One of my countdown timers will soon expire

[JulieM]

22 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I won't be responding to your posts here.

When there is a pile-on with people asking the same questions, I tend to select one or more representatives to respond to and ignore the rest -- particularly the more abusive ones.

That's ironic considering how unfairly you are treating Mike Reid here.

And, I won't report you for ignoring and not answering my very reasonable CFR.  

I'll actually release you from it since it's obvious you can't provide the quote I asked for (the prediction in Mike's words that you are erroneously attributing to him.)  

Edited January 9, 2017 by JulieM

[Gray]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But Mike did follow-up -- to deride me for starting the countdown clock. If I were making an erroneous assumption about his meaning, he could easily have clarified it then. He didn't. Or he could have come back on the board at any time over the past two years to give the clarification.

Are you saying he cared enough to come back on the board to deride me but he didn't care enough to ensure his meaning was clear to me and to others here?

 

In absence of a specific clarifying statement from Mike, any old statement someone wants to make on his behalf will do? I don't think that kind of approach is fair. 

[Scott Lloyd]

48 minutes ago, JulieM said:

That's ironic considering how unfairly you are treating Mike Reid here.

Do you really think Mike is snowflake enough that scrutinizing and challenging one of his predictions and holding him to account for it constitutes abusing him?
 

Quote

 

And, I won't report you for ignoring and not answering my very reasonable CFR.  

I'll actually release you from it since it's obvious you can't provide the quote I asked for (the prediction in Mike's words that you are erroneously attributing to him.)  

 

It's a bogus CFR anyway, so it won't do for you to feign being magnanimous in not reporting me over it. Bogus, because I have already directly quoted Mike and clearly explained why I chose to apply the interpretation that I did to his words.

[Scott Lloyd]

2 minutes ago, Gray said:

In absence of a specific clarifying statement from Mike, any old statement someone wants to make on his behalf will do? I don't think that kind of approach is fair. 

It's not "any old statement." I explained my reasoning for the interpretation I made.

 

[Gray]

2 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

It's not "any old statement." I explained my reasoning for the interpretation I made.

 

It's a statement that you put into Mike's mouth - classic straw man. If Mike wished to make the claim you're making on his behalf, he would make it. 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 minute ago, Gray said:

It's a statement that you put into Mike's mouth - classic straw man. If Mike wished to make the claim you're making on his behalf, he would make it. 

He wouldn't clarify when I asked him to. That left me no recourse but to apply the most reasonable interpretation I could to his remark. As I said, he has been free at anytime to come on here and clarify his meaning, including when he did come on to deride me for starting the countdown clock. The fact that he has never contradicted my assumption indicates to me it is not a straw man.

 

[JulieM]

29 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Do you really think Mike is snowflake enough that scrutinizing and challenging one of his predictions and holding him to account for it constitutes abusing him?

I think Mike Reid doesn't really care (if he even knows what you're doing here )  And, you are actually "scrutinizing" a prediction that YOU wrote.

I think that if anyone tried to do to you what you're doing here to Mike, you'd be throwing a fit.  

Edited January 9, 2017 by JulieM

[Scott Lloyd]

13 minutes ago, JulieM said:

I think Mike Reid doesn't really care (if he even knows what you're doing here )  And, you are actually "scrutinizing" a prediction that YOU wrote.

I think that if anyone tried to do to you what you're doing here to Mike, you'd be throwing a fit.  

Were I in Mike's place, I would have clarified the meaning of my remark long ago, if need be.

And rest assured, he knows what is going on here, as he has responded more than once.

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

Questions, quibbles and accusations have become rather tedious and repetitive on this thread, so unless something new or compelling emerges, I probably won't be responding to any more posts here.

[JulieM]

10 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Were I in Mike's place, I would have clarified the meaning of my remark long ago.

 

But he chose not to, so you think that gives you the right to put words in his mouth or write your own prediction and then attribute it to him?  How can you possibly believe that's fair to him?

You state that you choose to not respond to certain people here.  So following your example, they would have "no recourse but to apply" their own reasoning to your thoughts and words.  And then represent their words as if they were yours.

I honestly can't believe you don't see how wrong that is to do.

Edited January 9, 2017 by JulieM

[Rich Hansen]

Scott, I think you are taking yourself way too seriously. 

Tracking what people say over extended years to prove what?

