Where did the Book of Mormon Take Place?

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

There is nothing about the phrase that signals an aside or interruption of thought. 

The fact that the phrases could be removed without making the sentence incomplete or losing meaning very clearly shows that they are an aside or interruption of thought not essential to the sentences. I showed this in every single example I offered.

 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

my point was never that the components identified by Carmack were sequentially out of order in relation to themselves

Then you should not have said that I was "inserting something else in its place" 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My point was that when you insert intervening content, it changes the syntactic order of the sentence as a whole

No it doesn't, and if this is what you learned from your college education you should get a refund on your tuition.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Since those types of insertions rearrange the structure of the sentence

They don't rearrange the structure. The arrangement remains the same. The added explanatory clauses simply make the sentence more complex while keeping the core structure in place and in the same order.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

they can definitely make a difference in frequency rates

"frequency rates" is a made up measure that does not show what Carmack thinks it does.

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You can't just throw in an intervening independent clause or other features and assume it won't affect frequency. And Carmack's whole point was about rarity, so it matters to look at instances that are precisely similar to what he proposed. 

Yeah, and Carmack's whole rarity argument is nonsense. He'd be laughed out of a room if he tried to argue this in front of others linguists--even if it was applying it to something without religious baggage.

 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Yes, I realize that most texts have natural variations in usage.

You're beginning to see!

 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But I also realize that the specific types and patterns of variations we can expect from any given speaker or writer is typically constrained to a large degree by his or her linguistic environment.

And what is that degree?

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, one can look at the normative patterns of variation in a given linguistic milieu and then make reasonable probability estimates about what types of patterns any given speaker/writer in that milieu would be likely to exhibit.

Probability estimates can determine little about specific persons. Probability estimates make it very unlikely for someone to win the lottery. But guess what? Someone will likely win that lottery.

 

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You can't just argue that since speakers are known to vary in their use of certain items of lexis, grammar, and syntax then all variations are equally likely to be produced by the speaker and any variations at all can easily be explained by the simple fact that variation exists as a general principle of language. 

You sure do love the strawmen. Nobody is arguing that. What Davis, I , Gardner, and others have simply argued that it is possible. None of us live in Joseph's head and know for certain what was going on. However, the possibility that Joseph could have worded the text necessarily negates the demand that he could not have worded them.

 

Well, Ryan, we are getting nowhere, and I need to spend my time on things other than pointing out how much you enjoy beating straw. Best of luck to you.

Edited May 6 by the narrator

[the narrator]

32 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, you probably just can't do it, because the data isn't there to support an alternative claim. Whenever Carmack's assertions about rarity or obsolescence turn out to be fundamentally accurate, then there will inevitably be a pivot like this--away from the implications of the data and towards some superficial, overly reductive, or high-level linguistic principle or theory that doesn't actually deal with the cumulative statistical unlikelihood of Smith producing the text. 

Lolz. Good luck with life.

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

my point was never that the components identified by Carmack were sequentially out of order in relation to themselves

Then you should not have said that I was "inserting something else in its place" 

It should have been obvious what I was talking about, since that was already the established antecedent of the discussion. We were talking about the difference between the linguistic construction identified by Carmack and the significance of the intervening contents in the examples you provided (which disrupted his construction). 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My point was that when you insert intervening content, it changes the syntactic order of the sentence as a whole

No it doesn't, and if this is what you learned from your college education you should get a refund on your tuition.

Are you really arguing that the following examples have the same syntactic arrangement: 

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkenness (Alma 55:19) A B C
• for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned (Letter to editor in Times and Seasons) A C B

Do you deny that the subordinate clauses and independent clauses are swapped in their arrangement? 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Since those types of insertions rearrange the structure of the sentence

They don't rearrange the structure. The arrangement remains the same. The added explanatory clauses simply make the sentence more complex while keeping the core structure in place and in the same order.

