Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[lucretius]

10 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Its how nature works......like attracts like....things evolve and (sometimes) get better. Let me give you an example.

 

 

Thanks for the laugh!

[lucretius]

On 5/18/2019 at 3:45 AM, Blackmorec said:

Gold has several characteristics that make it ideal for electrical connectors. Firstly due to its electron configuration it does react with other materials or gases at mildly elevated temperatures...so it remains pure in a connection

Second, its quite soft, so high spots wear down and bed-in to make better, high-percentage surface area connections. 

Third because its surface remains clean and smooth it has the feeling of being self lubricating, which means connectors can be mechanically very tight without the connection seizing.  So ultimately a well made gold connection can be tighter, with better surface contact and no degradation.  

 

The gold plating is so thin and soft it quickly wears off.  Therefore, it's not good for constantly connecting/reconnecting. In that case, I'd take a nickel plated connector any day.

[lucretius]

2 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

And to the point... is that if there's $5000 worth of single crystal gold or gold plating in a $7000 component, - it can be of high value, - but still not "perform" (with faithful sound reproduction) as well as a $4000 component. But, on the other hand, it still has $5000 worth of gold in it. To cavalierly dismiss it outright as a "rip off" or "scam" is not doing the research....

 

Hmm ... point me to the cables/connectors with $5,000 worth of gold.

[lucretius]

6 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Surely that depends on the quality of the connectors you’re using? I’ve never had this problem, although it has to be said that I’m nothing “constantly connecting/reconnecting”  I can imagine that for such applications, where the plugs are perpetually in motion, gold is probably not the best element to use. 

 Yes. The nickel plating may be really thin but on better connectors it's thicker.  Gold-plating on connectors is always very thin.

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, esldude said:

Too bad Camac/Lemo connectors didn't replace RCA's.  They are fairly simple and gas tight. Levinson used them on some gear at one time. 

 

I like Type N connectors like this (but probably good for only unbalanced cables):

https://www.amphenolrf.com/connectors/n-type.html

[lucretius]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

First, the "high end" space occupied by these particular Devore's is often justified by the "trickle down" effect

 

It could be that a company's flagship model is merely a statement of their abilities, values, etc. and not made to bring in much profit itself but helps to sell a lot of 'lesser' affordable models.

[lucretius]

17 hours ago, emcdade said:

If $90k speakers are what help Devore Fidelity and Stereophile survive, then I'm all for it.

 

I'd much rather live in that world than a world where no boutique Hifi brands can survive and we're discussing whether we should buy the Apple or Amazon home surveillance speaker model.

 

There's a heck of a lot of room between these extremes.

[lucretius]

I like to buy in the sweet spot (if I can afford it).  I'm thinking $1,500 headphones may be the sweetspot.

 

[lucretius]

46 minutes ago, esldude said:

Yeah, those look good.  But they only work up to between 10 and 20 ghz.  They'll be totally insufficient for DSD 32,768 when it comes out in about 6 years. 

 

By my calculation, DSD768 requires 0.036864GHz (36,864kHz 48kz family / only 33,868.80kHz  44.1kHz family). and double for DoP.   Can you check your calculation? Or did you actually mean DSD 32,768?

[lucretius]

21 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

AFAIR -- N connectors would be overkill (afair, a little big also) in any case.  BNC/Bayonet seems pretty good -- but I am not a connector expert (I don't know all of the various things about contacts, oxidation, etc.)  Used to use BNC all of the time on my video equipment.  Also, the bayonet has a nice solid physical connection.

 

 

I suppose if you try to squeeze in as many outputs/inputs as possible on the back of equipment, then you'll likely need twice the real estate for N connectors.  I do like BNC -- easy/quick to connect and reconnect.

 

Doesn't the B in BNC stand for Bayonet?

[lucretius]

10 hours ago, crenca said:

High Fidelity has this basis as an endeavour grounded in a real objectivity:  the "perfect" (or approaching perfection as much as possible) reproduction of the original performance and/or recording.  Given this, while granted we all have subjective preferences, the ultimate goal is subjective. 

