Snake oil, fraud, confirmation bias

*sigh*  The 'tempest in a tea cup' continues....on and on, anon....

One of the 'function' keys on the typ. keyboard needs an app that makes "IMHO" appear....because most of the 'sturm und drang' that appears whenever an OP launches into a 'controversy' over 'something' that's stepped on their tail by 'someone' posting 'something' that's contrary to their 'HO'....

This activity reminds me of what would occur if one were to affix the tails of 2 cats together in some fashion, and suspend them from a 'clothesline'....for those of us who remember such an item....a 'clothesline', just to be clear....

(Please note:  I do not recommend, nor approve of such treatment of felines, and will call the authorities if I witness such behaviour.  It's an 'analogy'.  If you don't recognize the word, look it up.)

Now, I suspect that many of 'us' simply like to view the 'push/pull' of such seemingly endless forums as a version of 'cheap thrills', a 'slow motion car wreck' of sorts.  I used to be of that audience.  "Let's watch these fools fight over the quantity of angels on a pin head!"

Now...I'm just bored.

In the future...(how about tomorrow?)...post your 'grievance', supply an address to another site (preferably far from here) and have your online version of a back alley confrontation Elsewhere.

Yes, I can and will go 'elsewhere', having delivered 'MHO'.

To paraphrase an old McDonalds' ad line, "You deserve a brick today."

Consider it delivered.  I'll send you the bill....;)

This thread is an excellent example of the Galileo Inquisition. I have posted frequently on the subject of Science having become the new Religion. Is this thread an example of Lone Wolf terrorism? I.e., while officially a part of the Scientofic community, an individual is inspired by what he perceives as their will.

THE GALILEO INQUISITION

The Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610,[1] culminating with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633 for his support of heliocentrism.[2]

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543). Galileo’s initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical. Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.[3]

Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth. In 1632 Galileo, now an old man, published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which implicitly defended heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642.

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In case someone missed it the first few times around, here it is again.

Intro to Zen and the Art of Debunkery

"As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery."

Measurements dont apply to the enjoyment of roses or a meal but the roses may be carefully grown in a measured and controlled way and the meal prepared with measured ingredients and use of heat as well as technique.

The subjectivists continually confound measurements used to rigorously engineer and test high fidelity equipment and sound reproduction to the feeling one gets from listening to Mahler or Mozart. These are two entirely different aspects and conflating them is just the consequence of a feeble mind.

Of note the Snake Oil purveyors constantly appeal to subjective elements that are associated with our perception of music rather than stating a performance specifcation for what their Snake Oil actually does in a measurable way. This is deliberate and it works well but only on feeble minds.

Uh, actually we already know that many of these "Snake Oil" devices cannot be measured, at least not using conventional methods. That’s why you have to use your listening skills to evaluate them. Hel-loo! "OK, Give me some examples," you implore. OK, audio cones, the Clever Clock, Silver Rainbow Foil, Cream Electret, Morphic Message Labels, the Green Pen, a purple pen, a black pen, the Red X Pen, demagnetizing CDs, Mpingo disc.

Tiny little bowl resonators, tube traps, and other things that probably don’t arouse the overly suspicious mind of the wary naysayer CAN be measured using ordinary means. Besides the measurement argument is kind of moot since nobody measures anything anyway - not reviewers, not naysayers, nobody! They don’t measure cables, they don’t measure fuses, they don’t measure room treatments, audio racks, isolation devices or CD treatments, not even crystals, so in reality the measurement argument is pretty feeble, to use your word.

Mine Goes to 11