Originally posted by Oliver North
you have no idea how happy that made me 🙂
Sadly I find Bayes far too complex mathemetically to do anything more than describe (not being familiar with the notation doesn't help).
I don't suppose you know why a confidence interval can't be said to hold the true value of the mean with 95% probability even though it holds the true value 95% of the time? It seems to mainly be an epistemological issue (the mean is fixed, therefore it is either in the interval or not) but I can't follow the math well enough to tell if I'm right about that.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Sadly I find Bayes far too complex mathemetically to do anything more than describe (not being familiar with the notation doesn't help).
neither am I. I've really only been introduced to it on a conceptual level (recalculating the probability based on previous iterations, etc), but stats are really weird, at least in psych.
So (and admittedly, its taken way longer than it should) I'm finishing my thesis right now, and I've spent at least a month going over the stats I'm running in my paper. My experiment is this ridiculous 2x7x3 mixed model repeated measure design, so its not something that can easily be plugged into SPSS (in fact, even the syntax isn't powerful enough to do some of the tests I wanted to). I spent a huge amount of time going over which type of error correction or method for post-hoc comparisons I should use, and legitimately came up with some stuff I thought was great. However, my advisor basically said straight out, I have to do my stats in the traditional way, because psychologists aren't statisticians, and different stats look "deceptive" to them, ie: if I'm not running a Tukey HSD, it must be because I'm doing something to trick my commitee, rather than the fact that I'm trying to do something more appropriate than a Tukey (in fact, Tukey should never be used in a repeated measures design, because it assumes independence of observations [one trial doesn't influence another], and if you have a single subject performing a task more than once, it is impossible for this not to be violated). Getting published is just as bad, a guy who used to work in my lab had to redo his entire results section because the reviewers just didn't know the stats he was using, and what they wanted was a far less appropriate method, but it was the "traditional" method.
There are some advanced courses I'm hoping to take in my PhD on things like MANOVAs, but in terms of Bayes, it hasn't really broken into the field. Wagenmakers, in Amsterdam, pushes really hard for it and has some decent intro articles, but he is crazy extreme in his epistemology on stats. That being said, he did show that MANOVAs can basically be manipulated to get whatever result you want, among fairly scathing critiques of normal null-hypothesis significance testing. EDIT: hmmm, Wagenmakers might not have written that MANOVA article...
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I don't suppose you know why a confidence interval can't be said to hold the true value of the mean with 95% probability even though it holds the true value 95% of the time? It seems to mainly be an epistemological issue (the mean is fixed, therefore it is either in the interval or not) but I can't follow the math well enough to tell if I'm right about that.
ha, ya, I've always had issues with that too.
I think you are right about the epistemological thing. CIs are generated after an experiment has been run, so the mean is already a set value, as in, there is no longer any probability that it can be anything other than what it is. I think if you built a model based on that CI, you might be able to say what the probability of a future means value is (in fact, isn't that what Bayes does?), but once that mean is generated, it is either within that bound or not.
There are some other things that might have to do with it. RA Fisher, one of the fathers of modern stats, would probably emphasize that a "true mean" is sort of an illusory concept anyways, and you are only ever getting sample means based on whatever sampling criteria you used.
Additionally, it may have something to do with how CIs are calculated. So, (and bare with me if you know all this) CI values are essentially some "test statistic", either an observed mean minus the null, or the difference between two means in the case of contrast analysis, plus or minus the standardized value of alpha based on what test you use (so a CI95% of Z will have a critical value of 1.645, corresponding to a p value of 0.05) multiplied by some averaged value of the variance. Depending on what type of CI you are producing, they get more complex, but the basic idea is:
[teststatistic]+/-[criticalvalue]*[averagedvariance]
One of the biggest drawbacks of null hypothesis significance testing (the type of test you are doing if you are generating CIs) is that p doesn't represent the probability that your hypothesis is correct, but rather, it represents the probability that the data you are analyzing has no pattern in it, ie, it could have been the result of a random number generator. The higher p, the less pattern in the data. From a purely mathematic view then, the equation generating the CI isn't saying "this is the mean value", its saying, "based on how much pattern is in our data we can be 95% confident the true mean lies within these bounds". You don't know the probability of your hypothesis being true, only the probability of chance explaining your results, so you really can't say where that true mean is. EDIT: to clarify, it is the [criticalvalue] component of the equation that only represents the probability of chance.
