@andy2
Ha, as a bit of a philosophy nerd, yes Hume is one of my favorites!
*nerd hat on*
Yes, best to assume most people are telling the truth - which is justified inductively (most of the time people tell the truth), by the principle of parsimony (prima facie acceptance of truth-telling tends to explain people’s behavior without the additional hypothesis they have a motive for lying) , and in discussions by the principle of charity (if we didn’t accept that people believe what they are claiming to believe, and instead presumed the other side is lying, conversation would be impossible, not to mention it seems special pleading if we hold ourselves to be truth-telling but do not presume this for others).
See what happens when you bring up philosophy?! ;-)
But that idea was already taken care of in my previous replies as a red herring.
Second, we have to assume that our ears are reliable after all they are transducers just like any other sensors.
The assumption of the general reliability of our senses. Yes. But of course not wholesale. We need to recognize their limits, and where they are fallible too, right? That’s why I have a carbon monoxide detector in my house.
Now let’s say somebody gave me some data that prove cable burn in does exist, I could very say "I don’t trust your equipment. It’s possible that the equipment is not accurate." The person would say it’s not possible because the equipment has been calibrated. I then would say how do I know the calibration was accurate because the equipment you used to calibrate is not correct. That person then told me it’s not possible because that piece of equipment that he used to calibrate was already calibrated by another even more accurate equipment. I then would say I don’t trust that either. It’s possible that equipment is not even accurate. I want you to prove to me beyond any doubt that the data is absolutely accurate.
But it’s not simply good enough to raise possibilities in negating a claim; we need to raise "plausibilities."
If my peanut butter sandwich disappears from my picnic table, and I know my dog is around and my dog likes to snatch food from the table, and likes peanut butter...AND my dog has bread crumbs now around his mouth...then this is a plausible explanation for the missing sandwhich.
If someone suggests that Kim Jong Un’s secret agents "could have" stolen the sandwich for him to eat, that’s logically "possible" but hardly "plausible."
Now, presuming that the type of data and measuring techniques your "somebody" used are IF WORKING appropriate to the task (if not, the whole analogy fails anyway)....then there is already plausibility on the side of the measurements and conclusions. If you raise an objection that the equipment "might have been" out of calibration, it’s up to you to show that’s plausible, not merely possible.
As it happens, you probably could raise some case for the plausibility, in the sense that equipment can go out of calibration and this is one reason we want to try and repeat our results - especially by other parties trying to replicate your results or prove you wrong. (If this person was presenting his data as decisive, I’d be already dubious about this).
So it’s fair to say something like "this data looks sound for your hypothesis...and constitutes some evidence in favor of it. However, given what can go wrong it terms of equipment or experimenter error, I’d like to see these results replicated."
(There’s also background assumptions and facts that will demand more before we assent to a conclusion in some cases over others - the infamous Opera Experiment yielding faster than light particles being a good example - but will leave that for now) .
The problem is that each time you raise the ante by saying "But THIS could have been out of alignment, but THAT could have been out of alignment" you raise the burden ever further for the plausibility of your alternative explanation. Are X, Y and Z measuring systems USUALLY out of calibration? The more you add, the less likely your alternative explanation.
Presumably your friend is starting off with a plausible hypothesis derived from what is generally known and generally accepted about the properties of electricity and cables, which makes his hypothesis "there shouldn’t be an audible difference with burned in cables" plausible in the first place. And as an alternative hypothesis to explain the reports of cable differences with burn in, we have mountains of established evidence for bias/perceptual errors making that alternative plausible.
If you wanted to raise objections, mere skepticism isn’t enough, you’d have to show there are actual good reasons to doubt the results, not raise mere "possibilities" that "something might have gone wrong."
And if your friend is using in his tests generally accepted methods used successfully and reliably elsewhere, then you have the harder road to plow in defending your skepticism.
And nothing is "proven beyond any doubt" in the empirical method.
Cheers, and thanks for the conversation!
(Will a bunch of people find a conversation like this a bore? For sure! But as analogluver pointed out, some people will no doubt find it interesting).
