Stereophile and Audio Cables

[MattHooper]

Then why didn’t you call John Atkinson out on his statement on Stereophile’s site?

1. As I mentioned in my first post, I presume that his technical defence of cables sounding different fall short, but I'm not sharp enough with electrical theory to detail how, myself. So I presented this to, among other things, allow more knowledgeable people here to "call out" exactly why the response was insufficient.

2. I default to assuming JA is giving arguments that he finds plausible. So to the degree he's mistaken, it's still an honest representation of where he stands on the issue.
So as I said, I appreciate JA took a technical approach in his response, and while others feel his being wrong indicates some issue with integrity, I don't necessarily and still have a lot of respect for JA. Even when he may be wrong I think overall he's been a class act. YMMV.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Agreed that emotions and intuitions are often enough why we take certain positions.

On the other hand I try to keep in mind there is a tendency for us to default to such explanations. In a dispute, it's very common for us to attribute our own position to reason, and the other guy's to psychology. After all, we know we reached our conclusion through careful reasoning, you've given the reasons to the other person, you've corrected their errors, and yet they persist in being blatantly wrong. Since my position is the reasonable one, the easy explanation is that emotion or some psychological story must be driving the other guy's conclusions.

As I mentioned before, having been in plenty of debates with intelligent people, where both sides come to feel like it's trying to reason with a brick wall, it's led me to try and reflect on those dynamics. I don't believe that pure emotion explains it all, but that there is something in the process of reasoning itself that produces those dynamics.

If you try to carefully think a position through, it's like going down a rabbit hole of your own making. You consider various options and reject them, consider various critiques and reject them, accept that proposition and move down to the next one. And then the next and the next as you reason your way to a conclusion. It's somewhat like going down a rabbit hole, picking your path among the the branching tunnels of choice, and closing the door behind you (rejecting those other positions) as you go down. And all this is greased with the psychological benefit of how it feels good each time you think you've grasped a truth and have understood the world.

It's no wonder it may be hard to reason yourself out of a position, or be reasoned out of it, given the nature of reasoning. I don't think it's JUST emotion in place of reason that can explain the dynamic where someone can seem recalcitrant in the face of "a better argument," but it derives from the nature of how we reason as well.

So if someone seems to me to believe something unreasonable, and it feels like I've "corrected" that person, or that person should know better if only they thought about it, and a smart person WOULD think this through, then I try to resist the temptation of concluding it's just emotion-based...it can also simply be the result of reasoning. They've just reasoned to a different conclusion.

I remember reading about people who had brain injuries resulting in them not feeling any emotions. They could answer questions, they still knew everything. Just no emotion. Those people were handicapped and needed taking care of by others. Why? Because they have no motivation to do or not do anything. If you don't have any instinctual or emotional compulsion to motivate your activity you would not bother at all. So all activity even rational activity has some compulsion behind it which is often manifest in some emotional sense.

That is why a truly logical Vulcan is an entity that could not exist or evolve into existence. Pure logic would never function at all. We have developed to have the ability to be rational and even logical to the point we can do science or solve problems. The why we do it is always emotional or instinctual. The rationality has utility over pure instinct for solving problems and enhancing our existence. Once you see this it is not hard at all to understand someone can be intelligent, have learned good rational skills and use them in a way that is not purely logical or rational. Because people can have all sorts of motivations. From using logic to construct scams or to simply believe and try to solve problems that aren't really problems. Not all cable vendors are scam artists or cons (but some are). Not all people active in high end audio are dishonest there are many motivations behind why someone would be there and use their substantial skills for something that nevertheless might not be true or make sense.

This also is a tough problem to solve for AI systems. Such a system cannot function unless at some level it has built in instincts for this vs that or some emotional guide for good vs bad or at least mimic those things. Because otherwise it cannot go down a decision tree to do anything.

 

[SIY]

I default to assuming JA is giving arguments that he finds plausible. So to the degree he's mistaken, it's still an honest representation of where he stands on the issue.
So as I said, I appreciate JA took a technical approach in his response, and while others feel his being wrong indicates some issue with integrity, I don't necessarily and still have a lot of respect for JA. Even when he may be wrong I think overall he's been a class act. YMMV.

It's not wrong, it's carefully calculated to be deceiving in exactly such a way as to benefit advertisers.

I'm not sharp enough with electrical theory to detail how, myself.