Um, no. In additional examples you cited, the core structure of the specific linguistic feature identified by Carmack (for this cause that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase>) retains its sequential order, but the STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE is obviously changed. When you swap the placement of dependent and independent clauses in a sentence, the sentence doesn't just get "more complex." The actual syntax of the sentence has changed. This is so obvious I'm surprised you are arguing against it. 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

they can definitely make a difference in frequency rates

"frequency rates" is a made up measure that does not show what Carmack thinks it does.

It is remarkable that you think this is a "made up measure" (as if Carmack simply made it up and other linguists aren't considering it as relevant in a whole host of contexts).  Frequency rates for specific authors, especially when contextualized by broader frequency rates within corpora or time-period databases, is obviously relevant to the question of Book of Mormon authorship. 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But I also realize that the specific types and patterns of variations we can expect from any given speaker or writer is typically constrained to a large degree by his or her linguistic environment.

And what is that degree?

It depends. But let me give you a context to help illustrate the point. I know by my own experience that when I attend sacrament meeting, I can expect a certain degree of archaic speech forms in certain contexts (prayers, sacrament talks, lessons, etc.). For instance, I expect that when someone prays, they will likely use a few standardized forms of archaism (thee, thou, hast, wilt, etc.). But there is actually a minimal degree of expected archaism.

What I definitely do NOT expect is for someone to deliver a talk using a whole host of archaic grammar, lexis, and syntax from the Bible and Book of Mormon. And it's not just that I don't expect them to use such forms in that context. It's that I don't think they would even be capable of doing so. Most of them are not consciously aware of these archaic forms, even though they read them regularly in the scriptures. And these archaic forms have never become part of their active vocabularies, since they don't speak or write like that in their normal day-to-day communications. So I think it would be highly unexpected to find members of the church today who would be capable of implementing robust archaism in ANY of their idiolectic patterns, no matter the context of their communication. And this is despite the fact that these archaic forms are embedded in the sacred religious texts that we regularly read. 

I suppose the exception would be folks like Stan who are particularly aware of these features and are actively exploring them at a scholarly level. But, I suspect even Stan would struggle in the context of dictating a lengthy text, day after day.

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

What Davis, I , Gardner, and others have simply argued that it is possible. None of us live in Joseph's head and know for certain what was going on. However, the possibility that Joseph could have worded the text necessarily negates the demand that he could not have worded them.

Whether or not is it "possible," the statistical data and basic observations about how humans develop language patterns suggests it is highly implausible. And that, combined with a number of other considerations, points strongly toward the revealed-words hypothesis. 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

Lolz. Good luck with life.

Well thanks. You too. I have no animus towards you. I think the conversation has been illuminating, and I genuinely wish you well, no matter how strongly we disagree on this primarily academic issue that has little immediate moral relevance in our lives and which doesn't say anything qualitative about you or me as individuals, no matter which opinion we hold. 

[champatsch]

Of course a small amount of weak evidence does not overcome a large amount of strong evidence that Joseph Smith did not word the dictated language.

For some, it does not matter that they have been repeatedly wrong about important aspects of the text, in order to claim that Joseph Smith worded the Book of Mormon.

For example, they have been wrong about the biblical passages, preposterously proposing that Joseph Smith could perfectly visualize images of dozens of pages from 11 books of the King James Bible, including which words were italicized. And even if he could have, the biblical material would read very differently to how it actually reads. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded the biblical passages.

For example, they have been wrong that Joseph Smith dictated using his native expression. This is disproven by various syntactic and lexical evidence, including but not limited to the verbal complementation after verbs of influence (n>700) and the personal relative pronoun complex (n>1600) and dozens of items of nonbiblical archaic vocabulary. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded these aspects of the text, and many more besides.

In a few weeks, I will mention a few more things that also show that the claim that Bunyanesque English influenced Joseph Smith is unfounded. The recent Dialogue paper, which some people are enamored of, constitutes an attempt to paint a one-sided, academically acceptable narrative. A scholarly effort, attempting to arrive at truth, would have examined strong counterevidence to the claim of Bunyanesque influence, the kind that I have presented here and recently in another thread. Until then.

