3DSonics
away working hard on "it"
Folks,
The recent "Same old cable argument again..." thread again highlighted to me how much the whole discussions in audio are dominated by Weltanschaung (or religion if one so wants).
First, while every one shares a common "absolute" reality, between the actual Kantean "thing in itself" and how we react to it is perception. So what we percieve from absolute reality is our personal little universe and while we all share a certain degree of what I call consensus reality the area with a universal complete consensus are suprisingly small, even though a general broad consensus passing over differences in small details is fairly large.
But the bottom line is NO TWO PEOPLE PERCIEVE THE EXACT SAME ITEM/EVENT IDENTICALLY.
Secondly, large parts of our perception are formed by our general worldview. If we strongly believe in a given thing to be true our perception will gentley and unnoticable retouce what we percieve of universal reality so it fits better with our expectations. Someone who adheres to the old mode of viewing the universe and thus reality as newtonion, deterministic will percieve what he does of reality filtered by that basic stipulation to a degree much greater than such a person would wish to admit. Or as Nietsch puts it, "We are all much better artists than we give ourselves credit for!".
The Most laudable society of the illuminated seers of bavaria used to teach in one of the early grades the "law of the five", which had to be taken as complete and absolute statement of fatc and reality, namely that "all things happen in fives". The lower rank illuminatus would soon find endless confirmations of the law the of the fives.
At a much higher grade adepts where taught the true law of the fives, namely that all things happen singly, in twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens and innumerable other Chaney sequences, but that if we believe they happen in fives we will superimpose the desired pattern (all happens in fives) over reality and see all things that happen in fives and only percieve the "fives", when in fact things happen completely indeterministic.
How this relates to audio should be obvious, equally that DB Testing does not actually eliminate personal bias, it merely makes it presence known as strongly randomising factor, as perception struggles to impose the desired pattern of the individual over a fundamentally random set of data.
But there is another crucial concept here, that extends past perception and the law of the fives, one that is directly and inherently responsible for the lengthy and acrimonious as well as heated disputes. I call this for lack of a better term "moral affordability", in line with such terms as "moral depreciation" etc.
What moral affordability addresses is the moral/spiritual/psychological "cost" to an individual if this individual where to accept a given thesis presented to it as true.
Let us take an example, we have someone who has a traditional electronic enginneering background and who understands of physics just enough to inherently believe in a newtonioan universe, one in which action preceeds reaction, where all things are certain and so on. This person has clearly a LOT and I mean a LOT "invested" in this particular Weltanschaung, from the career to teh very understanding how the world works.
In order to accept a contention that in fact things are occouring that in empirical fact contradict this worldview in a small, unimportant and minor area this person would have to abandon the whole Weltanschaung held and that means throwing all this previous "investment", in other words the "moral cost" is very high and usually much higher than the individual is willing/able to afford. In other words, regardless of the truth or not of the thesis under discussion it must be rejected to avoid the whole house of cards comming down with it.
As this individual requires certainty and cannot accept uncertainty (remember, we have a believer in the newtonian universe) it becomes essential to not just reject, but to defeat, at least to the standards of the individual for "defeating a thesis" in public the thesis, irregardless of it's truth.
Once we are there and start throwing the root of all evil, namely the love of money into this any discussion is impossible, a shouting match is unavoidable.
And that is how the Weltanschaung of a given group gives rise to arguments endless and rather acrimonious in an area where what should happen is that we share our experiences with music and with the equipment used to record/reproduce it freely, aknowledging that the personal reality of others may diverge strongly from our own and both may diverge strongly from absolute reality.
If so indeed, it does not make a given experience less valuable, usefull and certainly anyone reasonably scientific (which inherently requires an open mind) would never dismiss any thesis flat out of hand and in turn CERTAINLY not dismiss anything and anyone remotely associated with the offending thesis out of hand.
Well, I'll leave it here. Maybe more in this upcomming shouting match and flame war, good thing I'm wearing asbestos underwear....
