Card carrying objectivists

[RayDunzl]

What is "music"?
NOUN
mass noun
1 Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.
1.1 The art or science of composing or performing music.
1.2 A sound perceived as pleasingly harmonious.
2 The written or printed signs representing vocal or instrumental sound.
2.1 The score or scores of a musical composition or compositions.

It immediately reveals that audiophiles don't think in terms of whether something sounds like real music, but instead classify it in terms of hardware-centric 'parameters' that have got nothing to do with real music or acoustics.

What is "real music"?

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=UejHWvfEAsO4swHfi7WACg&q=define+"real+music"&oq=define+"real+music"&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1l2.1616.7655.0.8194.21.18.0.0.0.0.344.2176.2-8j1.10.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..11.10.2408.6..0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i10k1.234.2ZsWNrsdIo4

 

[svart-hvitt]

But is there no difference between audiophiles and music lovers, say?

Audiophiles become obsessed with some very peculiar things. As I have become sucked into the weird world of audiophilia I forget that there once was a time when I might read something like "ESL57s... the midrange was beyond wonderful..." and be utterly mystified. If you think about it, that statement carries within it such strange assumptions and yet it is common currency in audiophilia. It immediately reveals that audiophiles don't think in terms of whether something sounds like real music, but instead classify it in terms of hardware-centric 'parameters' that have got nothing to do with real music or acoustics. Presented with a system that did sound like real music they might even rate it worse than one that sounds like the audio systems they are used to.

I think I get your message, but mine is this:

(1) Most people in the world of 10 billion people are subjectivists.

(2) I doubt it that the majority of the people in the world would gravitate away from neutrality in a blind test.

Therefore: Neutrality is a safe bet on a random person’s preferences in a blind test.

 

[Cosmik]

Well, context counts too. Remember when the ESL-57's were a thing what else was out there. There were no speakers that could come close to modern speakers. They all have severe obvious deficiencies a magnitude larger than is the norm today. This was before Thiele-Small parameters were in use and box sizing was more or less a rule of thumb guided by wife's tale situation. Psycho-acoustically it makes sense if you can't have full response to build from the mid-range out. Yet most speakers were squawkers or thumpers or shouters. Somebody makes a relatively uncolored low distortion mid-centric speaker and one listen would make people smitten. Which works into your narrative that audiophiles become obsessed with peculiar things like they are magic and mystery. After that experience a cult or myth grows about them. People try and work the mid-range magic with other designs and of course there was nothing magical or mysterious at all in reality.

The ESL57 quote was from a recent random forum discussion.

If I search stereophile "great midrange" I get 629 hits, so it still seems to be audiophile currency. (In the list comes a discussion titled "Who has the best midrange 2A3 or 300B ?", so I think the point is made pretty well..!)

 

[Blumlein 88]

Here are some measures of the Quad 57 if anyone is interested. The roll off below 400 hz is from using a short time window.

http://www.nutshellhifi.com/MLS/MLS2.html Measurements from some time back.

Just for comparison a Celestion SL6

And Martin Logan CLS II.

 

[Wombat]

@Wombat , I am sorry you didn't take my short answers. Allow me to elaborate to the extent that the answer will be longer and take some time to read.

Every human needs a life philosophy that can be summed up in simple heuristics. Heuristics doesn't mean lack of understanding the complicated or the complex; on the contrary (1). To see how heuristics makes sense, and which heuristics to use in different situations may take some skill or competence (2). As your skill increases, you use heuristics in an effortless way without even thinking; that means you are about to master something.

Humility when facing uncertainty is a virtue. Socrates drove his opponents to desperation due to his clarity of thought. He is supposed to have stated the following:

"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know".

To me, it's a philosophical choice to have humility facing uncertainties. And when facing uncertainty, I choose the heuristic of neutrality, the middle-way, diversification etc.

You asked initially the following question:

"Have subjectivist sound preferences been determined to the point where they can be generally classified enough for tailoring by designers?"

Then I answered the following:

"On average, subjectivists like neutral sound. Neutrality is always a safe choice. This is statistics, not rocket science".