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

Of course a small amount of weak evidence does not overcome a large amount of strong evidence that Joseph Smith did not word the dictated language.

For some, it does not matter that they have been repeatedly wrong about important aspects of the text, in order to claim that Joseph Smith worded the Book of Mormon.

For example, they have been wrong about the biblical passages, preposterously proposing that Joseph Smith could perfectly visualize images of dozens of pages from 11 books of the King James Bible, including which words were italicized. And even if he could have, the biblical material would read very differently to how it actually reads. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded the biblical passages.

For example, they have been wrong that Joseph Smith dictated using his native expression. This is disproven by various syntactic and lexical evidence, including but not limited to the verbal complementation after verbs of influence (n>700) and the personal relative pronoun complex (n>1600) and dozens of items of nonbiblical archaic vocabulary. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded these aspects of the text, and many more besides.

In a few weeks, I will mention a few more things that also show that the claim that Bunyanesque English influenced Joseph Smith is unfounded. The recent Dialogue paper, which some people are enamored of, constitutes an attempt to paint a one-sided, academically acceptable narrative. A scholarly effort, attempting to arrive at truth, would have examined strong counterevidence to the claim of Bunyanesque influence, the kind that I have presented here and recently in another thread. Until then.

Hey Stan. I know you're incapable of responding to the actual arguments that Davis has made, but I am really hoping you will explain why you lied about Davis's article have multiple authors. Why did you lie about it?

Edited May 7 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

5 hours ago, the narrator said:

Hey Stan. I know you're incapable of responding to the actual arguments that Davis has made, but I am really hoping you will explain why you lied about Davis's article have multiple authors. Why did you lie about it?

Why are you using the term "lie" here? Lying is when someone knows what it true and intentionally states what is untrue. As far as I recall, as soon as Stan made his initial claim, you came right out of the gate accusing him of lying. Also, I don't believe Stan specifically claimed that Davis's article had "multiple authors." Let's review the initial exchange, with Stan's specific comment and your follow-up accusation: 

Quote

A recent Dialogue article – Davis: Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language – is riddled with errors of linguistic analysis. Various people were involved in the creation of the article. They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized. The paper is a fine example of naive or deliberate one-sided argumentation. Many cases of counterevidence were not dealt with. I have mentioned some here recently.

This is a lie. You shouldn't lie, Stan.

It's rather curious that you never even asked Stan why he believed that "various people were involved in the creation of the article" or what he meant by his statement. You just jumped straight to your accusation that he lied, as if you knew that he knew otherwise and was intentionally not telling the truth. Did it never cross your mind that perhaps Stan simply assumed that almost any article that gets into a journal is going to have some type of scholarly or peer review process before publication. And in that process, one would think that sloppy claims or reasoning might get cleaned up. That is pretty much par for the course, when it comes to submitting an article to an academic journal, is it not? I don't know what Dialogue's typical process is, but I assume they have something along those lines. And, if so, Stan's claim would make perfect sense.

Also, note that he didn't say it had "multiple authors" as if there were multiple primary authors whose contributions were so significant that they should be listed or viewed as authors. Rather, he just said that "various people were involved in the creation of the article." And this is almost always true for any academic article, since any reviewers or editors technically are "involved" to varying degrees in the "creation of the article." 

But even if Stan were wrong, and if Davis's article went straight to publication without any content review or collaboration whatsoever at any stage of production (which honestly seems quite unlikely to me, even if possible), that still wouldn't mean that Stan lied. It would just mean that is claim was based on a reasonable assumption that he genuinely believed, but that he happened to be wrong about. So, unless YOU actually KNEW what was going on in Stan's mind (i.e., that he certainly knew that no review process took place and was intentionally making a false claim on that point) then it seems like your assertion that he lied would be quite premature.

Honestly, your hostility towards the other participants in this discussion is just bizarre. You could have just asked Stan about the basis or specific meaning of his claim, and then rebutted it with evidence if needed. There was no need to get personal and accuse him of outright lying, unless you absolutely knew that to be the case. 

