Weltanschaung and HiFi (warning, contentious and wordy)

Yeah, Dick Waving -Intellectual Style.

 

You've answered your own question. In our normal daily lives we have a largely unstated common-sense notion of what it is reasonable and sensible to believe, based on experience, knowledge, expectation, opinion, theory, etc. Certain things (for example, Shun Mook discs and the like) do violence to that notion and are clearly in the category of Things that only lunatics could possibly believe in.

-- Ian

PS. Insert smiley where appropriate...

 

Does anyone remember that song "19"? Self-knowledge is clearly a hard-won prize.

 

I think that question ("Is anything real?") is infantile, yes.

I'm only suggesting that subjectivism is an intellectual dead-end, a waste of time and energy, a pointless exercise which asks no interesting questions and provides no interesting answers.

-- Ian

 

The point is that if you claim you can hear something, yet you need your eyes to hear it, what you are experiencing is clearly not in the sound, however pleasant and/or expensive the experience.

I don't think it's necessary to invoke Bruce to follow the logic.

Paul

 

Mind you I wouldn't have said he was a lunatic exactly. Seemed perfectly sane and reasonable in everything except what can only be described as hifi related religious idols.

The Shun Mooks are an extreme example - most of us here, even the most "open minded" wouldn't seriously argue that a wooden bobbin on a piece of string is going to make all the difference ... or even any difference BUT there are less extreme examples which "do violence to that notion" (love that phrase ) for some people and not others ... perhaps they are lunatics (I might cite cables as an example, but then this might just get nasty ... and boring ).

 

Hi,

Good, do we agree that there is such a thing as reality then, even though we don't completely percieve it?

As you very well may. Others may differ in their suggestions though. One might argue that subjectivism contains the only relevant frame of reference and many other things. It gets us no closer to reality though.

Any offers of something that asks questions I PERSONALLY would find interresting and which would provide interresting answers to them that will get me closer to reality (or indeed to the absolute)?

Ciao T

 

Hi,

Oh, it's all in good fun and I did have Wittgenstein wrong, might have to even check if I did read "on certainty" after all. I did read the Tractus and some other stuff quite a few years back, remained unimpressed and unconvinced and filed it "over there".

I would say he misrepresents the situation. Anyone who is an active "disbeliever" will not hear any difference.

BTB, he is also for lack of a better word "wrong" on the subject of Shun Mook devices making an audible (per se) contribution. They do not. They do have an active principle derived from traditional chinese Fen Shui which does not cause audible differences, the fact that these principles are effective without prior believe is highly disputed, you might want to check claims and counters on the subject of crystal points.

Openmindeness simply implies no a priori rejection of something that appears to lie outside ones personal experience/reality and or outside the consensus reality "brand" one subscribes to (materialism vs. idealism, theism vs. atheism etc...) because it is outside the boundaries.

It implies simply no active belief nor any active disbelieve. The thesis presented (these devices change the sound) may or may not be true, they may or may not work entierly by reverse psychology.

An open mind then determines if having an answer to "does it work" and "how does it work" is desirable or required, if so it investigates, otherwise it simply falls under the heading of "no idea if it does or how if" and no strong opinion develops.

Openmindedness does not mean to take at face value what is being presented (though it can be usefull facility to be able to place oneself temporarily into a mode of complete belief, assuming one later conciously "undo" the conversion in order to keep the mind "open"), it merely means to avoid preconceptions of the kind Robert Anthony Wilson criticises through his here Hagbard Celine in the illuminatus Trilogy, specifically in "never whistle while your pi$$ing":

(from http://www.rawilson.com/whistlepiss.html

"I once overheard two botanists arguing over a Damned Thing that had blasphemously sprouted in a college yard. One claimed that the Damned Thing was a tree and the other claimed that it was a shrub. They each had good scholary arguments, and they were still debating when I left them.

The world is forever spawning Damned Things- things that are neither tree nor shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white- and the categorical thinker can only regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to his card-index system of classifications.

