And here's the point you're missing. No one is arguing that "anything" is a reasonable argument.
What? That is the moto of high-end audio subjectivists. The "everything matters in audio." There is no theory too remote to not be believable. They have left nothing out. I know an audiophile who put in expensive dedicated balanced power. Then he changed his outlets and claimed sound improved yet again. Then he changed the screws that hold the outlets and there was an improvement yet again! A new universe of laws governing audio fidelity has been created and OP's article encourage the doubters who just look for "some scientific" to justify their incredible positions here.
I said that I am
not arguing that
any argument is a
reasonable one. Here, you're countering with examples of unreasonable arguments, so you must have thought I was saying that any argument needs to be entertained? No, I'm not advocating unreasonable arguments—why would I?
Here again, in context, since the comment wasn't to anything you said, but what another poster said.
"The fact that anything is possible does not mean that anything is plausible or that everything is equally likely."
And here's the point you're missing. No one is arguing that "anything" is a reasonable argument.
It's counter productive to respond to assumptions about what I really mean when I say something. But as long as I'm adding another post, I'll try to make my opinions about expressing doubt on scientific findings very clear.
Again, I'm referring primarily to specific scientific research findings, which is the vast majority of day to day research and discovery.
Scrutiny and doubt from other scientists: This is historical, it's the way science works and should continue. If anyone think that certain aspects of science need to be walled off and not revisited, they don't understand how we make advances. I hope everyone would agree with this. There are certain inherent hurdles that keep crackpots to a minimum, such as research funding, and peer review and publication. The latter can sometimes be more of a barrier than it should, and not good enough barrier in some cases, but we live with it.
Scrutiny and doubt from non-scientists: Sure, this is potentially where there could more likely be dragons. But it goes way too far to say we should shut down discussion by non-researchers. For one, it's a fundamental freedom of speech issue (where do we stop?). But also it keeps science honest. (Not implying scientists are dishonest. But, for example, if an area of research is primarily funded by government contracts, and the government isn't keen on certain findings, you will see little of those finding published, and an overwhelming amount of the findings they like. Fact of life.)
To be blunt and give a specific example about non-scientists, a guy like
Alex Berersen is not a scientist, but he can read research findings. He was banned from twitter, largely for publishing pharma companys' own publicly available research, and saying, "hey—lookie here!". He has since won reinstatement via the courts, but this is primarily the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Yes, we risk that some bozo with a blog says the world is made of cheese whiz. The difference is that I can evaluate whether something Berensen says on his blog makes sense, because I will pull up the published pharma research paper he cites, and see if what he says I true. I read a lot of research papers on medicine, physics, etc., I'm comfortable navigating them—I'll track down the related research papers when I read an article that omits citing them. And I probably won't read the blog with the cheeze whiz guy. I don't spend a lot of time wringing my hands over people who think the earth is flat, we will always have idiots.
So when you tell me that some guy changed the screws and he thinks he got better output, I'm not terribly challenged by that, just annoyed like you.
