Some observations from a former skeptic - and a question

Everyone except you and I is hearing things, and I’m not sure about us either.

There was another test where all they did was change the color of a light bulb and people thought the speaker "changing" sounded different when the speaker did not change at all.

I think the psychology of some of the "meter reader" cables-don't-make-a-real-difference types is a lot like some other close-knit clans of professional skeptics - self-righteous, arrogant, vituperative, and totally closed-mindedly convinced of their mechanistic imagined view of what a human being is - a fine-tuned biological deterministic machine that can be totally characterized by various types of medical and biological research. In this mindset, if instrumentation can't detect it it doesn't exist. My impression is that there aren't any of these extreme types on this blog, but they may soon make their presence known.

These "guerilla skeptics" of audio are zealously defending the bastions of the wonderful enlightened scientific establishment against the legions of unwashed devotees of "woo" phenomena that don't exist outside their deluded audiophile imaginations, and these closed-minded skeptics are determinedly promulgating their empty philosophy wherever they can trumpet it. They worship the double-blind experimental protocol despite the fact that this protocol has the inherent tendency of (by a self-selection effect) carefully selecting out the faithful flat-Earth meter-reader engineer types who will usually predictably find nothing due to the very self-suggestion psychological phenomenon they think is going on with the true audiophiles. 

These flat-Earth meter-reader engineer audio fanatics remind me a lot of the "guerilla skeptics" that infest Wikipedia especially in the topics of paranormal phenomena and the afterlife, and of the science of Intelligent Design in its battle with Darwinism's impotent and invalid partial random walk process of random mutation plus natural selection. They have taken on the they think noble task of policing the Internet and especially Wikipedia of any false claims of esp, psi, the paranormal in general including NDEs, past life memories, mediumistic communications, any other afterlife research findings, and so on. The same scorn of the ignorant unbelievers, the same arrogance that they (the elite representatives of the True Theory) know the Truth and it has been proven by science (In reality not by a mile!). They of course also totally and deliberately and falsely mischaracterize the scientific researchers and proponents of ID as devotees of Young Earth fundamentalist Christian Creationism).

I tend to take all of this turmoil as indicative of a common thread of a strong intolerant science fanatic tendency in our society, people who have a deathly fear of "woo" of all kinds, they characterize as some sort of evil any deviation from the strict line of establishment consensus mainline reductionist materialist science, namely scientism - the worship of Science as some sort of religion. As a reversion to past ignorance and deluded religious faith that oppressed the development of enlightened Science in the beginning. Leading evangelists of this new religion are people like Richard Dawkins.

The other influence in their ranks is where there are the ones that just mainly have a strong need to belittle others in order to bolster their own egos. In order to accomplish this, they see themselves as heroic guardians of the True Faith of Materialism. Any topic where they can find what they consider "woo" is fair game since it allows them to really feel superior.

Yes measurements are maybe half useful and more useless,  but expectation bias, placebo effect and when the beer happens to kick in are all things.

They are both a thing.  

As for power cords where does it stop?  Certainly outlets should be changed to commercial duty gold plated of course, and then that horrible solid core Romex wire from the circuit breaker to the outlet needs replacing with single crystal copper.  Don't even get me going on the circuit breaker itself and the meter.  Pretty soon we are out the street hanging new power lines.   I have an electrician's license but I don't want to do that.

Honestly, my system's outlet is pretty bad.  Probably the first thing most should change including me to a heavy duty commercial type.  Where it takes effort to plug it in.  

But yeah I can see how the crappy zip cords feeding my amps may be a weak point.  And where they plug into the amps.  

@ossicle2brain 

Did you actually read my original post and follow up comments?  

I’m well educated and frequently discuss confirmation bias in my own work. I started this journey having already proved to myself that power cables don’t make a difference. I had actually done the work previously and concluded:No difference.

But, my sense in reading through your responses is that in being a skeptic, a position I was in and can respect - you and @ahuvia are not open to doing this work. You “know what you know” so there can’t be a difference. You conclude that it must be confirmation bias for us - ignoring that my bias going in was I had already proved to myself previously why bother. 

The difference between us is that I decided to do the work again out of respect for others viewpoints and in recognition that I “don’t know what I don’t know” as I am not a materials scientist. And, I came out the other end of the journey pleasantly surprised.

Lastly, there is a well known power cable and conditioner manufacturer who publishes white papers and their measured results of their power cords. It’s now established that the effects of power cables can be measured. 

To the question of where does it end?  Hopefully here for me but I remain open to the possibilities.

Peace.

Wow, so much anti-science hostility. It’s one thing to argue about the efficacy of cables, but let’s not get off the rails! Science created audio reproduction. Science improves it. Science probably saved your life once. Science has a say in this matter.

I didn’t see anything in ahuvia’s post that was rude or should have drawn such hostility. If the mere idea of skepticism is so threatening, the "cables matter" side needs to do the work to feel more emotionally secure. Come up with some tests and prove it.

I do agree that you can only go so far referencing published studies and that personal experience does matter. I also agree that it doesn’t really matter what other people think about a tweak you make that you like in your system.

However, that goes both ways. You say you don’t care what people think but you only really don’t care what people think if they disagree with you. I would say that’s not the optimal attitude to learn things or to convince others. Clearly when someone posts about a positive cable improvement they do care what people think when people agree with the post.

Forums are not echo chambers. People need to learn to deal with dissent. There is a Truth here, and maybe finding that starts with showing some mutual respect?

(I’m skeptical that power cables matter outside of quality construction and gauge but as I have never done a test and wouldn’t have the budget anyway I am more interested in reading data, facts and experiences and find the flaming counterproductive.)

EDIT: to the OP, the above doesn't refer to you as I think your posts are pretty balanced and respectful. But a few of the above set me off.