Worst of all are the facts which violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card- indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as every inclusion is an exclusion. In a busy, buzzing universe where no two snow flakes are identical, and no two trees are identical, and no two people are identical- and, indeed, the smallest sub-atomic particle, we are assured, is not even identical with itself from one microsecond to the next- every card-index system is a delusion. "Or, to put it more charitably," as Nietzsche says, "we are all better artists than we realize."

It is easy to see that label "Jew" was a Damnation in Nazi Germany, but actually the label "Jew" is a Damnation anywhere, even where anti-Semitism does not exist. "He is a Jew," "He is a doctor," and "He is a poet" mean, to the card indexing centre of the cortex, that my experience with him will be like my experience with other Jews, other doctors, and other poets.

Thus, individuality is ignored when identity is asserted. At a party or any place where strangers meet, watch this mechanism in action. Behind the friendly overtures there is wariness as each person fishes for the label that will identify and Damn the other.

Finally, it is revealed: "Oh, he's an advertising copywriter," "Oh, he's an engine-lathe operator." Both parties relax, for now they know how to behave, what roles to play in the game. Ninety-nine percent of each has been Damned; the other is reacting to the 1 percent that has been labeled by the card-index machine."

So, if you hear the Mookist hold sway and "damn him" by asserting identity: "He peddles all kinds of daft and crackpot things" prior to actually testing his position (assuming it matters to you of course) you damn him and his disks and your perception makes sure the damn things do not disturbe your woldview.

Of course, it is entierly possible that you really heard nothing, as the Shun Mook devices do not alter the soundwaves significantly.

Ciao T

PS, before people ask, there is a lot of crystal in my living room and also in my bedroom, different kinds, different places. And when I took them out I could observe behavioural changes on my unknowing and unwitting subject. Did she merely reflect my own from knowing the crystals where gone or was something more sinister and worthy of Randi's challenge involved? No idea, I just put the crystals back....

 

Hi,

That is the crux of the matter, the Aurora of the Philosophers, the hidden stone and all that Jazz.

We cannot find it. We may be able to progressively approximate it more closely, but we are in danger of simply accepting an inaccurate version of reality we learn about as reality and we will percieve that version, regardless of the real state, at least untill such a time that our worldview substantially collides with the material world.

An example of such a collision may be the man who thinks he can go through walls, but has actually not mastered the particular trick of shifting himself through the gaps in matter and space time and thusly will smack into the wall very hard when he attempts to run through the wall. He will be quickly disabused of the notion of walking through walls and will have to reconcile this even with his worldview....

So, there is an absolute reality, just as there is an absolute sound (and I'm not talking about the mag), in other words the world, live, the universe and all the rest are not just figments of your imaginating, but they look (or sound) rather different from what we percieve. Yet our perception is so integral to ourselves, we cannot "step outside it" and thus we cannot not know absolute reality. Berkley made this point with much erudition.

The rest, well the philosophers still squabble about it, but last I hear their consensus reality seems to largely agree with an actual absolute reality existing, but I heard it was touch and go for a while... :MILD:

Ciao T

 

Thorsten,

I think you are pulling my plonker and quite possibly taking some excellent drugs ...

... I also think its entirely LIKELY I heard nothing.

The thing with the crystals ... how can you be sure that your subjects behaviour was any different?

 

At a very recent point in our history, doctors firmly believed in the notion of the "wandering womb" accounting for female "madness".....

Had you suggested the world was in fact round, in the wrong time, that could have got you burned at the nearest stake.......

Had you sugested to a Victorian that we'd walk on the moon.....

You see my point.

 

The day you get two philosphers to agree on anything, let alone something as daft as "consensual reality" :JPS:

 

Hi,

I wish I was.... The quality of the stuff you can get over here usually is pretty bad for you.

I do to. You might have heard a slight difference from those "soundstages" stands, but it would have been VERY faint.

Long story, but there where certain stats. But as said, the test was not really blind and my own (knowing) reactions may have "spooked" my subject. So I am not claiming any actual efficiacy. Past that, I like crystals. I like the way they look.

Ciao T

 

Hi,

Well, yes, back on topic. Thank you for bringing "objectivism" into this, this is a good time.

