The difference between an "objectivist" and a "subjectivist" is that the objectivist recognizes his/her own fallibility, while the "subjectivist" believes that he or she cannot be fooled, and that his or her own senses are the only final arbiter of truth.
Yeah I've had that conversation so many times over the years with "subjectivist" audiophiles. I keep trying to argue for the relevance of blind testing for audio but it just won't land. Even just standard methods of argument, where you say "look, here's an example showing you accept this principle right? Ok, now apply it to the issue at hand" doesn't work.
For instance, when the subjectivist goes in to the
"so you are just calling me a liar or deluded?" mode I try to explain, no you can just be mistaken. I've used the example of my peanut-allergic son who was part of a large blinded study for a new peanut allergy treatment. It was double-blind placebo-controlled, so neither the subjects nor the researchers administering either the placebo or the medical agent knew which was which. Obviously to control for the variables of bias on either side. I ask "would it have been wise, or intelligent of me to strenuously object to the blind protocols, as in
'why can't we know whether my son is getting the placebo or medicine? Do you think we are liars or that we might be deluded? How insulting!" No, that would be pretty naive and immature and a misunderstanding of why the studies are blinded, right? The reason science uses those protocols is because we know how biases, error and misperception can skew results. The spectre of biases are a fact of human perception. There is no reason to think audio is magically excepted from this problem. What you are objecting to are standard protocols for removing the influence of bias when comparing one thing to another. Why would you do that?
The response is always to either completely ignore this question, or to say
"But that's all fine for Medical Science! But why are you talking about MEDICAL science? That's totally irrelevant. We are talking about Audio here! Using our ears! Our ears work!"
Point---whoosh!----over head.
This is what I call
Reasoning In A Bubble: it's easy to come to strong conclusions in a particular domain, especially one you are invested in (e.g. audio gear), while not having thoroughly checked your reasoning for consistency outside that domain. You've got your "thing" your hobby or belief system or whatever, and a firm conclusion feels so comforting your bias deflects from recognizing any checks for wider consistency with other facts.
Of course, humans being human, that can sometimes be found in forums like this too
We have to be careful about thinking "Since I'm citing science, the facts are on my side so I'm in the right." But there are all sorts of ways for bias to drive the conversations. Someone may be citing science, but making arguments that don't necessary follow from that science. Or cherry picking. Or drawing firm conclusions from a single small study because it aligns with one's own conclusions, etc.