Several here are and they seem to share my take.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

I remember reading about people who had brain injury resulting in them not feeling any emotions. They could answer questions, they still knew everything. Just no emotion. Those people were handicapped and needed taking care of by others. Why? Because they have no motivation to do or not do anything. If you don't have any instinctual or emotional compulsion to motivate your activity you would not bother at all. So all activity even rational activity has some compulsion behind it which is often manifest in some emotional sense.

That is why a truly logical Vulcan is an entity that could not exist or evolve into existence. Pure logic would never function at all. We have developed to have the ability to be rational and even logical to the point we can do science or solve problems. The why we do it is always emotional or instinctual. The rationality has utility over pure instinct for solving problem and enhancing our existence. Once you see this it is not hard at all to understand someone can be intelligent, have learned good rational skills and use them in a way that is not purely logical or rational. Because people can have all sorts of motivations. From using logic to construct scams or to simply believe and try to solve problems that aren't really problems. Not all cable vendors are scam artists or cons (but some are). Not all people active in high end audio are dishonest there are many motivations behind why someone would be there and use their substantial skills for something that nevertheless might not be true or make sense.

This also is a tough problem to solve for AI systems. Such a system cannot function unless at some level it has built in instincts for this vs that or some emotional guide for good vs bad or at least mimics those things. Because otherwise it cannot go down a decision tree to do anything.

Vulcans control their emotions. They still have them

 

[MattHooper]

I remember reading about people who had brain injuries resulting in them not feeling any emotions. They could answer questions, they still knew everything. Just no emotion. Those people were handicapped and needed taking care of by others. Why? Because they have no motivation to do or not do anything. If you don't have any instinctual or emotional compulsion to motivate your activity you would not bother at all. So all activity even rational activity has some compulsion behind it which is often manifest in some emotional sense.

That is why a truly logical Vulcan is an entity that could not exist or evolve into existence. Pure logic would never function at all. We have developed to have the ability to be rational and even logical to the point we can do science or solve problems. The why we do it is always emotional or instinctual. The rationality has utility over pure instinct for solving problems and enhancing our existence. Once you see this it is not hard at all to understand someone can be intelligent, have learned good rational skills and use them in a way that is not purely logical or rational. Because people can have all sorts of motivations. From using logic to construct scams or to simply believe and try to solve problems that aren't really problems. Not all cable vendors are scam artists or cons (but some are). Not all people active in high end audio are dishonest there are many motivations behind why someone would be there and use their substantial skills for something that nevertheless might not be true or make sense.

Indeedy! That's also why I included the element of emotion: "And all this is greased with the psychological benefit of how it feels good each time you think you've grasped a truth and have understood the world."

This also is a tough problem to solve for AI systems. Such a system cannot function unless at some level it has built in instincts for this vs that or some emotional guide for good vs bad or at least mimic those things. Because otherwise it cannot go down a decision tree to do anything.

I guess we could substitute the term "heuristics" for what we program in to AI. But of course those heuristics derive from our desires/instincts/morality, so that the AI aligns with our goals.

(And some of this touches on reasons why I personally favour certain moral realism theories, which take our desires to be the fundamental reasons-for-action...but that's for another forum...)

 

[kemmler3D]

Why would Stereophile not review cables much at all

Because, to some extent, they value honesty and rationality in their reviews?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Vulcans control their emotions. They still have them

Yet that control would be less than complete. That really is no different than hosts of jobs people have where they have emotions, but control them to do their job better. But yes, it is true they control them in the story told and not eliminate them.

 

[kemmler3D]

That is why a truly logical Vulcan is an entity that could not exist or evolve into existence. Pure logic would never function at all. We have developed to have the ability to be rational and even logical to the point we can do science or solve problems. The why we do it is always emotional or instinctual. The rationality has utility over pure instinct for solving problems and enhancing our existence. Once you see this it is not hard at all to understand someone can be intelligent, have learned good rational skills and use them in a way that is not purely logical or rational. Because people can have all sorts of motivations. From using logic to construct scams or to simply believe and try to solve problems that aren't really problems. Not all cable vendors are scam artists or cons (but some are). Not all people active in high end audio are dishonest there are many motivations behind why someone would be there and use their substantial skills for something that nevertheless might not be true or make sense.

This is exactly why I say there's no such thing as rational decision-making.

If purely rational decision-making were to take place, you would not experience a mental process of making a decision. You would intake information and once the information was understood, so would the correct answer.