This is practical application of my philosophy when I face a question to which we cannot know the truth. We cannot know the truth to your question because you haven't even defined "subjectivist sound preferences". Who belongs to this classification? Sometimes, I am a subjectivist and sometimes I am an objectivist - so in my case the limit between subjectivist and objectivist is a dynamic and not a fixed one.

Attempting to answer your question on "subjectivist sound preferences" I know that most of the world are simple people without much education. Africa is the fastest growing region. That gives us sort of an impression of what the average subjectivist may look like. To me, it makes sense to believe that the average subjectivist in the world thinks natural sound is the best because that's the sound he's most used to in daily life.

There is also another reason, more mathematical to choose the neutral, middle-way choice. If you pick the median guess in a group of people who try to guess multiple times on a range of issue, you will see that the median guess will fare very well in comparison to the other guesses. The median can never be lover than the 50th percentile; however, it can be anywhere between 1s and 50th percentile. So a person who uses the information of the median will over time, and on average, become a much better guesser than the other guessers (people who like quizzes may try and find out what will be the average percentile rank of a person who always uses the median in a repetitive guessing contest). In other words, mathematically it makes sense to choose the median when faced with uncertainty. Real-life experiments, based on a large set of data, tell us the same: Go for the median to become the best guesser over time!

And remember that the median is a better help in guessing contests than the average due to idiosyncrasy (the average answer will give you a lower ranking than the 50th percentile if just one of the other guesses is wildly off).

In audio, the median will probably guide you towards something which looks neutral, with a smooth downward-sloping frequency curve, cfr. Toole's research (3). The more complex the situation is (complicated things are easier to model than complex things [4]), the better it may be to use heuristics as a skilled person would use them. My initial answer to you was an attempt of heuristics in practice.

I hope this attempt at a longer, yet as short as possible answer, was of value to you.



Notes:
(1) See for example Heuristics by Gerd Gigerenzer, https://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Foundations-Adaptive-Gerd-Gigerenzer/dp/019049462X

(2) See for example Dreyfus brothers' skill acquisition model, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition

(3) See figure 14 in The Measurement and Calibration of Sound Reproducing Systems by Toole, http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20180406/17839.pdf

(4) For a discussion of the complex and complicated, see for example this short article: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-critical-difference-between-complex-and-complicated/
And allow me to use this quote from Reinhold Niebuhr: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot be calculated; courage to calculate the things that can be calculated; and wisdom to know the difference".

You didn't answer my simple questions. Instead I get a wordy subjective philosophical dissertation instead of a simple answers.

You have, though, led me to think that you may well indulge in pseudo intellectualism.

 

[svart-hvitt]

You didn't answer my questions. Instead I get a wordy subjective philosophical dissertation instead of a simple answers.

I tried to lay out my reasoning.

Thanks for your time reading it. Sorry you didn’t get it.

PS: For good measure I put you on ignore. I suggest you do the same to me to avoid wasting time.

 

[Wombat]

I think I get your message, but mine is this:
(1) Most people in the world of 10 billion people are subjectivists.

(2) I doubt it that the majority of the people

I tried to lay out my reasoning.

Thanks for your time reading it. Sorry you didn’t get it.

PS: For good measure I put you on ignore. I suggest you do the same to me to avoid wasting time.

You seemed to be in the ignore mode prior to activating the forum option.


Of course you won't see this:

Just to be clear on neutral in audio.
Common descriptors: faithful to source, transparent, accurate, 'straight-wire with gain', unchanged, to name a few. Listener preference has nothing to do with it.

When it comes to preferences the Bell-Curve comes into play. http://www.statisticshowto.com/bell-curve/

Zero on the base-line is called the 'mean'. It is not 'neutral'. One reason it is not 'neutral' is that the Bell-Curve can be skewed from symmetry.

 

[Sal1950]

You have to admit that it is highly unusual for an editor-in-chief to publish both reviews he disagrees with and measurements and statements disagreeing with those reviews. Personally, I see no "glossing over" at all. I see JA remaining objective, fairly and honestly reporting what his measurements told him. I cannot be sure he is always that way, but he has done it enough to warrant giving him some small amount of credit.

