A list of Audiophile Fallacies

[ahofer]

Am I allowed to say, WTF?

Yeah, fair, I didn’t reconstruct that well. Point is that while geniuses are often misunderstood, being understood doesn’t make you a genius. Thanks. Saw him say something like that in a video and was too lazy to get the exact wording. Here it is:

 

[Titurel]

---

I have a feeling that you may be thinking of analogies in a certain restrictive way, where I’m thinking of them in a broader fashion.

Again: Employing analogy can be informative and some respects and amplify or illustrate the point being made in an argument.

I direct those questioning the value of analogy in rigorous complex reasoning, to try making sense of Supreme Court opinions while skipping the analogies* routinely offered to help the reader negotiate complex legal structures without having to read all the citations. Stripped of well chosen analogies, a 10 page opinion could easily balloon to many hundred of pages with all the references and the precedents, on which the decision is made, included in their entirety. Adding the citations in the cited cases, would then balloon the document by another order of magnitude. And so on. Analogies are also useful uncovering high level logical fallacies. Think of analogies as intellectual band-pass filtering.

* The Chief Justice is very fond of analogies.

BTW, though not an attorney, I routinely read SCOTUS opinions and listen to (and read) the arguments for important cases. The arguments, in particular, are interesting, educational, and, on occasion, quite humorous. The opinions, less so.

 

[MattHooper]

Analogy:

• Audiophiles evaluating audio gear without controlling for bias is like wine tasters evaluating wine without controlling for bias.
• In both cases, the lack of control for bias can influence the perception of the evaluator.

Again, that’s not an analogy.

Of course it’s an analogy! It fits the classic definition of analogy: just look it up:

Analogy:

An analogy is a comparison between two objects, or systems of objects, that highlights respects in which they are thought to be similar.

An analogy is a comparison between two objects, or systems of objects, that highlights respects in which they are thought to be similar.

Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share.

Or you could plug my analogy into ChatGPT and ask “ is this an analogy?” And it will tell you. (Hint: Yes. And it will explain why it has the proper features of an analogy.)

The subject may be different but the activity of evaluation is the same not merely analogous and bias effects is the same issue in each endeavor not an analogy. Bias effects is not an analogy for bias effects. It is bias effects

Evaluating wine and evaluating audio are not the same thing - when is using taste in evaluation the other one is using hearing . So the “activity of the evaluation “ isn’t going to be the same.

The Analogy takes two different types of activity and identifies the feature they share that makes them analogous: both are coming to conclusions by relying on sense perception without controlling for bias effects.

We are right to ask in both cases because in both cases separately, tests have objectively demonstrated bias effects are acting upon the preferences. Without that evidence we would have no good argument

I disagree for the reasons I’ve already given.

Let’s say you were trying to give reasons to somebody as to why we can justify some scepticism in regard to sighted evaluation of differently priced AC cables. You don’t have the evidence on hand showing people coming to erroneous conclusions about AC cables. But you do have plenty of evidence demonstrating how our perception can be fooled in other areas - e.g. the sighted versus blinded wine tasting studies. And those demonstrate how people can be influenced by the proposition of how much things cost to perceive differences that do not in fact exist.

The wine studies do not, of course demonstrate that any particular sighted evaluation of different priced audio cables are wrong. But the wine studies do demonstrate the liabilities of our sense perception and its susceptibility to suggestion and expectation effects. The fact we are relying on the same brain for all our senses makes this variable at least plausible for our other senses, like hearing. So we have given some reason to put the claims of the Golden ear audiophile under more pressure: have they controlled for that possible variable?

We could continue to adduce further analogies to perceptual biases from other senses, touch, smell, sight….
Which put further pressure on the proposition that we should just accept our hearing to be specially exempt from bias effects. Simply presuming that hearing only is exempt would seem to be pure special-pleading so the golden-eared audiophile should have to justify the assumption that hearing is some special exception.

(with apologies: these days I’m having to type from my iPhone leading to rather horrible typos and formatting)

 

[Petrushka]

If I’m reading this correctly, there’s an argument or assertion that the need for blind testing in wine testing does not justify blind testing for audio gear.