Most should be aware from what has been said before that while there is at leats the postulate of an absolute, actual reality, we as individuals receive this reality through our perception of it and our perception turn tends to be a slave to our convictions and believes (1), thus ensuring that at least not so major actual happenings (eg. anything short of the "Road to Damaskus" experience) that conflict with these believes and convictions are kindly edited out.

(1) As I say, anyone who has strong convictions is in a prison (s)he has build and desperatly wishes to avoid leaving, while constantly complaining over a lack of freedom - convictions make convicts!

For those who still desire to advance the erroneous notion of senses as objective in any way I would suggest a bit of reading of Bishop Berkley, David Hume and Kant.... Other philosophers BTW exists who come to different views and of course all of these views are most likely griviously wrong, from experience I am more comfortable with the lot cited than with their detractors.

I take it from here as "READ" that our senses do not always tell us what we are actually exposed to, but rather they tend to pre-edit reality to fit in with our prejudices and expectations. This is CRUCIAL to the following discourse. It is also of the two points it hinges on, so if you (the you being completely generic to any reader) feel this fundamental pretext to be wrong, you may have an easier time to argue about this.

The second point to make is that recordings of music or indeed mechanical recordings of ANYTHING (eg. Photos, Films etc.) tend to be rather unsatisfactory second or third hand substitutes for the real experience. As hence the experience of recorded music is drastically different from the real one one may readily postulate that this difference is percieved quite keenly, but not equally by listeners.

In fact I would postulate that what is "most disagreeable" in the experience of listening to recorded music varies between individuals and that our perception will cover up for many imperfections, but not for all.

So, we all the same sound, but we percieve a different acoustcial event (a little different, a lot different) and the percieved difference may be one that for a given individual "destroys the illusion".

So, my contentions on matters of audio so far are:

1) Our perception and experience of any given thing is first and foremost personal

2) Our experiences have an area of overlap or consensus with that of others, but with perfect certainty no complete congruence of experiences with all other peoples

3) Our perception is influenced by our believes, the stronger the belief, the stronger the influence

4) Our perception of an imperfect facsimilae of something (like music) can compensate for some of the imperfections

5) Which imperfections care not compensated is a personal and individual thing

From these basic precepts we can draw a number of conclusions:

A) You can never hear exactly what I did (and reverse)

B) Peoples rection to the same stimulus differ

C) ABX and Double Blind tests as currently carried out are coloured and invalid

Surprisingly (or not), we seem to have to come to the conclusion that nothing is truely and absolutely knowable, but hope exists for a fairly substantial relative and limited knowledge, if we accept that we have more variables at play than just the "gear" involved.

I'm sure I can write and express this a bit better if I spend the time on it....

Ciao T

 

Why has it taken four pages of verbal masturbation for you to reach a definition of psychoacoustics?

GCSE philosophy.

More Solipsism please.

 

So given that, any advice you were to give on a subject at the boundary of shared experience, would be, by definition, wrong from the pov of the person being advised?

Paul

 

Hi,

Not the way you state it.

Depending how precise we define "shared experience" you get geomerically speaking a small central area everyone (or almost everyone) shares, as we move away from this imaginary center we find fewer people still "on the same page".

So, to relate to audio, to someone who likes the sonic results from SE Valve Amplifiers, high efficiency speakers etc. over those from low efficiency speakers and class AB Transistor Amplifiers advise from someone with similar preference is likely to contain a lot that is right from that persons's POV, while in the reverse case the response would likely be "what a nutter".

So, the bottom line is that people need to think for themselves and listen for themselves and avoid the moral affordability trap. Then you can take advise that makes sense, ignore that which has no relevance and keep an open mind on the stuff inbetween, be it on the subject of G*d or not, HiFi, music or most other things.

Ciao T

 

Doomed megalopolis - a work of genius and a fitting metaphor for the audio industry.

But what exactly is esoteric physics? As an academic from a background in theoretical physics and philiosophy I am somewhat intrigued. Dare you say more or is it forbidden knowledge reserved for the illuminatus?