Edited May 7 by Ryan Dahle

[the narrator]

5 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Why are you using the term "lie" here? Lying is when someone knows what it true and intentionally states what is untrue. As far as I recall, as soon as Stan made his initial claim, you came right out of the gate accusing him of lying. Let's review the initial exchange, with Stan's comment and your follow-up accusation: 

It's rather curious that you never even asked Stan why he believed that or what he meant by his statement. You just jumped straight to your accusation that he lied, as if you knew that he knew otherwise and was intentionally not telling the truth. Did it never cross your mind that perhaps Stan simply assumed that almost any article that gets into a journal is going to have some type of scholarly or peer review process before publication. And in that process, one would think that sloppy claims or reasoning might get cleaned up. That is pretty much par for the course, when it comes to submitting an article to an academic journal, is it not? I don't know what Dialogue's typical process is, but I assume they have something along those lines. And, if so, Stan's claim would make perfect sense.

But even if Stan were wrong, and if Davis's article went straight to publication without any content review or collaboration whatsoever at any stage of production (which honestly seems quite unlikely to me, even if possible), that still wouldn't mean that Stan lied. It would just mean that is claim was based on a reasonable assumption that he genuinely believed, but that he happened to be wrong about. So, unless YOU actually KNEW what was going on in Stan's mind (i.e., that he certainly knew that no review process took place and was intentionally making a false claim on that point) then it seems like your assertion that he lied would be quite premature.

Honestly, your hostility towards the other participants in this discussion is just bizarre. You could have just asked Stan about the basis for his claim, and then rebutted it with evidence if needed. There was no need to get personal and accuse him of outright lying, unless you absolutely knew that to be the case. 

Lolz. Maybe you should ask Stan why he made up things that weren't true rather than whine that I called him out on it.

 

Sorry that my autistic brain gets so triggered by fallacious reasoning and feels a need to point it out without putting on white gloves. It's a serious personality fault of mine.

[Ryan Dahle]

2 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Lolz. Maybe you should ask Stan why he made up things that weren't true rather than whine that I called him out on it.

Well, first of all, I don't know that "he made up things that weren't true." And his statement actually seems very likely to be true. Do you know that Davis's article didn't go through any peer review process of any king that might have spotted potential errors before publication? 

Also, how am I "whining" about this? Is there some aspect of my tone or in the tenor of my statements that qualifies as whining? 

[the narrator]

7 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Well, first of all, I don't know that "he made up things that weren't true."

Whether he made it up or just repeated someone else's lie, he still shared something to try to win some points to offset his incompetence.

8 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

his statement actually seems very likely to be true.

Nope. It isn't.

 

9 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Do you know that Davis's article didn't go through any peer review process of any king that might have spotted potential errors before publication? 

Stan explicitly claimed others ("his colleagues") beyond the typical peer review process.

 

10 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Also, how am I "whining" about this? Is there some aspect of my tone or in the tenor of my statements that qualifies as whining? 

I consider your complaining about me calling out his lies instead of asking him about it to be whining.

Stan's "scholarship" is awful, and he is not doing any linguistic analysis. He's acting like the most annoying of grammar nerds and not doing any real analysis to understand the language of the Book of Mormon. Scholars like Davis and Gardner are doing that. Stan is just labeling things, often arbitrarily for his own apologetic cause. I hope that you are able to see that someday, but I doubt you will.

I'm done engaging you. It's pointless. Maybe someday we could meet up at a conference and chat about anything else, but definitely not this.

Best of luck to you.

 

[j.mason]

On 5/6/2026 at 8:26 AM, the narrator said:

Stan, my man.

Statements like this are very disrespectful and do not help your case.

[Ryan Dahle]

55 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Stan explicitly claimed others ("his colleagues") beyond the typical peer review process.

 

First, it should be pointed out that you accused him of lying even before he made that additional statement specifically about "colleagues." So you jumped the gun no matter what. But let's actually look at what Stan said:

Quote

"This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors."