Guess it's how you read it. To me it's the same ole, same ole. (it measures bad enough to cause audible non-linearities but that's OK cause the subjective reviewer said it sounds good) Never mind it's not transparent to the source, besides generating a bunch of RF bad enough to wipe out FM reception in the same room. All this can and should be "glossed over" cause "KM very much liked the sound" enough to write 2 pages glowing verbiage. In fact, the crap lack of transparency still earns this $6000 amp a Class B Recommended Component rating. When you can buy a SOTA measuring Benchmark AHB2 for half that $2995.
Yep we should give JA kudos for at least publishing the fact it tested so bad, NOT. Where's the integrity?

 

[Cosmik]

(2) I doubt it that the majority of the people in the world would gravitate away from neutrality in a blind test.

Therefore: Neutrality is a safe bet on a random person’s preferences in a blind test.

But if there wasn't a neutral option to choose from, what then?

Here is an example of a professional audiophile's viewpoint:

Building a sound system is about synergy, and tailoring the final output to your taste: not some reviewer’s taste, or an old chap’s taste at a magazine who hurls test tones, graphs, and frequency responses around like they mean anything to anyone anymore who’s under 60 years old. If you like more timbrally-rich, texturally-suffused or coloured sound, and don’t give a damn about numbers then enjoy it, better yet; love it, embrace it...
...You can get a valve amp with pleasing harmonic distortion, and tailor the sound with a leaner cartridge, or digital source. Cables can flavour to taste as well, (I’m not even getting into the room sonics) and then there’s the loudspeaker – just like every other component in the signal path, transducers can tend to fat or lean depending on their design, and driver/crossover implementation.

The only way you get a neutral option is if someone decides to build it - it can't occur by chance. And the only way you build it is to deliberately design it and work hard to make it neutral. Clearly, audiophiles don't automatically think neutral is best i.e. they are not philosophically wedded to the idea of neutrality. Therefore, to some extent, neutrality only occurs because stubborn engineers persist in their beliefs. Without such unreasonable stubbornness, audiophiles wouldn't even get to hear a neutral system that they could express a preference for.

 

[Wombat]

But if there wasn't a neutral option to choose from, what then?

Here is an example of a professional audiophile's viewpoint:


The only way you get a neutral option is if someone decides to build it - it can't occur by chance. And the only way you build it is to deliberately design it and work hard to make it neutral. Clearly, audiophiles don't automatically think neutral is best i.e. they are not philosophically wedded to the idea of neutrality. Therefore, to some extent, neutrality only occurs because stubborn engineers persist in their beliefs. Without such unreasonable stubbornness, audiophiles wouldn't even get to hear a neutral system that they could express a preference for.

Or use as a reference to support their differences in preference. OMG, they need objectively designed gear for subjective comparison.

 

[svart-hvitt]

But if there wasn't a neutral option to choose from, what then?

Here is an example of a professional audiophile's viewpoint:


The only way you get a neutral option is if someone decides to build it - it can't occur by chance. And the only way you build it is to deliberately design it and work hard to make it neutral. Clearly, audiophiles don't automatically think neutral is best i.e. they are not philosophically wedded to the idea of neutrality. Therefore, to some extent, neutrality only occurs because stubborn engineers persist in their beliefs. Without such unreasonable stubbornness, audiophiles wouldn't even get to hear a neutral system that they could express a preference for.

@Cosmik , we may be talking past each other. Fundamental disagreement may not be here at all.

I think my problem is the definition of «subjectivist». In my book, most - almost all - people in the overall population are subjectivist because being objectivist demands a certain mind, training, education etc.

Your definition of subjectivist seems to be the rare person in the overall population who makes all sorts of tweaks to his audio system. These rare persons would anyway not be able to distort the median of a much greater population.

Having said that, I have never seen research documenting the blinded preferences of subjectivist audio enthusiasts. I guess this lack of data may be because audio researchers implicitly assume that people respond similarly when blinded? However, we do have some indications of preferences of experienced vs less experienced listeners. And I have never come across research which tell is that some sub group in the population deviate significantly from what could be called «neutral».

So I will always assume that a random listener’s true, blinded preferences gravitate towards neutrality and frequency response curves like the ones that Toole documented.

 

[Wombat]

@Cosmik , we may be talking past each other. Fundamental disagreement may not be here at all.

I think my problem is the definition of «subjectivist». In my book, most - almost all - people in the overall population are subjectivist because being objectivist demands a certain mind, training, education etc.

