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Re: I have no desire to do some science...

Wellfed,

There are two points to make here. The first is that, with due respect to Feynman (who is one of my favorite scientists; as a student I learned to greatly respect and appreciate his scientific style and some of his philosophy. His famous quote about accepting uncertainty is one of my favorites)--he was himself a theorist, which is to say that he worked not only from experimental results but also from previously existing theory. WRT the quote you cited, his argument was that no matter how lovely your theory seemed, if it was clearly contradicted by experimental evidence, you need to get rid of it. There's nothing new in this, but I do like the way he said it.

Of course, in this case established theory says that this whole IC business is 1. a crock of marketing shit that makes no scientific sense, combined with 2. the vastly under-appreciated fallibility and suggestibility of the human mind. (People seem insulted when you tell them that they might not be able to trust their perceptions. They shouldn't be insulted. It's equally true for all of us. It is a scientific fact, repeatedly proved, that our perceptions are unreliable.) Add to this the fact that there is no experiment to contradict the conventional scientific wisdom, and we're left with NO REASON to believe that there's any more to it than that. Feynman, by the way, was a great believer in using the simplest methods and finding the simplest explanations for things. And in this case the simplest and most obvious explanation is that the effect is not real.

Which brings me to the second point. It is that there is no way to do an experiment to prove that the IC has no effect on anyone's perceptions. So what kind of evidence AGAINST the chip are you seeking? The onus here is clearly on those who would demonstrate its effectiveness. All that's needed is a single, rigorous double-blind test. And in this case such a test is logistically quite easy to do--much easier than for, say, comparing amplifiers, or loudspeakers.

No, I'm not an unqualified advocate of double-blind testing. But, especially for those who would try to invoke science on the side of the chip's supporters, the onus is on them--you--to provide the experiment to support such dubious claims. If the effects are as robust as you and others have claimed, they should stand up to a double-blind test.

If you don't care to take the trouble--if you're not interested in convincing anyone--I'm fine with that. Believe what you want.

Jim Austin

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