It seems to me that Stan is simply assuming that various people were likely involved, and so he was listing the categories that typically contribute to an academic paper. In addition to the formal "reviewers" that are part of the process provided by the journal, many authors will share their article or discuss its contents with colleagues (i.e., friends, associates, scholarly acquaintances) for additional feedback or review. This doesn't mean such folks, even if they do offer feedback, should be considered as additional "authors" of the article. Note that Stan never claimed that the article had "multiple authors," only you did. Does that, in turn, mean that YOU lied about what Stan said?

The extent to which you are going to make it look like he was lying or being intentionally dishonest is really quite remarkable. 

Edited May 7 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

44 minutes ago, the narrator said:

I consider your complaining about me calling out his lies instead of asking him about it to be whining.

I wasn't just "complaining" about what you said. I was carefully evaluating what you said in the context of what Stan said. And I found what you said to be both logically flawed and also morally wrong (since I think accusing others of lying has a moral connotation that is different than simply pointing out that they are wrong).

It seems that you are simply using "whining" as a pejorative term to describe those who express disagreement with your conclusions and behavior. 

[the narrator]

7 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

First, it should be pointed out that you accused him of lying even before he made that additional statement specifically about "colleagues." So you jumped the gun no matter what. But let's actually look at what Stan said:

My goodness, why are you being so daft. You literally just quoted the initial lie from Stan that I called out, when he claimed that "Various people were involved in the creation of the article."

You clearly cannot dialogue in good faith. Bye, for really reals this time.

[the narrator]

44 minutes ago, j.mason said:

Statements like this are very disrespectful and do not help your case.

1. How is that disrespectful?

2. Is it more disrespectful than Stan lying about Davis's article being created by multiple persons?

[SeekingUnderstanding]

7 hours ago, champatsch said:

does not overcome a large amount of strong evidence that Joseph Smith did not word the dictated language.

I'm really trying to understand the theory here. What level of influence did Joseph's brain influence the text? It sounds like your position is none at all? Who translated the text then? You speak of changes in 3 Nephi. Are you posing two separate translators? More? Why isn't the text entirely EModE? Why the mishmash? I'd really like to understand what your hypothesis is for how the text was put together, and why God chose to do it that way.

[Ryan Dahle]

3 minutes ago, the narrator said:

My goodness, why are you being so daft. You literally just quoted the initial lie from Stan that I called out, when he claimed that "Various people were involved in the creation of the article."

You clearly cannot dialogue in good faith. Bye, for really reals this time.

As I already stated and made perfectly clear, if there were any reviewers or editors who contributed in any way to the quality or contents of the article, then of course they would have technically been "involved in the creation of the article." And there was obviously good reason for Stan to assume that others were involved in the review and editing of an article published in an academic journal (assuming he didn't have actually knowledge of the process involved for this specific article; which I don't know either way). 

I'm sure your own "good faith" efforts, charitable disposition, and endearing communication style will be sorely missed from this thread. 

[Calm]

25 minutes ago, the narrator said:

when he claimed that "Various people were involved in the creation of the article."

The accusation of dishonesty is one of the worst in setting off anger for me, so this is bothering me from both sides as it also did come across to me as Carmack was inflating the contributions of others (though not for the purpose of detracting from the value of Davis’ work apparently since he doesn’t see it as accurate if I understand him correctly).

As someone who highly respects the narrator from his long time posting and who has quite a bit of respect for Ryan and champatsch (they haven’t posted as long, so I know less about their personality but I think they are good people, committed and not malicious at all) and as someone who finds the conversation interesting if somewhat beyond me at this point (get the basics, but my English courses never went into syntax much so lost when it comes to specifics), I am going to say I agree with Ryan’s analysis of the initial comment that was labeled as lying by the narrator.  While it suggested significant contributions by others, it doesn’t rise to them imo having done enough to be considered as authors.  

