boxer,
Why not try to understand an argument, rather than presume it is wrong and waste time misrepresenting it?
You've presented quotes AS IF they don't form part of a coherent stance, while not actually showing any effort to understand what you quoted.
My point has been that it makes sense that if a phenomenon is objectively real - that we are detecting something that is objectively changing a signal and that we can perceive this change - it makes sense to look both for measurable evidence of a change and evidence that measurable change is audible. At the very least, reliable evidence that *something audible* is happening to begin with.
But the problem for the way audiophiles tend to discern these things is "trust your ears." Which is to just ignore the facts we know about how our perception is NOT necessarily so trustworthy. We know that varios forms of perceptual bias can lead us to think we "hear" (or see, or whatever) things that aren’t actually happening. That’s one BIG REASON we have a scientific method to begin with! To try to route through these variables to more reliable results.
So if you say "X capacitor produces different sound from Y" capacitor, it makes sense to ask "how do you know?" Do you have measurements supporting this? Even so, are the measured differences in the realm you’d expect to hear, given the limits of our hearing? If you are simply claiming this on the basis "I believe I hear a difference" then there is the problem of sighted bias. How have you discerned between "I heard something objectively changing" and "I imagined it, due to biased perceptual errors?"
Those are exactly the questions science asks. Why in the world would you imagine audio to exist in some bubble where those questions are not relevant?
See, it doesn’t matter "who" you are when you are making the claim. What matters is the method.
No scientist establishes justification for a claim merely by saying "I’m a scientist, so you should just believe me." Or "I’m a Well Known Scientist, so you should believe me." No! That’s antithetical to science.Science recognizes that every human can be biased and in error, so ANY scientist proposing a hypothesis or claim needs to show his work, to show how he has weeded out the variables and how the work can be replicated by others.
So, back to Curl, it doesn’t matter a DAMN whether Curl is a well-known audio engineer. What matters for him is the same for any audiophile making a claim: What METHOD does he offer for vetting his claim that, say, capacitors "just sound different?" If he is taking no more steps to weed out sighted bias than the average audiophile, it’s just as dubious methodology as the average audiophile.
And...AGAIN...this is NOT AN ARGUMENT THAT CURL IS WRONG. Or that you or anyone else aren’t perceiving real things. It’s simply a lookat the TYPE OF EVIDENCE offered for the claims, and the liabilities of THAT TYPE OF EVIDENCE.
It’s like saying "I know it’s sunny outside!" I say" well, you may be right! How do you know?" You answer "because I flipped a coin - heads it was going to be sunny, tails it was rainy. It came up heads, so it’s sunny!"
Well, it MAY WELL BE SUNNY OUTSIDE, but the method you’ve used to come to that conclusion has some problems we can talk about.
Similarly, if MAY WELL BE THAT CAPICITORS (or AC cables etc) sound different...but the type of evidence on offer has some problems we can talk about (particularly if it’s the "I think I hear it, so I know it’s true" form of anecdote).
Do you get this nuance...yet? Do you think you’d be able to actually depict my argument without strawmanning?
Why not try to understand an argument, rather than presume it is wrong and waste time misrepresenting it?
You've presented quotes AS IF they don't form part of a coherent stance, while not actually showing any effort to understand what you quoted.
My point has been that it makes sense that if a phenomenon is objectively real - that we are detecting something that is objectively changing a signal and that we can perceive this change - it makes sense to look both for measurable evidence of a change and evidence that measurable change is audible. At the very least, reliable evidence that *something audible* is happening to begin with.
But the problem for the way audiophiles tend to discern these things is "trust your ears." Which is to just ignore the facts we know about how our perception is NOT necessarily so trustworthy. We know that varios forms of perceptual bias can lead us to think we "hear" (or see, or whatever) things that aren’t actually happening. That’s one BIG REASON we have a scientific method to begin with! To try to route through these variables to more reliable results.
So if you say "X capacitor produces different sound from Y" capacitor, it makes sense to ask "how do you know?" Do you have measurements supporting this? Even so, are the measured differences in the realm you’d expect to hear, given the limits of our hearing? If you are simply claiming this on the basis "I believe I hear a difference" then there is the problem of sighted bias. How have you discerned between "I heard something objectively changing" and "I imagined it, due to biased perceptual errors?"
Those are exactly the questions science asks. Why in the world would you imagine audio to exist in some bubble where those questions are not relevant?
See, it doesn’t matter "who" you are when you are making the claim. What matters is the method.
No scientist establishes justification for a claim merely by saying "I’m a scientist, so you should just believe me." Or "I’m a Well Known Scientist, so you should believe me." No! That’s antithetical to science.Science recognizes that every human can be biased and in error, so ANY scientist proposing a hypothesis or claim needs to show his work, to show how he has weeded out the variables and how the work can be replicated by others.
So, back to Curl, it doesn’t matter a DAMN whether Curl is a well-known audio engineer. What matters for him is the same for any audiophile making a claim: What METHOD does he offer for vetting his claim that, say, capacitors "just sound different?" If he is taking no more steps to weed out sighted bias than the average audiophile, it’s just as dubious methodology as the average audiophile.
And...AGAIN...this is NOT AN ARGUMENT THAT CURL IS WRONG. Or that you or anyone else aren’t perceiving real things. It’s simply a lookat the TYPE OF EVIDENCE offered for the claims, and the liabilities of THAT TYPE OF EVIDENCE.
It’s like saying "I know it’s sunny outside!" I say" well, you may be right! How do you know?" You answer "because I flipped a coin - heads it was going to be sunny, tails it was rainy. It came up heads, so it’s sunny!"
Well, it MAY WELL BE SUNNY OUTSIDE, but the method you’ve used to come to that conclusion has some problems we can talk about.
Similarly, if MAY WELL BE THAT CAPICITORS (or AC cables etc) sound different...but the type of evidence on offer has some problems we can talk about (particularly if it’s the "I think I hear it, so I know it’s true" form of anecdote).
Do you get this nuance...yet? Do you think you’d be able to actually depict my argument without strawmanning?