How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

[gmgraves]

5 minutes ago, Jud said:

It's not a "test," it's a variety of tests across different topics - topics that the testmakers think intelligent people ought to know about.

 Jud, I was referring to a "test"; the standard Stanford-Binet IQ test given in the United States to most school children. It's the test upon which the averages are calculated; the test that gives standard reference for statistically figuring the "Bell Curve" that puts the average IQ at 100. 

[gmgraves]

15 hours ago, esldude said:

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.  

Now, is the point of the test to have more expensive gear than GUTB, or to be more cryptic about one's tweaks than Frank? Perhaps a combination of both will give a pair of curves and where they cross will give the test givers an "index of audiophilia" for each test taker, whereby one can figure out where they lie on the audiophile loon line.

[gmgraves]

8 hours ago, firedog said:

What's lost in these discussions about groups and their average intelligence: even if the numbers are correct, they are irrelevant. Decisions should get made about individuals. The group IQ means nothing about the abilities of an individual from that group. 

I don't know about today but when I was in the Seventh Grade (for you non-Americans, whose school systems work differently, that's about 12 years old) we were given a Stanford-Binet. When we got to Eighth Grade, we were separated into "classes", 8A through 8D. The 8A group took algebra1 and creative writing class while 8B and 8C took basic practical mathematics and English Grammar. 8D classes were all remedial and the 8D boys spent a lot of their time taking metal shop, and the 8D girls spent a lot of their days taking home economics. Boys in the higher Eighth Grade classes wished they had been put in 8D so they could spend their days learning how to weld and fabricate things out of metal! I asked my guidance counselor what the different classes meant, and he's the one who told me that the Eighth Grade class was divided-up along IQ lines. The smartest were in 8A, the largest class was 8C, and 8D had the lowest IQs.

[gmgraves]

18 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Hi George - Yes, I'm familiar.  The point is this: The Stanford-Binet and all other IQ tests are comprised of tests on different subjects.  Here's what Stanford-Binet says:

 

"The test is comprised of four sections: Short-Term Memory, Quantitative Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Abstract/Visual Reasoning."

 

The scores on the individual test sections are then run through a statistical tool that tells you what part of your scores on the individual sections was due to a "general factor" of mental acuity, your IQ, which is supposed to then apply across *all* mental tasks.  The problem is that this statistical tool will always find that a portion of your score is due to a "general factor," and not simply to how well you can do the problems posed by these particular test-makers in the four specific test sections.  As I mentioned a while ago, you could participate in the Olympic decathlon and the Pillsbury Bake-Off, and this statistical tool would find that part of your score on each was due to a general aptitude that applied to decathlons, bake-offs, and any other competition you could name.  And that's what we call IQ.

Well, yes, different sections to be sure, but still only one test. That was all I was alluding to.

[gmgraves]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

mainly, because it gets results ...

If only in your head... ?

[gmgraves]

19 hours ago, mansr said:

Are they as good as solder flux fumes?

But not as bad as what I did as a kid. I would hold a length of solder between my teeth as a third hand. IT sur dint effec mi enterl-i-genc nun!

[gmgraves]

15 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

It is Never the doctors fault.

 

A cardiologist told the story of how he gave a patient a clean bill of health only to have said patient leave the consultation room (opening on to the waiting room) and promptly drop dead of a heart attack. When asked what he did about this obviously embarrassing misdiagnosis he replied, " I did what any sensible doctor would do. I quickly turned the patient around to make it look like he was on the way IN to my room!

An old joke but humorous, nonetheless!

[gmgraves]

7 hours ago, elcorso said:

Oh, and never learn to smoke cigarettes. Once the habit is acquired it is VERY difficult to leave it !

 

Also, they used to say that if you stop smoking, your body will repair the damage in a few years. Now we know that's not true. The damage done by smoking is is irreparable. I had a friend who smoked when he was younger but gave it up in his 30's. When he died at 69, the autopsy revealed that his lungs were so full of tar and nicotine that the strain that put on his heart was too great and it failed. Anecdotal, yes, but it seems to back up the findings that the body doesn't purge itself of the effects of smoking. 

[gmgraves]

53 minutes ago, elcorso said:

 

That's precisely why I have not stopped smoking?

 

Now, seriously, when quitting smoking there is not so much vasoconstriction, which helps the circulatory function a lot and favors the functioning of the heart.

 

Your friend's lungs should have come out pretty clean after 10 years of quitting. That indicates the studies I've read. I do not know if these studies are reliable. On the other hand, each organism reacts differently to the different oxidizing substances ...

 

Roch
 

The Tobacco industry is one of the largest industries on earth. They will pay anyone any amount to debunk the notions that A) cigarettes are addicting (while at the same time gene manipulating tobacco to make it even more addictive!) and B) that there are long term health consequences associated with smoking.