🚀 go-pugleaf

<mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:

>McKay's Moby Dick and War and Peace examples make the same
>procedural mistake Drosnin does. He measures the probability of a
>particular "code" after it was found, and thereby tries to discredit
>the model used for computing the probability was measured by. However,
>since there are an absurdly high number of possible "code", many must
>be found in any text.

Perhaps we should ask Brendan McKay whether the Moby Dick and the War
& Peace examples were intended as refutations of Drosnin or of the
Witztum/Rips claims.  If Drosnin is the target of these examples, then
Micha Berger and Brendan McKay are in agreement on this point.

The Witztum/Rips paper is clearly controversial.  It has yet to be
convincingly refuted, and I have posted my theory of why it may be
fallacious.  (There are a huge number of plausible distance metrics,
and the results could very well be sensitive to the choice of the one
that was used in this paper).

Drosnin's book is a completely different matter.  Witztum, Rips and
others have given convincing arguments why Drosnin's claims are not
just wrong but totally fraudulent.
--
David  J  Ellis
92 Wilson Drive / Framingham, MA 01702
d...@mkitso.ultranet.com