"Audio Without Numbers" by Herb Reichert

[Allan F]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

What you mean you have a problem with satire?

 

I thought that your earlier posts to another thread had already established that you don't understand the nature of satire.

 

[crenca]

1 minute ago, Allan F said:

 

I thought that your earlier posts to another thread had already established that you don't understand the nature of satire.

 

 

I don't but with your continued help I'll get the hang of it ?

[Allan F]

6 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

I don't but with your continued help I'll get the hang of it ?

 

I doubt it, but you are welcome to try.

[OldBigEars]

On 4/4/2018 at 2:13 PM, GUTB said:

Eloquent and brutal analysis of non-audiophile objectivists’ belief system.

 

Agreed. Well written article.  

[Ron Scubadiver]

5 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

 If that's 'stilted' to you, that's your problem.  It's no excuse to make up lies about the place.   

You are calling me a liar.  That's a personal attack if there ever was one.

[Ron Scubadiver]

5 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

So you admit that the 'guy who runs the forum' that you cited, is actually...a member of an administration *team*.  

 

Any other careless claims about HA that you care to correct?

 

 

Who burned your breakfast?   I don't know how you reached your conclusion, as to what you believe I might have admitted.  If you like HA so much, why don't you clear out of here with all it's subjective opinions?  Other than asking specific questions about foobar2000, that place is nearly worthless.

 

[Rexp]

22 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

I take it you've never read up on the interesting things that happen to preference ratings when wines are compared 'blind' (i.e, without the drinker knowing anything about the price or label). 

 

What if your opinions of sound 'quality' are in fact being informed by things other than the sound?

 

 

1. I only take advice on wine from experts who can pick a good one blind.

2. I buy audio that allows the music to engage me emotionally, I either get engaged or I dont.

[adamdea]

13 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

duplicate

[adamdea]

13 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

 

Well, I did a little digging and found a few things, some familiar, some new to me. I do

 

Here's a review that provides a very good summary: https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/robert-watt-on-dennis-schultings-kants-radical-subjectivism/

 

 

 

 

 

A review that emphasizes "the struggle against subjectivism": https://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1137&context=eip

 

Aesthetics and subjectivity: from Kant to Nietzsche

Andrew Bowie

 

 

From the intro: 

"The new focus of philosophy on subjectivity established by Kant accompanies the c

 

 

 

 

 

These are all very interesting. Lots of food for thought. I have to confess I haven't read a book on Kant for a very long time, but any way up, the I'm fairly sure term "subjectivism" here is not being used in any sense which maps to the way it's used in audiophile discourse (and I'm not sure whether it is used in the same way in those books either). I think it is sometimes used to describe those whose starting point is something like the Cogito. Howerv that position can lead to all sorts of things including radical scepticism about the senses (something with which audio objectivism is often conflated). 

IIRC subjectivism has cropped up as a tag in lots of places. I seem to remember there's a chapter in Macintyre's After Virtue about something he terms subjectivism. I don't think these relate in any way to kant's transcendental deduction or audiophilia. Neither I think does Ayn Rand's usage. 

 

Obviously in some areas it is useful to have a tag to apply to particular positions. Here I'm not sure it helps. 

 

[adamdea]

12 hours ago, Allan F said:

 

Does anyone else find this psuedo-intellectualism to be less than enlightening? Not to mention condescending.

I can't quite see the point you are making but I sense hostility.

[drbobb]

16 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

So you admit that the 'guy who runs the forum' that you cited, is actually...a member of an administration *team*.  

 

Any other careless claims about HA that you care to correct?

 

 

Cmon Steven,

Although TOS#8 can be seen as a, IMO "nice", feature of HA, it is clear the TOS's are not uniformly enforced.

It's obvious "the guy" is greynol, and he often breaks TOS#2 and 5, and allows you and AJ and other to, also. Then he hides behind 7 to essentially say that as a global moderator, he can do anything, and no one can question him.

[Allan F]

3 hours ago, adamdea said:

I can't quite see the point you are making but I sense hostility.

 

Just calling a spade a spade.

