Misconceptions about Me, Baye's, Rigor, Exodus, Evolution

[borisp]

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boris---

Wait, are you saying that patience/dedication + high-but-not-genius-IQ can achieve non-trivial results in math/science?

I honestly did not know this was possible. (No sarcasm.) My impression had always been that essentially all important work was done by a few transcendent geniuses. Confirm/deny?

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I would say that genius IQ is a prerequisite, but patience and dedication are the truly rare qualities, and they are the ones that produce the truly groundbreaking results. However, I bet that many prolific mathematicians would score poorly on a "run of the mill" IQ test, since they probably would work too slowly, thinking more carefully than is appropriate. If you want to read someone who is much more qualified than I write about these matters, then I suggest Terrence Tao's blog. He has a post where he compares the value of hard work with genius, whatever that means.

People often neglect the value of asking the right question, which is really important in areas of research, and it is often the limiting factor. Once the right question is formulated, then IQ takes over. To be able to answer questions on a test, that someone else has cooked up to be easily answerable, is an absolutely trivial ability, even if it is rare.

And it is probably accurate to say that most important work can be traced back to the work of a few transcendent geniuses, but many revolutionary contributions have amounted to little more than noticing that someone else's idea worked in a completely different arena. I have heard professors describe this as getting lucky; i.e., that being in the right place at the right time, talking to the right people, with the right combination of ideas, can accomplish much more than any one person's directed thought.

[Subfallen]

Interesting, thanks for the thoughts. I am struggling to decide if I should even bother trying to do something useful with my life---so every new perspective helps.

Edit - Link to the blog post if others are interested.

[jay_shark]

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I managed to get past the "rigorous mathematicians have wasted their lives" part...

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Then you are a better person than I [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think you meant to say " you are a better person than me "

[borisp]

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I managed to get past the "rigorous mathematicians have wasted their lives" part...

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Then you are a better person than I [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I think you meant to say " you are a better person than me "

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So you mentally complete this sentence to say "You are a better person than me am"?

Whatever floats your boat. Keep in mind that being attentive to the details of grammar, especially when the message is clear, is not facilitating communication, it is impeding it.

[jay_shark]

Maybe it is obsessive compulsive or whatever David was talking about .

[Pauwl]

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Slightly tougher one. There are ten coins in a jar. One is heavily weighted towards heads. 90%. You pick a coin and flip three heads. The total chances that could happen is 1/10 x .729 plus 9/10 x .125. DUCY .0729 + .1125 = .1854. So the the chances we picked the bad coin is 0.0729 /.1854



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FYP

[chezlaw]

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1. With few exceptions I make no effort at rigor. I consider rigorous mathemeticians, like the ones who wasted their lives figuring out how to eliminate the use of infintesimals, either obsessive compulsive, or so devoid of cleverness that they know this is the only way for them to contribute anything.

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'help, Nurse!'

[calcbandit]

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Please apply your ratio of probability technique to exodus (including the miracle part) and the resurrection. You may have undefined quantities in the numerator & denominator...

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My take is this:

David uses Baye's in 2 parts, first to show that the lack of evidence of Exodus is more damning to the Exodus claim than the lack of Ressurection evidence is to the ressurection claim.

It goes like this: GIVEN that the ressurection occured, what physical evidence would we ever hope to find of this? We can't expect photographic or video evidence. The best we could hope for is eyewitness accounts. Shaky, at best. So, just because we don't find evidence doesn't mean the ressurection didn't happen, because if it did, we wouldn't expect to find evidence.

When a whole tribe of people is enslaved and then leaves (we'll just make this the claim and leave out all of the fireworks like first-bornicide and sea-parting), would you expect evidence? Yes. Claims like "Ramses covered up the Hittite defeat, so he covered up the Hebrew's defeating him as well" are obviously terrible, since we still have evidence of the Hittites defeating the Egyptipans, despite the cover up. So, given the lack of evidence, does this mean that Exodus likely didn't happen. In this case, unlike the ressurection, the lack of evidence proves that the event likely didn't happen. Because if it did happen, we would expect evidence, like we have from nearly all other events in Egyptian history.

Example: some aliens come to earth and find everything to be totally deserted since 1 year ago, evidence suggests nobody had packed anything, just vanished instantly. One alien suggests that all of the humans simply vanished. A different alien suspects nuclear war incinerated all humans.

There is really no evidence that supports either theory over the other. Nobody knows what happened, and we don't have any evidence to prove one way or another. No video, no withnesses. No evidence.

