Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

I guess I can not tell much about this video at all. It’s all sounds very unnatural to me, and I have no idea if it is supposed to sound that way, or if it is just because as a rule, I do not like zzTop’s music.  I do not like 50’s crashing guitar played that way, and to be honest, I can’t even hear a synth in there. Unless you mean that awful sound is a guitar synth. 

 

Yes, you have to be there - all the drum sounds are synth, and they are "unnaturally sharp" in their quality. But that's the point; they're not meant to sound like their acoustic cousins - and it's remarkably effective when reproduced well.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

This is very good,  it does not sound natural to me either. It sounds limited by the recording. 

 

This recording would be quite easy to have the vocals render well; the rig doesn't "have to cope" with a driving backing at the same time.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

While this recording sounds totally different, but so is the performance. And the recording media, which appears to be a handheld shaker iPhone. 

 

 

This one is a recording of the PA system, so you're behind straight away - released live performances always take the signal from the mixing desk; before being damaged by the pro amps, and PA speaker rig ... this would sound like being near a PA system, no matter how good the rig. Note the tonal difference between the performers, and the audience noise and interjections - the latter has real bite and impact, while the music doesn't.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

So with two real examples, both of which sound very different on an iPhone, and even more different on either system currently setup here, which one is more natural? How the devil would you make both of them appealing on the same system? 

 

 

The last one would never sound natural, as I just said - but could still be appealing; like being in the audience of that concert.

[fas42]

Will just mention that contrasts in music are a major part of what makes the experience so appealing. Classical composers have always used this of course, but pop music is full of such too. Part of the appeal of that ZZ Top album is that the intensity and drive of the beat is balanced by the, yes, softness of the voices - combining driving and restrained sound elements creates an emotional dynamic which I find very satisfying..

[Albrecht]

On 5/24/2019 at 8:27 AM, 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 objective."

 

Just an FYI - I meant to say "objective" and not "subjective" at the end of the above sentence

 

 

I think this is what I am trying to get at, that there is an "objective" quality to value to High Fidelity and price.  It avoids these two extremes:

 

1)  The radical subjective, where value is completely dependant upon the financial means and preferences of each individual.  

2)  The radical objective, where value can be reduced merely to measurements and an external "quality" that avoids the relativeness of value

 

So I think in some important way there is an objective aspect of performance (i.e. high fidelity), and while that is relative it is not radically relative in the sense that there is no consensus.  We are all human, so we all share the same make up (genetics, etc.), which means we are all much more alike than different (as important as those differences are).  In other words, there is a strong objective center to "high fidelity" and performance.  Hope I am making some sense...

 

By the way Albrecht, I heard that the long time founder/principle of Meitner (can't recall his name) sold off his share and is no longer part of the company

thanks for explaining further. I understand better what you mean.

Also, - in what I wrote previously, - i was not thinking so much of value, - as to performance. I used Meitner as an example as we often do not get as specific as we should in some of these conversations. Specific points of reference can yield a bit more clarity that cause confusion and too many generalizations.

 

Keeping to the Meitner example, - certainly a lot of products were sold on the basis of "it's almost as good,- but the price is a lot less." 

 

I don't know if this is subjective, objective, or radical  subjective or radical objective, - but the rule of "diminishing returns" is interesting and comes into play and often surfaces leading many folks to "an-almost consensus," - especially when experiences pile up. We've seen a lot of companies fail because of their price to performance ratio, - coupled with a dying economy, and a change in entertainment habits....

[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.

[crenca]

57 minutes ago, lucretius said:

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)?

 

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.  To put it another way, there is something objective in the value of a $300 HP and a $1500 HP, and rather you are a pensioner who can afford very little but otherwise likes music, or an oligarch (for whom in all truth $1500 is a rounding error on what he makes/spends every hour), the value of these HPs is objective and does not change (relative to the pensioner or the oligarch).

 

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

 

Unfortunately, the effort to try to get to some basic understanding of what value is in relationship to high fidelity requires that a mountain to be climbed and overcome, and that mountain is radical subjectivism.

 

Hopefully that helps...

[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?

[christopher3393]

Hilary  Putnam ( 1926 – 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. Under the influence of Pragmatism, Putnam became convinced that there is no fact-value dichotomy; that is, normative (e.g., ethical and aesthetic) judgments often have a factual basis, while scientific judgments have a normative element. At the end of the 1980s, Putnam became increasingly disillusioned with what he perceived as the "scientism" and the rejection of history that characterize modern analytic philosophy.

 

His The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, 2002, was primarily influenced by 2 economists, so economics is central here, particularly the economics of Amartya Sen.

 

From the preface:”… this was a perfect opportunity to present a detailed rebuttal of the view that ‘fact is fact and value is value and never the twain shall meet,’ a view that implies that the Senian enterprise of bringing economics closer to ethics is logically impossible. This was also an opportunity to present a philosophy of language very different from the logical positivist one that made that Senian enterprise seem so impossible. Of course it is clear that developing a less scientistic account of rationality an account that enables us to see how reasoning, far from being impossible in normative areas, is, in fact, indispensable to them, and conversely understanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all reasoning, is important not only in economics, but as Aristotle saw, in all of life.”

