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

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Dr Exiled
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

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Lem wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:21 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:42 pm
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, Kyler Rasmussen’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.
This.

Joseph Smith was riffing on the mound builder myth that put ancient israel into the americas. He wanted to sound like he thought his readers would assume ancient native american israelite prophets would sound and so used the Bible as a guide. A big portion of the stories in the Book of Mormon are reworked stories from the Bible. Any believer reading this need only read Acts side by side Alma when Alma and Amulek are doing their thing to see this. Isaiah is directly quoted probably due to laziness. He riffs on Matthew in 3 Nephi and uses Paul's writings on charity, putting them into Mormon's mouth.

No, the clear answer to the oversold and overhyped Early Modern English riddle, in my mind, is that any Early Modern English, if any, is from Joseph Smith trying to sound old-worldly and biblical at the same time.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Dr Moore
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”s

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Hand waving through fringe Early Modern English somehow results in non-ancientness being less likely than time travel. That’s fine. Okay so the low bar has been set. But Kyler finds being bothered to show statistical independence when multiplying probabilities an offensively high bar? You can’t make this up.
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”s

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Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:24 pm
Hand waving through fringe Early Modern English somehow results in non-ancientness being less likely than time travel. That’s fine. Okay so the low bar has been set. But Kyler finds being bothered to show statistical independence when multiplying probabilities an offensively high bar? You can’t make this up.
Is he really that worried that no BYU statistics professor would put their stamp of approval on his work? Surely he could get just one.
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

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Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
MG 2.0 wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:11 pm
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.
Thanks for your kind words, even if a bit condescending.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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.
Well, the fact is he grew up in rural New York, and he was born into a family that would be considered to be members of the working class. Farmers by trade. Elementary education.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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.


I don’t question that Joseph was a keen observer and we can find elements of his world within the LDS canon.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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.


He was both. A backwoods hard scrabble farmer’s son who also had a keen intellect.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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 think that when we find complex chiasmus showing up in key areas of the Book of Mormon where we have essential doctrinal exposition being taught we might ask ourselves, why? Wouldn’t it have been just as well to teach the important principles and doctrines as a ‘one off’ rather than going through through the house and back out again? To the best of my knowledge Joseph was not schooled in the art of ancient Hebrew poetry, Hebraisms, and the like. I think you are taking Welch’s work and shrink wrapping it into a ‘nothing really to see here’ oddity of some sort. There’s more to it…and you know it.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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.
That fits your narrative obviously. Keep it simple,right? I don’t think it was quite so simple. So he finds some old language he likes and then as he’s translating he’s also able to speak in different voices. You know, the whole stylometry thing that various folks have done to show a number of different authors scattered throughout the Book of Mormon speaking in their own voice. Joseph just turned that on while at the same time inserting bits and pieces of language anachronistic to his own. And all the while plugging in Hebraistic insertions along the textual flow. Joseph is doing all this stuff on the fly?

C’mon. Get real.
Dr Moore wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:04 pm
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.
OK. I’m a bit surprised that you would go this direction. Although I must say, I entertained this idea at one time. But it just doesn’t seem to fit Joseph Smith. His personality, his character, his person, just doesn’t seem to fit the bill of a savant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome

I think that’s a cop out to go that route, but you’ve got to travel some sort of route to explain Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon translation, right? I don’t think going the savant route even comes close to explaining what was actually going on.

Are there any other religious leaders that you would throw into this same class of savantism along with Joseph Smith? Just for comparison. Remember, those folks that are considered to be savants have some pretty peculiar characteristics.

But anything to distance yourself from gold plates and angels. You would then have the whole ‘God thing’ to deal with if you go that route.

Regards,
MG
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

Post by Lem »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 10:55 pm
Lem wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:21 pm

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

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



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.
This.

Joseph Smith was riffing on the mound builder myth that put ancient israel into the americas. He wanted to sound like he thought his readers would assume ancient native american israelite prophets would sound and so used the Bible as a guide. A big portion of the stories in the Book of Mormon are reworked stories from the Bible. Any believer reading this need only read Acts side by side Alma when Alma and Amulek are doing their thing to see this. Isaiah is directly quoted probably due to laziness. He riffs on Matthew in 3 Nephi and uses Paul's writings on charity, putting them into Mormon's mouth.

No, the clear answer to the oversold and overhyped Early Modern English riddle, in my mind, is that any Early Modern English, if any, is from Joseph Smith trying to sound old-worldly and biblical at the same time.
Yes. KR’s attempts to explain the not quite Early Modern English as language that is “filtered or managed” just puts further weight on your answer.
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

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MG 2.0 wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:19 am
But anything to distance yourself from gold plates and angels. You would then have the whole ‘God thing’ to deal with if you go that route.
:roll: :|
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

Post by Dr Moore »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:27 am
MG 2.0 wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:19 am
But anything to distance yourself from gold plates and angels. You would then have the whole ‘God thing’ to deal with if you go that route.
:roll: :|
Seconded. God can only exist if Joseph Smith is a prophet? LOL
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Daved, be honest with me. Are you high right now? - Dr. Kyler R. Rasmussen
:)
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

Post by MG 2.0 »

Dr Moore wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:55 am
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:27 am

:roll: :|
Seconded. God can only exist if Joseph Smith is a prophet? LOL
That’s not what I said. Go back and read for comprehension.

Regards,
MG
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Re: $30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

Post by MG 2.0 »

MG 2.0 wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 2:49 am
Dr Moore wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 12:55 am


Seconded. God can only exist if Joseph Smith is a prophet? LOL
That’s not what I said. Go back and read for comprehension.

Regards,
MG
You really believe Joseph Smith was a savant, huh? That’s a reach.

Regards,
MG
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