 

In some cases, what the sound engineer artistically does to the track is the performance. It may be the only way to listen to some modern pop artists (without being disappointed).

[lucretius]

15 hours ago, bluesman said:

So there is indeed a technical pursuit of objective perfection in audio, manifested and measured as closeness of fit between the source waveform and the reproduced waveform.

 

I don't disagree with this*. However, this is a lot less important for lovers of pop music than it is for lovers of classical music or jazz. And sometimes these lovers of pop music would like enhancements to the "source waveform".  Does this disqualify them from being audiophiles?   

 

15 hours ago, bluesman said:

But there is also a subjective pursuit of excellence, manifested and measured as listener satisfaction.

 

I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

 

 

* Why were audiophiles buying equalizers and dbx units in the early eighties?

[lucretius]

20 hours ago, crenca said:

Value and beauty is not in the eye of the beholder - rather it has its own reality is that reality is compelling, it is its own truth.

 

How Platonic of you.

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, Summit said:

Not all things people values are and can be prised on market though. For example someone might value free time high and wherefore work less hours or retire early. Someone else would like to work less, but can’t. Some like to live in a big city while others value the life on the countryside. The list of thing that we as individual value different is very long. Value is very much in the eyes of the beholder. 

 

This is the subjective theory of value. Constrast this with an intrinsic theory of value such as Crenca is proposing.

[lucretius]

On 5/25/2019 at 4:03 PM, bluesman said:

On 5/25/2019 at 7:12 AM, lucretius said:

I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

With all due respect, I agree with you.

 

What’s up with the smugness? You wrote the following nonsense, so the least you could do is explain it:

“But there is also a subjective pursuit of excellence, manifested and measured as listener satisfaction.”

 

 

On 5/25/2019 at 4:03 PM, bluesman said:

You're arguing two viewpoints about unrelated kinds of value, and you're getting nowhere.

 

Where have I done so?

 

On 5/25/2019 at 4:03 PM, bluesman said:

By value, Plato meant human values like goodness, beauty, and truth.

 

No shit.

 

On 5/25/2019 at 4:03 PM, bluesman said:

His extensive discussions about value are most often responsive to the relativist philosophy of Protagoras, with whom Plato strongly disagreed.  Protagoras believed that those human values all depended on the human observer, including existence itself.  But these discussions and philosophies were all focused on cultural and societal values, not economic value. 

 

Relevance?

 

On 5/25/2019 at 4:03 PM, bluesman said:

Marx, on the other hand, was talking about economic value - he couldn't have cared less about societal, moral, aesthetic, or any other kind of value.  Marx believed (or, at least, claimed to believe - I suspect that he said a lot of these things purely to perpetuate his political and social systems, knowing that they were invalid) that the value of anything was directly and solely related to the amount of labor required to produce it.  He used wages as the sole proxy measure for labor, in order to relate everything to monetary value and to create a value scale.  This approach required control and standardization of both wage rates and worker productivity, to negate the effect of human variability on the concept that anything requiring 2 hours of labor to make had twice as much value as anything requiring one hour of labor to make.  In Marxist terms, every worker was equal to every other worker, and workers were simply a necessary evil.  Specifically, he wrote that "[t]he lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of labourers not to die out".  Further, he did not equate value with price - he used supply and demand as a mechanism to account for changing prices despite what he thought was objective valuation.

 

Relevance?  By the way, labor units are used as a form of currency for theoretical arguments. It could also have been corn -- see David Ricardo. “Control and standardization of wages and/or worker productivity” is not necessary, since this is irrelevant to theory – for practice (i.e. in the real world), any Marxist would use money as currency. On the other hand, the “socially necessary labor units (etc.)” is more or less a suggestion of how to price goods in a centrally planned economy – i.e. prices should be directly related to necessary costs. But all this is irrelevant to this thread.

 

*******

 

I do know the difference between economic value and personal, moral, and aesthetic values. The original post focused on the price of a particular set of headphones and whether that price was rational. Further, the Crenca asked “Is the delta between them and say, a $300 HD650 justifiable?” Of course, this particular post was indeed about economic value.