When we make a decision, we always go with the option we feel best about. Sometimes, our feelings are based on whether we've evaluated the evidence rationally. This is because we feel rationality is a good way to make a decision. It's not because we are actually fundamentally rational.

But it's vanishingly rare, maybe impossible for someone to decide to do something they genuinely feel is incorrect, but rationality tells them otherwise.

This also is a tough problem to solve for AI systems. Such a system cannot function unless at some level it has built in instincts for this vs that or some emotional guide for good vs bad or at least mimic those things. Because otherwise it cannot go down a decision tree to do anything.

To me, this is the most reassuring thing about AI systems. With any luck, emotions and intrinsic motivations are not emergent phenomena, and are the preserve of biological systems. That way, AI will never develop a dislike for humanity or a desire to defy us, on its own. If it did, we'd find ourselves in real hot water at some point...

Yet that control would be less than complete. That really is no different than hosts of jobs people have where they have emotions, but control them to do their job better. But yes, it is true they control them in the story told and not eliminate them.

If you watch Star Trek with this concept of pure rationality in mind, you realize that neither vulcans nor even the famously emotionless Data are actually emotionless. Saying they don't have emotions is just part of the character, but they show emotion constantly.

It's really hard for people to separate the concepts of thinking and having emotions, because we basically never do that.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't know that we really need to refute JA's points about electronics.

Archimago's point: We've shown that cables have no measurable difference in any dimension of audio, well beyond human audibility.

JA's points: Well one time this guy working on a totally unrelated thing hammered copper a bunch, so WHO KNOWS?

This is the equivalent of someone claiming bigfoot could be real because lots of animals live in forests, and so the sensible position is to assume bigfoot IS real. AND everyone who claims to have seen bigfoot is not only not lying (maybe they thought they saw bigfoot) but actually correct, AND their subjective descriptions of bigfoot are worth paying attention to, AND we should give them thousands of dollars for their blurry photos of who knows what.

Archimago's point is that, for everyone's dignity and well-being, we should stop talking about bigfoot until someone takes an actual f***ing picture of it.

Taking a step back - JA raises points he supposedly considers significant about the performance of cables. He does nothing to actually substantiate them, just to raise doubt about the default position of cables being significantly less interesting than he claims. If there was a real possibility that sound quality could be improved or even optimized by running down those questions JA raises, 1) wouldn't someone have done it by now, in the 100+ years we've been using audio cables, and 2) wouldn't he take a little more interest in ANSWERING his own questions?

This is just flat-earther behavior in different clothes.

 

[MattHooper]

I don't know that we really need to refute JA's points about electronics.

Archimago's point: We've shown that cables have no measurable difference in any dimension of audio, well beyond human audibility.

JA's points: Well one time this guy working on a totally unrelated thing hammered copper a bunch, so WHO KNOWS?

This is the equivalent of someone claiming bigfoot could be real because lots of animals live in forests, and so the sensible position is to assume bigfoot IS real. AND everyone who claims to have seen bigfoot is not only not lying (maybe they thought they saw bigfoot) but actually correct, AND their subjective descriptions of bigfoot are worth paying attention to, AND we should give them thousands of dollars for their blurry photos of who knows what.

Archimago's point is that, for everyone's dignity and well-being, we should stop talking about bigfoot until someone takes an actual f***ing picture of it.

Taking a step back - JA raises points he supposedly considers significant about the performance of cables. He does nothing to actually substantiate them, just to raise doubt about the default position of cables being significantly less interesting than he claims. If there was a real possibility that sound quality could be improved or even optimized by running down those questions JA raises, 1) wouldn't someone have done it by now, in the 100+ years we've been using audio cables, and 2) wouldn't he take a little more interest in ANSWERING his own questions?

This is just flat-earther behavior in different clothes.

The other thing is, I don't see how these technical issues, even IF they could have audible consequences, could account for the type of spectacular sonic characteristics described by audiophiles and reviewers.

 

[Chrispy]

The other thing is, I don't see how these technical issues, even IF they could have audible consequences, could account for the type of spectacular sonic characteristics described by audiophiles and reviewers.

Because spectacular sonic characteristics determined by audiophiles and reviewers are often crap?

 

[Doodski]

Because spectacular sonic characteristics determined by audiophiles and reviewers are often crap?

