"Things that cannot be measured"

[Wes]

very simple

you measure A, and measure B; synergy means that Comb(A,B) > A + B

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

very simple

you measure A, and measure B; synergy means that Comb(A,B) > A + B

Synergy is measured in...what units?

 

[Wes]

same ones as A and B, or use an appropriate prefix, like femto

 

[mhardy6647]

There are no things that cannot be measured.

youch. double negative.

 

[mansr]

Synergy is measured in...what units?

Toe-tapping. 12 toe-taps make 1 foot-pound.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

same ones as A and B, or use an appropriate prefix, like femto

I've no idea what that means

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

youch. double negative.

Double negatives are a complete 'no no'

 

[mhardy6647]

Double negatives are a complete 'no no'

I stand in the presence of greatness.

 

[symphara]

What metrics might there be that 'we haven't thought of'?

I imagine someone about 100 years ago asking the same question, with a smug assurance that history has stopped right there.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

I imagine someone about 100 years ago asking the same question, with a smug assurance that history has stopped right there.

I'm not 'smug'. I'm open to anything with evidence. I may not have a hundred years to wait for it though.

 

[symphara]

I'm not 'smug'. I'm open to anything with evidence. I may not have a hundred years to wait for it though.

It would be truly strange if as of 27th of March 2021 the human race has all the audio measurements it will always have, despite this being literally not true about basically anything throughout history. I mean, your claim is extraordinary and you offer nothing to support it.

 

[scott wurcer]

I wasn't disputing that at all. This thread presents a trivial question, with a trivial answer. Yes there are things that cannot be measured, at least not very well. And measurements we haven't thought of.

You might not have noticed that I don't agree with some of what is done here vis a vis trying to quantify everything by measurement, but if you keep things trivial I don't see the point of a discussion. If "measurements we haven't thought of" is some kind of open door to scientific relativism I'm not interested. I need some context (are we talking about claims of super-luminal connectors, etc.) and at least a testable hypothesis.

 

[scott wurcer]

as of 27th of March 2021 the human race has all the audio measurements it will always have, despite this being literally not true about basically anything throughout history.

Qualifies as an extraordinary claim to me.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Toe-tapping. 12 toe-taps make 1 foot-pound.

You sure it wouldn't be 16 toe taps, toe taps would be in the ounce range?

 

[oldsysop]

My question is, do we "believe" APx555 or Paul McGowan?

 

[scott wurcer]

You sure it wouldn't be 16 toe taps, toe taps would be in the ounce range?

Who started the toe tapping meme, it goes on and on?

 

[CMOT]

What you're saying is equivalent to insisting that measuring the length of a line is impossible because there exist optical illusions that trick us into misjudging it.

I think you just proved my point. Yes, you can measure the physical length of a line with a ruler and I was never saying you couldn't, but knowing how a human observer will perceive the length of the line requires a psychological model of their length perception. Illusions aren't "tricks" - they are demonstrations of the inferential assumptions our perceptual and cognitive systems make to understand the physical world. So when we see an illusion such as this the Müller-Lyer Illusion the point is 1) your visual system makes assumptions other than the retinal distance subtended by the inputs; 2) one needs a psychological model to understand and predict the way we actually perceive line length. If you are only interested in measuring the signals coming out of audio reproduction equipment, you don't need to worry about people, brains, etc. You can just measure lines. But someone asked about how measurements relate to the sounds we experience. In that case, one needs a PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL (I am shouting now) to understand the relationship between the physical stimulus and our experiences. And these models are often complex, non-linear, and, sometimes, not well understood as yet.

No one is saying it is impossible to measure the physical signals. But that doesn't tell you how they will be perceived. Which is what matters if you actually want to listen to those signals and hear music.

 

[PaulD]

No one is saying it is impossible to measure the physical signals. But that doesn't tell you how they will be perceived. Which is what matters if you actually want to listen to those signals and hear music.

But perception cannot be measured, it is individual and variable with mood, drugs, fitness, age, hunger etc. So what we can do is measure signals for fidelity and leave perception out of it.

So what actually matters when listening to music is the fidelity of the signal. The perception is out of everyone's control, usually even the listener's.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Who started the toe tapping meme, it goes on and on?

I blame the British. Seems British reviewers first wrote about the toe tapping as I recall.

 

[Wombat]

And yet, musical instruments are tuned according to a precise mathematical relationship, each note having a well-defined frequency, also called pitch.

Pitch and pitch perception are different things. Pitch comes before pitch perception and is measurable.

If I had better pitch perception I may have had a chance of singing in-tune.