Human beliefs sure are weird. Why is it so difficult to get audiophiles to accept the existence of perceptual bias?

[BDWoody]

Put your index fingers on opposite outer edges of the platter and push down alternatively. If there is is any 'rocking' movement at all (even a tiny barely perceptible movement), the bearing needs attention. Clean it out, re-lubricate and compare. If there's still some movement, move up in oil viscosity.

Disclaimer: If you aren't comfortable dismantling the DD motor, get an expert to do it. Things can get lost if you aren't careful and magnets can get damaged. IIRC, the Kenwood motors need to be removed from underneath and then the bell housing/magnet/shaft will just pull upwards. I'd have to have a look at one here to confirm.

I'm not feeling any movement at all. This thing is a solid beast...
Hopefully I won't need to tear into it anytime soon.
Much appreciated.

 

[restorer-john]

I'm not feeling any movement at all. This thing is a solid beast...

That's great. It's been looked after.

 

[danadam]

- if he hears the wrong differences or likes a poorly measuring device, he'll lose credit in the eyes of some
- if he doesn't hear any issue/differences and measurements reveal a big issue, he "loses" again.

Does he care about those "some" opinion?

- if he likes everything or find everything similar, it defeats the purpose of this site.

Does it? What's the purpose of this site?

I'd be perfectly fine with the result that everything sounds similar.

I might disagree, on the basis that with prior measurement, there would be a bias toward something specific for which to listen, which otherwise might slip by.

Feature, not bug, if I'm understanding you correctly.

Agreed.

 

[Wombat]

Well we make great fertilizer.

The purpose of life is gestation of fertilizer.

 

[Wombat]

Funnily enough our imagination of the past , our ' memory' is not quite what it seems.

As I understand it we 'create' our memories via a bunch of assumptions that are rather dodgy .

Our brain also just assumes a bunch of things that really do compromise our perception of the present in all sorts of ways.

TotalHumans

Oh well , maybe we can get a refund.

There is no shortage of aspirants for The Darwin Awards.

 

[BillG]

It's been demonstrated to exist in lots of places and many different fields over and over again. Yet, people refuse to believe it is a thing.

Most people are not science minded. Also, we learn to trust our senses, emotions, and preceptions from an early age, as that is how we navigate through life successfully the vast majority of the time.

Once our preceptions are locked in on something, it requires quite a bit of effort to prove that they can be faulty, and this represents a serious challenge to an individual's reality. Ask any psychologist or psychiatrist just how difficult it is for them to drag a delusional person back to sanity...

 

[Azeia]

It's strange though, it is not like people reject all scientific concepts—even if it does contract their "gut" feeling or impression. For instance, I don't think too many people would reject the notion that stuff is made up of tiny bits of stuff called "atoms" that are too small to see. No one will attack you for claiming that water isn't actually a basic substance on its own, but rather it composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Nobody gets death threats for saying that sunlight, heat, radio waves are actually all the same thing (even though intuitively they seem pretty different).

Eh, I think there's plenty of people that reject science whenever it will run contrary to certain ideological positions they hold. Some of your examples would be seen as mere trivia to most people, so they would be ambivalent towards them; note, I'm saying you're correct that they don't outright reject those things, but they also are not implicitly accepting them either, they just literally don't care because it doesn't contradict any of their held beliefs.

The moment something contradicts a held belief, all science will be thrown out the window. Look at the rejection of climate science as a perfect example. Even cigarettes causing cancer was denied for decades, and still is by a few people (I know some in my family; most don't talk about it publicly anymore, but in private, they deny that it causes cancer and think it's some government conspiracy theory to make more money on taxing cigarettes).

I guarantee you, that if someone figures out how to politicize atoms or molecules, people will deny those things as well. Or if not believing in those things were necessary to maintain some other personal belief that one holds. An example would be people who throw away everything we know about geology, physics, etc, because they have a certain belief about the age of the earth that is impossible to maintain unless they jettison everything we know in science and replace it with pseudoscience.

For subjectivist audiophiles, the problem is they want to believe that their ultra expensive setup was worth the money, or alternatively, there is also a tribalistic explanation; if you've spent years learning all sorts of woo-woo online about audio, and believe that you've become part of some "elite community" of "audio experts", the last thing you want to face is that all of this was a waste of time and none of the things you view as "knowledge" and "expertise" is real, so you start isolating yourself and only hanging out with other subjectivists and never expose yourself to alternate views from outside of the tribe. Contrast this with "imposter syndrome", which is something that real experts often feel because they know enough to know that their knowledge barely scratches the surface of what is the full body of science on a given topic, so sometimes they may feel lack of confidence to speak as an authority on something, even though they may know more than most.

 

[Wombat]

GROUPTHINK. Religions, politics, economists, philosophers, fortune tellers, car brand tragics, audio beliefs, the arts, professions, alternative medicine, self-help merchants, diet and lifestyle faddists,......et al - and they all think they know better than other groups similar, but different in outlook. All, generally, lacking verification for what they proffer. Large doses of denial keep them going.

Humans are blessed and cursed by their imagination and their herd instinct. P.T. Barnum nailed it so succinctly. Evolution gave us the very intricate organ - our brain. It amazes me how many people let others think for them instead of using their own grey matter.

Such is life.

 

[daftcombo]

If you remove the belief of someone, which is often also the occasion of a hobby, he can get depressed and find life empty afterwards.

 

[Cosmik]

Things would be easier if people would just accept that human perception isn't infallible. It's not that big a deal. It doesn't mean we can't have any subjective impressions (people post subjective impressions of stuff here all the time—including myself), nor does it mean that all subjective observations are automatically worthless (which seems to be what some people claim anyone who takes some measurements is advocating for).

