RonM wrote: > What we have here is delusion -- delusion that is understood to be such > by the deluded, but still maintained. Self conscious delusion if you > will. > > It seems to be maintained primarily by a certain amount of cognitive > dissonance -- "I've invested all this money and time in addressing my > audiophile interests, so when I encounter evidence that suggests that > money and time has been sent into a black hole, I must absolutely refuse > to consider demonstrable reality, even when I know the reality is > real". > > I'm not an engineer or an audio scientist. But I AM a psychologist > (capital P, Ph.D., research, conferences), and very familiar with the > way in which belief can skew experience, and with the phenomena of cults > and "true belief". Because felt experience is fundamentally subjective, > we need to develop methods for achieving objectivity. Properly > controlled research (which often makes use of gold standard double blind > methods) is one way of doing so, as has been pointed out by many, at > length. > > The fact that there are some, such as the poster quoted above, who > persist in beliefs that at some level they know can't be true is a sad > reflection of broader social reality. Climate change denial, anyone? > > Of course, on both the bigger (societal) and smaller (audiophile) issues > it becomes necessary for these poor souls to imagine faults in the > objective data, such as "ABX masks differences". Or "climate change > theory is a radical conspiracy". Pretty feeble. > > R.
I've got a number of problems with your post. First off - on a purely consumer level, we all do experience cognitive dissonance to a degree. But taking pride in a posession is part of human nature. My expensive chefs' knife cuts better and is more of a pleasure to use. I feel better driving my car after it's waxed. I have more confidence going into a meeting wearing a well-made suit. And when I hook my stereo up with high-end cables, it looks better, and I enjoy listening to music more. Go back and read my post again - at no point did I say that expensive cables sound better. Only that I like having them in my system, and that my system SEEMS to sound better. Just like wearing a nice suit makes me feel more confident. The suit does nothing, but my perception of the suit is what counts. But for you to conflate that concept into promoting pseudoscience and denying scientific method is a cheap, shitty move. If your PhD was worth the paper it was written on, you'd refrain from comparing those two concepts - "ABX masks differences and climate change theory is a radical conspiracy". Simply by doing that, you reduce your entire argument into worthlessness. You say that belief can skew experience -- sure it can. But we have evolved by trusting our experience, and that experience can also engender belief. I don't like the word "belief" because of the negative connotations it's picked up from religion - belief equals faith. But I can take my experience - a lifetime of listening to different amplifiers and hearing substantial differences between them -- and end up with the belief, or knowledge, or confidence, that often they sound different from each other. That's not cognitive dissonance. I've also participated in several ABX tests, and know just how confusing they are. I also know how agenda-driven some of these so-called objectivists are. I say go for it - take an ABX test and try to pick out whether you can hear the difference between 128kb MP3s and 16bit wav files. My guess is that without some training you'll have difficulties. Then spend a day listening to MP3s and then another day listening to the same music in wav format. Heck, do the second part blind! I'd wager that you'll enjoy the wav files much more, even if you can't pick them out in the ABX test. Bah! I've already spent more time than I wanted on this. Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------ doctor_big's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15196 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=103950 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