 

Later, Crenca suggested that “there is an ‘objective’ quality to value to [sic] High Fidelity and price.” Then Summit said, “Value is like beauty [sic] very much in the eyes of the beholder. At this point, it still seems that it is economic value that is being discussed. But then Crenca replies, “Value and beauty is [sic] not in the eye of the beholder - rather it [sic] has its own reality is [sic] that reality is compelling, it is its own truth.”

 

Now, Crenca could be suggesting that there is some objective truth to economic value. In fact, since personal, moral, and/or aesthetic values had not yet been discussed, only economic value, why assume Crenca was speaking about the former (i.e. personal, moral, and/or aesthetic values)?

 

In any case, this is where the thread devolved into a sophomoric discussion of values, which is off topic.

[lucretius]

31 minutes ago, crenca said:

What I was attempting to point out (not so successfully granted), is that there is something real called value (economic, but obviously dependent up other things like SQ), and that it is not so radically subjective as to be totally dependant upon means, perception, etc.

 

Economic value is defined as the maximum amount of money an agent will pay for a good or service. Empirically, this amount varies among individuals, suggesting that it is subjective. Perhaps there are bounds to this subjectivity?  Perhaps the value of a good is (partially?) determined by some inherent property of the good or by the amount of labor necessary to produce it? This is going to require evidence.

[lucretius]

23 minutes ago, crenca said:

The "fill_in_the_blank is in eye of the beholder" is shorthand for radical subjectivism.

 

A subjective theory of value -- Yes.  But radical subjectivism?

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

That's what I and others (and not just nobody's - Aristotle as @christopher3393notes above) are saying, that to be rational, it has to have the real character of value.  To be anti-value in any way is to be be non-rational to some extent at least...  

 

What is rational?  What do you mean by "the real character of value" and "anti-value in any way is to be be non-rational"?

[lucretius]

8 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

Not sure I am following you but:  Simply reasonable, understandable, relatable, logical, and communicable.  To disconnect value from high fidelity, or to reduce it to the radical subjective, is to be unreasonable and unreal...that is to be in error...

 

I must not be following you...  😉

 

You seem to be substituting synonyms.  For example, one way to define reasonable: you can define an agent as reasonable if the agent acts in his/her best interests.

 

It does not help the discussion by using words like "radical subjective".  Can you rephrase your second sentence?

[lucretius]

1 hour ago, bluesman said:

 

I'm still seeing this as a simple application of the value equation:  the pensioner of limited means determines whether or not food, clothing, medicine, transportation etc and the benefits of same are worth more to him or her than $1500 headphones.  If yes, the cans remain with the vendor.  If no, they go home with the pensioner.

 

Assuming that he or she has $1500, decision support for this is subjective, despite the obvious (at least to me) fact that foregoing medication to have better sound seems like a foolish choice.  Then again, sacrificing meds to buy cigarettes and booze is equally dumb but done every day by millions of people around the world.  It's all a matter of relative worth for a given cost.

 

Yes, I know what the subjective theory of value is.  However, you have not established or even made plausible the idea that value of a good is determined by an inherent property of the good. You also, talk about "rational". Are you defining rational as:

the agent will pay less than or equal to the amount for the good as determined by its inherent property?  If so, how is the agent to determine value from said inherent property?  Is there a price list?     

 

 

 

[lucretius]

3 hours ago, bluesman said:

 

I'm still seeing this as a simple application of the value equation:  the pensioner of limited means determines whether or not food, clothing, medicine, transportation etc and the benefits of same are worth more to him or her than $1500 headphones.  If yes, the cans remain with the vendor.  If no, they go home with the pensioner.

 

Assuming that he or she has $1500, decision support for this is subjective, despite the obvious (at least to me) fact that foregoing medication to have better sound seems like a foolish choice.  Then again, sacrificing meds to buy cigarettes and booze is equally dumb but done every day by millions of people around the world.  It's all a matter of relative worth for a given cost.

 

Yes. You clearly subscribe to the subjective theory of value. It's Crenca that does not accept this.  But I have yet to see a reasonable defense from Crenca for his position.

