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RE: Ignore the doubters!

"There is no exact repeatability in human research. See comments elsewhere.

This is an idea borrowed from traditional conceptions of empirical physics that cannot apply to live thinking creative humans."

Joe, let's take the example of the claim that reversing the direction of the wire changes the sound. Somebody makes that claim, and the question then arises as to whether the claimed effect is real or imagined. How else can that be tested, if not by double-blind listening experiments? What would it even mean, to suggest that yes, the effect is real, and yet the person claiming it is unable to demonstrate the ability to discriminate between the two wire orientations when tested?

This should be a question that matters not only to other people, who would like to know the answer. It should also matter to the person himself, who is making the claim, at least if he has an inquiring mind. Speaking for myself, I cannot imagine ever being comfortable with believing that some change I make to my amplifier changes the sound I hear, if I cannot satisfy myself with some sort of double-blind experiment that I am not merely deluding myself. I am only too aware of how easily the brain, my own included, can be fooled into perceiving things that are not "real."

If you want to insist that DBT experiments are completely untrustworthy and worthless, then what tests would you propose instead, to determine whether the listener genuinely can hear the difference between one orientation of the wire and the other? Or would you say we should all just live in some sort of a state of fuzzy relativism, where everybody's beliefs are valid, and nothing can ever be questioned?

Chris

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