Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Apikorus · 03-17-2007, 10:17 AM

Rev. Edward Miller was Scrivener's editor on "A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, for the Use of Biblical Students" (1894). If Nazaroo is this Edward Miller, I'd like to ask him about his diet and exercise regimen.

Nazaroo · 03-17-2007, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Alas now only the Japanese have the foresight to fund such groups. With few exceptions, the best scientists at IBM and Bell Labs (the two best places for physics) left for the universities long ago. (My own department has benefited from this exodus.)

Rather than patents, a better rule of thumb is the physicist with the highest H index / most grants / most prizes wins. Patents really mean very little in physics.

So true..so true. The fun times seem to have vanished.

Quote:

Rev. Edward Miller was Scrivener's editor on "A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, for the Use of Biblical Students" (1894). If Nazaroo is this Edward Miller, I'd like to ask him about his diet and exercise regimen.

Well done.

Is Apikorus the only person who's awake in this thread? Perhaps you should let him do the critiqing for a while...

Apikorus · 03-17-2007, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nazaroo

Is Apikorus the only person who's awake in this thread? Perhaps you should let him do the critiqing for a while...

Sorry, I only do Hebrew Bible and rabbinics. I'm just slumming here...

Quote:

So true..so true. The fun times seem to have vanished.

The biologists seem to be the ones having all the fun (and funding) these days.

Nazaroo · 03-19-2007, 08:00 AM

Just to finish off the discussion on Willker's use of PCA on the grouping of MSS for the PA, I'd like to quote some excellent keypoints from Mark C. Chu-Carroll's blog, GOOD MATH, BAD MATH:

Quote:

The problem is that when you build a mathematical model, you need to make sure that your abstraction captures all of the relevant features of what you're modeling. And when you draw conclusions based on the analysis of the mathematical model, you need to make sure that your abstraction isn't the source of the conclusion. Both of those are different ways of stating the fundamental rule of mathematical modeling:

Mathematical models must be validated against the thing that they model.

Demsbki's reduction of the process of analyzing certain features of the universe to the a metaphor involving recognition of patterns in coin flips is fine with me. The problem is that he creates a model that omits important elements of the real world, and then insists that the conclusions drawn from his abstract model are applicable to the real world. But in fact, his conclusions are the result of properties of his model, not of the real world. The validation of his model fails: the specific conclusions are the result of eliminating things from his model that might permit a different conclusion.

To continue with the example of the coin flip metaphor: if you're studying patterns, you could abstract the problem of observing patterns to one of observing flipping coins in an idealized universe, where the coin is perfectly even, and nothing about the surface that it lands on can affect the outcome of a flip. That might be a useful model for trying to understand the difference between random sequences of flips, and patterns in sequences.

If you then try to use that model to determine the cause of a pattern, you'll conclude that the only possible cause of a pattern is the actions of the coin flipper. If you've abstracted away everything that could influence the outcome of the coin-flip except the influence of the coin-flipper, then in your model, concluding that the flipper is the only possible source of a pattern could be a reasonable conclusion.

That doesn't mean that you can then say that in the real world, the only possible cause of a pattern in a sequence of coin-flips is some action taken by the coin-flipper. You can't apply that simplified abstraction of your model to the real world without showing that it's a valid model with respect to the the properties that affected your conclusion.

The ultra-simple coin flip model isn't valid for the real world, because it deliberately omits factors of the real world that could influence the conclusion. In the real world, there are unfair coins (both deliberately unfair coins, and coins that have become unfair either through minting flaws or through wear and tear). There are magnetic fields. There are irregular surfaces.

The problem with many of the conclusions that bad mathematicians draw from mathematical models is that the models don't represent what they claim to represent. They abstract away relevant features of reality, and then demand that reality doesn't possess those features, because they aren't in the model."

---------------------------------
... [additional post:]

"You can create a mathematical model of something that focuses on one or two aspects of it - that abstraction from the overwhelming complexity of reality to the simplicity of the model is precisely the value of mathematical modeling.

But when you want to draw conclusions from that model, you have to be sure that the conclusions aren't an artifact of your limited model. If the process of abstraction in generating your model eliminated a factor that's relevant to the conclusion you want to draw, then you can't use that model to draw that conclusion.

So in the case you're talking about: you can understand certain population dynamics by considering a limited model. And within the constraints of the model, that abstraction is valuable, and can lead to interesting insights and discoveries. But if you wanted to draw a conclusion about, say, the cause of a sudden precipitous population drop, and your model didn't include predation, then the set of possible causes for the population change that you could infer from your model will be incomplete: you'd be missing the possible causes that were excluded from your model.

