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In Reply to: RE: Variability and context--Key point posted by cpotl on October 2, 2015 at 07:21:08:
I understand where you are coming from. Let me ask this...What makes the test objective?
I don't think there is an "objective." We perceive and experience the world though cultural filters. These are subjective. There is no outside stance.
Now, we can have cultural interpretations that match up with an observed empirical reality. This could be considered a validity test, the correspondence of interpretation with the structure of reality as we perceive it. I usually suggest substituting "empirical" for "objective" in these discussions, becausue there isn't any such thing as objectivity.
Objectivity is itself a subjective cultural construction, after all.
But let's remember that observation is also relative, as physics teaches us. Also the tools and concepts/definitions we use frame, limit, and configure our observations, hence a true "objective" universality of perspective is not going to happen.
>>where words and statements no longer have meaning, everything is relative, and everyone's beliefs and claims were all of equal validity.
They still have meaning but relative to situations/contexts. You have been living like this all your life, so wheres the big mystery?
Validity is not as clear cut as we would all want it to be.
In terms of audio testing procedure, I think that what would make the "test" more valid is to pluck the data from the flow of natural experience somehow.
A test is a test because it sets up a fake controlled situation. Unfortunately, doing so destroys the phenomenon we are looking to study, unless our interests only revolve around performance in that particular contrived situation.
To be scientific, by old scholl definitions, observation and logic yields conditions of necessity and sufficiency that force the conclusion to be true. People are just too creative, unpredictable, variable, and flaky for the model of lab rese4arch drawn from the natural sciences.
Maybe I think that to perfectly know whether somebody else can hear X is impossible but a quasi controlled casual "test" as related in the Pierre Sprey wire story is somewhat convincing to me...moreso because it was not a formal "test."
More important is whether _I_ can hear X. I would try to find that out by listening as I usually do and swapping the parts and listening carefully but not obsessively for differences. Time and some learning might be key factors that are ignored in clinical AB testing. I find that sonic differences can be amplified or attenuated and their significance best understood when some time is devoted to understanding them in one's usual music listening context.
Hey there is a guy who can identify LP records by looking at the grooves. I'd have to say that is impossible and I know I can't do it. Does it really matter if he can do it or not, aside from a certain human curiosity perspective?
In short, I'd have to say that I can not recommend a scientific method of the form and potency you seek to determine whether other people can ever, under any circumstances, hear unlikely esoteric differences.
I don't know how to plug this question into science. The nature of the human experience is too slippery to establish the logical links required for solid general knowledge via scientific observation and reasoning.
I suggest coming to terms with some forms of relativity. This is only a bad word in religious and moral contexts where absolute certainly handed down from above reigns over all meaning.
EE doesn't have that kind of authority beyond measurable aspects of electronic circuits. The clinical testing paradigm never achieves it.
Relativity and subjectivity are intrinsic to the human condition. Try to fight that and you will never get to the truth.
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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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Follow Ups
- RE: Variability and context--Key point - Joe Roberts 08:06:20 10/02/15 (1)
- RE: Variability and context--Key point - cpotl 08:49:53 10/02/15 (0)
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