[crenca]

4 hours ago, adamdea said:

These are all very interesting. Lots of food for thought. I have to confess I haven't read a book on Kant for a very long time, but any way up, the I'm fairly sure term "subjectivism" here is not being used in any sense which maps to the way it's used in audiophile discourse (and I'm not sure whether it is used in the same way in those books either). I think it is sometimes used to describe those whose starting point is something like the Cogito. Howerv that position can lead to all sorts of things including radical scepticism about the senses (something with which audio objectivism is often conflated). 

IIRC subjectivism has cropped up as a tag in lots of places. I seem to remember there's a chapter in Macintyre's After Virtue about something he terms subjectivism. I don't think these relate in any way to kant's transcendental deduction or audiophilia. Neither I think does Ayn Rand's usage. 

 

Obviously in some areas it is useful to have a tag to apply to particular positions. Here I'm not sure it helps. 

 

 

Perhaps @christopher3393can explain, but I too am at a loss to see how Kantian (or really any other German Idealism) really comes into play.  Just as you point out, Kant is at the end of the day a Cartesian (i.e. Cogito) metaphysician.  The person upstream who identified the categories Herb Reichert abused used in his hit piece with Kant is mistaken IMO - these go back much further to Aristotle.   I don't remember (it's been 20 years since I read After Virtue) but my guess is that Macintyre's complaint would have been with Cartesian metaphysics and the modern morality that is (often) derived from it (i.e. modern anti-virtue "ethics").

 

The subjective/objective divide in Audio is much more along the lines of methodological materialism and its "anti-metaphysics" (on the objectivist side - Francis Bacon, etc.) and a crude (and vague, and incoherent, etc.) modern psychologism (that does have some things in common with the Romantic side of German Idealism).  Perhaps @christopher3393can tie it all in better for us...

[christopher3393]

 I could just suggest what I think may be a fruitful direction: Kant's subjectivization of aesthetics, which he couldn't have and wouldn't have argued before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. So, in terms of Kant, the third critique, The Critique of Judgement. Especially the effects it had. Before Kant, we don't have the subjectivization of taste. After Kant it gradually becomes a presupposition, one that many or most here would accept, I would guess.  And this is, I think,  a kind of radical subjectivization. If aesthetic experiences and judgments are finally understood to be strictly individual, irrational, idiosyncratic, relativistic, etc., then where are we?

[sullis02]

22 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

You are calling me a liar.  That's a personal attack if there ever was one.

 

Oh dear.  Wouldn't want that.  In that case, let me amend 'make up lies'  to 'post multiple poorly researched and inaccurate claims about'.  Better? 

[sullis02]

12 hours ago, drbobb said:

Cmon Steven,

Although TOS#8 can be seen as a, IMO "nice", feature of HA, it is clear the TOS's are not uniformly enforced.

It's obvious "the guy" is greynol, and he often breaks TOS#2 and 5, and allows you and AJ and other to, also. Then he hides behind 7 to essentially say that as a global moderator, he can do anything, and no one can question him.

 

 

The primary animus I sense against HA is not for supposedly inconsistent TOS#2 (everyone play nice)  or  #5 (everyone stay on topic) enforcement, but against enforcement of its 'nice' TOS#8 -- its distinguishing 'objectivism' feature versus pretty much every other audio forum, CA included --  which , understandably, is anathema to 'subjectivists'. 

 

The rest of the complaints are just gravy by comparison.    

 

 

[sullis02]

6 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 I could just suggest what I think may be a fruitful direction: Kant's subjectivization of aesthetics, which he couldn't have and wouldn't have argued before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. So, in terms of Kant, the third critique, The Critique of Judgement. Especially the effects it had. Before Kant, we don't have the subjectivization of taste. After Kant it gradually becomes a presupposition, one that many or most here would accept, I would guess.  And this is, I think,  a kind of radical subjectivization. If aesthetic experiences and judgments are finally understood to be strictly individual, irrational, idiosyncratic, relativistic, etc., then where are we?

 

We are nowhere with that,  as far as determining the probability that  a) a 'heard' difference between A and B has a basis in reality and b) whether a preference is due only to the heard difference.   

