[Hutnicks]

Quote:

Do you know Sylvia Brown? She told Amanda Berry's mother that Amanda is dead. A few years later Amanda's mom died believing her daugther is dead. Now that Amanda is found, Brown still had not apologize. She claimed she is only right some of the time. I guess I am not buying any lotto number from her.
 
My wife's side of the family is big with Tibetan Buddhist. The head lamas are supposedly reborn buddha so people called them living buddha. And they're supposed to have god like power. So they went on a junket to Las Vegas, and they proceeded to lose quite a bit of money. You figure with supernatural power, they should do better than the plain normal folks. They're just like every one else no difference.
 
There are research project that VERIFY these claims of psychic power. There might just be a X-fike. Heck, I can be a psychic too if all I have to if to be right 50% of the time. Are the audiophile grade USB cable psychic too so it can modify the code to give you better high and low. Sometimes, I heard music in my head without any cable or headphone. Maybe if I try  breaking in my head, I can get better sound stage.

A Buddhist in Vegas, gambling. I think they missed the whole point of the religion.

 

[julian67]

A Buddhist in Vegas, gambling. I think they missed the whole point of the religion.

Why should they all be rigid adherents? Show me a Christian country where it's normal to abide by both the 10 commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. There isn't one.

I'm English but have lived in a Buddhist country and visited Buddhist areas of others. Apart from monks it's really only some western converts who abstain from gambling, drinking, meat eating and so on. In fact meat eating is quite normal amongst monks who beg for alms because they are obliged to be so humble that they accept what is offered as mercy.

It's a real mistake to have romantic notions about "the orient" or "orientals". People all over the world have the same drives and it hardly seems to make much difference if they are Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or anything else: they like to gamble, get laid, get intoxicated and eat whatever they please* and will do so discreetly if it's frowned upon or illegal, and overtly if not.

*edit: also fighting

 

[mikeaj]

Quote:

Lateral thinking in the means of testing is a good idea, as I think an obvious DBT would interfere too much if subconscious factors were involved. I think where it becomes a problem are when differences are extremely subtle and figuring out what is going on is extremely difficult. DBTs only test something under DBT conditions. IMO believing that DBTs can test everything is proverbially throwing oneself off a building. 

 
I just think that people should be realistic about the nature of information gathered and not jump to conclusions. Some tests aren't run all that well. Some test gear isn't used properly or is faulty. Some people, despite claiming otherwise, are actually human and subject to perceptual biases like the rest of us.
 
Sure, some test procedures may affect responses in unintended ways. Sometimes there's really not much way of knowing if your contrived test is capturing the "natural" conditions (in some sense and in many circumstances, you can establish this with preliminary testing, though). But really, if you're claiming that effects on RPS results are due to the thoughts alone and not visual cues (there also could be others, but I'd say it's most likely due to visual factors), there are a lot of ways to test that hypothesis that shouldn't be very intrusive. e.g. blindfold both people, use a dark room, use a dividing partition between the people, and so on. 
 
Practically speaking for audio, fast-switching blind testing is a pretty sensitive procedure and has been shown to reveal all sorts of small differences that people don't notice over long-term listening, despite whatever reservations anyone has. If there's some effect out there there's so small as to be very difficult (or impossible, or between) to not be recognizable with statistical significance by listeners better or equal to me in a controlled setting, then I don't worry about it. It might exist, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it or actively encourage others to try chasing after it.
 
That said, some things haven't been tested extensively in earnest. It's not like there are limitless high-quality listening tests published out there.

 

[xnor]

Quote:

Think it's time to unsubscribe from this thread.

Some of the previous posts were about the patently most absurd, unfounded, ludicrous non audio related posts I've read on HF, especially considering this is Sound Science. Seems like belief in expensive cables and the like is the smallest problem here.
Whatever floats your boat guys ... I'm going outside to ride my flying pink unicorn.

 

[Currawong]

Something to consider before I close this thread: Every engineer I've spoken to finds the objectivist arguments in this forum absurd (in essence) and is totally uninterested in joining the discussion here. There is so much un-sound science discussion here it is sad.