There’s an entire discipline called experimental psychology. Experience led to the general principle that all experiments involving the reporting of observations must be double-blind. This is not the result of logical deduction. It is the result of many instances of failure to replicate findings.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

* The Chief Justice is very fond of analogies.

The Supreme Court does not make arguments about objective reality. They don’t even try cases. They offer binding opinions on the constitutionality of laws.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

If I’m reading this correctly, there’s an argument or assertion that the need for blind testing in wine testing does not justify blind testing for audio gear.

There’s an entire discipline called experimental psychology. Experience led to the general principle that all experiments involving the reporting of observations must be double-blind. This is not the result of logical deduction. It is the result of many instances of failure to replicate findings.

Experience lead to that conclusion? I hope not. I’m betting the conclusion was based on evidence

 

[Middle Earth]

People who buy nice audio components are delusional idiots.

 

[pderousse]

Is there a Latin word that can be used to describe a person who claims to hear things that other people don't hear ?

A Greek one (idiotes), but Romans were bilingual, so they used it liberally.

 

[pderousse]

I know this list is only half-serious, but logic is a powerful, very difficult and highly relevant tool in circles like these, since the goal is to wead out things that cannot possibly be true. I would urge people to use already established lists of logical fallacies (as those in Joseph, 2002 or Corbett, 2009, Bennett, 2015 or this place) that most philosophers agree upon. However, if we must use Latin, let’s at least get the Latin right at the outset (surely you all knew someone like me was lurking here).

Not all falacies involve ad or Latin, but if you are using ad to describe a fallacy, it is an argumentum (‘appeal’) ad (‘to’ / ‘against’), where ad is a preposition that requires a noun in the accusative case after it. So it will not be enough to just google the Latin word that iyou would like to follow ad, but you must decline it too in the accusative case, regardless of which of the 5 declensions your noun happens to belongs to. So, some corrections:

Argumentum ad vinum – multo bene! This seems to be a variation on the argumentum ad crumenam (appeal to wealth).

Argumentum ad lecticam. Obviously there were no automobiles at Rome, and anything auto- (self-motivated) is a Greek derivative; however, all is cool, because Romans were generally bilingual, and like us often made up words; Carrum is too late; but perhaps you are being too literal, since what you really mean an ‘appeal to luxury transport’, therefore the argumentum ad lecticum (appeal to my bad-ass 4-8-man-slave-taxi) would be far better - another variation (I think) on the argumentum ad crumenam.

Ad horologium - Clocks were exotic enough in the ancient world, but there were no wrist watches and if there ever had been, the full expression would have to be argumentum ad horologium carpi – no in, which in any case requires the ablative case (carpo).

Ad caecitatem – I’m not sure what ad difficile nito could mean, especially the nito. You are pointing out the difficulty of staging a test involving willful blindness, as a stand-in for objectivity, so caecitas, caecitatem (literal unsighted-ess) - the abstract noun, would do well for this.

Ad Mysterium, ad Quantum and Ad Materiam (not materia)

Ad Aures Aureas – multo bene!

Contra aequam claritudinem– There was the confusion of a noun declension with an adjective declension here, but understandable enough. However, a volumen was anything rolled, like a ‘book’ (scroll), not our concept of volume. The word for loudness was claritudo, -tudinem.

Argumentum ex ignorantia – The argument from ignorance (Russell’s teapot?) is a well known logical fallacy that says X is true because you cannot prove that x is false (and the converse). This seems to be what you mean. Perhaps, teh only proper response to this is HItchen's Razor: "what can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Wishful Thinking Fallacy – Ad Tuba (should be Tubam), but an argument against the tuba (?) – This is not right. Ad Populum (would be correct Latin) but this literally means ‘against the people’ and that is not what you mean either. Wishful thinking is a term of art and commonly understood without some kind of argumentum ad Latinitatem – appeal to false authority because it is written in Latin! (There, I made up my own.)

