On the subject of audiophiles hearing differences, and those differences are dismissed by some fairly forceful voices. The problem is duplicating the conditions. To be the person themselves, in their maze. To dissect the scenario with enough clarity and complexity. To not simply dismiss it as you as an individual cannot easily reach it. One has to raise themselves to that given complexity of scenario. Dismissal is not an credible answer.:
" All experiments in psychology are not of this [cargo cult] type, however. For example there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on — with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train rats to go to the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.
The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe they were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.
He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go to the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.
Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using — not what you think it’s using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.
I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or of being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn’t discover anything about rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science"
----- Richard P. Feynman
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To flat out say that cable differences are garbage, the listeners are insane and the items are snake oil and so on.... is to engage in the simplicity of the self---projected on to the issue, and the declaring the matter closed as the individual doing the declaring.....cannot easily reach it.
Simple mind, simple view simple grasp, simple answer. Which just Just happens to be wholly wrong. The insult is to the self doing the declaring.... and overlaid as an enforced point upon others. It’s emotional, not scientific. A person who has reached some sort of limit in the self, in either the senses or reason..emotes..and then projects it as a norm and limit upon all others.
And that is psychology ---not science, not the scientific method. It’s the frailty of the human condition which helms the attempt at science. And fails miserably.
Eg:
We, as a group of beings we like to call humans, still don't know what an atom is. Nice name and descriptors and all, but if you dig into it, we still can't really define an atomic particle with any clarity. Even with all that text, effort, and minds on it.
Why not attack all that use atoms? Damned snake oil atomic particles!
What's the difference, here? None, really....