Plus jumping to lying when it could be misunderstanding even if it was intended to imply a level of authorship rather than just lots of fingers in the pie (don’t think he took it this far though) really bothers me.  Maybe Davis thanked people somewhere for extensive help, maybe someone mentioned helping Davis along with others and champ took it as more than intended….so many comments could be easily misinterpreted especially if unintentionally exaggerating actual involvement and then that exaggeration can get exaggerated again just as this comment got exaggerated to authors and to a lie.
 

It’s harder to recognize others’ good points in a conversation imo when those points get overshadowed by personal comments and it’s a shame when good conversations or debates get swallowed up in unfortunate misunderstandings.

Edited May 7 by Calm

[the narrator]

41 minutes ago, Calm said:

While it suggested significant contributions by others, it doesn’t rise to them having done enough to be considered as authors.  

Nobody assisted Davis with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be "involved in the creation of an article." Perhaps I would give Stan the benefit of the doubt of not understanding scholarship, however his claim of "various people" and then later claim of assistance of "his colleagues" beyond the blind reviewers and editor make it clear that Stan was lying (or carelessly repeating a lie).

We could spend plenty of time wondering why Stan wrote out his lies, but it would probably be better if he just explained himself.

 

Quote

Maybe Davis thanked people somewhere for extensive help

Davis does thanka few people for helpful suggestions, but that is hardly a claim of various people being in the creation of his article.

It's obvious why Stan portrayed the article as being multi-person creation. It's part of his schtick of feigning skills of a linguist that any critic of his couldn't possibly match--despite him not actually doing linguistics in his grammar labeling.

Edited May 7 by the narrator

[Calm]

28 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm sure your own "good faith" efforts, charitable disposition, and endearing communication style will be sorely missed from this thread. 

They will be by me. 

[the narrator]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

They will be by me. 

Well, it's best I leave this thread. As I noted, my autistic brain gets triggered by fallacious reasoning, and the utterly absurd EModE thesis (and even moreso attempts to defend it) are about as fallacious as things could get.

 

So consider this my last contribution (if they could be called that) to this.

 

Looking forward to an actual substantial reply to Davis from Carmack in which he actually responds to what Davis actually argued instead of his usual strawman adventures.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, the narrator said:

Nobody assisted Davis with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be "involved in the creation of an article." Perhaps I would give Stan the benefit of the doubt of not understanding scholarship, however his claim of "various people" and then later claim of assistance of "his colleagues" beyond the blind reviewers and editor make it clear that Stan was lying (or carelessly repeating a lie).

We could spend plenty of time wondering why Stan wrote out his lies, but it would probably be better if he just explained himself.

I agree it would be best if champatsch explained what he meant and if inaccurate, correct his comment. I hope he doesn’t feel too on the spot to do it.  I know I would be personally offended if someone accused me of lying and wouldn’t want to interact with them in the future.  I also think it would be good to resolve this so as not to influence future conversations.  However, will you believe him if his explanation supports misinterpretation and not intentional deception?  I am not sure I would if I thought someone was lying if they hadn’t explained right away simply because my brain considers all possibilities.  I would want to believe them, but doubt would be present.

I obviously disagree one should view at this point with the level of information we have about his thought process what is possibly a misinterpretation or misstatement as a lie, even if carelessly made.  Dishonesty is very wrong, malicious in my view and therefore the accusation of dishonesty needs to be solid before being made.  

You may see this case as solid based on your own experience with the process scholarship and likely more precise way of speaking given your autism, but others may not be applying the same standard of measurement of involvement and precision to speaking, etc as you are.

I would love it if all were precise and detailed in their speaking so as to make clear their thought process for their conclusions, but most people don’t want to read that detailed of an explanation and many don’t want to put in the effort to write it.  I also wonder how much that would actually help understanding because often it seems like the more detail I put into a comment, the more likely someone focuses on a detail and therefore misinterprets my overall view. 

I think I may go find my husband and test him on how he would describe input from others (ranging from casual conversations about research he is working on to actual assistance) for his papers.  He is not that precise in his casual language, so it feels like it might be a good test case….also the only one available to me, so it has to be good.  
 

