What you are talking about hearing should be obvious in any reasonable system.
Perception, being as biased as it is, can choose to reveal those sounds to you or not. When testing A vs B, it is not enough to say "I hear it more in A than B!". Bias can ruthlessly alter what you are hearing.
If you do not think that bias matters, either your experience is lacking, or you fear that faults in your perception will be exposed. ( Although Narcissism can also explain why people ignore bias.)
Perception alters reality -- meaning that if you believe you perceive something, then your vision of reality changes to accommodate it.
Tried any Quantum Stickers lately?
Perception, being as biased as it is, can choose to reveal those sounds to you or not. When testing A vs B, it is not enough to say "I hear it more in A than B!". Bias can ruthlessly alter what you are hearing.
If you do not think that bias matters, either your experience is lacking, or you fear that faults in your perception will be exposed. ( Although Narcissism can also explain why people ignore bias.)
Perception alters reality -- meaning that if you believe you perceive something, then your vision of reality changes to accommodate it.
Tried any Quantum Stickers lately?
Actually, the whole problem is that you cannot say that you "know" that your computer is or not perfect just by listening. You believe it to be, you suspect it to be, but you don't know. Belief turns into knowledge when you go from "knowing that something must be wrong" to knowing what is wrong. Or, in other terms, when a less reliable experience is validated by another, more reliable, experience. An intermediate step is "knowing that something is indeed wrong", which can be achieved by blind testing vs a clean reference.
I do trust my ears for setting every day life's beliefs. I don't trust my ears as validation tools without exercising some caution though.
I do not see how being able to fool yourself is any different from not trusting your perception. That's the point of why you should not trust perception.... because it is so easy to fool yourself.
Yes.
00940 said:
Yes.
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Narcissism explains why people project their own self-doubts on to others.
This is fundamentally a broken claim - have you watched and digested the Hoffman TED talk I linked to? Without perception, reality is unknown.
That's a different meaning to your first claim. Certainly beliefs feed into perception and colour it, but beliefs aren't perception.
What are they?
I get that you don't see it, but do you wish to see it or are you quite content in your current state of not seeing?
Then why do you refuse blind testing, which simply attempts to reduce how much beliefs colour perception ?
Why would you rather have perception tainted by beliefs over perception less tainted by beliefs ?
This is remarkably simplistic thinking - something along the lines that if you see a woman momentarily in ideal lighting conditions you might perceive her as beautiful, and therefore from then on the reality is that she's beautiful, 😀.
The massive flaw here is that human sensing of behaviours and surroundings is enormously dynamic and complex, it's constantly updating and varying "its take" on what's going on, from second to second. Believing you can take a person and stick him in a laboratory, and study his behaviour like that of a chimp, and think that you then understand what makes him tick ... that has the strong smell of narcissism to me.
@00940 - Refuse? I don't see anyone offering me it so I can't see how I can be refusing it.
I don't do blind testing myself ( that's my choice) because I'm not interested in whether A sounds different from B. I'm interested in getting better sound, not different. I'm interested in understanding how circuit changes affect the sound I perceive and I don't see blind testing as helping my understanding.
I don't see beliefs as 'tainting perception' so I'm rather at a loss to answer your last point. Its certainly important to me personally not to have strong beliefs, but then again I don't rely on perception when I listen in order to make a decision about a circuit to adopt (or not), I rely on my feeling. Getting the feeling is ultimately the point of listening to the music for me.
I don't do blind testing myself ( that's my choice) because I'm not interested in whether A sounds different from B. I'm interested in getting better sound, not different. I'm interested in understanding how circuit changes affect the sound I perceive and I don't see blind testing as helping my understanding.
I don't see beliefs as 'tainting perception' so I'm rather at a loss to answer your last point. Its certainly important to me personally not to have strong beliefs, but then again I don't rely on perception when I listen in order to make a decision about a circuit to adopt (or not), I rely on my feeling. Getting the feeling is ultimately the point of listening to the music for me.
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Better sound implies different sound. Without at least trying to control your bias, you have no way to know if the better sound comes from circuit changes or your beliefs (since you admitted that beliefs can colour perception) and your understanding rests on shaky grounds.
Because in many situations it's pointless ... I see my car has a flat tyre - hmmm, I look away and back again, 20 times - aha, it still looks flat, we're getting somewhere! Next step, I'll take out the pressure gauge - and take a reading 5 times, just in case my eyesight is fooling me when I look at the readout - after all, I might just be wanting the tyre to be flat, for some emotional reason. Hmmm ... still not convinced - I know, I'll take the car for a high speed run, and see if it shreds after a while - that should definitely confirm the matter !!
Yes, sure but not the other way around. Different sound does not imply better sound. So if I test for different sound (using your suggested method of blind testing), how may I know its better please?
Sure, everyone's understanding rests on shaky grounds, that's the very nature of science - if its not eminently falsifiable then its no longer science. But if I make an error I have the confidence that I'll pick it up later - after all its my error, not anyone else's. I'll also run my designs past other listeners - they have no hope of 'knowing' what they're listening to so its in effect a 'blind' listen.
That's an excessive analogy. Blind testing is the equivalent of taking a reading of the pressure gauge once, that's just validation through a more reliable test. I'd even argue that blind testing is the equivalent of giving your tyre one foot kick.
Richard, we should stop - those two Turing Test machines have obviously got too much CPU power for us ...
You know it is better if you like it more. But, if there is no discernable difference in the blind testing, then how could you dare say "I like this sound better than that one?"
Re: Effectively blind: Have you read about clever Hans? The horse that could add? How do you know that your friends are not taking cues from you?
Re: Effectively blind: Have you read about clever Hans? The horse that could add? How do you know that your friends are not taking cues from you?
Please do explain why you used 'dare' in that question?
Since I don't do blind testing your 'if' looks moot.
I don't - but if they do then my customers probably will too, and that's cool.😎
Feel free to leave me to it Frank, I'll bask in the attention while its still forthcoming, my patience is probably more sustainable than theirs 😀
Yes, let's not learn anything. Dig in your heels, put your fingers in your ears and scream "I am not listening!"
Classic "audiophile".
At that point, if there are any differences, you're entitled to use your feelings. But you'll know if this preference is actually due to your changes or not. Which doesn't seem useless if you're after understanding what you're doing.
Not trying to reduce the margin of uncertainty is the very opposite of the nature of science.
Ironically if I were asked to name an individual who's as far from the 'classic audiophile' stereotype as its possible to be, I reckon Frank would come to mind 🙂 But I speculate because nobody's actually asked me that.
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