Your definition of subjectivist seems to be the rare person in the overall population who makes all sorts of tweaks to his audio system. These rare persons would anyway not be able to distort the median of a much greater population.

Having said that, I have never seen research documenting the blinded preferences of subjectivist audio enthusiasts. I guess this lack of data may be because audio researchers implicitly assume that people respond similarly when blinded? However, we do have some indications of preferences of experienced vs less experienced listeners. And I have never come across research which tell is that some sub group in the population deviate significantly from what could be called «neutral».

So I will always assume that a random listener’s preferences gravitate towards neutrality and frequency response curves like the ones that Toole documented.

It is not neutrality but a preference with respect to accuracy, but then you won't have considered a previous post of mine because you have me on 'ignore' because you can't adequately respond to my interest.
You don't need a personal definition of 'subjectivist'. Get a credible dictionary and use it. Stop expecting others to be mind readers.

Maybe there is some truth in my avatar.

 

[Jakob1863]

Or it is more like that neutrality is just an illusion too wrt to the usual two channel stereophony. Imo todays best approximation to neutrality is still binaural recording and listening, and even then there are some drawbacks.

It is of course related to the "hearing trough the room" hypothesis but goes even further as neutrality (if meant in the sense that the perception of recorded content should be as similar as possible to the perception of the original acoustical event) depends on individual abilities too.The people who did the mix might respond to the same stimulus in a different way as any other listener.

Neutrality to the "source" is an arbitrarily choosen reference that misses imo the point that the recorded content relies on a certain illusionary concept of listeners brain, which is the reason why some (perceived) properties are so difficult to measure as they do not exist in reality. May i remind to the part of our discussion where we considered the measurement of spatial features of a recorded content?

Wrt "listening through the room" that will work up to a certain degree, but the ability to recognize something despite variable room acoustics is not a strong criterion as we are able to do even under quite gross distorsions (linear and nonlinear).
It will work for direct sound above the modal region (for the usual acoustical small reproduction environments) but not in that region. And it will certainly not work for the parameters where our hearing sense uses the relation between direct and reflected sound.

@Cosmic,

But is there no difference between audiophiles and music lovers, say?

Wouldn´t that depend on the definition of these terms? Are these exclusive terms?

Audiophiles become obsessed with some very peculiar things. As I have become sucked into the weird world of audiophilia I forget that there once was a time when I might read something like "ESL57s... the midrange was beyond wonderful..." and be utterly mystified. If you think about it, that statement carries within it such strange assumptions and yet it is common currency in audiophilia. It immediately reveals that audiophiles don't think in terms of whether something sounds like real music, but instead classify it in terms of hardware-centric 'parameters' that have got nothing to do with real music or acoustics. Presented with a system that did sound like real music they might even rate it worse than one that sounds like the audio systems they are used to.

Although it might that you are correct, but in which way does that "immediately reveals that audiophiles don´t think......" ? And why should that have "nothing to do with real music or acoustics" ?
Wouldn´t it be possible that someone who listens to acoustical music instruments on a regular basis and listens to records of this kind of music considers the ESL 57´s midrange as "beyond wonderful" ? Maybe just carried away by a perceived quality in reproduction that other speakers couldn´t reach?

 

[Cosmik]

Although it might that you are correct, but in which way does that "immediately reveals that audiophiles don´t think......" ? And why should that have "nothing to do with real music or acoustics" ?
Wouldn´t it be possible that someone who listens to acoustical music instruments on a regular basis and listens to records of this kind of music considers the ESL 57´s midrange as "beyond wonderful" ? Maybe just carried away by a perceived quality in reproduction that other speakers couldn´t reach?

Have you ever gone to a concert and thought "This orchestra has great midrange"? Or "This hall has got great midrange"?

"Midrange" is an audiophile concept and is derived from the hardware itself. To me, the idea that I might listen to a system and think that it has poor bass and treble but a great midrange, and that this might in some way redeem the system and persuade me to give it an 'Editor's Choice' award, seems very odd. The question should be: does it sound real, or does it not?