 

These are not questions of 'taste' (though 'b' is related to it), but they are central to the debates about audio . 

 

Since Kant's day we have developed methods to help us answer them.

 

 

 

 

[drbobb]

On 4/5/2018 at 2:51 AM, Ron Scubadiver said:

Nothing has changed and that will get you banned, but some members are obviously getting away with a lot and the guy who runs the forum breaks his own rules whenever he feels like it.

 

On 4/9/2018 at 8:28 AM, sullis02 said:

 

Who is this 'guy' who 'runs' the forum?  There are multiple administrators , monitoring different sections of HA.  

 

You are not a  reliable source of information about HA.  Stop. 

 

19 hours ago, drbobb said:

Cmon Steven,

Although TOS#8 can be seen as a, IMO "nice", feature of HA, it is clear the TOS's are not uniformly enforced.

It's obvious "the guy" is greynol, and he often breaks TOS#2 and 5, and allows you and AJ and other to, also. Then he hides behind 7 to essentially say that as a global moderator, he can do anything, and no one can question him.

 

7 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

 

The primary animus I sense against HA is not for supposedly inconsistent TOS#2 (everyone play nice)  or  #5 (everyone stay on topic) enforcement, but against enforcement of its 'nice' TOS#8 -- its distinguishing 'objectivism' feature versus pretty much every other audio forum, CA included --  which , understandably, is anathema to 'subjectivists'. 

 

The rest of the complaints are just gravy by comparison.    

 

 

I responded to your response to "the gravy"(see above). Your pretending to not know to whom Ron referred is disingenuous. I don't find the "primary" problem to be TOS#8 (prove it), but as @Ron Scubadiver mentions, attempts to enforce TOS#8 while blatantly ignoring TOS#2, #5. And not just by you and others, but by a "global moderator", who hides behind TOS#7(shut up-I'm God).  I'd guess that is what @Ron Scubadiver meant when he said the HA TOS are "not evenly enforced".

Although some disagree, I find Chris' enforcement at CA predictable, consistent and therefore fair. There is no equivalent to TOS#8, but if someone posts something I don't want to read, ... I don't.

HA is the objectivist equivalent of Herb Reichert's piece in the OP.

 

[drbobb]

On 4/9/2018 at 4:23 PM, pkane2001 said:

 

I've observed this in politics recently: the way to attack the opposing side is to accuse them of exactly the thing you're guilty of yourself.

 

Yup!

That's Karl Rove's tactic #3. See here, Tactic #3, page 5.

[adamdea]

14 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 I could just suggest what I think may be a fruitful direction: Kant's subjectivization of aesthetics, which he couldn't have and wouldn't have argued before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. So, in terms of Kant, the third critique, The Critique of Judgement. Especially the effects it had. Before Kant, we don't have the subjectivization of taste. After Kant it gradually becomes a presupposition, one that many or most here would accept, I would guess.  And this is, I think,  a kind of radical subjectivization. If aesthetic experiences and judgments are finally understood to be strictly individual, irrational, idiosyncratic, relativistic, etc., then where are we?

Yes I’m with you about this. Perhaps it would help if I explained where I was coming from. 

When I first bumped into internet audio forums about a 10-12 years ago, I was inclined to assume that the words objectivist/ subjectivist were used in a way which corresponded roughly to some sort of (Anglo/American/German)  philosophy usage and that a subjectivist was supposed to be someone who regarded subjective preferences as an end in themselves (in a moral/aesthetic dimension) not dependent on any material objective facts and radically unfalsifiable (in the truth/knowledge dimension).

To be a bit more concrete, I assumed that a subjectivist was someone who said “I prefer the sound of this [grounding box]. It does not matter whether in fact I can’t distinguish when it is in circuit or not; it does not matter whether you have opened it and shown that it is full of sawdust; it does not matter whether the engineering explanation given by the designer would have him thrown off an undergraduate course; it does not matter whether I like it because I like shiny things. I like it, and that it all that matters. I cannot be wrong when I say I like it.”

I would be happy with that position being termed radical subjectivism. It is not a point of view I hold, or even greatly admire, but I consider it to be tenable in a way (although probably difficult to hold consistently). 