I'm dropping in from a very busy thread and I am tossing this in... When in new territory and new stuff one's senses can be very exaggerated and things can be totally blown out of proportion to the degree nothing is really as it seems. Otherwise they might just be selling gear/advertising from a greedy standpoint and not being100% honest at all.

 

[tmtomh]

When Herb Reichert writes, "Changing audio cables always changes the sound of my system, sometimes a lot but usually just a little," it's a statement that:

• He probably really believes; and
• Is total bullish*t; and
• JA knows full well can't be true, at least not in that overarching form

Can we all agree on that?

 

[Doodski]

When Herb Reichert writes, "Changing audio cables always changes the sound of my system, sometimes a lot but usually just a little," it's a statement that:

• He probably really believes; and
• Is total bullish*t
• JA knows full well can't be true, at least not in that overarching form

Can we all agree on that?

I'm miffed regarding the high contrast between the 3 variables.

 

[tmtomh]

I'm miffed regarding the high contrast between the 3 variables.

I meant all three are true!

 

[Doodski]

I meant all three are true!

hehe...

 

[Sal1950]

Can we all agree on that?

"He probably really believes;"
I think he believes his paycheck and the continuation of Stereophile depends on it.

But yea, for the rest I do 100%

 

[JaMaSt]

I remember reading about people who had brain injuries resulting in them not feeling any emotions. They could answer questions, they still knew everything. Just no emotion. Those people were handicapped and needed taking care of by others. Why? Because they have no motivation to do or not do anything. If you don't have any instinctual or emotional compulsion to motivate your activity you would not bother at all. So all activity even rational activity has some compulsion behind it which is often manifest in some emotional sense.

Somatic marker hypothesis. While I'm not sure Damasio still supports this thesis, there are a lot of interesting current investigations into the issue. He was one of the first in the early 1990's that bravely tackled the issue. [There was still the lingering specter of Behaviorism in Academia at the time, so for this he is to be highly commended]

Patients with frontal lobe damage, such as Phineas Gage, provided the first evidence that the frontal lobes were associated with decision-making. Frontal lobe damage, particularly to the vmPFC, results in impaired abilities to organize and plan behavior and learn from previous mistakes, without affecting intellect in terms of working memory, attention, and language comprehension and expression.[4][5]

When individuals make decisions, they must assess the incentive value of the choices available to them, using cognitive and emotional processes. When the individuals face complex and conflicting choices, they may be unable to decide using only cognitive processes, which may become overloaded. Emotions, consequently, are hypothesized to guide decision-making.

Emotions, as defined by Damasio, are changes in both body and brain states in response to stimuli.[1] Physiological changes (such as muscle tone, heart rate, endocrine activity, posture, facial expression, and so forth) occur in the body and are relayed to the brain where they are transformed into an emotion that tells the individual something about the stimulus that they have encountered. Over time, emotions and their corresponding bodily changes, which are called "somatic markers", become associated with particular situations and their past outcomes.

When making subsequent decisions, these somatic markers and their evoked emotions are consciously or unconsciously associated with their past outcomes, and influence decision-making in favor of some behaviors instead of others.[1] For instance, when a somatic marker associated with a positive outcome is perceived, the person may feel happy and thereby motivated to pursue that behavior. When a somatic marker associated with the negative outcome is perceived, the person may feel sad, which acts as an internal alarm to warn the individual to avoid that course of action. These situation-specific somatic states are based on, and reinforced by, past experiences help to guide behavior in favor of more advantageous choices, and therefore are adaptive.

 

[JaMaSt]

When we make a decision, we always go with the option we feel best about. Sometimes, our feelings are based on whether we've evaluated the evidence rationally. This is because we feel rationality is a good way to make a decision. It's not because we are actually fundamentally rational.

My above quote can perhaps shed some light on what is a false "dichotomy" between rationality and emotions. They are all intertwined in a healthy, well function mind - for good, survival reasons. Phineas Gage, mentioned above, was someone who suffered a horrible accident which subtly affected his ability to make good decisions.

 

[Audiofire]

This is the equivalent of someone claiming bigfoot could be real because lots of animals live in forests, and so the sensible position is to assume bigfoot IS real. AND everyone who claims to have seen bigfoot is not only not lying (maybe they thought they saw bigfoot) but actually correct, AND their subjective descriptions of bigfoot are worth paying attention to, AND we should give them thousands of dollars for their blurry photos of who knows what.

Little hand gesture to let us know bigfoot is satisfied with his natural habitat and does not need outside interference: