You clearly did not get what I was trying to tell. And I really do not appreciate your tone.
It's about people. The so called 'scientific method' has attained religious status and it's zealous followers it's priests that can do no wrong. But however you want to turn it around it is always about interpretation. Setting up a test, any test, requires a preconceived Idea. Preconceived by... people! And interpretation is done by... people. You put to much trust in certain people, attributing to them a total lack of bias or emotion, while especially scientists have very strong 'beliefs'. 'Science' always comes with a certain worldview because the sentience is done by people.
I'm not a hypocrite as you so finely put it, just very experienced in the human way of thinking and very pragmatic. Testing humans will never get you a 'fact', except when you dissect them. Any results will always be stochastic. You cannot say: 'Chinese are tall', or tiny. Or yellow skinned (very racist example, I know, sorry). Compared to what? And which one of the 1bln are you referring to?
The scientific method is just 1 way of getting results. And a pretty good way. The trouble starts when people start hijacking it to prove they are right.
To me you sound like an angry young man. To quote Will Smith in I robot: "You must be one of the dumbest smart people I know". But don't worry, hopefully one day you will see that there's more to the world than what you learned in school - even a scientist needs love when he comes home. It just requires a choice: do you want to take the red pill or the blue pill. It's all about the wanting part.
Oh, and FYI: I make or modify all my equipment and cables etc. myself. I don't 'believe' in audio voodoo but I'm also not that stupid that I don't try it because... "it's just impossible". Now that is stupid. And all too common in the scientific community. This whole hobby is about enjoyment. So there no reason to snap at each other.
I'm not saying the scientific method is completely INFALLIBLE, or some kind of holy ritual that should always be adhered to. However, I firmly believe that it is the MOST TRUSTWORTHY method of inquiry and of obtaining results and potential facts available to us humans today. It's the way to remove oneself as far as POSSIBLE from subjectivity. Trusting PURELY subjective impressions over something which has had some semblance of control placed on it to at least TRY to remove bias and give it better objectivity, is simply ridiculous. ANd anyone who DOES do so (and I'm not saying you do, by the way) IS being a hypocrite if they do, in fact, also live in our modern society while using modern technology. So many people are so quick to dismiss science as being "just like religion, man, scientists are basically just worshipping their faith and BLAH BLAH BLAH," making it sound like it's just as stupid and unreliable as any other method of human inquiry. That is absolute BULLCRAP. For people to be on the INTERNET, the epitome of all modern technology and the result of our science, and say such things, is
ABSOLUTELY hypocritical.
I do not believe science is the be-all-and-end-all, or that it is completely 100% reliable without fail. However, if you want to talk about bias, scientists, while they do tend to have preconcieved notions and bias, make a point, by using the method they do, of at least
trying as much as they can (while of course still failing to some extent, because they are humans and thus flawed and swayed by emotions) to REMOVE bias and preconceptions from their analyses. In that sense, science is NOTHING like a religion or a similar faith. It is in fact OPEN to the idea of change. Scientists used to think everything was deterministic, man. Now they know that is absolutely bunk, what with the advent of Quantum Mechanics. Scientists used to think spacetime was Euclidean. Now they have accepted the fact that it is curved. Science is the closest we have to being able to use pure, objective logic to analyze the world, as humans.
You can dress up your arguments in whatever fancy wording or semantics you want, but the fact of the matter is that expectation-bias and the audio placebo-effect are VERY real.
Any attempt to identify "audible differences" between different audio components
while knowing which component or source is which is bound to be biased-as-all-hell. That is why blind testing and a scientific approach are so important. If a guy buys a super-fancy 5000 dollar cable, he is giong to SWEAR UP AND DOWN that it sounds better to him ("oh my god there's so much more detail in the bass and treble, man!") than his old 300 dollar cable, because he KNOWS he is now listening to a "higher quality" product that he paid much more money for.
That expectation-bias is what accounts for sales of those Jack Bybee "Quantum Purifying" products, which to me represent everything that is wrong with the high-end audio industry today. They claim to use "special crystals" with "quantum proton alignment" to "purify the electron flow" in cables, and even claim to provide a form of actual ACOUSTIC ROOM TREATMENT via "quantum purification." That is obviously technobabble-gibberish on the same level as what you often hear in Hollywood sci-fi films, and the products are obviously complete scams, because the science supposedly behind them does not even exist and the wording being used to describe their mechanism of operation does not even make sense. The product pages even claim that they work even when placed over or under highly-shielded cables that are completely immune to outside interference, because of "quantum effects" that make them work and pervade the space around them. That kind of technology does not actually exist yet on a macroscopic scale (i.e. there is no such thing yet as technology that can control quantum-effects to a high degree of precision on an above-microscropic scale), and yet people are dumb enough to believe the claims of the company which is scamming them by saying their products do so, and thus buy their products some of which
cost as much as five-thousand dollars. That, right there, is the kind of thing that happens when people ignore real science and rely on subjectivity and what "sounds like it must be better." ANd of course, everyone who buys the "crystal quantum purifiers" swears that their system sounds better once they have them. . .because none of them do blind-testing. I bet that if you told them that simply taping some quartz-crystals to their cables will "purify the signal," they'd believe you, proceed to do so, and then swear that everything sounds better.
The best part of all this, and the part I'll leave off with, is the fact that
you accuse
me of having a tone (and I'll admit I do. . .yes, I am being condescending as all-hell), but then yourself proceed to be
just as condescending and demeaning in your own tone, saying things like "'You must be one of the dumbest smart people I know'. But don't worry, hopefully one day you will see that there's more to the world than what you learned in school - even a scientist needs love when he comes home. It just requires a
choice: do you
want to take the red pill or the blue pill. It's all about the
wanting part." That COULD NOT be more condescending, you're literally calling me an idiot. Don't go and tell someone that it's inappropriate for them to take a condescending tone, and then yourself go and use such a tone. . .that's completely hypocritical. You also say "there [sic] no reason to snap at each other," and yet you totally snapped at me in the paragraphs preceding that statement.
I don't know why I'm even bothering trying to debate you, though. It is a fundamental fact about human psychology that neither of us will be able to do anything whatsoever to convince the other that they are wrong or to open their mind to new ideas. Here's an interesting article about that: http://www.cracked.com/article_19468_5-logical-fallacies-that-make-you-wrong-more-than-you-think.html
![]eep](https://cdn.head-fi.org/avatars/m/139/139747.jpg?1273084439){kind=avatar}
. Surprinsingly little astroturfing and goldears cluelessness for this part of the forum.
). Or should I say apples and oranges?