Unfortunately it gradually dawned on me that, although one does occasionally come across a position roughly mapping to what i term radical subjectivism, what characterised the audiophile belief set was  a set of positions which really amount to something like fantasy physics/ fantasy powers. These include believing that audio foo is firmly based in science; that there is firm evidence that middle aged humans can hear over 30 kHz; that vinyl records have infinite resolution; that engineer all know that things that measure the same sound different; that there are no known limits of hearing; that high bitrate mp3 sounds awful; that a CD player is a turntable; that ABX tests obscure results Apart from the science says this fantasy, there is the Galileo/ paradigm chance fantasy - if science doesn’t say this now it will soon. There is also (drum roll) what I call the “human sound quality measurement device “ fantasy. 

There are many variants but what characterises them IMHO, apart from a conviction that listening to hifi boxes MATTERS , is that they are mainly based on bad science, twisted science and/or ignorance or lack of interest in basic well established knowledge in both physical and human sciences. 

I have often been struck by the fact that cable vendors, purveyors of dubious audio formats and hifi journalists tend to serve up big dollops of bogus or misreported science. It’s not about subjectivism, it’s about imagining that the facts match what you want them to. 

 

This is why I don’t think that the expression subjectivist or objectivist really help. 

[adamdea]

5 hours ago, drbobb said:

Yup!

That's Karl Rove's tactic #3. See here, Tactic #3, page 5.

It is also pretty obvious in the orange comb-over king's penchant for crying "fake news".

[adamdea]

5 hours ago, drbobb said:

 

 

 

I responded to your response to "the gravy"(see above). Your pretending to not know to whom Ron referred is disingenuous. I don't find the "primary" problem to be TOS#8 (prove it), but as @Ron Scubadiver mentions, attempts to enforce TOS#8 while blatantly ignoring TOS#2, #5. And not just by you and others, but by a "global moderator", who hides behind TOS#7(shut up-I'm God).  I'd guess that is what @Ron Scubadiver meant when he said the HA TOS are "not evenly enforced".

Although some disagree, I find Chris' enforcement at CA predictable, consistent and therefore fair. There is no equivalent to TOS#8, but if someone posts something I don't want to read, ... I don't.

HA is the objectivist equivalent of Herb Reichert's piece in the OP.

 

I'm not sure why there is so much HA hate. It's a funny place, with a range of people, some of whom are a bit weird. But I think one can learn quite a lot there because there are undoubtedly a number of really smart and knowledgeable people who hang out there like JJ  (OTOH there's Arnie kreuger).

 

What I don't particularly like about it is that there is an air of besieged paranoia about the place. The regulars have a weariness with mainstream views and having to go over basics which has over time led to them more or less assuming that any newcomer is a troll out for a fight. Quite often they are right of course. This can mean that in order to find out information about a topic one has to go through a bit of ritual tummy ticking and/or a term of fagging just to prove that one really does mean to ask the question one appears to be asking. 

[Fokus]

13 minutes ago, adamdea said:

 people who hang out there like JJ  (OTOH there's Arnie kreuger).

 

Both deeply-rooted pillars (*) of the audio internet, and this since long before the www.

 

(* But not of the same type, I have to add.)

 

 

 

[adamdea]

43 minutes ago, Fokus said:

 

Both deeply-rooted pillars (*) of the audio internet, and this since long before the www.

 

(* But not of the same type, I have to add.)

 

 

 

True. Arnie in some ways is the epitome of the internet warrior and of the feature of HA I mentioned (though I'm not sure whether he hangs out there still). I have wondered whether at some time he was well balanced, but certainly in recent years he seems unable not to have an argument or even to concede the slightest point.. 

[Ron Scubadiver]

17 hours ago, sullis02 said:

 

Oh dear.  Wouldn't want that.  In that case, let me amend 'make up lies'  to 'post multiple poorly researched and inaccurate claims about'.  Better? 

@drbobb Thank you for demystifying why I am receiving all these nasty notes.  Frankly, HA is not for me, and I only go there for fb2k support these days.