Re: Bible Codes Resurrected?

From: Avi Norowitz (usenet_at_ulag.net)
Date: 11/23/04 

Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:20:51 -0500

"Craig Feinstein" <cafeinst@msn.com> wrote in message
news:b671fc3e.0411220951.12a64c72@posting.google.com...
> usenet@ulag.net (Avi Norowitz) wrote in message
news:<e6dfe776.0411201721.4121bec6@posting.google.com>...
> >
> > It is true that the choice of appellations is regarded by McKay et al
> > (1999) to be "the most serious problem with the data" [1]. However,
> > nowhere in the paper is it argued that Witztum et al should have used
> > have used all possible appellations.
>
> Maybe not explicitly but it certainly was implied.

Perhaps the following sentences can be interpreted in that way:

"Since WRR used far less than half of the appellations by which their rabbis
were known, the issue of how the selection was made is central to the
interpretation of their experiment ... This has led to the widely held
misconception that the list was comprehensive or that the selection was
rigorous and mechanical. Not so."

In any case, the paper does not at any time state that an appropriate list
for an experiment attempting to provide evidence of Torah Codes is a
combination of the two lists from Witztum et al (1994) and the War and Peace
list of Bar-Natan et al (1999). The reason this is inappropriate is because,
as McKay et al have shown, Witztum et al's lists seem to be tuned to acheive
remarkable results in Genesis. Nobody has claimed that combining the War and
Peace list with these two lists will necessarily cancel out the effect.

>
> > 1. Witztum et al tended to choose options more favorable to their
> > results when a choice was available [1]. The same was found in
> > numerous other experiments by Witztum et al [2], and the bias is most
> > apparent in the 70 nations experiment [3].
>
> This is basically the same argument as I described before.

No, this is a different argument. Please see the section of the paper titled
"The study of variations" (pages 14-20).

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/StatSci/StatSci.pdf

> > 2. The P2 value, a measurement used by Witztum et al., was closer to
> > each other for the two lists of rabbis than what would be expected by
> > chance. Having them close together makes it appear that the results
> > are consistent. However, McKay et al. found that when shuffling the
> > two lists of rabbis together and splitting them in half, the results
> > were only equal around 1% of the time. The same study was performed on
> > the rabbis in Gans' cities experiment and found similar results [1].
>
> I talked in person with Gans about this a few years ago because I had
> questions about this. He said that when he did his cities experiment,
> he did not split the lists up as was done in the WRR paper.

Yes, but Gans didn't compile the appellations and cities on his own. Rather,
he obtained the data from Zvi Inbal, a lecturer on the Torah Codes and a
friend of Doron Witztum. (As far as I know Inbal has not made any public
statement about the origins of the data.) The hypothesis (which is not
explicitly stated) seems to be that Witztum compiled the lists expecting
them to be used in two seperate experiments, adjusted them to demonstrate
remarkable but consistent results (as he did with his previous lists), and
gave them to Inbal to give to Gans. This hypothesis seems to be the most
consistent with the data. Please see the section titled "Traces of naive
statistical expectation" (pages 20-22) for more information.

> >
> > Is there any evidence that could potentially be found that would
> > refute the *possibility* that there are hidden codes in Genesis? What
> > about hidden codes War and Peace?
>
> That is pretty difficult to do. Sort of like trying to define
> randomness. It's relatively easy to show that a sequence is not random
> by finding a pattern. However, showing that there is no conceivable
> pattern is much more difficult. So there is no real "proof" that there
> are no hidden codes in War and Peace although it is pretty safe to
> assume such.

I agree. However, after considering the evidence for and against the Torah
Codes, I also believe that it is pretty safe to assume that there are no
codes in the Torah.

> I have a feeling that McKay and Simon will take Haralick's claims
> seriously and try to dispute them regardless of whether it is
> published in a peer-reviewed journal or not. The fact that it is up on
> the internet and presents a serious challenge to their claims by
> someone as distinguished as Prof. Haralick (you can find his resume
> here: http://prl.cs.gc.cuny.edu/web/LabWebsite/Haralick/main.htm) is
> enough for them to intelligently try to dispute it. Up until now,
> McKay and Simon have been winning the "codes debate".

Fortunately they will still be winning even if none of the experts respond
to Haralick's paper, since the reliability of any experiment using data from
Witztum et al's lists must automatically be questioned.

> >
> > Yes, it is quite amusing.
>
> The reason I pointed it out was not to try to convince anyone that
> Genesis was written by God but to show that there are some patterns in
> the text which appear not to be by chance.

Before it was demonstrated that hidden codes can be found in any book, Bible
Codes appeared to not exist by chance (and I'm sure you would agree that
*some* of the impressive looking codes exist by chance).

Before it was demonstrated that hidden patterns of 7 can be found in any
book, Panin's patterns in the Old Testament and New Testament appeared to
not exist by chance:

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/panin.html

It has not yet been demonstrated that similar patterns to the pattern you
pointed out can be found in any book. However, when this pattern becomes the
subject of a bestseller or a paper in a peer-reviewed journal I suspect
someone knowledgable will be motivated enough demonstrate this.

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