I find your comments on absolute reality a little contentious as well as the whole kantian casting of existence - things in themselves and tables of categorical imperatives. From a relativistic viewpoint there is no absolute reality as everything depends upon the frame of reference of the observer. In addition, "The world" is merely an internal representation formed by inputs from sensory stimuli in conjunction with neural processing. It is formed of things that have no meaning outside of the representation and the emergent property of consciousness that arises from the apparatus that contains it. Like the colour "blue" or the feeling of "love". Our consensus world is merely those parts of the concious experience that we have in common due to commonalities of structure between humans but still has no basis in the external universe. Given that perception, internal representation and belief are essentially decoupled from the external universe except as they pertain to utility then the whole lot is essentially "cobblers" - hence the need for objective measurement for the progress of science and why only science progresses (science that is in the Kuhnian sense - better than the internal only in the sense that it is not "truth" but it does at least break some of the constraints on our internal method of thought conception). Science however can also be used to assess subjective internal representations in some respect such as "listening tests", even if it cant quantify what a colour is.

A test CAN be devised to elimate personal bias but it is very difficult to do so. It is possible to conduct the best test that you can and then examine and quantify the bounds for the bias and error, adjusting the methodology until acceptable tolerences are reached. That isnt really possible in any sense for internal subjective beliefs - which is why they arent used as the basis of science. To say that DB "strongly randomises" results is incorrect. What it does is expose the strongly random variation of subjective experience in accordance with the degree of apparent magnitude of an effect. This in itself is illuminating when consdering the results of cable a compared with cable b versus comparing a whistle with a flute. Perception struggles to find a pattern as the SNR is very low - the existence of the effect itself is contended, hence the need for large numbers of tests and listeners to answer the question with any significance, and the very large variation in personal subjective experiences. This in no way invalidates the DB process.

In the absence of clear patterns faith emerges - much like astology and constellations. A scientist who doesnt understand how science works can become dogmatic and invest too heavily in the status quo. By looking at the philosophy and mechanisms of science and perception a more fluid view emerges, but without the need to compromise science or invalidate db testing, given a proper understanding of all these issues. The science and the "anti-science" viewpoint sit within this meta-viewpoint that encompasses all possible viewpoints and the overarching pardigm that encompasses everything discussed. Uncertainty itself is essential to this paradigm and the true scientific viewpoint and is no way undermined by it - in fact it is at the very core of its existance and efficacy. In practice scientists forget this and thereby veer into religion.

In short if scientific method is correctly applied then there is no barrier whatsoever to the examination of the issue of whether or not cables make a difference. If the effect exists then it will be possible to show that it does given appropriate methodolgy and a kuhnian paradigm shift will occur - until that time the onus is on the beleivers.

 

I doubt even green is a consensus reality - some people are colour blind and whois to say my green feeling is the same as yours. We merley agree by both pointing at the same leaf and saying it is "green". We agree on the label as deduced by interaction for purely utilitarian purposes of communication - thats all. Another persons communication is just recieved as external stimuli like any other.

Both ssb and 3d are basically doing the same thing just withndifferent words and concepts but fall prey to the same fallacy.

I fear tempering philosophy with neuroscience, statistics, complexity, the study of science itself and the human condition is more productive - lest you follow the philosophical oozalum bird into its metaphorical nesting hole... philosophy on its own can be undisciplined meandering. ssb is correct in saying however that subjectivism ON ITS OWN is a fairly hapless creature. Once people invent a concept they flog it to death and showhorn it everywhere they can as a complete explanation. The true situation is often less polarised and deterministic - shades of grey, multiple factors, emergent high level properties etc. It is unfortunately the greatest evolutionary limitation of the human mind to always think in terms of x versus y with a binary outcome.

Lets not forget occam - what place for that in subjectivism? Expediency ... explanatory ... all concepts to play with. We dont explain reality more closely - we just reinvent the story with less discrepancies in our internal utiliatarian representation.

