oregonpapa,
Again ... tens of thousands of Red, Black and Blue fuses sold to an
appreciative customer base with very few returns says tons more than a
few skeptics posting here.
I'm afraid not. That's a fallacy.
If there are good reasons to be skeptical of a phenomenon being reported by large groups of people, it doesn't matter if those reasons are voiced by a handful, or even one person, vs the majority. A lot of people using a faulty method of inference doesn't add up to a sound method of inference.
A medical study using poor controls that yields a "positive" result isn't any more reliable if it uses 100 or 7,000 people. Similarly, if the technical explanations for the sonic influence of audiophile fuses are only speculative, and the evidence beyond that is "many audiophiles reporting a difference" then it's just being reasonable to admit "the results could be due to perceptual bias." Thousands, millions, of people believe things in unison due to such biases and cherry-picking to support their own biases. It's just human nature. That's why controls are put in place when studying anything that relies on our reporting our perceptions - be it medicine, studies of human hearing, etc. (Note that geoff could not, or would not, answer why hearing tests are blinded for the subject. Why not? Because admitting the reason clearly has implications for the reliability of his beliefs about fuses and other tweaks.
Instead...he fell back on name-calling and silly "blind tests are for sissies." I guess he'll be insisting on being told every time a tone is playing if he ever goes for a hearing test).
Again, that is not to conclude fuses don't make a difference; only to identify weaker arguments in defense of that claim.
I have no problem with anyone buying any tweak, trying it out, feeling it made a difference reporting on that, etc. Fine. I do that, we all do that. We all can't spend our time doing scientific-level testing on everything we buy.
But it's different when people refuse to show any epistimic humility, and use their subjective impressions to make objective claims that such tweak DO make a sonic difference, and that their own personal impressions are sufficient to establish this fact. Especially when we have entered an area of controversy, THAT is when it's prudent to caution "Well, no, actually you haven't really accounted for the possibility of bias in your results."
Its
good to remember The Golden Rule. Do not try to dissuade others from
buying and enjoying products that you haven't experienced for yourself.
Pretty simple, really.
First, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone. But I disagree. It's far from that simple.
As I've pointed out numerous times, you don't have to "try something for yourself" to understand when the method is an unreliable one, and therefore to have reasonable doubt about claims made on such a basis.
If I "tried astrology for myself" using the same method people use to read their horoscopes, engaging in the same method of cherry-picking hits and ignoring misses, then sure I can come out with the same result.
Astrology works! But, adopting what you know to be a dubious method of inference is hardly the way to establish whether something is true or not.
If I just put aside everything I knew about the type of bias effects humans, and hence I myself am susceptible to, and think "Well, I'm just not going to apply those rules to audio" then sure, I can try out fuses, and green pens on CDs, and tiny vibrating discs and come out thinking "They all make a difference!"
But...if I care about truth...why would I do that? I'd want to make sure I account as best I can for what I know about human bias when making such inferences.
And raising reasonable skeptical doubts is a good thing (outside of church, anyway). It's more information into the pot.
Think of people who are desperately ill who are swayed by reports of nonsense "cures." They will be able to find numerous true believer reports of the efficacy of the cure - but if they don't know these reports are based on a very unreliable sample type - this can have bad consequences. People can and do lose valuable time, e.g. when they have cancer, going for b.s. treatments based only on subjective inference, that fail and allow them to die, vs going for more scientifically established treatments. Being right actually matters.
So if someone is being advised of a dubious "cure" to "just try this cancer cure for yourself" it's a good thing to let them know "actually, there's little basis for that claim." Knowledge is power.
High End audio isn't life-and death. But there are still consequences to being wrong. You may end up spending tons of money that you didn't have to spend - and wouldn't want to spend on something that actually didn't do what it purports to do.
Why would it be good for a newbie, for instance, to only hear one side of the story? Only "THIS tweak works!" If there are good reasons for skepticism, then I think that side should be presented as well, so people get a fuller picture of what is going on. Then they can be in a more informed position to spend their money.
I'm certainly glad to have encountered all sorts of skeptical arguments I encountered early on. They saved me money! Though I could have, and sometimes have, bought tweaks anyway. But at least I did so with a fuller picture of the facts.
And, again, someone doesn't have to "try it for himself" in order to raise reasonable doubts about a claim.
Finally, I saw your next post and agree about the nature of on-line misunderstandings.
Cheers,