Ciao T
The recent "Same old cable argument again..." thread again highlighted to me how much the whole discussions in audio are dominated by Weltanschaung (or religion if one so wants).
First, while every one shares a common "absolute" reality, between the actual Kantean "thing in itself" and how we react to it is perception. So what we percieve from absolute reality is our personal little universe and while we all share a certain degree of what I call consensus reality the area with a universal complete consensus are suprisingly small, even though a general broad consensus passing over differences in small details is fairly large.
But the bottom line is NO TWO PEOPLE PERCIEVE THE EXACT SAME ITEM/EVENT IDENTICALLY.
Secondly, large parts of our perception are formed by our general worldview. If we strongly believe in a given thing to be true our perception will gentley and unnoticable retouce what we percieve of universal reality so it fits better with our expectations. Someone who adheres to the old mode of viewing the universe and thus reality as newtonion, deterministic will percieve what he does of reality filtered by that basic stipulation to a degree much greater than such a person would wish to admit. Or as Nietsch puts it, "We are all much better artists than we give ourselves credit for!".
The Most laudable society of the illuminated seers of bavaria used to teach in one of the early grades the "law of the five", which had to be taken as complete and absolute statement of fatc and reality, namely that "all things happen in fives". The lower rank illuminatus would soon find endless confirmations of the law the of the fives.
At a much higher grade adepts where taught the true law of the fives, namely that all things happen singly, in twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens and innumerable other Chaney sequences, but that if we believe they happen in fives we will superimpose the desired pattern (all happens in fives) over reality and see all things that happen in fives and only percieve the "fives", when in fact things happen completely indeterministic.
How this relates to audio should be obvious, equally that DB Testing does not actually eliminate personal bias, it merely makes it presence known as strongly randomising factor, as perception struggles to impose the desired pattern of the individual over a fundamentally random set of data.
But there is another crucial concept here, that extends past perception and the law of the fives, one that is directly and inherently responsible for the lengthy and acrimonious as well as heated disputes. I call this for lack of a better term "moral affordability", in line with such terms as "moral depreciation" etc.
What moral affordability addresses is the moral/spiritual/psychological "cost" to an individual if this individual where to accept a given thesis presented to it as true.
Let us take an example, we have someone who has a traditional electronic enginneering background and who understands of physics just enough to inherently believe in a newtonioan universe, one in which action preceeds reaction, where all things are certain and so on. This person has clearly a LOT and I mean a LOT "invested" in this particular Weltanschaung, from the career to teh very understanding how the world works.
In order to accept a contention that in fact things are occouring that in empirical fact contradict this worldview in a small, unimportant and minor area this person would have to abandon the whole Weltanschaung held and that means throwing all this previous "investment", in other words the "moral cost" is very high and usually much higher than the individual is willing/able to afford. In other words, regardless of the truth or not of the thesis under discussion it must be rejected to avoid the whole house of cards comming down with it.
As this individual requires certainty and cannot accept uncertainty (remember, we have a believer in the newtonian universe) it becomes essential to not just reject, but to defeat, at least to the standards of the individual for "defeating a thesis" in public the thesis, irregardless of it's truth.
Once we are there and start throwing the root of all evil, namely the love of money into this any discussion is impossible, a shouting match is unavoidable.
And that is how the Weltanschaung of a given group gives rise to arguments endless and rather acrimonious in an area where what should happen is that we share our experiences with music and with the equipment used to record/reproduce it freely, aknowledging that the personal reality of others may diverge strongly from our own and both may diverge strongly from absolute reality.
If so indeed, it does not make a given experience less valuable, usefull and certainly anyone reasonably scientific (which inherently requires an open mind) would never dismiss any thesis flat out of hand and in turn CERTAINLY not dismiss anything and anyone remotely associated with the offending thesis out of hand.
Well, I'll leave it here. Maybe more in this upcomming shouting match and flame war, good thing I'm wearing asbestos underwear....
Ciao T
However it did get a little repetitive after a bit.