There are scores of informal fallacies, and they are very worth reviewing periodically as a prophelactic against sloppy thinking. I think they could be very useful here for cleaning house. In fact, there is a massive thread here "Are Measurements Everything or Nothing" that is arguably nothing more than the McNamera Fallacy.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Let’s say you were trying to give reasons to somebody as to why we can justify some scepticism in regard to sighted evaluation of differently priced AC cables. You don’t have the evidence on hand showing people coming to erroneous conclusions about AC cables. But you do have plenty of evidence demonstrating how our perception can be fooled in other areas - e.g. the sighted versus blinded wine tasting studies. And those demonstrate how people can be influenced by the proposition of how much things cost to perceive differences that do not in fact exist.

If I don’t have the evidence on hand I’m going to go get the evidence! It’s there. I just have to get it and present it.

Here is what I am NOT going to do. I’m not going to offer an analogy as and argument. For example, I’m not going to argue that AC power cords are like water pipes and all you need is a big enough gauge and a water pipe will deliver water perfectly therefore so will an AC power cord.

Set up alert

 

[pderousse]

I posted this in another thread, but I thought it might be useful to open source some more ideas in a separate thread.


“To be a genius is to be misunderstood. But to be misunderstood is not to be a genius”. - Neil DeGrasse Tyson
..nor is being hard to understand - me.

Ad Vinum
Audio is like wine, which inevitably involves incorrect assertions about the chemical make-up of wine (e.g. they allege that identical wines taste different) and blind testing (usually they are wrong about what sommeliers can and can’t do). For instance, the different tastes of different varietals, vintages, and terroir all have measurable chemical signatures (Giving rise to “frankenwines” blended to be similar to great vintages). They tend to ignore that the Sommelier and Master Sommelier exams involve an important label-blind test (but even that requires viscosity and color examination to get correct).

Audiogon Discussion Forum

1. There is no best wine for everyone.It depends on personal taste to choose favorite wine.2. Law of diminishing return apply to both audio and wine.100...

forum.audiogon.com

suggested edit: This fallacy also misses the point that in this analogy. the music is the wine, not the audio gear. The music (like the wine) is the thing we enjoy/consume.

Ad Automobilis
High end audio is like cars. Ok, now what? It seems more like installing a speedometer that goes way higher than the maximum speed of the vehicle.

Ad Horologium in Carpi
Audio is like wristwatches. True, but nobody is making claims about the quality of time-telling in a fancy chronomoter. Corollary: all audio debates devolve to wristwatch debates.

6moons industry features: Luxury watches versus high-end hifi

Ad Quantum
Your measurements are Newtonian and Audio involves significant quantum effects that are audible to us - we just can’t prove it

Walker Audio Quantum Silver Contact Treatment with Nanocrystal Technology

Elusive Disc, Inc., Features Only The Best In Audiophile Hardware, Accessories and Music. We Offer a Wide Variety Of Audiophile Turntables, Cartridges, Phono Stages, Record Cleaners, SACD Players, Speakers, Headphones, Pre-Amps, LP Cleaning Fluids, Cables, Vibration Control, Record Brushes &...

elusivedisc.com

Ad Difficile Nito
Blind testing involves too much pressure/rapid changes and therefore is invalid. Typically ignores many blind tests where the timing, length, and rapidity are under the subject’s control. Those asserting this also tend to discount the audiological evidence that a) rapid switching is by far the best way for humans to distinguish small differences and b) that audio memory is incredibly short-lived.

Audiogon Discussion Forum

Because it was scientifically proven to be useless more than 60 years ago.A speech scientist by the name of Irwin Pollack have conducted an experiment...

forum.audiogon.com

Ad Mysterium
A superset of Ad Quantum and Ad Materiae, in which previous examples of ‘settled science’ being unseated are trotted out as dispositive that this is going on in Audio, despite the lack of unexplained phenomena to explain in unsighted testing. Often supported with the Shakespeare quote from Hamlet “There is more on heav’n and earth..”, ignoring that the speaker is defending the existence of ghosts. He is also expounding on the limitless nature of human imagination, which is actually quite apt to high end Audio, as that’s where most high end differences appear to arise. Typically used to confuse the fact that measurements don’t explain everything we hear with the truth that measurements can describe everything in the sound wave (above and beyond what is audible).

