long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche. Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Monday, November 18, 2024

Cumorah 2024 - 1: decision tree analysis

In the ongoing pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding, we'll spend the next week or so reviewing multiple working hypotheses about the Hill Cumorah/Ramah by applying the FAITH model.

Facts

Assumptions

Inferences

Theories

Hypotheses

___________

As we'll see, there are no disagreements about the relevant facts. We can all read for ourselves the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah/Ramah.

Multiple working hypotheses arise from differences in assumptions, inferences, and theories regarding those teachings. One way to view these is through the all/some/none framework that we will discuss. 

Proponents/believers then corroborate their assumptions, inferences, and theories by assembling evidence to support their hypotheses, using basic techniques of confirmation bias. 

This might sound complicated to people who are new to the Cumorah issue, so we can summarize it with this general decision tree analysis:

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Applying basic decision tree analysis to the Cumorah issue produces this simple, clear explanation for how and why we have multiple working hypotheses. You can use the same decision tree for any of the multiple working hypotheses about the location of the Hill Cumorah/Ramah.

In this example, we follow the logic of the Mexico setting for Cumorah promoted by Scripture Central, BYU Studies, the Interpreters, etc.

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BYU Studies "Cumorah"
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This example we follow the logic of Tyler Griffin's fantasy setting for Cumorah.


Tyler Griffin's fantasy map Cumorah
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