Snake oil, fraud, confirmation bias


It is becoming increasingly apparent that many threads about legitimate topics devolve into one or more of the contributors here making claims of snake oil, fraud, or confirmation bias thereby derailing the conversation beyond the valid and relevant thread topic and this is getting ridiculous. For anyone here who honestly holds the position that there is snake oil and fraud in the world of Music Reproduction Systems I challenge them to prove their claims in court it should be an easy task based on the claims they make here in Audiogon  AND they will make a fortune because in the US once proven they can file a class action suit and profit enormously from the efforts of others to deceive. These people regularly claim that "there is no evidence" that things such as cables or fuses make a difference when in actual fact Audiogon is filled with evidence that these things make very real differences in Music Reproduction Systems of course those who claim fraud reject that evidence as "confirmation bias" but in absence of any documentation from them they are only repeating the claim they have made so many times that has been refuted many times here by those who have demonstrated to there satisfaction that they make a difference.   I think in actual truth the real fraudsters here are those that repeatedly make these claims of snake oil and fraud and often they have no experience to back up there claims they simply say the claims are impossible!
clearthink

Showing 17 responses by geoffkait

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Check out the classical Indian music label, Moment. Fantastic music, many of their CDs recorded live. Tremendous sound quality. And guess what? Moment is a believer in audiophile equipment and audiophile cables, which they use in their recordings. And I ain't talking about no pro audio cables, either. Wake up, people! Smell the coffee! ☕️
Nope. That’s incorrect. The real definition of knowledge is what’s left after you subtract what you forgot from school. Which, for most people, myself not included, is immediately if not sooner. There is no shared knowledge. There I no learning by osmosis, either. 🌿
My boomerang won’t come back - but that’s not what you said. You said in your example you could perceive gravity if you’re standing near a cliff. By the way, shouldn’t you be standing out on a ledge somewhere?

Are you volunteering to peer review the Teleportation Tweak? As I said previously I already published the long awaited, How the Teleportation Tweak Works. Try to keep up.
Costco_emoji wrote,

I don’t know where Geoff gets this idea that there are things in this universe we can’t measure. We can measure black holes colliding half way across the galaxy, but we can’t measure the quality of our stereo??? Whatever! I had one chump tell me that it would be impossible to measure single instrument within an orchestra. It would be difficult, but hardly impossible, and probably not worth the effort. These snake oil clowns who claim you can’t measure a cable breaking in speak out of pure ignorance. The answer is obviously you can’t measure what doesn’t exist. People have in fact measured cables. Nelson Pass has a great article on cable which I’m sure none of the snake oilers would bother to look up. Stereophile measures almost everything they review so I’m not sure how anybody can say nobody measures anything. The only folks that don’t measure things are the folks who know there’s nothing to measure..... because you can measure the customer’s delusions. I have to wonder if sticking suction cup dildos to your speakers would improve the sound as much as some of this high dollar hocus pocus the con artists sell.

>>>>Costco, I’m pretty sure your reading compression went bye bye again. I didn’t say nobody measures anything. Duh! What I actually said was that there is no way to measure certain audiophile tweaks. You know, the ones that SCARE you. The ones that go BUMP in the night. The ones YOU don't understand. The ones you're constantly ranting about. In fact, Stereophile doesn’t meausure audio tweaks. Nobody does. Hel-loo! So, go ahead, fly off the handle.
 
defiantboomerang
@jji666

so if you perceive no gravity, it is safe to jump off a roof? After all, according to you, perception is reality. :))
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Gravity is the weakest force. We cannot perceive or feel gravity. So that is what we call a bad example. Nuclear forces, for example, are much stronger than the force of gravity yet we cannot perceive nuclear forces

We do have a natural fear of heights, however. 
Uh, actually we already know that many of these "Snake Oil" devices cannot be measured, at least not using conventional methods. That’s why you have to use your listening skills to evaluate them. Hel-loo! "OK, Give me some examples," you implore. OK, audio cones, the Clever Clock, Silver Rainbow Foil, Cream Electret, Morphic Message Labels, the Green Pen, a purple pen, a black pen, the Red X Pen, demagnetizing CDs, Mpingo disc.

Tiny little bowl resonators, tube traps, and other things that probably don’t arouse the overly suspicious mind of the wary naysayer CAN be measured using ordinary means. Besides the measurement argument is kind of moot since nobody measures anything anyway - not reviewers, not naysayers, nobody! They don’t measure cables, they don’t measure fuses, they don’t measure room treatments, audio racks, isolation devices or CD treatments, not even crystals, so in reality the measurement argument is pretty feeble, to use your word.
This thread is an excellent example of the Galileo Inquisition. I have posted frequently on the subject of Science having become the new Religion. Is this thread an example of Lone Wolf terrorism? I.e., while officially a part of the Scientofic community, an individual is inspired by what he perceives as their will.