[crenca]

15 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

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.

 

8 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

and conversely understanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all reasoning, is important not only in economics, but as Aristotle saw, in all of life.”

 

 

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 (and when they come up short, they say things like "value is purely determined by the means/whims of the individual").  Sure, the poor pensioner and the oligarch might not be affected by this inherent character/property of value in the same way, but they both know value vs. cheap or trash when they see/hear/touch/smell it.   

 

As with most things important to being human, one can not measure a "value" directly, only obliquely (studying humanity with statistics for example).   So it depends upon what sort of evidence you're expecting.  If you are looking for a "law of value" in the same way you might look for a "law" in the physical sciences, your not going to find it because humanity is not the same thing as a physical property.

 

All this is probably too esoteric however - It might be useful to listen to what our guts tell us.  What does our guts say about the value of a $1500 HP, and does this instinct really change fundamentally (or only relatively, or in some other manner) when our bank account gets larger or smaller?

[Ralf11]

I value Neolithic technology more than Paleolithic but not sure if that is intuitive...

[Paul R]

22 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

Hilary  Putnam ( 1926 – 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. Under the influence of Pragmatism, Putnam became convinced that there is no fact-value dichotomy; that is, normative (e.g., ethical and aesthetic) judgments often have a factual basis, while scientific judgments have a normative element. At the end of the 1980s, Putnam became increasingly disillusioned with what he perceived as the "scientism" and the rejection of history that characterize modern analytic philosophy.

 

His The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, 2002, was primarily influenced by 2 economists, so economics is central here, particularly the economics of Amartya Sen.

 

From the preface:”… this was a perfect opportunity to present a detailed rebuttal of the view that ‘fact is fact and value is value and never the twain shall meet,’ a view that implies that the Senian enterprise of bringing economics closer to ethics is logically impossible. This was also an opportunity to present a philosophy of language very different from the logical positivist one that made that Senian enterprise seem so impossible. Of course it is clear that developing a less scientistic account of rationality an account that enables us to see how reasoning, far from being impossible in normative areas, is, in fact, indispensable to them, and conversely understanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all reasoning, is important not only in economics, but as Aristotle saw, in all of life.”

 

Oh boy - so I have always had trouble with the Twin Earth thing. No matter what you call something, it is what it is. Water is H2O here, and something else on Twin Earth. Practically, they may be the same, but in reality, they are different.

 

Never have seen why the POTM people want to say they are the same, as they seem to be unable to distinguish belief from actuality in this old experiment. 

 

And, any element that is water-like enough to be indistinguishable from water, is going to be H2O. Two atoms of atomic hydrogen combined with one atom of atomic oxygen.  You can call it anything you like. What you call it may influence what you believe about it, how you use it, it’s value to you, or what you do with it, but that does not change what it is. 

 

A bit like audio - call a hunk of equipment audiophile quality, and it changes what people believe about it, how they treat it, and what they will pay for it. Does not change how it sounds.  

 

 

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I value Neolithic technology more than Paleolithic but not sure if that is intuitive...

 

It is, or your sense is not "normative", and perhaps more not valuable...

[Ralf11]

What if it is purely a rational decision?

 

Say if it is based on surface smoothness and edge sharpness assessments?

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

What if it is purely a rational decision?

 

 

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...  

[Ralf11]

if rational, then .not. intuitive

[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"?

[crenca]

14 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

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"?

 

 

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...  😉

[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?

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

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

 

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.  

 

In other words value lies outside of the subjective, the individual, and their particular (economic or otherwise) circumstances.

[bluesman]

1 hour 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.

 

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.

[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?     

 

 

 

[Ralf11]

[christopher3393]

What price beauty?  When I started this "hobby" seven years ago, I kept noticing how much better music sounded with sometimes even simple system improvements. The word "beauty" came to mind often, so I started thinking and reading about it more, and noticing it more, particularly when listening to music.

 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy actually has a good overview article with a very striking beginning for our purposes:

"This article will begin with a sketch of the debate over whether beauty is objective or subjective, which is perhaps the single most-prosecuted disagreement in the literature. " It is the first and by far the longest part of this article, but some may find it worth the effort since this is no trivial question, even as it applies to audio (particularly regarding music and sound quality):

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/

 

Have a good weekend.

[bluesman]

13 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

What price beauty? 

 

"This article will begin with a sketch of the debate over whether beauty is objective or subjective, which is perhaps the single most-prosecuted disagreement in the literature."

 

A man calls the friend who set him up with last night's blind date to complain:

 

"You didn't tell me the truth about her - you told me she looked like a model!"

 

"You said you liked Picasso."

[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.