So .... do the victims believe these mistruths? Yes, I say that they do, and that is a tragedy. Do the perpetrators believe what they foist on the victims? That I cannot believe. The essence of a scam or con is that the perpetrator knows what they are doing, knows that it is false, and deliberately does it anyway. If that were not true, con artists and their ilk would not be prosecutable.
I know that some here see much of high end audio equipment as a scam of sorts - a knowing one by the manufacturers.
As I've argued before, I still think a majority of manufacturers believe in what they are doing. Most high end manufacturers are relatively small businesses, and many arose from the passion of an audiophile (e.g. who started designing his own amps, speakers or whatever) starting a business.
So long as the beliefs and methodology for these manufacturers is the same as when they were fledgling audiophiles - or that is, so long as the methodology they use is flawed like the methodology of most "subjective" audiophiles, then they will come to beliefs in the same way.
The guy making or selling "higher end" capacitors or whatever, if he's vetting his beliefs by trial and error uncontrolled subjective listening, then he will come to believe he's hearing improvements just as readily as his customer.
It's the old "Never
attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" heuristic. Where stupidity is unecessarily derisive, just replace with "faulty methodology."
Does my blood boil when I see all those nutty cable prices? You bet! And I absolutely feel the desire to attribute cynical hucksterism (of which I'm SURE there is some). But more broadly speaking, it's my view that a good portion of manufacturers who many here think are selling overpriced crap, likely really believe in their products.
Look at it another way: for a person to consistently choose that which is wrong, they must first know what is right or they would otherwise have no reference.
Jim
To be picky, that doesn't follow. It doesn't require the person choosing knows right from wrong; it just requires someone else to know this and make that judgement. That's why we can adults can know certain actions by, say, toddlers/young children are wrong or anti-social, before they understand the moral import of what they are doing.
Again, just contemplate the utterly astounding variety of false beliefs people hold in this world. They really don't know they are mistaken. (I feel particularly mindful of this as I've long had in interest in people with fringe beliefs. I was just listening to a podcast episode of Oh No Ross and Carrie,who investigate all manner of fringe belief systems, even joining cults themselves, and the stories of what people earnestly, mistakenly believe that pour out of those investigations is continually astonishing).