Is Audiophiledom a confidence game?

[wgscott]

Just now, sandyk said:

 

 I have no disagreement with that, which is why I usually also involve others in an effort to confirm what I believe that I am hearing.

 

So if people just said "I think you may be fooling yourself about X", you would be ok with that?

[wgscott]

4 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

This is pedantic. 

 

Honestly, no, it is not.  It is a fundamental misunderstanding about how science works, and that may be one of the root causes of a whole bunch of political problems we are facing, as a consequence.  

[wgscott]

Why is it all the Happy People(™) can't laugh at a joke, or even (as in this case) a very mild parody?

[wgscott]

HTFU, snowflakes!

[wgscott]

Thanks for the link!

 

Even being married to a British individual for > 20 years, I still find the whole "sorry" business a sorry business.

[wgscott]

4 hours ago, mansr said:

I don't see why it's any worse than "grammar Nazi."

 

I very much appreciate your support, but @christopher3393 has a compelling objection, so out of respect for him and his personal history, I respectfully suggest we should all retire the term and use something less inflammatory to convey the idea.  Better yet, if some of those folks who are constantly calling for banning others could tone it down a bit, it would remove the need for ridiculing their intolerance.  

 

(As a side note, Seinfeld took a lot of flack for "soup nazi" as it can be read to trivialize the crimes of the real ones, so these things can easily backfire.)

[wgscott]

 

[wgscott]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

Can we call them the Spanish Inquisition then?

 

Only if we get to refer to ML as "The Pope."

[wgscott]

1 minute ago, mansr said:

I expected that.

 

I see what you did there.

[wgscott]

2 hours ago, Tony Lauck said:

It was a real-world example that shows the effect of imperfections of the playback chain  on the sound a listener hears. 

 

Alex's claim is that two bit-identical files on the same device, etc., and all other things being equal, can nevertheless sound different if they have different histories (such as, for example, one is copied from the other using a computer powered by a noisy power supply).

 

The point isn't whether he is right or wrong (and he and I are finally in agreement to simply disagree and let it go). Rather, the point was whether someone can state, under what hypothetical conditions, they might be willing to accept that their hypothesis has been refuted.  Alex used to say he would never accept any contrary evidence as compelling, under any condition. If testability and potential falsifiability are used as a demarcation between science and non-science (eg metaphysics, religion, subjective opinion, etc), then his claim by those standards don't meet the criteria.  It doesn't mean his claim is wrong; it just means we can never know if it is right or wrong.  (I too have wondered if there is some other explanation, like differences encoded in the resource fork on HFS+ or similar file systems, byte-swapping, or something else that might not show up under conventional tests.)

[wgscott]

Just now, beerandmusic said:

what do you mean by "different histories"?

 

2 identical files can sound different even depending "heat of the moment".

 

I edited the post to make it a bit more explicit.

 

We have a lot of threads here on the topic.  Let's honor Alex's request and not make this another one.

[wgscott]

The comments are delightful:  https://www.anandtech.com/comments/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds/578055

[wgscott]

Since everyone else is doing it wrong, could you help all of us idiots out by defining the problem properly?

[wgscott]

There is another aspect to the confidence game.  Perhaps it might be best to make the analogy to the M.D. who, for example, decides to take up the mantle of the anti-vaccine movement, or the molecular biologist who endorses Creationism as a viable alternative to evolution.  If they favor the dominant position in their field, it is hardly newsworthy, but if they endorse the "maverick" or "anti-establishment" "alternative" view, they instantly become a hero with a cult following. Likewise for engineers or computer scientists etc. who legitimize what they doubtless privately and cynically recognize as the palpably absurd. It likely provides a real ego boost.

[wgscott]

39 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Interesting analogy. On one hand there is a vast compendium of peer reviewed published literature regarding both the efficacy of vaccines and the biology behind evolution. Vaccines have saved millions if not approaching billions of lives and cured diseases such as smallpox and polio. 

The scientific evidence behind evolution as you know cannot be overstated.

 

on the other had the beliefs which folks hold regarding what might be considered “absurd” regarding consumer audio has no such scientific backing. Indeed no one has been able to provide a single peer reviewed published article regarding the “SQ” of Ethernet cables. 

 

Ive asked before and no one has been able to answer: on what basis, specifically, did you personally determine an audiophile belief to be absurd or delusional? No doubt there are edge cases but what about some common ones? 

 

Like the box of dirt that serves to ground audio equipment?  There is not a single peer-reviewed article in the literature I am aware of that says that grounding your stereo to a box of dirt won't work, so therefore we should take it seriously?

 

 

Quote

 

Can you articulate why you consider certain things so absurd that they are not in need of detailed analysis and investigation?

 

Because the proponents of these "certain things" are unable to articulate a testable hypothesis and to state under what experimental conditions they might be willing to accept that their prediction is incorrect.

 

Quote

 

How would you treat a freshman biology student who stood up in class and asserts: “it is well known that enzymes are made of proteins and absurd to consider that RNA acts directly as a catalyst”?

 

I would first acknowledge that the assertion is completely reasonable and consistent with what (almost) everyone believed until the mid-1980s, until they were confronted with compelling experimental evidence to the contrary.  See the difference?  

 

Note also that the proposition that RNA might also have catalytic activity violated no laws of physics or chemistry.  It required no revision of physical theory.  The idea that a box of dirt can work as a ground is fundamentally different.

 

Quote

 

...

 

”Yeah but can you prove that’s necessary?”

 

Huh?

[wgscott]

25 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

But on the basis of what expertise on your part (or that of others on which you rely) does this “doubtless” rest?  Sure, there’s stuff that’s obviously absurd just for normal reasoning humans.  But on some of these topics engineers disagree, and they both/all Know More Than I Do.

 

It isn't a question of expertise.  It is a question of whether the proposition is testable, repeatable, measurable ...

 

Donald Trump, by virtue of his current job, which includes access to highly classified intelligence, knows much more about what is going on in the world than you do.  Do you give his tweets the same benefit of the doubt that you do the statements of engineers disagree upon? Or do you apply a wee bit of common sense?

[wgscott]

Because we are on page 42