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In Reply to: Re: How do you guys get away with talking about all this weird stuff? I mean... posted by Steve Eddy on October 20, 2006 at 20:53:23:
Two distinctions.1. Reporting observations versus asserting causality
Science depends on collecting lots of data. Even everyday life depends on collecting a fair amount of data. You collect a lot of data on anything and look at it and some of the data will obviously be wonky and you set it aside. But collecting more data is almost always better than collecting less. So yes, nobody should be afraid to report an observation no matter how weird.
What the woo-woo crowd doesn't get or deliberately confuses is the distinction between reporting a datum (a "what") and making a scientific claim about causality or mechanism (a "how" or "why"). We have, ever since Bacon and Galileo, a very conservative Scientific Method which requires repeatable experiments, clear communication of methods and measured results, and vigorous efforts to disprove theories. And under that regimen natural science has produced much more impressive results, from electrical circuits to the medicine without which most of us wouldn't be here, than it did when it was a bunch of alchemists, astrologers, and mountebanks, entertaining though those guys were. (If you visit a country that still has street medicine men, curanderos ambulantes, go find some and watch their acts. The good ones are amazing performers.)
2. Fooling yourself versus being suckered by charlatans.
I've fooled myself on occasions, wanting to hear a difference that further listening showed was not there. The charming part of this forum has been people playing around with scrounged or low-cost materials. Good clean fun. The less-charming part is bunco artists reselling low-cost generic items at enormous markups. Arguably the victims deserve it, and maybe for some of them $100 is a reasonable price to pay for a fairy story. But it does lower the tone of discussion.
Follow Ups:
Anyone who rejects a reported repeatable phenomenon out of hand is NOT a scientist. If that were taken accross the board there would be no advances in either knowledge or technology, etc. Remember when there were 96 elements, PERIOD; an element cannot be changed into another element; an element cannot be created/manufactured ? That was "Scirntific Truth" not that long ago but we now know that all of the above were not true then and are not true now. True scientists have open minds and when they see a repeatable phenomenon they are driven to find out, if possible, how and why it happens. What "scientist" would have believed some 65 years ago that a petri dish containing the moldy residue of a failed experiment would turn out to be the greatest boon of the century ? Before the discovery of penicillin if you had an infection that could not be cured by amputation "Doctor say you goan die", and you DID.
Most of this seems obvious. Does it contain a disagreement with something?Scientific method means that EVERY conclusion is provisional, and wide open to disproof. That would include the principles on which the periodic table is constructed. What you want to think about is the *process by which* people came to accept relativity or the microbial origins of some diseases. The supply of BS being infinite, setting a high standard for accepting (but always provisionally!) theories has proven a markedly more successful way of building knowledge over the long haul than wide-eyed credulity.
Did you mean a repeatable *experiment*? There are plenty of much-repeated phenomena, such as the operations of our own brains, that are still rather poorly understood.
Perhaps what happens on these boards is that credulous souls hear skepticism as an assertion of an opposed dogma about what the world is like. It's not. It's simply a matter of imposing a uniformly high standard on claims.
Anyone who rejects a reported repeatable phenomenon out of hand is NOT a scientist.
Nothing to argue there.
But what of those who reject that which well known and well established out of hand, who make objective, declarative statements of fact based solely on subjective experience, and who become defensive and insulting if their objective claims are questioned or challenged?
Is it any worse to insist that someone is imagining things than to insist that someone is deaf?
se
There is a mystical subculture in audio. In this subculture, magic rules! sometimes it borders on Aliens stole my cadillac ;~)) I almost fell into this category myself a while back. started believing that any change in the system, no matter how ridiculous, made a huge difference. Fortunately, a good friend talked me out of this mindset.. Now I just listen for good, and realistic sound and what makes me happy and makes my ears happy. Now my cats have all the goofy gadgets and have a ball with them. PS: I am still not beyond making tweaks for sure but have abandoned the more ridiculous ones. PPS: It also helps if you just enjoy the music for the music sake and not worry about how it is being reproduced on your system.
Now I just listen for good, and realistic sound and what makes me happy and makes my ears happy.
That pretty much just sums it all up for me.
se
So how come I catch so much crap anyway?Oh yeah, forgot, I talk about it, publically. ;-)
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