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In Reply to: Hey - This is a great set of definitions you've outlined... posted by Scottrt on September 14, 2006 at 03:04:10:
His catergorisation of "psychological upgrade"(s) is narrow-minded, arrogant and dissmissive of cognative phenomenon and perceptive variance.
Follow Ups:
Maybe the word "psychological" isn't the best one, but I don't like "placebo." The power of suggestion is not a theory or a hypothesis, but happens all the time to everyone. One example that I have seen of this in audio: with absolutely no change in a system, people were told than a marvelous new X was installed instead of Y. People listening say the change is dramatic, fantastic, and so on. I seen this done a number of times with highly experienced "golden ears." Sometimes it happened by accident, when people got to talking, and the person doing the switching got distracted and forgot to do it. Sometimes it is done for fun, sometimes it is done maliciously. But if you don't believe people can be pursuaded that one thing is much better than another when in fact they are the same, I'm afraid you are narrow-minded and have no understanding of an important aspect of human psychology.I remember a great example. I rode my bike to work, which is up a long hill. Just after I got there, I washed up quickly as I had to attend a meeting. I brought a small towel to the meeting, as I knew my face would continue to perspire. As i wiped my face from time to time, others in the room began to sweat. After about 15 minutes the chair of the meeting announced it was quite hot in the room, and opened even more of the windows. In fact, the room was cooler than normal from the beginning, and fresh, cool air had been blowing in through an open window. The power of suggestion. My psychologist colleagues here on campus have told me some amazing examples of it.
I have taught courses on wine for decades. In a blind tasting, if I have two of the wines identical and make some funny faces when I taste one and smile when I taste the other, identical sample, many students will rate the smiled-upon wine much higher. They claim it smells and tastes much better.
So I am baffled that you do not believe that peoples' judgment of something can be affected by what they are told, either verbally or non-verbally, about it. If I am "narrow-mined, arrogant, and dissmissive of..." for believing this, so be it. It happens in audio more than many people would like to admit. Now that doesn't mean it isn't important to the people perceiving the benefit. Placebos do work, at least for a while. Whether you think it is OK to sell placebos claiming that they work by some physical, non-pschological way is up to you.
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are you saying there is no such phenomena? I agree with him that it exists, and not just in audio listening. I feel it deserves to be a category if only to keep people on their toes/ears about the brains ability to 'want' to hear something.I cant see how his verbage rubbed you the wrong way as it did.
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