[stemelbow]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Well, you seem to be making an issue out of your supposition that the increase in missionaries mostly consists of women. I say, so what if it does? Young women are just as capable, valuable and serviceable in the work as young men. Your making an issue out of it seems to imply you do not agree.

I think I was pretty clear.  That more of a percentage of women are going is a good thing, for sure.  I didn't imply anything you are suggesting here. 

The only telling thing we get out of a much higher percentage of missionaries being women is that less young men seem to be interested in going now.  That's what the numbers would tell us.  Afterall, as it turns out, we have far less missionaries going out then we used to, in terms of percent of the whole. 

[stemelbow]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I've already laid out what I want to come of it. I don't see a need to pursue it further beyond what I have stated in the OP.

If Mike meant that he thought that within two or three years, all the gains that came in missionary numbers after 2012 would be erased (and I have no good reason to think he meant otherwise) it has turned out he is wrong, as there are many thousands more today than there were in 2012. That's the long and short of what I am saying.

He didn't say "all the gains that came in missionary numbers after 2012 would be erased" nor anything like that.  He said the number would drop.  it did.  It doesn't matter what you think he might have meant by it.

I'd be disappointed if at every time one of your countdown times comes to a close we get this type of stuff.  Let's just stick to what was said, I say. 

 

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Why would he have suggested the Church would have to do other things to sustain the growth, such as redefining missionary work to incorporate more Church service missions, or serving from home via the Internet, unless he was predicting the net gains that came from the age changes would not be sustained?

 

I don't get why you're adding more to this.  The number clearly dropped.  It was at 85,000 at the time of the claim, now, the latest number we have is below 72,000.

But I have outstanding questions that you haven't addressed.  You had said the number would rise from the bottomed out of 75,000.  But we dropped below 75,000 since then.  We haven't seen it rise but drop more.  I was curious the reliability of your sources and if they are reliable, what went wrong in that time?  Did they not anticipate as many missionaries would be going home early as has? 

[Gray]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

He wouldn't clarify when I asked him to. That left me no recourse but to apply the most reasonable interpretation I could to his remark.

Actually, you had one other more reasonable option - to simply take what he said and not add additional information onto it. He said the numbers would decrease, and they did. Everything else is your invention.

 

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

As I said, he has been free at anytime to come on here and clarify his meaning, including when he did come on to deride me for starting the countdown clock. The fact that he has never contradicted my assumption indicates to me it is not a straw man.

 

If that's how it works, I guess whenever the LDS Newsroom chooses not to respond to specific criticisms or claims about the church, that's an admission that those criticisms and claims are true. 

[stemelbow]

2 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

But Mike did follow-up -- to deride me for starting the countdown clock. If I were making an erroneous assumption about his meaning, he could easily have clarified it then. He didn't. Or he could have come back on the board at any time over the past two years to give the clarification.

Are you saying he cared enough to come back on the board to deride me but he didn't care enough to ensure his meaning was clear to me and to others here?

 

What part of the number would fall is not clear?  It fell and has continued to drop. 

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

He wouldn't clarify when I asked him to. That left me no recourse but to apply the most reasonable interpretation I could to his remark. As I said, he has been free at anytime to come on here and clarify his meaning, including when he did come on to deride me for starting the countdown clock. The fact that he has never contradicted my assumption indicates to me it is not a straw man.

 

What do you mean when he came on here to deride you for starting the clock? 

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

He wouldn't clarify when I asked him to. That left me no recourse but to apply the most reasonable interpretation I could to his remark. As I said, he has been free at anytime to come on here and clarify his meaning, including when he did come on to deride me for starting the countdown clock. The fact that he has never contradicted my assumption indicates to me it is not a straw man.

 

Just to clarify.  The most reasonable interpretation would be to read his words as saying the number, then at 85,000, would get smaller within 2 or 3 years.  Trying to make it something other than that is just silly at this point, particularly considering how much has been said about it. 

There's no more to add to it.  If the number fell 1,000 he would be correct in his claim.  If it fell by 500 he would be correct.  But we all know it fell far more than 10,000.  So either way he was right. 

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Were I in Mike's place, I would have clarified the meaning of my remark long ago, if need be.

And rest assured, he knows what is going on here, as he has responded more than once.

 

After his initial post you replied saying,

Quote

How far will it fall? Back down to 2012 levels?

