Let's see how long before this post gets derailed and deleted by Admin.
3, 2, 1......
Take it on faith: A cease-and-desist letter to those who only believe in measurements
Faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith). Faith is often considered to be distinct from and even contrary to science. I argue science is based on faith. Specifically, it is faith in the belief that measurements are always correct, and they alone can reveal the world around us. However, there is no evidence that this approach will always provide a correct and complete depiction of our environment.
I am not anti-science. In fact, I am all about science. I was a science major in college. I taught high school biology and chemistry. I employ science every day in my current career. I also use it to make decisions when it comes to audio, and I can point to a scientific basis behind my equipment decisions, speaker/listener locations and room treatment. I believe John Locke’s scientific method is a wonderful boon to mankind. But although data may rule my life, I know that science has its limitations.
The scientific method is an empirical approach and relies on our eight senses or extensions thereof to measure phenomena, enabling us to better understand and control our environment. People who embrace this approach believe if something cannot be measured, it cannot exist. They have total faith in this approach and deny the credibility of others whose senses do not or cannot yield something in units. In essence, these disciples take it on faith that measurements are the only true way to make sense of the world. However, we just may not have developed the instrument that enables us to measure the event. Early digital is a good example of our senses superseding the limitations of our understanding of the technology and hence, our measurements. Other examples of this include our past beliefs that we could destroy mass, that the earth is flat, and the universe is not expanding. And cables and amplifiers all sound the same.
Others find their senses can reveal events that are not apparent to some and may not even be measurable. Some people can smell faint odors or feel a slight breeze that others cannot. My wife can find a Petoskey stone on a beach out of thousands of rocks; I cannot see it even when I am standing over it. Different cables, fuses, amplifier topology, or cartridge design may or may not result in the same or even any data points and may or may not sound alike. But just because you cannot hear a difference nor measure a difference does not mean there is no difference. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, just as good sound may be in their ear.
Some of us have at least as much faith in our ears as we do in our REW software and associated hardware. I start room setup with acoustic theory and then confirm with measurements, but the final placement is always a result of what sounds most pleasing. I would not know how to determine speaker toe-in using a microphone.
While I will always have to trust my senses, I am not handicapped by relying solely on those that are associated with a number.
“…not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” William Bruce Cameron, 1963
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While I suppose this is intended as to be a helpful point of view, it is the kind of rhetoric that gives credence to those with unexamined beliefs to have more faith in there beliefs and that that truth is just a point of view. I’m not going to spend the morning refuting every part of it. But here are some of the issues. Why This Is Bad Rhetoric: Good Reasoning Requires But the argument uses
It’s compelling storytelling, but weak epistemology. Please explain this as well.
It uses emotionally resonant examples to downplay the rigor of scientific reasoning—while claiming to defend it. My focus is to understand what we know an how we can know it and to converge on truth... not show the foundation of everything is faith. What has impressed me endlessly about science (I was trained and worked as a scientist for over a decade) was the rigor and reproducibility, the ability to reproduce endlessly the results of experiments with increasing accuracy. There is another thread somewhere where the four kinds of investigation of science are discussed... yes, you must use the correct approach to the right problems. This is the kind of rhetoric which folks that do not understand it point to and say, see even among the intellectuals truth is just faith.
Along these lines, I do not like to use the word “know “because it assumes there is a truth, but indeed there are only beliefs. When everybody believes the same thing, then it is regarded as a truth. But is it? We know nothing. We believe much. There is no spoon.
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I feel comfortable commenting as a four decade scientist. The scientific method is a rational approach to solving problems. Measurements are only useful for solving problems if they are relevant.
This is what is problematic with the ASR approach- the measurements they make are not all relevant, as they are static and not done under dynamic conditions and do not typically examine aspects such as phase. The same mistakes were made by Julian Hirsch, who apparently never fully understood that whole circuit feedback was affected by time delay, and thus great amounts of such feedback, while reducing static distortion for an unvarying signal of a given frequency, actually greatly increased distortion for dynamic music reproduction through transient intermodulation distortion. | |||||||||||
Great post! thanks... When i proposed the same points to Amir of ASR using physicist Hans Van Maanen articles , he mocked him as a mere hobbyist ...
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