What I'm trying to argue for here is the necessity of the validation step: before you can draw a conclusion about reality from a mathematical model, you need to demonstrate that the model is valid with respect to the features that could affect the conclusion.

So to go back to the Dembski'ian model: if you assume a fair coin and a smooth table, and you get a highly improbable pattern of coin-flips, you can reasonably conclude that the coin-flipper is doing something to produce the non-random pattern. But if you see a non-random coin-flipping pattern in the real world, you would probably guess that the most likely would be an unfair coin. The conclusion (cheating flipper) is justified in the model; but because the model can't be validated against reality for that conclusion, the conclusion can't be extrapolated from the model to reality."

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/200...ical_model.php

(italics his)
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comments:

"To my mind Dembski illustrates by example a truth uncomfortable to some, obvious to others: one can be a mathematician yet still be a lousy mathematical modeller."

Posted by: loren | June 26, 2006 09:54 AM
----------------------------------------

"...The most basic mathematical training teaches you that one mistake invalidates an entire proof (many published proofs are thus invalidated although the mistakes are fixable) so if you are consistently sloppy, you can get from any assumption A to any conclusion B in a manner that looks like it could work until it is read very carefully. ..."

Posted by: PaulC | June 26, 2006 11:56 AM

-------------------------------
"Describing modelling is a complex business. I haven't read those referenced books on it, but I have some small experience of doing it on processes with persistent general but complex behaviour.

We learned the following:
1. If your model explains the basic behaviour, people will adopt it after you have done a few experimental papers using it.
2. If your model explains the basic behaviour, it will help considerable in defining the remaining properties of the process, see 1.
3. The model will be more complex than basic theory, since we want basic theory to be parsimonious and thus applications are messier, but it will still be useful to make it as parsimonious as possible, see 1 and 2.

I note that ID makes a point of consistently failing on point 1.

Another thing we learned from other groups model attempts is that people actually circularly put in ad hocs that gives them the behaviour they want to verify the model with. The ad hoc gives the persistent feature that they see, ie the model is 'verified'. So is the next model which uses a different ad hoc. And those models fail in the next experiment that typically need other values on the free parameters of the ad hoc.

The later problem reminds me somewhat of when Dembski invents a "law of conservation of information" since he wants to prove that a designer provided information. The law assumes ad hoc evolution is closed to prove that information is conserved, ergo evolution needs information input. (Evolution isn't a closed system since the environment both changes and provides information on how new evolutionary properties succeeds.) Or when Behe ad hoc assumes irreducible complexity is irreducible.

It isn't clear cut analogies but in general it shows the problem of assuming what you want to show. The only predictive about such results are that they will fail."

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson

What is Chu-Carroll getting at?

When a model oversimplifies a real-world situation, it becomes disconnected from underlying reality. It will mislead us not just in the area of its presentation of 'reality', but also in the limited (and incorrect) number of options it makes available for both causation and effect.

Willker's oversimplified model of the groups in the MSS base containing the PA is not just incorrect as a presentation of the number and kind of groups. It will also mislead us in any genealogical model that attempts to explain the order and nature of interdependance of those groups, as well as miss entirely the relations between the undocumented groups.

Finally, as one of the responding posters in the GOOD MATH/BAD MATH thread points out,

independant verification of the results of the modelling technique must be done. And it must be done using an entirely independant technique or observation method. Not as Willker has done, repeating the same method on a slightly different data-base (and not even bothering to report the actual results!)

hatsoff · 03-19-2007, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nazaroo

Back to the topic.

Lets examine the alleged Lukanisms of the Pericope de Adultera.

I will post a list shortly. We can begin with those culled by Cadbury in 1917.

I think an origin in Luke's Gospel is quite unlikely. It's not impossible, of course, as considerable suspicion is raised by its present in medeival mss. of that Gospel. Your idea that scribes mistakenly placed it there by copying out of lectionary texts is interesting, but ultimately only one of many possible explanations--and in my opinion not the most likely, much less more likely than any other explanation.

The popularly imagined scenario is that a few scribes, under any number of circumstances, appended the pericope to the end of some mss., the beginning or end of John's Gospel, or wherever blank space permitted; later scribes, then, unaware of or confused as to its proper location, took it upon themselves to force it into the narratives.

A less likely, but still plausible, explanation is that the omission of the pericope in many Johannine mss. led to speculation among scribes. This may have in turn led to a rumor that its absense was due to the fact that it did not really belong to John, but instead Luke. Wishing to correct the error, some scribes, perhaps even working interdependently, forced it into Luke--or, as they saw it, back into Luke.

But all we really know is that something strange happened, and as a result the passage shows up in medeival Lukan mss. Anything more, as far as I can tell, is just imaginative guessing.

