Why is the snake oil topic closed?

Do You Suffer From the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.

You don’t even know enough to realize just how little you know.

"Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/do-you-suffer-from-the-dunning-kruger-effect--net-22227

Manipulating societies is driven by elevating and empowering the former outside of their cognition that it is being done, and denigrating and degrading the latter ...via similar manipulations... and most importantly...having the former (the enabled illiterate) chase after and defeat the latter. Pure Machiavellian tactics. Practically page one chapter one of the Machiavellian guide to controlling populations.

The scenarios encountered on forums like this show the door is always wide open to use this lever, even if the people be aware of it. Cognitive dissonance driven by desires, fears, and so on. The harder a body is driven the stronger the ego's grip. After all, that's it's job..which is to preserve the body above all else. Thought and cognition that is unedited can happen in the calm times. So control is about disallowing rest and calm times. Which some of you, if you noticed, in the past decade or so... there have been probably dozens of books now that try to get that point through to the people. But..cognitive dissonance intercedes...

I'm just a guy who loves music and audio gear and believes that common sense should prevail in determining which after-market accessories should or should not make a difference or at least which are worth pursuing. There could be a civil, interesting conversation had about this, even if it was had before.  

Instead, what you have here, I am sorry to say, are a few other voices like my own drowned out by some pretty odd/extreme folks on both sides of the debate. 

Now I do understand why Audiogon closed the prior thread.  Unfortunately it's a little like closing the picnic basket after the ants have already gotten in. 

teo_audio

Do You Suffer From the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

This is a fair question. Indeed, I think many of the self-proclaimed objectivists here suffer from this effect.
But the real problem here seems to be the seething intolerance and animosity that some posters express, as reflected in the many deleted posts in this thread.

jji666 OP wrote,

"I’m just a guy who loves music and audio gear and believes that common sense should prevail in determining which after-market accessories should or should not make a difference or at least which are worth pursuing. There could be a civil, interesting conversation had about this, even if it was had before.

Instead, what you have here, I am sorry to say, are a few other voices like my own drowned out by some pretty odd/extreme folks on both sides of the debate.

Now I do understand why Audiogon closed the prior thread. Unfortunately it’s a little like closing the picnic basket after the ants have already gotten in."

I’m waiting for some kind of argument why something must make sense or must be measurable. I’m not interested in if you’re a nice guy or not. Or if you’re a reasonable fellow. That’s beside the point. Black holes don't make sense. Quarks don't make sense. Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense. Lots of things in this hobby don't make sense. That vinyl can sound better than CDs. Vibration isolation. Especially for solid state electronics. That fuses are directional. That speaker cables are directional. Mpingo discs. The Green Pen. The Schumann frequency generator. 

I’m being civil. Stop pretending this conversation isn’t civil. And stop pretending anyone who disagrees with you is some sort of extremist or lunatic. If you don't wish to discuss the subject, the one YOU started, I'll understand. 😀

Huh? Quantum mechanics and black holes don't make sense. It all makes total sense to me but I dont go in to the detail of these things with preconceived notions. Einstein made that mistake.