The Unmeasurable Aspects of High-End Audio

In our world of high-end audio, we often find ourselves tangled in the web of specifications, measurements, and tangible data. As a self-admitted crazy audiophile and a 50-year veteran in designing audio equipment, I've always believed that while numbers and graphs are crucial, they don't tell...

www.psaudio.com

Ad Aures Aureas
The Golden Ear fallacy, usually trotted out by people with severe age-related hearing loss. Tales of extraordinary audio discernment with few witnesses accompanied by a violent allergy to any kind of blind-testing. Ad Difficile Nito is a common co-morbidity when cornered.

The Swift Boating of Audiophiles

The "Want to make an easy $1,000,000?" e-mail wasn't a scam from Nigeria but an alert from Paul DiComo, late of Polk Audio and now of Definitive Technology, about a double-blind cable-identification challenge made by The Annoying Randi, a magician and debunker of paranormal events who goes by...

www.stereophile.com

Omnia Critica
Every little thing makes a difference, down to the cushion material used on the feet of your DAC. No threshold of difference is too small. Ignores the science of human hearing.

Audiogon Discussion Forum

Everything matters with digital.Oh yeah.

forum.audiogon.com

Contra Aequationem Volumen
Often committed en passant, without acknowledging as much, this is the practice of deprecating level-matching as the primary cause of actual perceived differences. Many audiophiles eschew any kind of level-matching in evaluating equipment, which has, perhaps, cost people more money than any other nonsense in the hobby. Also known as Contra-Fletcher-Munson.

Ad Materiae
Another subset of Ad Mysterium The materials used in electronics have their own audible quality, which transcends measurement. Amusingly, these qualities correspond directly to the tactile or visual characteristics of the material in question. Plastic waveguides sound synthetic, silver cables sound liquid, beryllium sounds hard, wood sounds warm, etc.

Audiogon Discussion Forum

I notice the Beryllium tweeters cost about $500 each! Focusing mostly on SB Acoustics (Satori) but you are welcome to comment if you have heard any bra...

forum.audiogon.com

Russell’s Teapot
”You can’t prove it doesn’t exist”. A favorite of everyone with unsupported theories and claims, despite the well-known practical difficulties of proving a negative. Failure to disprove something is not evidence that it exists.

Others?

*****added from thread below*****
Ad Turba or Ad Populem- The argument that many people, maybe thousands or millions all agree that they hear something when measurements say they shouldn't, so the measurements must be wrong. Ignores the omni-prevalence of cognitive effects on hearing.

Ad pecuniam - The argument that those who discount the possibility of certain audible differences simply haven't heard expensive-enough systems. Ignores the fairly blatant dislocation of price and quality across the entire industry.

A list of Audiophile Fallacies

Am I allowed to say, WTF? Yeah, fair, I didn’t reconstruct that well. Point is that while geniuses are often misunderstood, being understood doesn’t make you a genius. Thanks. Saw him say something like that in a video and was too lazy to get the exact wording. Here it is:

audiosciencereview.com

 

[pderousse]

If I don’t have the evidence on hand I’m going to go get the evidence! It’s there. I just have to get it and present it.

Here is what I am NOT going to do. I’m not going to offer an analogy as and argument. For example, I’m not going to argue that AC power cords are like water pipes and all you need is a big enough gauge and a water pipe will deliver water perfectly therefore so will an AC power cord.

Set up alert

Hitchens' Razor

 

[Titurel]

The Supreme Court does not make arguments about objective reality. They don’t even try cases. They offer binding opinions on the constitutionality of laws.

I'm not convinced you understand how the court works. The court's actions are confined to cases and controversies. They can't do anything about an "unconstitutional" law unless someone can show standing (e.g., have experienced harm). They are barred from issuing advisory opinions, i.e., directly rule on the constitutionality, absent a case. Showing harm is typically the domain of trial courts.

This ongoing kerfuffle may come down to what your definition of objective reality excludes. If you exclude logical systems (like the law or computer programs) from your definition of objective reality, this discussion can't really proceed productively.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I'm not convinced you understand how the court works.