If, say, an accountant does his job 'sighted', no one seems to worry, even though he is influenced by his biases. But then, no one expects accountants to do their job by asking them "Which of these answers do you prefer?". With accountancy, there is only one correct answer. There may be a choice of methods or ways of doing the calculation, but for each one there is only one correct answer.

For some reason, in audio people think that there isn't a correct answer, but that both the method and the answer are free-floating and all equally valid. Science is not even being so judgemental as to say that some answers are invalid (which would be insensitive) but is saying that all answers are equally valid. Merely that a passive observation may show that the rainbow of humankind may sometimes enjoy some answers slightly more than others.

A different perspective would be to start from the position that there is a correct answer and that it can be worked out without asking people which answer they prefer. Without that starting point, nothing is fixed and progress has no clear direction.

The method for getting somewhere does not have to reflect the purpose of getting there. Designing and maintaining aircraft is a hard, grinding, boring business even though the end result takes people on their holidays. At no point in the design of an aircraft is a potential holidaymaker brought in and asked which wing angle they prefer. Audio does not have to be designed by playing music to people and asking which sound they prefer. Bias shouldn't even be an issue.

 

[Wombat]

If you remove the belief of someone, which is often also the occasion of a hobby, he can get depressed and find life empty afterwards.

I can see that belief fills a human need. It has over the human time-span. But belief often discards rationality. I think most people, to various degrees, make the trade-off for getting some emotional comfort in some part of their psyche..

 

[maxxevv]

Its very much analogous to why there are over 2000 gods/ demi-gods / deities amongst the myriad variety of religions that exist around the world. And each and everyone of them are as valid as they people who worship / believe in them.

Many people just lock into what suits/meets their immediate emotional needs.

 

[Wombat]

Its very much analogous to why there are over 2000 gods/ demi-gods / deities amongst the myriad variety of religions that exist around the world. And each and everyone of them are as valid as they people who worship / believe in them.

Many people just lock into what suits/meets their immediate emotional needs.

Or their community's.

 

[Jim777]

I might disagree, on the basis that with prior measurement, there would be a bias toward something specific for which to listen, which otherwise might slip by.

But if the goal is *only* to find if there's an audible difference or not (as opposed to picking a favorite between very different systems), the more you know the better.

 

[Jim777]

We trust our senses, I can still fool myself even though I know better (I've done blind tests for years for work); and there's a resultant message out there saying not to trust measurements. Add the fact that we have different abilities and different self-appraisal of those capabilities, no surprise that people just "believe" what they hear.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm just grateful for this forum providing an advanced set of measurements. I might be biased, but my belief is that equipment that measures "ok" may or may not sound good, but state of the art measurements will always sound good (provided it doesn't accentuate a problem elsewhere; the point being it won't be the weak link).

 

[Kal Rubinson]

He'd need reference devices for each class of product and an ABX setup for each. Anything else would be impossibly time consuming.

Agreed.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

If you remove the belief of someone, which is often also the occasion of a hobby, he can get depressed and find life empty afterwards.

Or he can find clarity and a reduction in anxiety.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

True. But it is my understanding that the tests aren't blind comparison but sighted single component tests.

As I said, "If...."

 

[invaderzim]

If you remove the belief of someone, which is often also the occasion of a hobby, he can get depressed and find life empty afterwards.

Or he can find clarity and a reduction in anxiety.

Speaking as someone that spent a lot of money on things that were only believed to improve things I can say that it was fun at the time buying into the hysteria and being part of the group.
The problem is that is short lived because once the euphoria of the purchase wore off I was no happier with the sound or my system. Simply because in reality it hadn't changed.

I've always thought that if one has enough money to buy thousand dollar cables and never notice that the money was spent then it is no business of mine what they buy. The problem is there are 'bargain' versions of these same things and those of us with more limited funds get sucked into.

One of my financial theories is that it often isn't the bigger purchases that bury us. Buying a new TV, Receiver, Couch, Refrigerator etc. all take a hit on the bank account but it is a single hit and generally gets us an item that will be used for years. What is more damaging financially is the ease of spending $50, $100, even $300 on a frequent basis on more ephemeral items. Buy a few of those in a month and it adds up fast. These are the things that are often the most hyped in videos and on forums. "It is only $100 and it made my system sound so much better!" And, since that doesn't actually improve the sound we are still looking for the next bargain fix, and the next, and the next, and the next. Because we thought the $100 item really did improve the sound then we believe even more strongly in the ability of the next purchase. By the time we've added the better power cord, fancy interconnects, special shelf, power treatment, and doorstop the system should sound so amazing that one would never want to leave but instead we look for the next improvement.

Sure, it was a bit deflating when I actually did a blind A/B test and found I couldn't tell a difference between a $100 DAC and an $800 DAC; especially after thinking the difference was huge when doing a sighted test.
It cracks me up when not only will so many say that they can tell a difference but if the idea of doing a blind comparison is suggested they get angry and belligerent. If one believes so strongly that there is a difference wouldn't they want to prove it, if not just to themselves?

 

[watchnerd]

Sure, it was a bit deflating when I actually did a blind A/B test and found I couldn't tell a difference between a $100 DAC and an $800 DAC; especially after thinking the difference was huge when doing a sighted test.

But did you like the $800 DAC better for other reasons? Looks, features, ease of use, quality of build, etc?

If so, I think it's fine to spend the extra money on those benefits, even if they're not audible, as they can make you feel happier with the product.