In no way does any of this undermine the utility of using db or abx to assess cables. Some people just try to find a rationale for why their beliefs are at odds with obsevation - thats just another religion. If they are at odds evolve a better test. It can be shown if it exists. If you claim somehow this is not the case then cable the cable effects claimed lie firmly in the same camp as the hly ghost. Just a romantic notion.

 

Hi,

I generally agree with your sentiments, except on the subject of Kant.

We either have an "absolute reality" that exists independent of the observer or not. That is another absolute. And of course, all absolutes are wrong, including this one, EXCEPT outside our perception and within in Kantian "thing itself".

True, it is a quick and dirty illustration of certain utility though.

OH YES. IT DOES!

Take the following example.

We have two listeners.

One is an ardent believer and the other is ardent disbeliever.

We claim to cary out a test about an item that both subjects have very strong (and opposing) prejudices.

We take in fact a totally different test and one one that is normally aknowleged as audible but very marginal (eg. an 0.2db difference in level).

We present to the believer a series which has twice as many "same" trials as it has "different", we place the "same" items towards the end of the fairly long (20 trials) series.

We present to the disbeliever a series which has twice as many "different" trials as it has "same", we place the "different" items towards the end of the fairly long (20 trials) series.

The believer by his propensity to percieve a difference where non exists and propperly primed by a few "different" stimuli at the beginning of the series when attention and acuity is highest will continue to hear "different" even when the presentation is in fact "same".

The disbeliever by his propensity to percieve no difference where one exists, lest it be "road to Damascus" and propperly primed by a few "same" stimuli at the beginning of the series when attention and acuity is highest will continue to hear "same" even when the presentation is in fact "different".

The result of these tests, when combined together as a set of 40 Trials will have equal numbers of "different" & "same" trials. By tailoring the stimulus carefully to subjects propensity to percieve according to it's prejudices we have in fact data that would appear to support the "all is the same" conclusion, yet the results are completely useless in fact.

No doubt you can see this whole thing working the other way around and you will alos realise that when I present my data sumarised the actual fraud comitted (because that is what it is) would not be identified easily.

Before you ask, I have done a similar test once, in that I was a bit vindictive and thus arranged it to rather shame an "objectivist", than per se to illustrate or proove this point.

I repeat however that non of the commonly cited ABX tests show any care in demonstrating the ability of the test setup to produce any results at all.

Without such calibration, that is, without demonstrating the ability of the setup (including system, room, statistical analysis, actual listeners etc.) to discriminate small but known audible differences (WITHOUT THE NATURE OF THE TEST BEING KNOWN TO THE SUBJECTS) and in light of the strong tendency of peoples perception to edit the incomming stimuli according to individuals weltanschauung, which in turn basically acts as strong randomising noisefloor; the absence of such does not just undermine the credibility of any such test, in fact it actually requires us to completely reject such test data outright, ESPECIALLY if not enough detailed data is provided to eliminate deliberate or unconcious (or just sloppy) pre-weighting of the data.

So, EVEN IF the experimenter is actually honest (something which I will readily dispute with many of the parlour confidence tricksters passing themselves off as objective scientists) there are still way too many items outstanding to accept such tests, especially when compared to the rather more serious institutional and company funded tests which attempted for example to establish the effect of perceptual coding etc.

Anyway, strictly on the grounds of the strong impact of belief on perception I feel the use of "blind but knowing" tests to establish audibility is futile.

A serious attempt would conceal the contentious nature of the subject entierly and would claim to focus on an item that has no hardened fronts and believes but instead of the expected stimulus would present a number of stimuli including the previously mentioned "calibration test", the use of modest incentive for participation with modest bonuses for correct identification should help to "keep them keen", as does keeping a relaxed atmosphere and keeping individual test series very short, 4 - 6 trials max.

This suggests a kind of cloistering away of the subjects and multiple test series over a number of days and ideally a "weeding out" any listeners showing poor acuity and so on.

Then we will have finally some relevant data that will have been gathered seriously and scientifically. If the data is from a large number of listeners, all the better. That is the way serious researchers carry out their DB Testing,

Compare that to "I bet £1,000 that you cannot get 16 correct identifications in 20 as long as I control the statistics!".

Ciao T