Marvin Shilmer

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Posts by Marvin Shilmer

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  82

  Quality Thinking - Warning: Long Post Ahead

  by Viviane in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  recently, several threads have had some debate about logic, evidence, critical thinking and skepticism.

  i wanted to write a post discussing those things, hopefully to clarify what those things are, why they are important and how to use those tools.

  first, logic, at its core, is simply a method for how to reason validly, how to draw conclusions based on a premise.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  My company has many female pilots, and a good number of them are captains, some younger but far senior to me in tenure. I haven't flown with them all, but the vast majority of the ones I've had the pleasure of working with have shown their reasoning, judgment, and skill to be the match of any man's, including my own.

  And how long will it take Watchtower to figure out that women are already teaching among JWs, only not in a Watchtower appointed capacity of "elder"?

  And how long will it take Watchtower to figure out that sitting on a judicial committee to evaluate evidence and repentance is not "teaching"?

  And how long will it take Watchtower to recognize the context of historical positions taken by biblical characters/authors apart from underlying values so that JW women are no longer kept from performing valuable work inside the organization that so far they've been kept from?
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  82

  Quality Thinking - Warning: Long Post Ahead

  by Viviane in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  recently, several threads have had some debate about logic, evidence, critical thinking and skepticism.

  i wanted to write a post discussing those things, hopefully to clarify what those things are, why they are important and how to use those tools.

  first, logic, at its core, is simply a method for how to reason validly, how to draw conclusions based on a premise.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  Who advocates challenging every opinion?

  I do!

  Wouldn't have it any other way.

  An opinion worth sharing is an opinion worth challenging!!!
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  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  What ratio did you identify from your statistical slice? It's evidently lower than for the whole data.

  I'm not sure what you're asking me to calculate as a ratio.

  Take a look at my second post in this discussion. There I express what I counted and did not count. Maybe that'll answer your question. If not please rephrase your question.
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  30

  We can now estimate the absolute minimum number of child abuse cases

  by Viviane in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  vincent tool said that he is exclusively working the phones for child abuse cases, but never said he is not the only one.

  for now, let's assume the rate of abuse cases averages over time to the three or four cases he gets per month.

  let's further assume that, since he isn't the only person working the phones and is on vacation at some point, the number is 4-5 per month, or 4.5 per month.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  To be clearer, when I say to me this provides a pretty clear idea of the magnitude of reported cases Watchtower has received worldwide over the past 10 years, and is also a pretty good indicator of what the problem has looked like for a long time (decades!) before that, I'm not talking about the overall number of reported sexual molestation of a child/children. Rather, the constructed statistical slice I'm talking about only accounts for the number of individuals reported to Watchtower that are associated with the organization in some capacity (i.e., as a parishner, elder, unbaptized publisher etc.).

  For purposes of extrapolating the amount of overall victimization (worldwide) I have to perform a different analysis, and I'm working on that.
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  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  Of victims:

  Based on the Australian Branch data, and subject to the same statistical base I describe above in my initial disclosure of BASIC STATISTIC,

  For the 10-year period of 2005-2014 I find victims at an annual average rate of 0.000645 per peak publisher. (As a hard number for the Australian Branch this is 412 victims for the period.)

  Extrapolated for a worldwide total, for the 10-year period of 2005-2014 the value is just over 46,000 (specifically in my statistical slice: 46,102).

  PS: There were no "10+" counts in the data slice use in this 10-year period that had to be adjusted to read "10". There were 3 occurrences of "Unclear" that were assigned a value of 1.
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  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

  1. 
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  3. 
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  Marvin Shilmer

  '10+' could mean any number 10 and above, and 'Unclear' could mean any number 1 and above.
  These were not being counted in the total.
  I replaced all the '10+' with the number 10, and all the 'Unclear' with the number 1...
  The total number of victims on this list is 1857.
  This means the ratio is 1857 victims / 1006 abusers = 1.85/1 ratio

  Okay,

  Where the RC states "10+" I'm going to assign 10 as the value.

  Unclear means at least 1. For each of these instances I'm going to assign 1 as the value.

  We'll see what that looks like.
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  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  Something doesn't sound right - that's nearly half the current population of Australian JWs.

  The extrapolated value is no more an no less than a result of the same ratio actually reported by the Australian Branch, which (based on the values included and cited above) is an annual average of 0.000401 per peak publisher for years 2005-2014.

  Check the math if it doesn't sound right. That's why I've put this out there.
• 
  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

  1. 
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• 

  Marvin Shilmer

  In the 1006 thread I calculated the ratio (conservatively) to be 1.85 victims per abuser.
  So with 28,827 known abusers, using the ratio of 1.85 victims per 1 abuser, this suggests there have been 53,330 child abuse victims in the 10 year period 2005-2014.

  I'm going to take a look at that based on the statistical slice I've constructed. What rules did you use in cases where the victim count is unstated or shown as a minimum value?
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  30

  We can now estimate the absolute minimum number of child abuse cases

  by Viviane in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  vincent tool said that he is exclusively working the phones for child abuse cases, but never said he is not the only one.

  for now, let's assume the rate of abuse cases averages over time to the three or four cases he gets per month.

  let's further assume that, since he isn't the only person working the phones and is on vacation at some point, the number is 4-5 per month, or 4.5 per month.

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  Marvin Shilmer

  That's an interesting way to look at it.

  It was in or around year 1990 that Watchtower started taking greater and more specific measures to have elders give special treatment to reports of child molestation. During the early to late 1990s this likely resulted in a surge of reports of child molestation. To reduce the probability of skewing values I decided to ignore all reports except for the last 10 years. For statistical purposes, this gave any initial number surge a good 15-years of opportunity to subside.

  Of those reports I ignored 1) all cases without a clear date (year) of reporting and 2) all cases reported as "Not a JW member".

  To me this provides a pretty clear idea of the magnitude of reported cases Watchtower has received worldwide over the past 10 years, and is also a pretty good indicator of what the problem has looked like for a long time (decades!) before that.
• 
  37

  Australian Branch Stats?

  by Marvin Shilmer in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm working on some statistical analysis of child abuse data made public by the royal commission.

  while i'm working on this, can someone here do me a favor and look up the peak publisher figures reported by watchtower for the australian branch for each of the years from 2005 through 2014?

  my thanks in advance.

  1. 
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  3. 
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  Marvin Shilmer

  Those are 28,827 reasons why WT's GB Jackson may not present himself to the Royal Commission's courtroom next week and 28,827 reasons why WT's GB Lett refused to testify in the U.S. a few months ago on another JW child molestation case.

  It's much, much worse than that.

  Keep in mind that the extrapolated value of 28,827 is only for the last 10 years. Think about what that means.