In double blind testing that is poorly done, the small differences, the nuance found is harmed. harmed via the physical set up and the overall execution of the test.
Of course, when I say that, the person reading it has to know how important all that is.
To set up a test correctly it must contain the intelligence and the nuance that is required for the audio capable mind and intellect involved, to be able to perceive the nuance being tested for. That nuance must be able to emerge from the test unharmed and be capable of being heard. In other words -- Don’t attempt to count intact chicken eggs with a 10 pound sledgehammer.
This also involves psychological bullying or disturbances of mental state via the test set up and coming from the direction of the people handling the test, creating the test, setting up the test, and so on. This is important as the mind is a self malleable shifting senses/concentration/scope/direction/range type device that has to center itself to the task at hand.
One can’t do basic arithmetic while one’s arm is being sawn off with a blunt spoon while it’s being held over a raging fire. The mind, overall, prevents the capacity for nuance being discerned, as it takes over and tries to move the arm out of harm.
On the more subtle level, we find that to train our children or anyone else for that matter, it is required to have the correct environment and to also fit the situation of learning into the type of scenario that works not for just all but to help the individual to understand, as their capacity to realize nuance, in learning, is key.
We end up having to design learning systems for individuals. Environments and envelops, moods, shapes, spaces etc...this is why we hire tutors for our children or people so the individual tutor can work with how the individual learns and retains. to help them excel, when they may have failed, as the generalization at hand in the training/teaching norms, is not working for them. We don’t ask diamond cutters to do fine cuts in diamonds while being a passenger in the Baja 1000 Rally (or the Dakar Rally).
This is going to be difficult for the person who is involved and is a ’detractor’ of such audio directions as ’cables make a difference’.
This, as they are like a mental and physical blunt instrument, regarding understand the nuance tha this required in this entire situation.... We have to go back to the start and try and help them ’get it’.
To back to long before or deeper into orignal extant nuance and help them understand..that they got stuck running down the road into this gauntlet that is narrowing in their own ignorance... to a fine over-extended point..that is attacking the audio world.
The kind that rolls into your driveway crushing newborn kittens... when the task at hand ..is to come over... and be involved in accurately counting living newborn kittens. What’s wrong? they ask....
They kill and harm and can’t plan a simple test as they have no idea of the data or the tests meaning. they misconstrue even where to begin, in order to claw their own ignorance back... as they have no grip on the subject matter at hand.
in the case of James Randi vs Micheal Fremer, Fremer went after all those small aspects that had to be correctly done, so that the test could go forward in a correct functional way.
so the Randi foundation and whatnot kept allowing things to proceed in the right direction and then it was found that under such a correctly designed test, that Fremer could actually seriously discern to a pretty well 100% level, of the differences in cables, reliably, every damned time.
Fremer was going to dunk the Randi foundation in its own projected effluent, and he was going to be collecting that million dollars.
To add, the test was invalid statistically, as noted by more than one professional and accredited statistician and test regimen designer. you know.. the kind of people who design drug tests and whatnot for the tune of millions of dollars in medical studies, FDA approval, etc- what becomes drug approvals and so on. actual science.
Those people noted that the Randi test was utterly ridiculous in it’s statistical reliability and correctness demands. They noted that the criteria needed to be beat, to collect the million dollars was out of line with reality. Way out of line.
Where that... if anyone had used the Randi test criteria to prove the efficacy of a drug or compound, or any other scientific testing and validation scenario, nothing in this world would have ever been approved. Ever. Far too stringent for any form of reality in this world.
So the entire thing appeared on paper, in execution and then, of course, in reality...that it was designed to make sure anything involved was a failure and that no one could ever get to the insane 100% correctness level in testing across enforced repetition.
To force testing until failure. and then calling the intermittent failure from over stressing, the accumulation to eventual failure ...as THE outcome.
Like testing a bridge or the like with more and more mass and stressing until it fails, and then calling the expected failure as the outcome of the test. Or using the bridge for 50 years and then when it fails calling it a failed bridge, an invalid bridge. That was part of the testing regimen as well. Over-testing to force outcome to failure and call it different than it actually was or is.
The challenge and the debunking from the Randi foundation was going to remain intact forever, as the testing regimen was scientifically invalid and essentially rigged. This, as coming from world class statisticians who analyzed the ’million dollar challenge’ regimen presented.
That the Randi foundation was akin to a debunking system or ’front’ ---and nothing more.
Which makes it far far worse than neutral.
Fremer was going to beat that system and beat the impossible 100% perfection mark...and walk away with the million dollars.
The Randi faction backed down and contrived an excuse to walk away.
When someone brings up Randi and the challenge, or anything haveing to do with double blind testing in this area of proofing....ie, high end audio.... as tied to the ’prove you hear a difference’ ignorance that is always presented...well...
I realize I’m talking to someone with an agenda ...or they are severely misinformed about reality and the bits within it.
