"Things that cannot be measured"

[krabapple]

When ghosthunters report a particular poltergeist experience, that experience is real. Trust that...

Edit: I see we're going to have to have people define what they mean by "real". It might be "real to them", as in they really believe that is what they experienced, but it is also a deceptive experience in that 99.999% of them would NOT have experienced the same under controlled listening.

Putzys did not claim otherwise.

He *literally wrote* that you cannot trust their explanation derived from the experience -- e.g., 'the two devices are audibly different' --only the sincerity of listener's belief that they heard a difference.

 

[CMOT]

Wellll.....

Certainly it's prestigious.

But.

PNAS has a policy of allowing 'contributed' articles -- articles by or sponsored by a NAS member -- via a sort of 'fast track' where the review rules are somewhat different.

This has occasionally resulted in what I'll gently refer to as publishing misdemeanors (work that could/should not have been published otherwise).

I believe this policy has been tightened up in recent years, but it was in force for decades

I can affirm this post. PNAS has contributed articles that go through basically no review. Plus "inaugural" articles that are often random ramblings of the newly crowned. But having been involved in PNAS reviewing many times, it is also very much an old boy network where people look out for their buddies. So many echo chamber papers.

 

[Tokyo_John]

I am a scientist, by profession. I study planets (especially this one) and natural systems dynamics. I’m interested in questions like: how do planets make life? Where do we come from, and where are we going? What drives me is discovery of things we do not know, finding new ways to understand how the world works, and clever ways to unlock longstanding mysteries. Science is evolution, a learning process, and if it ever stops then it is no longer science. And if we ever stop learning as humans, then we stop living.

Did you know that a new human sense was discovered in recent years? The evidence shows that brain wave patterns in our heads are affected by changes in the magnetic field of order the geomagnetic field strength (though having a MRI scan seems to affect it, and not everyone is sensitive). We don’t appear to use this sense so much, however, birds and other critters do appear to use the geomagnetic field to navigate. The biophysical mechanism is linked to small bits of magnetite (Fe3O4) in our cells. We know that some bacteria use magnetite to navigate up and down magnetic field lines, which are usually sub-parallel to gradients in sunlight, nutrients, pH, acidity, redox, etc.. The present idea is that magnetic orientation may be the oldest and most primitive sensory mechanism developed by life on Earth...something that wouldn’t have arisen if the Earth didn’t have a magnetic field generated in the core, which seems to depend on cooling driven by over-turning convection of the rocky mantle, which is linked to plate tectonics, volcanism, and maintenance of habitable conditions on the surface. Life is an open system, and its inter-dependencies are vast and deep, we’re still only just beginning to have a broader picture as we consider where to aim our new-fangled telescopes in the era of exoplanets, and what to look for. The natural origin and sustenance of life is one of the greatest challenges in all of science, and the answers are important for humans to understand how we may survive in the long term.

Another great challenge is that of consciousness. Much like life on a planet, consciousness is an “emergent phenomenon” that only arises under the operation of a certain combination of processes. Emergence is synergy, the sum that is greater than its parts, and is inherently non-linear in nature.

Qualities of music are also emergent phenomena. Particular patterns, tones, and combinations of sound are somehow pleasing to humans. We enjoy a symphony more than a cacophony. Hearing certain sounds stimulates brain waves and elicits chemical changes in our bodies that is somehow linked to emotions. Hearing music can be deeply tied to old memories, especially emotional memories. Why?

We don’t know. Neuroscience is changing so fast these days, it seems as if there is a new paradigm every few years. Recently my neuroscience colleagues have begun to sound like Buddhists, talking about the myth of the “self” and so on. I have no idea where they are headed, and neither do they...which is what makes it fun.

My research, like that of many other fields, is constantly plagued by lack of access or the kind of observations we’d ideally like to have in hand. How can I figure out what is happening in the center of our planet, that allows a magnetic field to be regenerated over billions of years of history? Well, we have to work with what we have. Physics, chemistry, experiments and simulations of matter at extreme conditions, observations of the field today, and relics recorded in rocks in the past, analysis of elastic seismic waves generated by earthquakes after they pass through the Earth’s interior, gravity, mass spectrometry of tiny variations of isotopes in lavas that are coughed up onto Earth’s surface from inside, etc.. We’d happily trade these methods for the chance to hold a chunk of the inner core in our hands...but that will never practically happen. So we make do with what we have.

Science is a process of evolution, a never ending series of trials (hypothesis) and errors (empirical testing). Science has co-opted the mechanism that nature itself uses to adapt and learn over time. We are always plagued by the inability to perform all the tests we would like to do, as well as dealing with large volumes of data when we do, analyzing and understanding. We are human, and we like to have a storyline, a narrative, and it is subject to the same cognitive biases that anyone else possesses as humans. We are heavily influenced by society, its customs and mores are deeply imprinted on our scientific concepts, more than we’d like to admit. We do what we can, and it skews our perspective and makes it impossible to obtain an objective view of any situation.

