How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

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2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

then let's get back to colonial vestiges in the Americas (while I finish my pot stickers)...

 

there are 16 dialects of French spoken in Louisiana

 

mais oui, sixteen !!

How many dialects of English?  And I don't think French or English gets to claim variants of Creole.  

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Speaking of home theater immersion.  I'd turned everything off due to lightning Sunday afternoon.  Later watching Westworld I just flicked on the center speaker.  Really thought "you know maybe one channel is enough."  I didn't feel too much was missing.  Then I started it over, and turned on the other 4 channels and sub.  Now you feel "in the picture".  

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1 minute ago, mansr said:

In most surround mixes of film/TV audio, the centre channel carries dialogue and little else. Front left/right have mainly music and sound effects along with some dialogue (mostly by off-screen characters). Surround channels are used for ambience and occasional positioning of effects. The three front channels provide probably 80-90% of the experience.

Well in the episode of Westworld two weeks ago, the center had enough of the gunfire, rumble and explosions bleeding into the center, you weren't listening to voices only.  Foley effects also were enough in evidence it didn't hamper viewing the episode.  

 

I'll have to sign off for a bit now as again there is plenty of lightning. Later.

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15 minutes ago, mansr said:

No, but it will eat you within 100 yards. Not very smart of you, is it?

 

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3 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

 I started to read the article but confess my eyes started glazing over. Statistical analyses affect me that way. I am possibly more skeptical about statistics than most other test measures but agree that reducing "general intelligence factor" to a numerical value is not without problems.

 

That said I didn't really hear anything very revelatory. Stuff about flaws of correlation between tests as a basis to derive "g" and so fourth, I mean sure duh but so what. I have seen many neuropsych tests inclusive of IQ components. My overwhelming impression was that the same information could be ascertained by spending a bit of time with that person and perhaps, possibly, probably even a better, more meaningful assessment can be made compared to the test measures.

 

Interestingly, psychologists also estimate "pre-morbid intelligence" IOW intelligence prior to a brain impairment. I always thought this was a bit of a flaky proposition but, as I understand it, they use indicators like aspects of long term memory and language acquisition or whatever that would have preceded and survived the insult. I guess to the extent that you believe this is possible you would be even more willing to accept that current levels of functioning can be quantified in some ways.

 

I submit we all can tell a bright person from a not-so-bright (stupid) person fairly intuitively. Personally, I don't have any great difficulty estimating a "general intelligence" for most individuals after a certain time of interacting with that individual. There are exceptions and initial impressions not always being correct. You get a general idea of their cognitive abilities for speed of information processing, flexibility of thinking, ability to grasp abstractions, logical reasoning, problem solving, organizational and executive skills and so fourth.

 

While this cannot inform you how they might perform in any one specific area I have found it positively correlates with a range of cognitive functions, if not necessarily all functions. This does not mean obviously that these individuals will be more successful in life's endeavors than their not-so-intelligent counterparts. My observation is that things like personality and emotional stability along with high levels of drive are more deterministic.

 

I agree that putting a quantum on IQ like "136" is not an all encompassing construct but I can tell you IME I would predict that individual to be highly intelligent in a general layman's sense of the word. I look at it as analogous to some "visual analogue scales" like 9 out of ten for pain or beautiful women (or men). You know "9" is a lot of pain even if you know little else about the pain and "9" is a hot woman or man even if you know nothing else about their particular physical attributes.

 

 

 

This is at least a 9. 

 

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5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Historians rank the dumbest presidents - list includes Harding, Andrew Johnson, Reagan, and GW Bushco

Well I agree with one of them.  The most recent.

 

But is that because of his innate IQ or just the leftover effects of cocaine.  

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19 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

I certainly wouldn't consider Reagan dumb. He was quite effective, where many presidents weren't (aren't). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that in my lifetime, we've only had three "great" presidents: Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Reagan was a "good", effective leader, and I wouldn't give a nickel for the rest, each worse than the one before. 

I was referring to Bush not Reagan.

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41 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I remember the movie Gumball rally where the Porsche broke down being run down and captured by a Ford Ranchero.   Mr. Shelby must have gotten paid for that ad. 

 

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What about the Wonderlic test given by the NFL to potential draftees?

 

At one time the test was available online (I believe only samples are now).  One night having just finished a few glasses of wine I decided what the heck I'll take it?  I scored a 48 out of 50.  I attribute the two misses to somehow not noticing you had only 12 minutes to complete this after being about 8 minutes into it and only halfway done.  So I had to hurry. I attribute not noticing that to the wine.  