Edited May 7 by Calm

[the narrator]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

I agree it would be best if champatsch explained what he meant and if inaccurate, correct his comment. I hope he doesn’t feel too on the spot to do it.  I know I would be personally offended if someone accused me of lying and wouldn’t want to interact with them in the future.  I also think it would be good to resolve this so as not to influence future conversations.  However, will you believe him if his explanation supports misinterpretation and not intentional deception?

I obviously disagree one should view at this point with the level of information we have about his thought process what is possibly a misinterpretation or misstatement as a lie, even if carelessly made.  Dishonesty is very wrong, malicious in my view and therefore the accusation of dishonesty needs to be solid before being made.  

You may see this case as solid based on your own experience with the process scholarship and likely more precise way of speaking given your autism, but others may not be applying the same standard of measurement of involvement and precision to speaking, etc as you are.

I would love it if all were precise and detailed in their speaking so as to make clear their thought process for their conclusions, but most people don’t want to read that detailed of an explanation and many don’t want to put in the effort.  I also wonder how much that would actually help understanding because often it seems like the more detail I put into a comment, the more likely someone focuses on a detail and therefore misinterprets my overall view. 

I think I may go find my husband and test him on how he would describe input from others (ranging from casual conversations about research he is working on to actual assistance) for his papers.  He is not that precise in his casual language, so it feels like it might be a good test case….also the only one available to me, so it has to be good.  
 

Why you gotta be so calm about things...?

[Calm]

31 minutes ago, the narrator said:

Why you gotta be so calm about things...?

You should have seen me last night.  One of my notable meltdowns.

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

Davis does thanka few people for helpful suggestions, but that is hardly a claim of various people being in the creation of his article.

This is an interesting development. I hadn't checked the article myself for any expressions of thanks. And based on the narrator's persistent accusations on this front, I just assumed that Davis didn't publicly credit anyone for their contributions to his article. So it is pretty rich to then find out that Davis, in fact, DID give others credit for their helpful suggestions. Here is specifically what he said:

Quote

Special thanks to David Rodes, James Krauser, Colby Townsend, and the anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions.

This, then, provides an obvious basis for Stan's statements. Here is what Stan said on two different occasions: 

Quote

A recent Dialogue article – Davis: Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language – is riddled with errors of linguistic analysis. Various people were involved in the creation of the article.

...

They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized.This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors. 

One would assume that if their feedback wasn't helpful and didn't in some way contribute to the creation of the article, then Davis wouldn't have expressed his gratitude for them. It is also not, by any means, inappropriate to describe the specific individuals that Davis named as his "colleagues," since it is a fairly loose term to begin with. Here is the immediate definition for the term "colleague" when I Googled it: 

Quote

A colleague is a person with whom one works, particularly someone at a similar professional level or within the same field. While often used for people in the same workplace, it can also refer to peers in the same profession who work for different organizations.

In other words, it is a general enough term to be applied to those who in some way might contribute to an article or collaborate with its author (by giving suggestions, feedback, correcting for errors, etc.). Note that Carmack never described these individuals as "authors" or declared that the article had "multiple authors" (as the narrator asserted). 

Could Carmack have been more specific or qualified his statement in some way? Sure. But that is pretty much true of many if not most claims made on this board. Moreover, one will notice that Stan's claim in both contexts was about Davis and his contributors not detecting errors, which suggests that Carmack was primarily focused on the fact that multiple people were looking at and reviewing this article, and yet none of them seemed to notice the problems. This suggests that Carmack was not intending to assert or imply that others were contributing substantial amounts of text to the article (as if they were full co-authors).

In any case, both of Stan's statements are technically accurate and the narrator never even asked for clarification. He just jumped straight to calling him a liar. Now that it comes out that Davis, indeed, did publicly give credit to others' for unspecified contributions to his article, it makes the accusation of lying all the more bizarre and unwarranted. 

 

Edited May 7 by Ryan Dahle