In the process of evolution, the “tree” of life, it is silly for us to think of the set of species at any given time as the “correct” solution. The best you can say is that life finds “a” solution, which is only approximately “correct in the context of its continuously changing times. Science is the same.

 

[Wes]

I dunno if natural systems dynamics of planets means you are an ecosystem ecologist or a comparative planetologist...?

OTOH, I definitely do not want to hold a chunk of Earth's inner core in my hands, unless it cools off first.

and BTW, the shark people are excited now about magnetic fields...

 

[j_j]

Putzys did not claim otherwise.

He *literally wrote* that you cannot trust their explanation derived from the experience -- e.g., 'the two devices are audibly different' --only the sincerity of listener's belief that they heard a difference.

Bruno's position is, I think, very simple. He regards the people who report differences as being sincere. He does not think that their sincerely held belief has anything to do with the actual sound.

That is, frankly, exactly my position. The how of this is simple, you can refocus, etc, your attention. Right now, as you read this, listen for very high frequency noises in your area. See? Now you hear them, while you didn't a minute ago. You remember something different from the same soundfield.

That doesn't mean the soundfield changed (although of course it could have, as well).

 

[TK750]

Bruno's position is, I think, very simple. He regards the people who report differences as being sincere. He does not think that their sincerely held belief has anything to do with the actual sound.

That is, frankly, exactly my position. The how of this is simple, you can refocus, etc, your attention. Right now, as you read this, listen for very high frequency noises in your area. See? Now you hear them, while you didn't a minute ago. You remember something different from the same soundfield.

That doesn't mean the soundfield changed (although of course it could have, as well).

As someone with, thankfully, very mild tinnitus (I only notice it when specifically thinking about it) this post needs a warning haha

 

[j_j]

As someone with, thankfully, very mild tinnitus (I only notice it when specifically thinking about it) this post needs a warning haha

Yep. Me too.

 

[Wes]

Bruno's position is, I think, very simple. He regards the people who report differences as being sincere. He does not think that their sincerely held belief has anything to do with the actual sound.

That is, frankly, exactly my position. The how of this is simple, you can refocus, etc, your attention. Right now, as you read this, listen for very high frequency noises in your area. See? Now you hear them, while you didn't a minute ago. You remember something different from the same soundfield.

That doesn't mean the soundfield changed (although of course it could have, as well).

Nope - still getting tinnitus

or maybe those cicadas got over here somehow

 

[BDWoody]

Nope - still getting tinnitus

or maybe those cicadas got over here somehow

I am right in the heart of that here in Maryland, and it is just about to ramp up to crazy levels. This will be my third time through it. Last time, we had our 10 week old Golden Retreiver running around eating them like they were noisy candy.

It's awesome and beautiful, but hard to describe how truly loud it is.

 

[David Harper]

As someone with, thankfully, very mild tinnitus (I only notice it when specifically thinking about it) this post needs a warning haha

yep. me too. If you're taking either naproxen (an NSAID) or the blood pressure med lisinopril (an ACE inhibitor) try going off of it for a while.
Your tinnitus may lessen or go away.

 

[Tom Danley]

The late Dick Heyser posed that we measure what we do because we can, not because the answer the question that would best inform.
The latter part of his life was spent trying to tie what one measures to what one "hears" and was never satisfied.
Consider the spec THD, made sense because it's easy to calculate but has little correlation to audibility.
With loudspeakers especially, there ARE aspects that are clearly audible but do not show up as "something" in a measurement and some of these are tied to the faithfulness of the stereo image. In another thread here it is asked about speakers that disappear in the stereo image, this can be tied to this kind of thing.

Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs

 

[mkawa]

yep. me too. If you're taking either naproxen (an NSAID) or the blood pressure med lisinopril (an ACE inhibitor) try going off of it for a while.
Your tinnitus may lessen or go away.

oh weird, i take naproxen for my back and wrists pretty often (ibuprofen in the quantities i need for my carpals makes me drowsy) and had no idea it could cause tinnitus. i was also on lisinoprinol briefly, but changed meds as it made me a bit nauseous. fwiw i don't have tinnitus but do have this annoying tendency to hear the bloodflow through my ear structures or head or something who knows. when i was a teenager i complained of tinnitus so they stuck me in an anechoic chamber for a hearing test, which was fine, and i went "oh, wait, sorry, it just sounds like blood flowing through something up there". they went, yah, there is blood flowing up there, and i went, oh, and that was about that.

 

[SimpleTheater]

Well, at STP air is pretty close, except for the water vapor. Remember, only argon is a "round single particle" though

Still covalent attraction isn't in play, it's not dense enough. It's REALLY not dense enough for actual collisions.

