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Snake Oil Department, Top This

I also found this gem:
1757945519039.png

(on reddit).

And this comment made my day:
This only works for rock music.
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WideEyedToad said:
Been browsing this one site, the things people fall for....

View attachment 475123

But I'm jealous of people can spend that much on a power cord, something I'd wince paying more than $40 for.
Also $80,000 speaker cables.
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Some people buying that cord likely take out a loan or incur credit card debt to get it. I knew a guy who had this towering audio system with the fanciest of everything, and his kids ran around wearing other people's clothes. It's okay to buy that cord if it tickles your fancy, if and only if (iff) all financial responsibilities are taken care of first. As for me, I view that cord as ludicrously overpriced for the simple function it performs, which can be done identically well with an inexpensive but competent cord bought at a hardware store. As for speaker cables, typically only one pair is bought, while several power cords for all the pieces equipment in the system are. The power cord cost could then eclipse the cost of the speaker wire. I use 16 gauge lamp cord for the speaker runs of 8 feet each. That gits[sic] 'er done for me.
 
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aamwgm said:
I'd make it a point not to buy anything from companies sufficiently morally bankrupt to be selling snake-oil-coil, as I like to call their cables.
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It might be that a company sincerely believes that its product does as claimed, and don't think that that they are pulling a fast one on their customers by selling something known not to have any beneficial effect at all.
 
egellings said:
It might be that a company sincerely believes that its product does as claimed, and don't think that that they are pulling a fast one on their customers by selling something known not to have any beneficial effect at all.
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Asking a premium price without any evidence of improvement (due to ignorance or otherwise) is moral bankruptcy no?
 
I look at wellness as trying to fix something that ain't broke. It's a solution running around trying to find a problem to solve. When it can't find a problem, then it invents one that it can then provide a solution for. Wellness would disappear in a blink of the eye if it were demonetized. Nobody would be any the worse for it.
 
aamwgm said:
Asking a premium price without any evidence of improvement (due to ignorance or otherwise) is moral bankruptcy no?
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I don't know. If the scientifically illiterate seller sincerely thinks that the product does something special, and is not intentionally trying to pull a fast one on the customer, maybe it's not immoral. To do something immoral, the doer needs to know that it is immoral first, and then decides to do the act in spite of that knowledge. Of course, if the oil seller refuses to accept generally accepted scientific facts about the product type, then that's a different story. Intention determines morality. Nothing denatures morality faster than money. Sexual urge is a distant second.
 
egellings said:
I don't know. If the scientifically illiterate seller sincerely thinks that the product does something special, and is not intentionally trying to pull a fast one on the customer, maybe it's not immoral. To do something immoral, the doer needs to know that it is immoral first, and then decides to do the act in spite of that knowledge. Of course, if the oil seller refuses to accept generally accepted scientific facts about the product type, then that's a different story. Intention determines morality. Nothing denatures morality faster than money. Sexual urge is a distant second.
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It's no different than amulets and religious jewelry. A US$16B market, world wide.
 
egellings said:
I don't know. If the scientifically illiterate seller sincerely thinks that the product does something special, and is not intentionally trying to pull a fast one on the customer, maybe it's not immoral. To do something immoral, the doer needs to know that it is immoral first, and then decides to do the act in spite of that knowledge. Of course, if the oil seller refuses to accept generally accepted scientific facts about the product type, then that's a different story. Intention determines morality. Nothing denatures morality faster than money. Sexual urge is a distant second.
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It's like George Costanza said to Jerry Seinfeld, "it's not a lie if you truly believe it".
 
mhardy6647 said:
I am starting to feel like truth is a vector quantity.
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it needs to have a magnitude (it does!) and an angle (it does) in order to be a vector quantity. When truth gets distorted, the Oxford English Dictionary has a recently entered word for it: enshitification.
 
speaking of snake oil -- moving from hifi, unfortunately, but somewhat closer to actual water-insoluble serpentine chemical components... I heard this on All Things Considered this evening. The rise of anti-science in the form of (not what one's mind might fairly leap to, nowadays, at least in the US) Tik-Tok Influencers is truly distressing.
(cutesy play on words of the item's title notwithstanding :p)
 
mhardy6647 said:
speaking of snake oil -- moving from hifi, unfortunately, but somewhat closer to actual water-insoluble serpentine chemical components... I heard this on All Things Considered this evening. The rise of anti-science in the form of (not what one's mind might fairly leap to, nowadays, at least in the US) Tik-Tok Influencers is truly distressing.
(cutesy play on words of the item's title notwithstanding :p)
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Same with this hyped solution : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_water_treatment
 
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