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placebo and its relation to 'hearing better'

MartinT said:
The research is to do with medical placebos. I am not for one minute suggesting we have 100% control over our thoughts and don't see where it might have been implied. Being open-minded is all relative but it is quite adequate for dealing with system upgrades and whether they are worthwhile or not.
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You might look at the work of Floyd Toole and Sean Olive.
Keith
 
Rockmeister said:
All sounds to me like someone who has decided to shut a few educational doors in order to keep an easy and familiar pattern to his life
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It's a very poor form of debate to throw such a silly accusation when I've already made it clear that I listen with an open mind and compare notes with others.
I'll not bother responding again.
 
It is fair for people to come to a forum with different approaches to what they are looking for, and the way they expect to interact. It seems reasonable say that one doesn't really care to have one's choices picked over by other people, or that one doesn't necessarily care why one likes what one likes. One doesn't have to feel that one is being dragged into a seminar or a controversy. I get all of that.

It would be nice if there was a way of separating all of this out so that no one feels got at, judged or mocked. Unfortunately I just don't think it's ever going to work though. This hobby is IMHO riven through like a stick of rock with a sort of science cosplay. Most people seem to sell and buy fancy cables because on the basis that the cables are somehow allowing a purer more unadulterated signal through. If we could all agree that it's just a laugh there would be no need for arguments.

For those of a certain temperament, a claim that cables improve the signal on a scientific level is either true (and big news) or not true. One that level anyone making the claim would have to be prepared to back it up or back down. This is annoying for people who don't really care, or just don't want to play.

If you take all of this seriously then inevitably you come to the conclusion that you could only really assess the truth by means of structured testing by means of experiments which are fiendishly difficult to do properly. I think this is really the point of the OP. But where does this take us?

It would all probably be fine if we could agree that cables are a sort of scientific fancy dress party where it is bad form (and socially daft) to shout "you're not a pirate you're an accountant with an eye patch" and equally bad form to pretend that you really are a pirate once the party's over.

But I don't think this works.
 
Maybe some sort of soul searching is essential if anyone want's to take this thread seriously. I find the idea fascinating because I have (as a reasonably intelligent well educated bloke) been influenced by unscientific products. For example, I had severe migraines 'cured' by one short visit to a herbalist in the 70's. Later I read that his products had no Scientific basis and therefore were derided, but the Migraines stayed away. Well thank you god then, because Migraines are shit. That moment made me aware also that self delusion is a useful tool and a good way to get by. Overthinking everything leads to an honest disappointment. Later, working in a HiFi shop, I recall various experiment with cables that had me hearing what I was told I would hear, only to be upset later when the same changes vanished under double blind conditions, and the cyncic meter being wound to 10 at a typical flat earth demo, the seller tweaking the volume and dancing about smiling as his wonder product was switched in to the system. I see both sides, and I love the hobby enough to understand that for the industry to survive it has to turn a respectable profit. But not an excessive profit based on deliberate deception, even if, as some claim, they KNOW it's deception but who cares? Well, I do. Sry but there it is.
So the thread attempts to stir a few consciences, open a few eyes and promote some debate.
It's not MY facts, or all of my belief. I just think it's interesting.
 
MartinT said:
It's a very poor form of debate to throw such a silly accusation when I've already made it clear that I listen with an open mind and compare notes with others.
I'll not bother responding again.
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"I have an open mind because I say so!" :)
 
Good luck with your 'debate'.

By the way, cables can make such a glaringly obvious difference that it's not a case of using science to prove that all such claims are a manifestation of our minds, it's more a case of understanding that science can't yet show what we can hear so we need better science and better measurements to corroborate it.
 
MartinT said:
By the way, cables can make such a glaringly obvious difference that it's not a case of using science to prove that all such claims are a manifestation of our minds, it's more a case of understanding that science can't yet show what we can hear so we need better science and better measurements to corroborate it.
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I see a Nobel Prize in Physics in your future...
 
onlyconnect said:
So the Randi cable challenge was easy money? Strange...

http://archive.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/105-comments-on-cable-challenge.html

Tim
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I think it's well-established that the actual terms of the Randi challenge were rigged to ensure no differences would ensue. Something about 'electrically identical' or somesuch. CBA to read all the guff again to find the relevant catch.

The one thing that gets my goat in these discussions is the passive-aggressive approach of some of those of the sceptical persuasion. The OP makes it fairly clear that we have little to no conscious control over our response to the placebo effect (assuming, for the moment, that this is the key mechanism in play). Yet the sceptics' approach is often 'you heard this, but I didn't'. The subtext is always, 'I have more control over my irrational impulses than you'. (The crafty ones depersonalise it so: 'some people say they heard a difference, so I tried it for myself and heard none'. It's the same, just nicely dressed up).

Firstly, if the paper referred to by the OP is correct, they simply don't have 'more control', so they are, in claiming this, indicating their propensity for self-delusion just as much as the rest of us.

Secondly, if they hear nothing, perhaps that is because their subconscious biases suppress any perception changes. Again, a failure to acknowledge this possibility betrays a lack of self-awareness similar to that which they, indirectly, accuse the 'hearers' of.

A little more humility on the part of the sceptics, and a little more mutual respect, would take a lot of the heat out of these arguments. It'll never happen though.

As you were, chaps.
 
And you forgot the money factor, Sue. There is always bias when it is involved in anything.
Whenever you purchase an expensive item you expect the thing to be very good.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
A little more humility on the part of the sceptics, and a little more mutual respect, would take a lot of the heat out of these arguments. It'll never happen though.
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A little more humility, willingness to question and learn, curiosity and an open mind on the part of the believers, and a little more mutual respect, would take a lot of the heat out of these arguments. It'll never happen though.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
The OP makes it fairly clear that we have little to no conscious control over our response to the placebo effect (assuming, for the moment, that this is the key mechanism in play). Yet the sceptics' approach is often 'you heard this, but I didn't'.
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Not my approach, and I think I count myself as sceptic. The whole point is that we DO hear differences for all sorts of reasons, many of them non-technical. So the scepticism is not over whether a difference is heard, but over the reasons for that, and whether that difference disappears in controlled blind test experiments.

Tim
 
I agree that some of this is, in the end about 2 interconnected things, money and self delusion. I clearly recall how stupid I felt when I paid for this and that and later found it did no more, sometimes less than a cheaper product. And no-one likes to have it implied that they have been conned or, maybe, that they have been a bit thick. But that is not a very useful part of this debate. For me it is part of an interest in the power of the human brain, and the myriad things going on 'up there' that the conscious mind has no awareness of. It was probably daft of me to expect this to be neutral territory for discussion, but let's see where it goes:confused:
 
MartinT said:
Good luck with your 'debate'.

By the way, cables can make such a glaringly obvious difference that it's not a case of using science to prove that all such claims are a manifestation of our minds, it's more a case of understanding that science can't yet show what we can hear so we need better science and better measurements to corroborate it.
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I don't think you understood the OP at all. No-one is trying to prove that all cable differences are....etc. OFC some cables sound different, speaker cable quite obviously so, even when DB tested, and the why of that is another debate. The suggestion is that where the known, legitimate and well documented science supports the idea that an 'x type' cable should not make any difference to the sound, why do some people insist that it does. The OP suggests that here is a path to a possible understanding of that phenomena.
Other paths are available.
maybe.
 
Honestly, the only interesting part of these threads is the inane drama of watching people with nothing better to do get wound up and wagering with yourself who gets thread-blocked or a 30 day forum blackout -or worse- because of the bunghole's northern migration.
Pro Tip: usernames beginning with 'The' are always a safe bet.
 
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