To which he responded by saying,

Quote

I dont know how far it will fall.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/64782-surge-has-subsided-but-missionary-work-continues-apace/?page=2

 

You responded:

Quote

It is already down from the peak of the surge. As indicated in my article, that was expected and foregone. The remarkable thing is that the decrease is not nearly to the extent that was anticipated for this point in time.

 

For a prognostication like this to be meaningful, there must be some indication of how substantial the drop will be. Will the number diminish to pre-2012 levels, as though there had been no change made? Will it be just under what it is now? Somewhere in between? What?

 

We get rehash this but I won't because we did this last year.  Mike never responded, because he already clarified.  he didn't know how far.  he just guessed it would fall.  It did.  What's more to say on this really?  Maybe a "sorry" to Mike?  Would be appropriate...

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Were I in Mike's place, I would have clarified the meaning of my remark long ago, if need be.

And rest assured, he knows what is going on here, as he has responded more than once.

 

What part of "I don't know" was unclear to you?  It's pretty dang clear to me.

Honestly, the idea that a prediction needs to be precise and timed is a little absurd, especially on a Mormon-themed message board.  If you applied these same criteria (and made-up claims) to LDS leaders and scriptures, your head would explode in Sunday School.

[cinepro]

4 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Why do you undervalue young women as a percentage of the whole? That strikes me as sexist.

 

No one is "undervaluing" young women who serve missions (other than possibly the system that doesn't allow them to hold real leadership positions or perform baptisms or blessings, of course).  We were just pointing out that the age-change effected men differently than women, so in addition to looking at the numbers as a whole, a lot might be learned from breaking the numbers down to account for the difference.

[CA Steve]

I believe that when Mike made his prediction he was only speaking as a man.

[Calm]

Iirc, possibly a couple of decades ago, but possibly less...LDS dropped one kid in terms of number on average of children a family would have (iirc it tends to run one or 1.5 more than general population).  If so, it seems to me the youth percentage of the population would be dropping...don't know how significant that would be, but if it went from 30% of membership to 25%, that would affect the appearance of missionary rate.

Anyone have numbers on those who go who are eligible to go age and health wise?  That would be the best number probably, though it would be very interesting to compare rates of eligible in active, temple recommend (both parents) families to general membership.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Calm

[Scott Lloyd]

22 minutes ago, Calm said:

Iirc, possibly a couple of decades ago, but possibly less...LDS dropped one kid in terms of number on average of children a family would have (iirc it tends to run one or 1.5 more than general population).  If so, it seems to me the youth percentage of the population would be dropping...don't know how significant that would be, but if it went from 30% of membership to 25%, that would affect the appearance of missionary rate.

Anyone have numbers on those who go who are eligible to go age and health wise?  That would be the best number probably, though it would be very interesting to compare rates of eligible in active, temple recommend (both parents) families to general membership.

Rapid growth in areas outside the United States and, more particularly, outside the Intermountain West might also complicate the matter. In recent years, the percentage of membership outside the United States has exceeded the membership in the United States. It would be a factor, because typically it's the older, more established areas of the Church that tend to provide the bulk of the missionary force for the rest of the world. Thus, I don't think it's a given that the missionary force could be expected to increase commensurate with Church growth if a substantial portion of that growth is in developing areas of the Church, especially where poverty is widespread.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, Rich Hansen said:

Scott, I think you are taking yourself way too seriously. 

Tracking what people say over extended years to prove what?

If a negative or nay-saying prediction turns out over time not to have been validated or fulfilled, that's cause for some measure of satisfaction and pleasure. And it might have some educational benefit for some in leading to reconsideration of expectations.

Furthermore, it can help counter general notions of gloom and doom that some harbor about the Church of Jesus Christ and its prosperity and progress.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

Just to clarify.  The most reasonable interpretation would be to read his words as saying the number, then at 85,000, would get smaller within 2 or 3 years.  Trying to make it something other than that is just silly at this point, particularly considering how much has been said about it. 

There's no more to add to it.  If the number fell 1,000 he would be correct in his claim.  If it fell by 500 he would be correct.  But we all know it fell far more than 10,000.  So either way he was right. 

If he meant that it might only fall by 500 (which would put it at an impressive 80,000), why was he suggesting that the Church would have to redefine what it means to be a missionary in order to sustain the growth in the missionary force that has come in the wake of the 2012 announcement? 80,000 missionaries would be an astounding increase.