I find that calling my subjectivitivist criticism "useless" is very unfriendly.
You may notice the link I gave that connects to a list of cognitive biases. One of the most powerful biases results from the power of suggestion. One person says something, and the stage is set. Other people try to appraise their situation, but the suggestion already made reinforces the tendency to come to the same conclusion.
The next thing you know, everyone is having the same problem. Newcomers see the certainty of numbers that is already afield, and are sure that "where there's smoke, there's fire."
The final step is that this idea becomes canon, and talking heads and wagging tongues spread it as gospel ... all because of the mistake of trusting in subjective opinions not verified by scientifically-controlled tests.
So when you come across a situation where an opinion is attested without scientific foundation, be careful. Be
especially careful if there is a line of other people who chime in after the fact, and they don't have any scientific foundation, either. Pretty soon you'll have a situation where "everybody knows" this, or "everybody knows" that, and there is no data to support any of it.
That's only ONE of the reasons that subjectivism is useless. (In the case of subjective testimonies regarding alternative medicine, it can even be lethally dangerous. Remember Steve Jobs?)
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Everyone's mind produces subjective comparisons. It's the convenient method that we use to assess the world around us in our daily life. Subjective assessments produce subjective opinions. But as the link on heuristics shows, those subjective opinions (if not controlled) are not necessarily accurate. Not only that, but one of the characteristics of subjective assessment is that it is not reproducible, which long ago led to the development of the
Scientific Method.
One of the linchpins of the scientific method is reproducibility, or repeatability. It means that the experiment that is successful today, under controlled conditions, will be similarly successful tomorrow, or next year, or a hundred years from now. The outcome will be the same here or halfway across the world. One extremely simple example that I often cite is mixing chlorine bleach and ammonia. That produces chlorine gas, and enough of it to become dangerous. It will do it any time and in any location.
As far as transferring reliable information from one person to another, that repeatability (or reproducibility) is
entirely lacking in subjective thought processes ... especially if those thought processes are not formed in correlation to dispassionate (non-emotional) references. That's why the gold standard for audio is the
double-blind test.
There are sites on the web that refuse to acknowledge this. Some are audio sites, and others are concerned with The Flat Earth, or dietary supplements, or old wives' tales. No matter what subject they address, the point is that subjective assessments cannot be trusted. Scientific data needs to be produced, needs to be interpreted, the whole thing needs to be subject to peer review, and then trustworthy information can be the result.
After all, subjectivism didn't give us cell phones, modern medicine, cars (ICE or electric), aircraft, the Mars rovers (and the communications to and from them) or even the simplest examples of electricity.
SCIENCE DID THAT.
So enjoy subjectiove opinions ...
we all have them and we all enjoy them. Just don't trust them to be useful.
Jim
p.s. - Don't judge something as "unfriendly" simply because it doesn't agree with what you already think. Sometimes friends work tirelessly to dissuade you from the wrong path ... often with no thanks. Those are the best friends. OTOH, the people who gladly accompany you down the road to darkness aren't your friends. They're your enemies.
www.superbestaudiofriends.org
Which is fine, but not ideal for me if I am thinking of buying his kit.
