricks, but in order for those tricks to be legitimate, there has to be some basis for a connection. What could possibly have made them think they had repeatedly been exposed to the phrase "And it came to pass" when that phenomenon does not occur in Spalding's manuscript? What could induce them to remember teasing old Mr. Spalding by calling him "Old came to pass?" This sort of claim goes above and beyond legitimate memory substitution. Where did it come from? Hurlbut?

You ask a "what if" question under the assumption that there was only one manuscript, but by the same token you have to ask yourself, what would we expect to see IF there actually was another manuscript? The fact is I was exposed to Winds of War and when I cracked it open again legitimate memory jogging occurred. You can't argue that because my memory was jogged I never read the novel. And if 8 of my buddies had read the same novel and someone collects my memories and then asks my friends if they remember those things too and they say "yes" that doesn't mean we are having false memories because our statements agree too much! It simply means there might have been a better way to gather the information.

In short, the kind of thing we see in the Conneaut testimonies is exactly what I would expect if they were either telling the truth or lying, but not what I would expect to see if what they had really been exposed to was the extant Spalding manuscript.

To argue that the differences between the Conneaut witnesses’ memories and the extant Spalding MS proves there was another MS closer the Book of Mormon is to beg the question. A second MS isn’t the only conclusion to the disparity between the MS and testimony. I don’t believe you sufficiently understand how false memory works. Implanting names is easy. It starts with this book sounds vaguely familiar. After discussion with other witnesses, this gets reinforced. By the time Hurlbut shows up it has become a strong memory. Now, I’m not using false memory theory to prove this is what happened; I’m using it to show that we are not stuck with the Spalding witnesses’ memories. Moreover, it explains the disparity between their memories and the extant Spalding MS.