But the irony is that it does not matter at all. All you need to know is the velocity and rotational moment of the various molecules. In this, water is a pain, having 3, rather than 2, contributions, and argon is wonderful, having only velocity.

But it's not hard. Anyone who actually does physics could do it. The most uncertain part is the area of the tympanum.

So you’re suggesting to fill the ear canal with argon gas for the best audio. This may have to be an over ear or in-ear headphone to get a proper seal.

99.99% pure Argon sells for about $5 per liter, so we’ll have to jack the price up for refills or it won’t meet audiophile price specs.

 

[mkawa]

fill the cables with argon. claim they give your speakers more air.

 

[whazzup]

Or fill your room with helium for more attack!

Eran Amichai and Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University decided there was a simple method: changing the speed of sound. One of the factors that influences the speed of sound is the density of the air. And there's a simple way to alter the density of air: spike it with lighter-than-air gases. In this case, the authors chose helium and raised a group of bats in an atmosphere that had enough helium in it to increase the speed of sound by 15 percent.

(Whether or not the bats raised in this environment thought they sounded funny was sadly left untested.)

https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-a-helium-voice-mess-with-their-echolocation/

 

[j_j]

Or fill your room with helium for more attack!



https://arstechnica.com/science/202...-a-helium-voice-mess-with-their-echolocation/

Or you could use Sulfur Hexafloride, incredibly heavy, slows sound down.

Note: Those people are nuts.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Or you could use Sulfur Hexafloride, incredibly heavy, slows sound down.

Note: Those people are nuts.

Dayton Wright made some ESL panels which were enclosed in a bag of Sulfur Hexaflouride gas.

 

[rdenney]

The late Dick Heyser posed that we measure what we do because we can, not because the answer the question that would best inform.
The latter part of his life was spent trying to tie what one measures to what one "hears" and was never satisfied.
Consider the spec THD, made sense because it's easy to calculate but has little correlation to audibility.
With loudspeakers especially, there ARE aspects that are clearly audible but do not show up as "something" in a measurement and some of these are tied to the faithfulness of the stereo image. In another thread here it is asked about speakers that disappear in the stereo image, this can be tied to this kind of thing.

Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs

We need to be careful about statements like “THD...has little correlation to audibility”. If the THD is vanishingly low over the audible spectrum, then it has high correlation to transparency (which is what all manufacturers at least claim to produce).

Where the correlation is poor is when THD is high. Depending on which harmonic and in what degree, a given THD measurement may not be particularly audible, or even when audible not particularly unpleasant.

But I have a hard time imagining how a device with distortion plus noise at -100 dB or less could sound anything but transparent. It seems to me that any subjective but demonstrable fault would show up as measured distortion.

In the old days, THD was measured at low power and at one frequency. Now, we see plots of distortion vs. power, and distortion vs. frequency.

Also in the old days, we didn’t measure loudspeakers “in the round” and good anechoic on-axis performance (which we did measure) didn’t mean it would sound good in a room with unfavorable early reflections or once the unguided tweeters started beaming, etc. Now that we focus on both directivity and distortion in addition to linearity, we can indeed correlate measurements with preferences, and the properly controlled preference studies showing that correlation have been done.

Rick “agreeing that engineers often fail to articulate operational objectives as the basis for performance measurement” Denney

 

[solderdude]

Where the correlation is poor is when THD is high. Depending on which harmonic and in what degree, a given THD measurement may not be particularly audible, or even when audible not particularly unpleasant.

When you measure THD of an amplifier at say 200W @ 1kHz you may get a low number. Yet that amplifier could have some crossover distortion which is very small compared the large voltage swing during the measurement. However, should one measure it at say 0.1W or have a look at the waveform distortion might reach audible levels yet the measurement at 200W won't show alarming levels.

Of course this too can also be measured but at much lower output voltage levels. Plus one could define audibility levels for that type of distortion so very measurable but under other conditions but can be obscured by the manufacturer's specs which they publish so the best numbers can be shown.

 

[Tokyo_John]

I dunno if natural systems dynamics of planets means you are an ecosystem ecologist or a comparative planetologist...?

All of the above. I abhor silos.

OTOH, I definitely do not want to hold a chunk of Earth's inner core in my hands, unless it cools off first.

Much agreed! And...a density 13x greater than water, but a lot of that is due to the confining pressure (several million atmospheres).

BTW, the shark people are excited now about magnetic fields...

Nice! Migration patterns of great whites are particularly mysterious. I know some folks who have come up with a way of preserving frozen fish using magnetic field gyration that oscillates magnetite crystals in fish flesh and prevents the nucleation of ice crystals in cells that otherwise cause them to rupture and degrade.