jf47t,
Thank you for that response!
e) The topic is directly about "Talk but no walk" Making adjustments to your system is walking.
And yet his OP was mostly about "talking" and "faking it." His very last question summing up the OP was "why fake it?" Hence the topic is as much or more about people "faking" as it would be about those who are "doing." If you want to make a post about Golfing, you don’t make a post referring mostly to, and addressing, non-golfers. You could make a thread "let’s talk about golfing" and people will talk about golfing.
If you make a thread "why don’t people golf?" you will naturally invite discussion about, and from, non-golfers.
This is basic communication 101.
If Michael only really wanted to talk about Tuning, then as I pointed out in my first reply, addressing his post to the subject of the "fakers" is not going to be a good trajectory to set your thread on. I’m trying to make you, and Michael, unbaffled about what went on here, so you hopefully learn from it and don’t end up confused again if you keep doing this.
c) Tuning is a form of walking, just as tweaking or any other form of adjusting your system (already covered several times in this thread)
Excellent.
So, as I’ve said, on such a view virtually everyone here is "walking." Including myself.
No, I don’t "tune" my system to every single song or album. But like everyone on this site, I have spent a lot of time putting together my system and dialing it in, tweaking it along the way to achieve what I want.
So, as I wrote in my very first reply to Michael, that begs the question of "who would he be talking about?" If as you just said, "walking" is tweaking or any form of adjusting your system" then I and pretty much everyone else here are "walking." Therefore it make sense to ask "Well...since I think I’m walking, and everyone else would seem to be walking....who ISN’T actually ’walking?"
Do you not see the logic of this question, why someone might ask for more detail and clarification from Michael?
And yet when I raised this question to get Michael to clarify, he didn’t seem to recognize it’s pertinence and immediately, in his first reply to me, suggested he was already clear, that it wasn’t worth any more of a response to me, except to imply I was indicative of those only "talking " or "faking" that he was thinking of.
Do you get why this was problematic, yet?
i) The definition of empirical testing is covered in depth on the internet.
Then you *should* know how wide-ranging the term "empirical" is. Which is the very problem I raised in my first post.
At it’s most basic, empirical means "based on experience." And most of what we infer is based on experience. And to add the word "testing" to "empirical" doesn’t help much because there is a huge gulf between "empirically testing" an idea...and "empirical testing" in the scientific sense.
Virtually EVERY fringe belief system, every alternative medicine, or every new age healer, or every psychic, or astrologer, flat earth believers etc believe they are "testing" their beliefs empirically. They ALL give the same talk of "try it FOR YOURSELF and see if it works!" And for every claim, no matter how nutty it is, you get people saying "I tried it, tested it myself, and IT WORKS!"
Most people it seems don’t contemplate the true magnitude of our powers of imagination, or the more subtle influences of our bias, and how they lead us to cherry-pick "evidence" for something we are beginning to believe in and ignore evidence and theory against it. People can literally end up believing virtually anything because of this. And we always think we are the rational ones; but we can see the bias and cherry picking when others do it.
So simply "testing" says nothing about how good or reliable your testing method is. That’s why there is such a huge gap between mere "empirical testing" in the sense of experience, to "empirical testing" in the scientific sense. You can engage in empirical testing in a way that does not challenge your intuitions or biases or that doesn’t account for variables - and that’s how you get virtually every dubious and contradictory belief system in the world. OR you can avail yourself of the scientific method, and the knowledge gained by that method, where you look for more objective verification that takes our error-prone cognition seriously- e.g. developing coherent hypotheses that build from existing reliably documented phenomena, measuring phenomena that can be repeated by others, being skeptical of where your own or other people’s bias could be operating, controlling for this in your experiments, etc.
So, I asked, did Michael mean "empirical testing" in the first, general sense of simply "trying it for yourself?" Well, then that is clearly full of problems and isn’t very rigorous.
Or did he mean it in the scientific sense. After all, he referred to scientific testing in his OP. This is why for instance it was relevant to ask what type of methods he was using to establish things like "untied caps change the sound of a system." Is he measuring as a careful empiricist (toward the scientific/engineering side) would do, so his data can be seen by others, or repeated by others measuring the same claims? If he’s using listening tests, is he controlling for bias? Which is what one who takes scientific skepticism seriously would likely want to do.
Or...just "trying it and if he thinks he perceives a difference, that’s good enough to ratify his ideas about what is happening, and why, and that it is in fact happening?"
Everything Michael, and Tuners like yourself have posted - including Michael endorsing a post in which one of his followers stated he’s not even interested in technical explanations or mapping theory to experience, has suggested Michael appeals to the most basic and unreliable sense of "empirical testing" and not the scientific sense.
If someone is going to come on here and call other people out for being "fakers" and not being empirical, then he should expect if he actually cares about this subject to answer these questions, not just ignore them.
Summing up, I have said from the beginning:
IF by "empirical" and "walking" Michael only means a basic sense of people having ideas about setting up and dialing in their system, and trying them out...then EVERYONE HERE is walking and no one - certainly not me - deserves to be put in the category of "not walking/faking." And if Michael can actually point to someone here "not walking" then he should do so as an example to clarify and justify his talk of "fakers," - or stop implying there are people faking it.
But IF by empirical Michael actually meant empiricism in the careful methods of testing compatible with science, then by that definition even Michael doesn’t seem to be "walking the walk." He’s not demonstrating, or even explaining his claims in any credible fashion, and unlike a scientific mindset, he pushes challenging questions off as a negative thing, instead of embracing them. Thus he is being hypocritical making a thread calling out other people for not being sufficiently empirical.
k) Theory covers a wide range of talking. Some are close to walking and some are more imaginative what ifs.
l) It isn’t. Faking it is faking it.
m) Faking it is faking it. It’s when an event is made to appear like it is happening yet it is not really being done.
Unfortunately, nothing in those replies clarifies anything. You may have some idea of "faking it," but you are not communicating it clearly. For instance, do I fit this definition of "faking it? in this "hobby?" Certainly this is what Michael and his followers have kept indicating. If so, please clarify exactly how I am "not walking the walk" of the HEA hobby. It’s ok, I’m a big boy, you can be as clear and direct as possible. This is what I want.
Thank you for giving a go at engaging my post.
Cheers,
