How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, Jud said:

New Mexico comes real close.  

I've been there.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, GUTB said:

Are there any places in the UK which are both not decayed urban trash and not horrendously expensive to visit?

It's all class D. It sucks.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, beerandmusic said:

aquatic water parks

What are the other kinds of water park?

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, Nordkapp said:

It cost this guy $6 mil. to be an audiophile. 30-Mcintosh MC2102s in case you were wondering.

 

Audiopath would be a more apt description.

[mansr]

40 minutes ago, mav52 said:

How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

According to GUTB, all of it.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, elcorso said:

But I do not finish thanking Spain for the Paella.
Family and friends say that mine is the best, but they know that if they do not say that I will not invite them again ?

At least they like it enough that they want to be invited again.

[mansr]

22 minutes ago, esldude said:

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".  

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.

[mansr]

17 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

There is most certainly such a thing as IQ.

 

Don't confuse that with the difficulty in measuring it.

I have no difficulty at all identifying stupid people.

[mansr]

16 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

humans are distance runners.  This was evolutionarily necessitated by the need to tire out our food so we could more easily kill it.  If you were unable to kill your food, you died.  There is no physical fitness part of our IQ tests.

That's because physical fitness is by definition not intelligence.

 

16 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

maybe we are becoming a more weighty society because we no longer need that specific ability to acquire food.  Things to think about.

I get food by running after the pizza guy and snatching the box. Doesn't everybody?

[mansr]

Just now, AudioDoctor said:

It absolutely is.  It is also proof of how lacking our understanding of intelligence is.

So by your definition, Stephen Hawking was really stupid.

[mansr]

9 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

You're stuck in our very basic modern understanding of IQ as only brain smarts. Great, 1000 years ago Hawking would have been eaten by a tiger.  Not very smart is it.

A human can't even outrun a house cat, yet only a few cats are able to open a door. Intelligence is, again, by definition distinct from physical strength. Both are, of course, a factor in survivability.

 

10 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

You should stick to arguing about electronics.

Sorry, I'm not that fast a runner.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, elcorso said:

Personally would define IQ as "the state of happiness".

Happiness is great. It is, however, not equivalent to intelligence. Indeed, stupid people are quite often happy. Ignorance is bliss.

[mansr]

1 minute ago, Ralf11 said:

there are clearly overall aspects of general mental ability - that is what IQ tests seek to measure

There are, but quantifying them in a single number is difficult, if at all possible or meaningful. As a crude analogy, consider computer benchmarks. They, too, attempt to assign a single number to the performance of a system. In reality, which system wins is highly dependent on the specific workload. Humans are no different.

[mansr]

Just now, AudioDoctor said:

A cheetah may be fast, but not for very long...  It certainly can't run 26.2 miles...

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

[mansr]

Just now, Ralf11 said:

humans can out run any other animal

 

...under certain conditions

Rocket engines are great.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Actually, all an IQ test claims to do is to measure a person's ability to solve problems, and put a number to it. It's not supposed to measure knowledge or so-called "common sense". Smart people grasp concepts and abstractions faster than the average Joe, and that's all that an IQ test is designed to measure. 

All true, but an IQ test doesn't account for the effects of long-term experience. Reaching one's limit in a particular area of problem solving can take years.

[mansr]

10 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Smartness is a result of evolutionary pressures,

Yes, because we pretty much suck physically, we had to invent various tools and otherwise outsmart other animals.

 

10 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

IMO.  ie: our ancestors had to adapt and problem solve to survive and meet new challenges as they moved out of Africa.  I have seen some argue that an ice age and the pressures to survive in the new climate, as well as the different cold climates further north from Africa as early humans spread out, is the cause of our intelligence and evolution into what we are now.

You seem to be suggesting that Africans are not as smart as others. That's wrong and offensive.

[mansr]

1 hour ago, Summit said:

If you are in an area there the probability to be attacked by any predator without anything to defend yourself with, you are not very smart.

Right, so if you can't outrun the predator, you invent the spear and bring one with you.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

What are some of those current selection pressures in first world societies?

Whatever it is that women find attractive in men. Many men seem to believe it is fast cars.

[mansr]

43 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

how smart does a Pres. need to be anyway?

Smart enough to not be constantly boasting about his own intelligence.

[mansr]

44 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

so why did Europeons succeed in trashing all other cultures for a couple of centuries?

Perhaps because they just happened to develop ships, guns, and a desire to explore/conquer the world before anyone else did. The development of ships might have been encouraged simply by the geography of Europe.

[mansr]

Just now, Ralf11 said:

the Chinese had ships long before that

Yes, but apparently they didn't want to conquer Europe, for whatever reason. The Mongols wanted to and did.

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Yes but I was thinking, in the context of this discussion, of selection for intelligence and talent.

I'm mostly seeing the opposite.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, Jud said:

Our assessment of someone’s intelligence has everything to do with whether their demeanor seems appropriate *to us*, and whether they are conversant with topics that seem *to us* to be those a smart person would be familiar with.

I judge a person as reasonably intelligent if I can have a conversation with them for more than 5 minutes without getting bored.

[mansr]

10 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

So, the examples you cited of applying "standardised" tests to 'non-standard', not neurotypical individuals seriously challenges if not invalidates the test procedure.

But they work just fine on GUTB.