"Great midrange" is one of those ideas that, to a thoughtful, curious novice, gives them the idea that if audio is not subjective flowery fairy dust stuff, then it must be the most mundane hardware-related repair shop chat. They thought they might find a group of people who strive to make the most transparent systems they can at a 'holistic' level, but they find that those people don't exist because very early on they are inducted into the school of thought that says that valves have "a really special sound", etc. They don't stand a chance...

 

[Cosmik]

@Cosmik , we may be talking past each other. Fundamental disagreement may not be here at all.

I think my problem is the definition of «subjectivist». In my book, most - almost all - people in the overall population are subjectivist because being objectivist demands a certain mind, training, education etc.

Your definition of subjectivist seems to be the rare person in the overall population who makes all sorts of tweaks to his audio system. These rare persons would anyway not be able to distort the median of a much greater population.

Having said that, I have never seen research documenting the blinded preferences of subjectivist audio enthusiasts. I guess this lack of data may be because audio researchers implicitly assume that people respond similarly when blinded? However, we do have some indications of preferences of experienced vs less experienced listeners. And I have never come across research which tell is that some sub group in the population deviate significantly from what could be called «neutral».

So I will always assume that a random listener’s true, blinded preferences gravitate towards neutrality and frequency response curves like the ones that Toole documented.

I'm sure we're not really disagreeing, it's just that I think that neutrality can't happen by chance so it has to be design-led rather than listener-led (because without a neutral system in the first place, the listeners can't signal their preference for it...).

 

[Jakob1863]

Have you ever gone to a concert and thought "This orchestra has great midrange"? Or "This hall has got great midrange"?

That misses the point, seems i wasn´t clear about it....

"Midrange" is an audiophile concept and is derived from the hardware itself. To me, the idea that I might listen to a system and think that it has poor bass and treble but a great midrange, and that this might in some way redeem the system and persuade me to give it an 'Editor's Choice' award, seems very odd. The question should be: does it sound real, or does it not?

I simply wondered about your assertion as you concluded from a statement about a specific virtue of a reproduction device (that as wonderful as i consider it sounding is still far away from "reality") to something general. How could you know which way the same person would react to the reproduction (i.e. reconstruction) of an original sound field?
Or which way the same person would react (and describe) to a real music?

"Great midrange" is one of those ideas that, to a thoughtful, curious novice, gives them the idea that if audio is not subjective flowery fairy dust stuff, then it must be the most mundane hardware-related repair shop chat. They thought they might find a group of people who strive to make the most transparent systems they can at a 'holistic' level, but they find that those people don't exist because very early on they are inducted into the school of thought that says that valves have "a really special sound", etc. They don't stand a chance...

Or it is just the description of a loudspeaker that lacks a "bit" in the lower end and (often depending on the age of the ESL 57) in the upper region?

And, as you described it, it was a statement about a specific loudspeaker model, it´s a bit of a long shot to the generalization of other peoples description of "valve sound", isn´t it ?

 

[Cosmik]

And, as you described it, it was a statement about a specific loudspeaker model, it´s a bit of a long shot to the generalization of other peoples description of "valve sound", isn´t it ?

I refer you to my earlier post which mentioned a forum discussion titled "Who has the best midrange 2A3 or 300B ?"
Just google 'stereophile "great midrange"'.
"...The NHT bookshelf speakers...they go really low, with great midrange"
"...This wasn't remarkably flat, but the Venere 2.5s matched within 1dB, and gave the subjective impressions of great midrange clarity "
"...Dali Ikon 6's which have a great midrange"
"...some have a great midrange—that's one of the first things I listen for—but lack upper and bottom definition"
"Ted Denney was eager to show off the great midrange and bass transmitted by his Galileo System of hand-built cables..."
etc. etc.

 

[Sal1950]

"Ted Denney was eager to show off the great midrange and bass transmitted by his Galileo System of hand-built cables..."
etc. etc.

I just returned from Lowes to pick up some speaker wire, needed some good stuff for my ATMOS ceiling channel wiring.
They had a couple options but I immediately latched onto some RCA brand 14 gauge wire.
With the official "His Masters Voice" stamp of approval how could I go wrong?

 

[svart-hvitt]

I'm sure we're not really disagreeing, it's just that I think that neutrality can't happen by chance so it has to be design-led rather than listener-led (because without a neutral system in the first place, the listeners can't signal their preference for it...).