I hope that makes sense... It makes sense in my brain, but I've literally been running hundreds of CI tests all day and it is now 1:30am... I could be talking total gibberish insofar as my ability to explain stuff goes.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
This seems inconsistent with your previous claim that all babies go to heaven. God doesn't say "I can kill anyone I want, cause I'm God". According to the Bible there was not a single living creature in Sodom and Gommorah that did not deserve death (I believe one of the angel's investigates this). In that case everyone, including unborn children, is capable of being evil.
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Why did the unborn children deserve to die?
* don't make this complicated... God did say it ---
"Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand."
Deuteronomy 32:39
* why did the unborn children deserve to die? wrong question... that's your interpretation... in the Bible, all children are of heaven:
"And said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:3
"But Jesus said, Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 19:14
* now, even if God took the lives of million babies - no matter how ridiculously "evil" you think it is - all children go to heaven...
Originally posted by Galan007
Yes, "God can burn babies to death if he wants to, because he is God."If you think you "win" because you demonstrated the best cop-out in this thread, then good job.
* don't make me laugh... just because you cannot refute Biblical fact, it's already a cop-out?
* piece of advice: you want to preach that the Biblical God is evil because He killed babies? read the BIble first... or more emphatically - don't go there because you don't know anything from it... judging from your posts, you're only whining that God did this, God did that... without even knowing what it really was...
* yeah, "God killed babies"... that's the only thing you say... but the Bible says, all children go to heaven...
Originally posted by Robtard
Peejayd, if you're still around, I'd like to hear your take on Lot, as a religious person.-what your thoughts are on Lot offering up his daughters to be anally (cos that's what sodomites do)gang raped; possibly killed?
* already answered it on page 8 ---
Originally posted by peejayd
* first, although Lot offered his own two daughters, it never consummated... the sodomites insisted on the two men (angels in disguise)... now, why would a perfectly sane and holy man like Lot do that? you see, in the Old Testament, angels are treated as though they were Gods and Lords... and when the sodomites attempted to rape the two angels, it's the most logical thing in that kind of scenario... and second, if the angels are Gods and are powerful, then what would hinder those angels to save Lot's daughters from the filthy sodomites? in fact, the angels did them save eventhough Lot's daughters were not taken by the sodomites:"And [b]they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness
, both small and great, so that they became weary trying to find the door."
Genesis 19:11 [/B]
Originally posted by peejayd
* already answered it on page 8 ---
Ah, you did; thanks for linking.
The daughters being rejected by the sodomites (what a blow to their poor egos) and/or being saved after the fact doesn't reconcile that Lot pretty much threw his own children under the bus. How do you reconcile what Lot did as not being a sin of in itself (I'm assuming offering your children to be raped and murdered is a sin)? Why didn't Lot offer up himself first?
Originally posted by peejayd
* don't make this complicated... God did say it ---"Now see that I, even I, am He, And [b]there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive
; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand."
Deuteronomy 32:39[/B]
I was referring what is said specifically when justifying the destruction of Sodom and Gohmorra. God says that the city will be spared if there are ten good in people and then destroys it. This means that the unborn children of the city were so evil that they deserved to die.
Originally posted by peejayd
* now, even if God took the lives of million babies - no matter how ridiculously "evil" you think it is - all children go to heaven...
I want to know how it can be that all children go to heaven and yet they can be so evil that they deserve death. Do other evil people get into heaven?
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I was referring what is said specifically when justifying the destruction of Sodom and Gohmorra. God says that the city will be spared if there are ten good in people and then destroys it. This means that the unborn children of the city were so evil that they deserved to die.
* nope... that's not the case...
"So the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
Then he said, Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there? And He said, I will not destroy it for the sake of ten."
Genesis 18:26, 32
* God said He will not destroy the city for the sake of ten righteous... does the term "righteous" include children, babies and unborn?
"For every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child."
Hebrews 5:14
* what God meant by the term "righteous", are people who are capable of doing righteousness, hence people who are not children but adult or mature in thinking... so it is wrong to conclude that when God destroy the city, the children in it are evil...
Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I want to know how it can be that all children go to heaven and yet they can be so evil that they deserve death. Do other evil people get into heaven?