Clearly, the alien with the vanishing theory is the favorite. Because if there were a nuclear war we'd expect nuclear craters, higher radiation, etc. There'd be evidence. With vanishing (and the ressurection) we wouldn't expect there to be evidence. But, with the nuclear war and an entire race of slaves existing for many years in a country known for thorough record keeping, if this happened at all there would be evidence. And there isn't.


As far as the second part, saying that Exodus is far more likely to have occured anyway, David is just saying that a man rising from the dead requires an exception to the known laws of physics. In our experience, nobody has ever risen from the dead and been photographed, videod, studied by modern day medical experts. That's not saying it's impossible, it's just saying that it's extremely unlikely.

To put it mathematically, let's fill in the terms of Baye's theorem.

Our claim is that "given all of the evidence that Jesus was ressurected (bible, eyewitness accounts that were recording much later?), what is the probability that Jesus ressurected?"

We need to know the probability that the stories in the bible about Jesus would have been written, even if he wasn't ressurected. Even if we trust those who first wrote down the ressurection story to be pretty discerning as to have no written anything down unless it really happened (let's say they would only write it down if it happened 90% of the time, they don't take no BS!-hell, make it 99), the probability of Jesus ressurecting even given our extremely discerning recorders who provide evidence for the event in terms of the bible. Why? Because the probability of anyone ressurecting is ridiculously near to 0.

So, P(Ressurection|Bible) = P(Bible|Ressurection) * P(Anybody ressurecting) / P(that the New Testament would have been written anyway, with or without the ressurection).

-assumptions: if Jesus actually did ressurect, there is no chance that it wouldn't have been recorded in the Bible. P(Bible|Ressurection) = 1.

-P(anybody ressurecting) = 0.0000000000000000000000001.

-P(NT gets recorded anyway, even without ressurection) = .01. I'm beibg generous and saying that the NT writers wouldn't have written it unless they were fairly certan that the ressurection happened. 99% of the time they write about an event, the event happened. P(NT ) = .01.

Plugging in, we still get a mathematically 0 value for the ressurection since people don't come back from the dead. Even if the NT writers rarely make errors.

There is no such huge penalty on Exodus, since it's entirely feasible for one group to enslave another.

[carlo]

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P(anybody ressurecting) = 0.0000000000000000000000001.



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That really is the issue,isn't it? No need for a theorem to obfuscate a disbelief. complete waste of paper and ink.

I repeat, the probabilities betray the basic bias of the author or authors. No new information here.

Consider my post on the Flood(Exodus Post). You would consider a mathematical approach as superior to multicultural evidence of the Flood. Illogical to dismiss it out of hand.

The Resurrection can only be approached by seeing Man as more than physicality and takes study but underneath all the hubbub of the Resurrection the Man on the street in some form knows of its verity but the forces of abstract thinking and crass power of scientific materialism is at the present time much stronger than he. But this strength does not make the truth.

[djames]

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So, P(Ressurection|Bible) = P(Bible|Ressurection) * P(Anybody ressurecting) / P(that the New Testament would have been written anyway, with or without the ressurection).

-assumptions: if Jesus actually did ressurect, there is no chance that it wouldn't have been recorded in the Bible. P(Bible|Ressurection) = 1.

-P(anybody ressurecting) = 0.0000000000000000000000001.

-P(NT gets recorded anyway, even without ressurection) = .01. I'm beibg generous and saying that the NT writers wouldn't have written it unless they were fairly certan that the ressurection happened. 99% of the time they write about an event, the event happened. P(NT ) = .01.

Plugging in, we still get a mathematically 0 value for the ressurection since people don't come back from the dead. Even if the NT writers rarely make errors.

There is no such huge penalty on Exodus, since it's entirely feasible for one group to enslave another.

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Personally, I think assigning numbers to any of these probabilities is completely arbitrary and only reflects our personally perceptions (i.e. subjectivity) and is not based on any probabilistic framework.

However, I'll join in your fun:
P(B|R) = 1, ok fine, my subjectivity matches yours.
P(R) ~= 0, ok fine, mine matches yours.
P(NT | no R) ... for me this is also ~= 0. I don't see how you're being "generous" by assigning 0.01. To me, if Jesus didn't resurrect, then he was nothing more than a great speaker/leader of the time, and is not the son of god, etc., etc. However, I completely subscribe to this probability being totally subjective based on my personal beliefs and not grounded on any model.

So my hand waving math yields 0 / 0 for a nice little undefined quantity, as it should be when applied with rigor anyway. But, since I like rigor, I guess I'm a loser who doesn't understand mathematics anyway (of course you didn't say this though).