It’s simply very difficult to gauge where someone is on their journey, or to explain in objective terms what you’re subjectively hearing...I suspect that’s one of the reasons people lean on measurements, which brings us back to the many variables and perspective involved in audio.
@knotscott -- very much appreciated your survey of the variety of psychological factors at work. It’s so tricky for folks to engage a subject matter that is physical on one hand (electricity, acoustics, etc.) and psychological on the other (description, interpretation, evaluation).
One thing this hobby lacks is a well-known and standardized vocabulary for sensory experience. Without that, we have no "Rosetta stone" to communicate about what we are experiencing with this or that component. Even if we had a standard vocabulary, we might still disagree about what sounds "better" or "worse,"
but without some way to designate an experience which is significantly similar, we often wind up miscommunicating.
The audio "language barrier" has been a point of some confusion for as long as I can remember, and likely for long before I ever got into audio. (probably true of most hobbies) I’ve seen a few attempts by folks to capture the dialogue and provide definitions, but there’s certainly no standard.