THE GALILEO INQUISITION

The Galileo affair (Italian: il processo a Galileo Galilei) was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610,[1] culminating with the trial and condemnation of Galileo Galilei by the Roman Catholic Inquisition in 1633 for his support of heliocentrism.[2]

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus (published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543). Galileo’s initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical. Heliocentric books were banned and Galileo was ordered to refrain from holding, teaching or defending heliocentric ideas.[3]

Galileo went on to propose a theory of tides in 1616, and of comets in 1619; he argued that the tides were evidence for the motion of the Earth. In 1632 Galileo, now an old man, published his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which implicitly defended heliocentrism, and was immensely popular. Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to indefinite imprisonment. Galileo was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642.

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In case someone missed it the first few times around, here it is again.

Intro to Zen and the Art of Debunkery

"As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery."
WOW! We’re not talking about how hearing is measured. We’re not even talking about frequency response. We’re talking about skill and experience. Geez, Louise!

Your hearing is only as good as the best system you ever heard. - Old audiophile axiom
It's a mystery only for the ones who can't figure it out. Case solved. 🕵🏻
If it’s not worth the time arguing about it why are you still arguing about it? 😛

Also, if I am a liar how come my pants aren’t on fire? 🔥

Your "theory" of the fuse holders is all wet. And I’ll tell you why. It’s all wet because directionality based on how the fuse contacts the fuse holder is *unpredictable.* The way the fuse contacts the fuse when you rotate it is random. Therefore you cannot predict which direction the fuse will sound best. By contrast, the directionality of the fuse is completely *non-random*. The fuse always sounds best in the direction of least resistance. It is not (rpt not) random. And because fuse direction is predictable it means the fuse holder has nothing to do with it. Follow? So, your "theory" of the fuse holder makes about as much sense as the theory that the directionality of cables and interconnects is determined by how the RCA connectors on both ends make contact.

"If it doesn't make sense it's not true." - Judge Judy
Actually the clocks work even when the person doesn't know the clocks are there. Or if a friend comes over. Assuming you have friends. The clocks can be hidden in a drawer or whatever. So it cannot be expectation bias or imagination or placebo effect. Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I. 🤡
Mapman, you're such a tease! Come on, give us a couple names of these snake oil miscreants that get under your skin. Pretty please. I bet you believe money is the root of all evil. 🤢
Geez, don’t tell me this is going to be another one of those dreadful, What about this? What about that? threads.


jea48
@geoffkait ,

I do not have any opinion one way or the other on fuse directionality. I do not have any personal experience listening to the direction of a fuse. Now that’s out of the way.

>>>>>>That’s weird. I thought everyone had an opinion on such a controversial topic. 😳 Have you checked for a pulse recently?

jea48
I notice you never try to inject fuse directionality on the Cable Asylum. We both know in short order a Bored Member would chime in and tell you to take to another AA forum.

>>>>Huh? With one or two exceptions, I never (rpt never) post on Cable Asylum. Wire directionality would probably be a worthwhile subject for Cable Asylum if you can stand the fierce region of the locals. I've almost never posted on Cable, not in all these years. I’m mean, come on, what would be the point? I’m not a masochist. I do post on General, Prophead and of course, Isolation Ward, which was set up specifically for your humble scribe and May Belt following the Intelligent Chip blow up about 12 years ago. My, how time files. I used to post primarily on Tweakers Asylum but obviously that forum is kind of dead. Oh, well, nothing last forever. 😢

jea48
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a post of yours on the Cable Asylum for quite awhile.

https://www.audioasylum.com/audio/cables/bbs.html

>>>>There are reasons for everything. As I said, I almost never posted there. Case solved.😃


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Actually, the audio hobby in general and this forum in particular are not intended to be or set up to be a peer review of anything. Especially when many of the targets of tweakaphobe scorn and anger are quantum mechanical in nature or things that go BUMP in the night. The technology of many audiophile devices the last twenty years or so, including aftermarket fuses, is beyond whatever the average bear can remember from school. This is not the faculty of Harvard or the AES or the Journal of Physics. A peer review is by uh, peers. What we have here, my friends, are not (rpt not) peers. Let the wailing and hand wringing begin!

Education is what’s left when you subtract everything you forgot from school.

A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If thy eye offend thee cut it out.
How about a 12 Angry Men forum.

"But you said we could forget about all the other stuff."

" It’s always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth."

"You're not goin' to intimidate me - I'm *entitled* to my opinion!"

"You can’t prove it!"