* i believe i already answered the issue above...
* in addition to this, i would also like to give you another Biblical perpective: physical death can be a punishment, but it is not the punishment... why?
"And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,"
Hebrews 9:27
* God appointed all people to die, so we all die... good people die, evil people die... physical death does not mean you are automatically evil... in some circumstances, death saves:
"The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come."
Isaiah 57:1
* in some circumstances, to die is gain:
"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
Philippians 1:21
* in some circumstances, death is precious to God:
"Precious in the sight of the Lord Is the death of His saints."
Psalms 116:15
Originally posted by Robtard
Ah, you did; thanks for linking.The daughters being rejected by the sodomites (what a blow to their poor egos) and/or being saved after the fact doesn't reconcile that Lot pretty much threw his own children under the bus. How do you reconcile what Lot did as not being a sin of in itself (I'm assuming offering your children to be raped and murdered is a sin)? Why didn't Lot offer up himself first?
* we should know first the character of Lot:
"And delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked
For that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds"
II Peter 2:7-8
* in the Bible, Lot is a righteous man with a righteous soul... so i am pretty sure that under normal circumstances, righteous Lot will not offer his daughters to be raped... but why did he do it? well, this is a special circumstance where two angels (disguised as men) went to Lot's house and the men of Sodom wants to rape them... this is no ordinary situation since angels are depicted to be Gods in the Old Testament, in fact, a certain "Angel of the Lord" is characterized to be as God the Father Himself... so given that situation, Lot opted to offer up his daughters instead of the angels he believes as deities...
* why didn't he offer himself first? i think, Lot was thinking, since the angels disguised as men are good-looking (i'm pretty sure), offering himself (having an old age close to Abraham's age at that time, maybe 70+ years old) is not an attractive sight for trade of the angels... and offering his daughters might have a better shot... just my two cents, that's the most logical thing i can think of...
Originally posted by peejayd
* we should know first the character of Lot:"And delivered [b]righteous Lot
, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked
For that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds"
II Peter 2:7-8* in the Bible, Lot is a righteous man with a righteous soul... so i am pretty sure that under normal circumstances, righteous Lot will not offer his daughters to be raped... but why did he do it? well, this is a special circumstance where two angels (disguised as men) went to Lot's house and the men of Sodom wants to rape them... this is no ordinary situation since angels are depicted to be Gods in the Old Testament, in fact, a certain "Angel of the Lord" is characterized to be as God the Father Himself... so given that situation, Lot opted to offer up his daughters instead of the angels he believes as deities...
* why didn't he offer himself first? i think, Lot was thinking, since the angels disguised as men are good-looking (i'm pretty sure), offering himself (having an old age close to Abraham's age at that time, maybe 70+ years old) is not an attractive sight for trade of the angels... and offering his daughters might have a better shot... just my two cents, that's the most logical thing i can think of... [/B]
The most righteous are not above sin, just because they're righteous.
You're essentially saying "the lesser of two evils", which still has Lot sinning, just sinning to a lesser degree by the standards set. Seems God should have struck Lot along with the rest of the sinners in Sodom, no?
While logical. Lot could have tried, no? That would have been the most righteous thing to do in the situation.
Originally posted by Robtard
The most righteous are not above sin, just because they're righteous.
* agreed, Ecclesiastes 7:20... 👆 even righteous people commit sin...
Originally posted by Robtard
You're essentially saying "the lesser of two evils", which still has Lot sinning, just sinning to a lesser degree by the standards set. Seems God should have struck Lot along with the rest of the sinners in Sodom, no?While logical. Lot could have tried, no? That would have been the most righteous thing to do in the situation.
* i kinda agree with you here, but while righteous, Lot is not stated to be one of the wisest or quick-witted persons (not that i'm undermining his capabilities), and just to be fair, this situation happened so sudden, maybe Lot is not good in making quick decisions...
* in choosing "the lesser evil of the two" is still a sin, since technically it is still evil... but i'm pretty sure God is merciful and understanding enough to let those special circumstances slide...
Originally posted by Darth Jello
Out of curiosity, wouldn't the literal biblical definition of Sodomy be "inhospitable and cruel behavior towards guests and visitors"?
Edit: YouTube video
As this video shows, Gomorrah was named after an even weirder move.