I don’t care

This ongoing kerfuffle may come down to what your definition of objective reality excludes. If you exclude logical systems (like the law

Law is an abstract concept. It is a human invention of the mind. It is a subject of objective reality like physics or chemistry or other similar subjects that deal with objective reality

or computer programs) from your definition of objective reality, this discussion can't really proceed productively.

Before my post you thought it could? :- 0

 

[ahofer]

If I’m reading this correctly, there’s an argument or assertion that the need for blind testing in wine testing does not justify blind testing for audio gear.

There’s an entire discipline called experimental psychology. Experience led to the general principle that all experiments involving the reporting of observations must be double-blind. This is not the result of logical deduction. It is the result of many instances of failure to replicate findings.

Could you point out specifically what you are reading? Because that is not at all what the Ad Vinum entry says. It says that audiophiles drawing the analogy conveniently disregard that blind testing IS used in that field.

 

[Middle Earth]

Setting aside the ignorant posts about the SCOTUS, threads like this are the most bemusing part of this forum.

“Let's go back to making fun of subjectivists with google translations into latin.”

I don’t like shill subjectivists but I have zero problem with someone having an opinion and I like that crazy expensive things exist regardless of their ultimate utility.

The infinity betas spending time caring about how other people spend their time and their treasure when it has nothing to do with them is pathetic.

I Heart this most of all.

Tu weakinglings.

 

[Titurel]

I don’t care

Law is an abstract concept. It is a human invention of the mind.

Portland cement is also an invention of the mind. (Is there truly any other sort?) And you can't get much more concrete than that.

By your logic, even a semiconductor diode would be judged an abstraction. It is, after all, an invention of the mind. A law controlling the direction of motor travel is conceptually a diode. If people occasional break that law, that particular diode can be judged to have failed or to have been put in the wrong place in the (traffic) circuit. And even physical diodes leak. Why should a conceptual diode be any different?

Look up the etymology of diode. You'll discover one of its components means "way." You know, like motorway or pathway. The diode is merely the electronic analogy of the oneway street. (Good analogies tend to be commutative, unlike diodes.) Would we have ever looked for race conditions in circuit layout if we hadn't first analogized the fault to traffic jams? I guess we should toss out the zero, too.

Before my post you thought it could? :- 0

With many people? Yes.

 

[Titurel]

Setting aside the ignorant posts about the SCOTUS, threads like this are the most bemusing part of this forum.

“Let's go back to making fun of subjectivists with google translations into latin.”

Ignorant fool I am, I never really enjoyed pulling the legs off insects, so naturally I don't find cheap shots particularly amusing, even translated into Sanskrit. (Actually, they might be more fun in Sanskrit.) At least be sporting and pick moving targets.

 

[ahofer]

Setting aside the ignorant posts about the SCOTUS, threads like this are the most bemusing part of this forum.

“Let's go back to making fun of subjectivists with google translations into latin.”

I don’t like shill subjectivists but I have zero problem with someone having an opinion and I like that crazy expensive things exist regardless of their ultimate utility.

The infinity betas spending time caring about how other people spend their time and their treasure when it has nothing to do with them is pathetic.

I Heart this most of all.

Tu weakinglings.

Hypocrisy is the most common vice, as usual.

I find lists like this useful like a coding library-I don’t have to say it again. Like the “blind test catalogue” and the post on market success vs fidelity. It’s how I choose to spend a little of my time.

And is there anything sillier than masculinity contests? Ad Virem indeed.

Btw, since this has been raised a few times, I took Latin for 6 years 7-12th grade, and Greek for a year (11th). That was how I chose how to spend some of my earlier years, and it’s been surprisingly helpful. But yeah, it’s been 42 years since high school so I still pull out translate.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Portland cement is also an invention of the mind. (Is there truly any other sort?) And you can't get much more concrete than that.

No. It’s a physical thing. If you don’t know the difference between that and an abstract idea there’s nothing more to say.

But you did illustrate beautifully the inherent flaw in trying to use an analogy as an argument.