Nazaroo · 03-19-2007, 02:12 PM

For me the most likely scenario for the Lukan MSS (at least the initial placement) was the attempt by disobedient scribes to preserve the verses by hiding them, after they were instructed to leave them out of John.

Niall Armstrong · 03-20-2007, 12:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nazaroo

For me the most likely scenario for the Lukan MSS (at least the initial placement) was the attempt by disobedient scribes to preserve the verses by hiding them, after they were instructed to leave them out of John.

But try to imagine the telling-of these poor scribes would get if they were found out!
“Hmm. Good! I see you abstained from inserting that adulterous perikope, as I told you to. We’ll allow you to copy another bible, forthwith! But, wait! What do I see? You’ve inserted it into the Holy Gospel of Luke! We’ll have to burn the whole thing now. How could you do such a thing? And what did ever Luke do to deserve such a treatment? You stupid mother of heresy!”

This isn’t an explanation. It’s an insult of the intelligence and zeal of mediaeval scribes and biblical scholars.

Nazaroo · 03-20-2007, 02:09 AM

Quote:

But try to imagine the telling-of these poor scribes would get if they were found out!
“Hmm. Good! I see you abstained from inserting that adulterous perikope, as I told you to. We’ll allow you to copy another bible, forthwith! But, wait! What do I see? You’ve inserted it into the Holy Gospel of Luke! We’ll have to burn the whole thing now. How could you do such a thing? And what did ever Luke do to deserve such a treatment? You stupid mother of heresy!”

This isn’t an explanation. It’s an insult of the intelligence and zeal of mediaeval scribes and biblical scholars.

But try to imagine two obvious factors:

(1) "And if any man takes away from the words of the book,
God shall take away his part out of the Tree/Book of Life..." (e.g. Rev 22:19)

This provides a huge incentive for a scribe to break ranks and attempt to save the PA.

(2) Obviously they weren't caught, or there would be no MSS at all with this variation.

So your scenario falls on its face, and this following scenario must have been the case instead:

"But, wait! What do I see? You’ve inserted it into the Holy Gospel of Luke! ...
No. False alarm. You were just copying your exemplar exactly as told.
Relax good scribe, you are not in any trouble. I will check with the Abbott
about this odd copy of the gospels. Its obviously not your fault. For now,
put it on the shelf with the others."

The explanation remains as valid as before. Its no insult to anyone's intelligence, and it accounts for the zeal of medieval scribes well, and the existance of the small number of closely related MSS all about the same age which have moved the PA to Luke.

hatsoff · 03-20-2007, 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nazaroo

The explanation remains as valid as before. Its no insult to anyone's intelligence, and it accounts for the zeal of medieval scribes well, and the existance of the small number of closely related MSS all about the same age which have moved the PA to Luke.

Niall's objection is badly articulated, but somewhat valid. If scribes really were given specific instructions to leave it out, but disagreed with their benefactors' decision, they may well have wanted to hide it in another section of the Bible, yet declined out of fear of reprimand. But your scenario makes sense, too: their fear of God based on the Revelation passage may have been greater, and caused them to include the passage, regardless.

And thus your idea indeed does "[remain] as valid as before." The problem is, it was never very convincing to start. It's just one of many possible explanations, with its own set of problems just like any other. In my opinion, the primary wrench, here, is why did they always choose Luke? Of course, that is not insurmountable, either. And it is a clever idea, that it might have been intentionally hidden in another Gospel. I certainly did not think of it before it was suggested--though in my defense I hadn't really spent more than a minute or two considering the various possibilities.

Chris Weimer · 03-20-2007, 06:27 AM

Many communities didn't even hold Revelation canonical. Moreover, every manuscript is missing something or another - things are left out, mostly on accident. The argument is imaginative, but not at all convincing. You have absolutely zero evidence to back you up on it.

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03-17-2007, 10:17 AM	#231
Apikorus Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,396	Rev. Edward Miller was Scrivener's editor on "A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, for the Use of Biblical Students" (1894). If Nazaroo is this Edward Miller, I'd like to ask him about his diet and exercise regimen.

03-19-2007, 02:12 PM	#236
Nazaroo Banned Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Canada Posts: 528	For me the most likely scenario for the Lukan MSS (at least the initial placement) was the attempt by disobedient scribes to preserve the verses by hiding them, after they were instructed to leave them out of John.

03-20-2007, 06:27 AM	#240
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	Many communities didn't even hold Revelation canonical. Moreover, every manuscript is missing something or another - things are left out, mostly on accident. The argument is imaginative, but not at all convincing. You have absolutely zero evidence to back you up on it.

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