[lucretius]

2 hours ago, lucretius said:

3 hours ago, bluesman said:

 

I'm still seeing this as a simple application of the value equation:  the pensioner of limited means determines whether or not food, clothing, medicine, transportation etc and the benefits of same are worth more to him or her than $1500 headphones.  If yes, the cans remain with the vendor.  If no, they go home with the pensioner.

 

Assuming that he or she has $1500, decision support for this is subjective, despite the obvious (at least to me) fact that foregoing medication to have better sound seems like a foolish choice.  Then again, sacrificing meds to buy cigarettes and booze is equally dumb but done every day by millions of people around the world.  It's all a matter of relative worth for a given cost.

 

Yes, I know what the subjective theory of value is.  However, you have not established or even made plausible the idea that value of a good is determined by an inherent property of the good. You also, talk about "rational". Are you defining rational as:

the agent will pay less than or equal to the amount for the good as determined by its inherent property?  If so, how is the agent to determine value from said inherent property?  Is there a price list?     

 

 

Oops. I quoted the wrong person. I was replying to Crenca. I am in agreement with bluesman insofar as I accept the subjective theory of value.

[lucretius]

On 5/30/2019 at 3:38 PM, crenca said:

The evidence for value being at least partially determined (not a good word, but let's use it for now) by an "inherent property" is everywhere.  No matter what the economic station in life, most folks have an intuitive sense of value, when they are not being philosophers and trying to justify it

 

Is this really an intuitive sense of value or is it just knowledge of market prices?

[lucretius]

6 hours ago, crenca said:

By "radical subjective" I mean the idea (really, a set of ideas) that value is subjectively determined.  So the pensioner of limited means would say a $1500 HP is not a value because he or she could never afford it.  The Oligarch would say the $1500 HP is a value because any good or service to him or her below some amount (let's say a $1,000,000) is a rounding error on his bank account.   

 

Radical Subjectivism is radical in the sense that we extend subjectivism to not only preferences but to expectations as well. Economic value is an agent’s measure of preference for a particular good.  So far, that is not radical; we have not said anything of expectations. Whence cometh the radical?

[lucretius]

19 hours ago, bluesman said:

There are some inherent aspects of subjectivism that strike me as pretty radical, e.g.

• Suppose subjectivism is correct and there are no objective moral truths.  Then the belief that lying is good, when expressed by a person who genuinely approves of telling lies, would be true. It would only be untrue if that person were knowingly lying about it.
• If moral statements have no objective truth to them, how could we say that murder is wrong? 

And then there's the practical subjectivism of John Steinbeck, who wrote in the Grapes of Wrath that "[t]here ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do."  

 

 

Is it inconsistent to hold a subjective theory of value while maintaining morality is objective?

 

When economists say value is subjective, this means that people have different tastes and preferences and people value things differently. The way to know what something is worth is to say what it is worth to someone.

 

If people have different tastes and preferences, we need an objective moral framework to live together in society. We have to have an objective way of knowing what to expect from each other and how to treat each other. Otherwise, people of different tastes and preferences will each have their own (different) morality. (if expectations were subjective, now that would be 'radical'.)

 

And, since we had been discussing the subjective theory of value, what is 'radical' about people having different tastes and preferences and people valuing things differently?

 

19 hours ago, bluesman said:

Although it's fun to stretch the mental muscles,, this thread mixes (and perhaps confuses) a bunch of loosely related concepts and facts that don't really belong together.  There are subjectivist theories of economics, e.g. Keynes' and Hayec's, but they're not the same as the philosophical subjectivist theories of Kant, Descartes, et al.  To philosophers, the subjectivist says simply enough that perception is reality.  The subjectivist economist, OTOH, is concerned with subjective perceptions of value.  Subjectivist economists (e.g. Bastiat, Menger et al) believe that for trade to occur between two people, each must assess the items traded differently - and each must prefer what he hopes to receive over what he is giving up for it. 

 

 

Exactly!

 

19 hours ago, bluesman said:

Both appear to me to be reasonable models for the acquisition of audio equipment.

 

There seems to be much 'irrational' behavior demonstrated in the acquisition of audio equipment.