Wining about the placebo effect - Page 2

Fail.

 

I guess it's like walking up to every woman you meet and asking her to go to bed with you. Eventually you'll come across one who says "yes."

 

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seldom worked when I was young.....never works now that I am older.....

 

You just didn't try hard enough. Slacker!

 

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Seldom is good enough, you just have to increase your work rate...

One obvious question that nobody asked is why would sighted AB test works while blind test doesn't. Actually under any condition or test plan, why would sighted test work better. This is like saying the reason why I failed my exam is because the teacher did not give me the answer with the test. 

One argument for sighted tests would be that the equipment under investigation is encountered in a more "natural way" the way. Equipment would be used in a situation than was more "normal" versus a situation where the identity of the item is hidden, where some trickery is employed,  or where the situation of encountering it was significantly altered.

 

 

Because of course throwing a towel over an Amp or DAC so that you cannot see what it is completely changes the acoustics of the room/headphones and/or the listener's hearing and/or powers of discrimination making the obvious night and day differences routinely reported vanish like scotch mist. This is why all medical trials are sighted so that the pharmaceutical properties of drugs are not hampered by the metaphorical towel. The enormous stress generated by not knowing what you are listening to must cripple golden ears power of discrimination, Harman for instance routinely show test listeners their speakers and tell them how much they cost so listeners are not hampered by ignorance when they compare the sound and know upfront which ones will sound better, ask Dr Olive who hangs out here from time to time. I know for instance that in blind testing I cannot tell the difference between ABBA and Wagner it is just too difficult when I cant see the CD 

Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry will come out with a pill for that.

 

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The thing about placebos is that they have been proven to work to reduce pain. People who believe that they have been given a pain reducing drug have not only experienced subjective experience of less pain but also measurable changes in brain chemistry. What they believe effects the chemical make up of their brain and their experience.

That's pretty much the definition of placebo (effect). It's still ineffective treatment.

Edited by xnor - 2/15/13 at 2:10pm

How is it ineffective if it produced both objective biological changes and phenomenological first person subjective changes?

*Edit to add- I think the term placebo when used in the context of discussing audio is troublesome.

Edited by JadeEast - 2/15/13 at 2:38pm

Many people do not even respond to placebos. I'd argue that this is quite comparable to audiophile components.

Feeling better after getting a placebo doesn't mean the placebo is an effective treatment for the disease.

 

It's quite similar with audio components. A new component will usually sound different, even if it performs identically (-> auditory placebo effect). How do you tell if there's a real difference? By hiding which component is which.

 

Sure, you can spend all your money on whatever you like if it makes you feel better. I just prefer to not just get a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but a real improvement. (improvement is important here because I've seen people feeling better after replacing a component with a worse one ...)

Edited by xnor - 2/15/13 at 3:13pm

 

+1

 

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