I am in full agreement that neutrality didn't happen without a scientific plan. We can thank decades of science for our understanding of neutrality in audio.

Then, I'd like to quote Toole (ch. 1.6 page 17 in latest edition):

"Traditionally, loudspeakers have been chosen "by ear" - subjectively. Underlying this is the widespread assumption that "we all hear differently", so it has to be a personal decision. It is definitely true that we are individualistic in our preferences of "wine, persons and song", but sound quality turns out to be different. In fact, learning this was a turning point in my career when, back in the mid-1960s, I ran some crude listening tests on a few highly regarded loudspeakers (described in Section 18.1). They sounded very different from each other, and the anechoic chamber measurements on them confirmed large differences. But, at the end of the blind evaluation two things were clear: (1) most listeners agreed on what they liked, and (2) the loudspeakers that they liked had the best looking (i.e. smoothest and flattest) frequency responses. To all present, this was a revelation. Nothing has changed since then, but much more detail has been added to the story".

I may not know all the details that Toole refers to, but his initial, revealing finding is one of my heuristics. So I am inclined to believe that all people - subjectivists, objectivists, younger, older, experienced, novices, masters, dumb-asses etc. etc. - will on average (median) gravitate towards what was predicted by science, i.e. a pretty neutral sound, when listening blind.

ADDENDUM: To add to the insight that people will gravitate towards the truth - i.e. the neutral reproduction of reality - is this story on the wisdom of ordinary people:

"Galton was a keen observer. In 1906, visiting a livestock fair, he stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was on display, and the villagers were invited to guess the animal's weight after it was slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 participated, and Galton was able to study their individual entries after the event. Galton stated that "the middlemost estimate expresses the vox populi, every other estimate being condemned as too low or too high by a majority of the voters",[50] and reported this value (the median, in terminology he himself had introduced, but chose not to use on this occasion) as 1,207 pounds. To his surprise, this was within 0.8% of the weight measured by the judges".
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton

To me, this is an indication that if there is something true - like the weight of an ox - you shouldn't underestimate the wisdom of people. So if there is something true in audio - my hypothesis is that neutrality is a pragmatic representation of "truth" - we should expect a large number of people's preferences to gravitate towards the more neutral audio systems.

 

[Ken Newton]

I'd like to quote Toole..."Traditionally, loudspeakers have been chosen "by ear" - subjectively. Underlying this is the widespread assumption that "we all hear differently" so it has to be a personal decision. It is definitely true that we are individualistic in our preferences of "wine, persons and song", but sound quality turns out to be different.

Toole's conclusion here doesn't necessarily follow. A possible different conclusion is that available loudspeaker performance metrics at the time didn't adequately inform listeners of what they would actually perceive, and that prospective purchasers only found out through listening experience that the product specifications were an insufficient proxy for the actual perceived result. Loudspeakers present, of course, a complex mix of performance parameters (polar response, etc.) that are not all easily captured, nor effectivly communicated by a set of product specs.

I may not know all the details that Toole refers to, but his initial, revealing finding is one of my heuristics. So I am inclined to believe that all people - subjectivists, objectivists, younger, older, experienced, novices, masters, dumb-asses etc. etc. - will on average (median) gravitate towards what was predicted by science, i.e. a pretty neutral sound, when listening blind.

ADDENDUM: To add to the insight that people will gravitate towards the truth - i.e. the neutral reproduction of reality - is this story on the wisdom of ordinary people:

...To me, this is an indication that if there is something true - like the weight of an ox - you shouldn't underestimate the wisdom of people. So if there is something true in audio - my hypothesis is that neutrality is a pragmatic representation of "truth" - we should expect a large number of people's preferences to gravitate towards the more neutral audio systems.

To argue that people subjectively accurately gravitate to an truth, with no objective foreknowledge, seems more like an argument for the validity of subjective judgement, rather than a denial of it. I've always believed that the disconnect between the subjective and objective worlds has most to do with the inadequacy of the objective to effectively communicate the subjective experience. By implication, that objective measurements could serve as an accurate proxy for what we perceive once they are fully effective in capturing and also communicating all of the relevant parameters, as well as the dynamic impact of those parameters on each other. Information which, I feel, is lacking.