 

Now if they get those brain transplants perfected I might be a potential star quarterback in the NFL.  

 

Or maybe if the Wonderlic were really important I'd be rich enough to own myself a team.  

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Maybe we need to develop the Standford Audiolic test for potential audiophiles.  Unless they have a score higher than GUTB we don't let them take part.  Some questions will be mental and some will be about the gear you own.  That way you can aspire to own better gear and make up the mental differences if you fail to qualify the first time.  

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3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

could reflect significant changes in inborn mental acuity...

 

but there is significant variation in individual scores for reasons other than inborn mental acuity

 

like lead exposure

That's okay.  Most of the world uses lead free solder now.  Standford Audiolic scores would only be effected among audiophiles with older gear. 

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1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

I took a welding class in grad. school - or at least I tired to.  The instructor kicked me out, since I wasn't a "professional" welder wanna be.

 

But maybe it is evidence that my IQ declined 

Those off gases in welding will do that to you.  :)

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I transferred to a new school in 4th grade.  They had a division into 4 groups.  They didn't give IQ tests, but spent the first week giving tests in each subject to see where each student was, and placed students based upon that.  What made zero sense is they maintained this division thru the 6th grade.  In the 7th grade everyone was thrown together at random for junior high and high school.  It was a severe disservice to students in the lower two groups as they were considerably behind after 6 years and suddenly expected to work along with everyone else or fail.  Or you had to slow things down for them at the expense of those further along. 

 

Eventually after I was out of school they had magnet schools which basically gave the option for the males in the lower two groups to attend these instead.  Which were more vocational training or shop class. The females just had to do the best they could I suppose.  The plan seemed so poorly thought out you wonder if someone in the D group was behind it. 

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59 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/06/why-are-rich-white-girls-struggling-in-math/563066/

 

Among wealthy white students in some school districts, but not others, girls struggle at math compared to boys.

 

Among poor African American students in many districts, boys struggle in math compared to girls.

 

Obviously your genes determine which school district you live in, and work according to gender, just exactly the reverse depending on the genetics of your skin pigmentation.

I've seen evidence of boys encouraged to disengage from academics in several instances of minority families.  The most obvious was someone I worked with who had one son interested in technical stuff and was doing well in school.  Whenever the mother was around if he started talking with interest about such things or things he was learning she slapped him in the back of the head.  Told him to quit trying to be someone he isn't.  I felt really bad about that. I'm sure in her household and probably their neighborhood there were plenty of other influences against cerebral activity at too high a level.  The result of this is that curious interested young boy graduated to prison when he was 22.  He'll be there for several more years.

 

From that article:

 

As for the findings in the poorer districts, Fahle pointed to research suggesting that the norms of masculinity prevalent in many low-income black and Hispanic communities downplay the importance of academic achievement. “Boys subsequently disengage with school somewhat,” Fahle said, “and that could be a pattern that fits with our data.”

 

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1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Virtually all systems have the potential to be "great". My technique is to identify where there is a shortcoming, where the SQ is not "great", and try the most likely solutions, largely from experience, to rectify that - and keep doing that until the quality is good enough. I would call it debugging - because the mindset is exactly the same ... of course, this is of no value is one can't perceive that there is a bug, that the system "is not working right".

 

Which is why I keep harping on listening for faults in the sound - if you can't identify a symptom, well, you're stuffed! And every time I mention this vital first step, there is deathly quiet - eyes drop down, and hands start playing with the phone ... ohhh, ohh, did he say something?

 

 

Try fixing a car that someone has brought with a fault - a situation every mechanic can handle - that's a nice bit of learnin' ...

The complaint about your methods are right dead on target.  You can't communicate to someone else where or how to do the same thing. 

 

Plus some of your responses are like a car coming into the shop with a wheel vibration problem and you start looking into the wiring on the ignition saying you can't feel the details of the vibration until the engine ignition is upgraded for smoother running. 

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2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

My mother took me to a woman pediatrician when they weren't all that common, at least where we lived. She figured any woman who got into and persisted through med school in that day and age had to have something on the ball. 

I also had a woman pediatrician.  Never thought much about it.  Maybe women doctors were more likely to be a pediatrician in those days.  

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Doctors can use Google too!  No need to handicap ones font of knowledge. ?