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RE: Slagle is the actual scientist here...

>> But I think you and I are in agreement that the results you are reporting have some sort of objective value precisely to the extent that they are the outcome of the rigorous application of the scientific method.

No, I am saying they have NO objective value because this phantom of objectivity does not exist. It is a made-up fantasy with the ironic twist that it denies any influence of fantasy, as if it is talking about the real reality not the fake reality of subjectivism, even though "objectivity" itself is a subjective construction!

I can give more examples of terms that try to defuse attack before the fact, in the manner of what is known popularly as Orwellian double speak, especially if I dig into religion and politics.

Actually, "objectivity police" and the kind of "scientific" defensiveness I see on audio forums have more than a little religion and politics in them.

What I know as an anthropologist, and after 30 years of study I am still learning to understand how deep this goes, is that human action is much the same everywhere, among any culture, at any time. Only the superficial aspects change.

The call for "objective verification" is one among many contingent, socially-santioned modes of substantiating truth. I like "divine inspiration" better myself.

I heard different and better results from silver wire, as did my highly skilled and experienced colleagues, in reasonably well-controlled comparisons. More than once. I am convinced that this is true because I was there and I heard it. The distinction was not subtle. I "know that" the silver matters even though I don't "know how" it does it.

For centuries and millenia, people have been doing useful and successful practical work without having detailed Western scientific explanations at hand. The fact that we are working on electronic and electro-mechanical equipment doesn't change much.

The fact that I don't have the graphs and models to prove this to some random dude on an audio forum who has neither the experience nor the inclination to try it for himself, is HIS/YOUR tough luck and points to a gap in HIS/YOUR experience and understanding, not mine.

The lack of empirical measurements does not discount the knowledge gained through experience in any way.

Yes, there is no end of wacky claims in audio. I am not defending them, nor can I offer a foolproof method for separating wheat from chaff. I consider the source and the claims and decide what is worth my time.

I know Slagle, the whipping boy of objectivists in this thread, fairly well. I do not agree with everything he says, but I know he does more hands-on work, thinking, and listening than 95% of the poseurs out there.

I will at least listen to and consider what he has to say, especially if he has beer. He is the wrong target to pursue in any scientific lynch campaign because he is a very empirical guy and he does the work. He is creative and an explorer in the borderlands, but that is good.

But I think that some of the claims that I have heard from "audio forum objectivists," particularly from the science goons at DiyA, are some of THE WACKIEST stuff I have ever heard. These dudes make Shun Mook sound like Tektronix.

Over there, under the flag of "objectivity," they have constructed an insane, logically problematic, notion of experience where all listening impressions are "speulation" until they have been subjected to approved ABX test methodology.

This is a really radical skepticism, bordering on anti-humanisn and nihilism.

How can these guys drive cars?? Can they know the road and signals are not "speculation?"

The problems of clinical blind testing for audio evaluation are numerous and profound. I think the problem is one of proper education and training among acousticians to understand the differences with meaningful musical material as opposed to Army induction center hearing tests.

I am speaking from a background where I much of my life studying philsophy of science and social science, linguistics, and anthropology in academics. I can't expect everybody to know what I think I know, most of which is esoteric and only vaguely practical. However, I see a lot of intellectual positions flying around the forums that do not have the force of contemporary philosophical and socio-cultural undertanding behind them.

Granted that this academic material is not intuitive or obvious, but that is precisely the point. We don't analyze most of what we do, we just do it.

For example, anybody who has studied the field, the quest for positive knowledge in a universe that can be perfectly and objectively characterized in logicol-mathematical terms, the darling of the Enlightenment, was abandoned by the Positivists and logicians themselves, as well as advanced physics, before the Second World War.

It lives on in audio forums though.

All together now... "Gimme that old time religion, that old time religion, it's good enough for me!"

People who think about this professionally recognize that "science" is a contingent and conventionalized cultural activity--or rather "activities," because the foundations do shift. Check out Thomas Kuhn "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" for one of the most popular seminal works on this topic. I guess most college grads ran into this book somewhere along the line. It is a 50 year old book and much elaboration has been worked out since then.

On the question of silver wire and the fluke....one of my collegaues at Silbatone, Dr. Bae, has a PhD in solid state physics. He introduced me to a guy with a couple PhDs who is working for a government-sponsored technology incubator, drawing ingots of monocrystal silver and working on, as I understand it, effect of presence/non presence of intermolecular boundaries on electrical conduction.

This is BIG SCIENCE. REAL scientists. Real laboratories. Real money behind it.

You see, there IS science beyond gross DMM resistance in a piece of wire but one has to go beyond the ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs to find out about it.

Incidentally, we tried the monocrystal wire...not bad but didn't totally blow us away.

I'll save more for another post, someday somewhere. Gotta buy my kid some new shoes for school.





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Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent -- Wittgenstein

Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic

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