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wrote:
Steven Sullivan wrote:
wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 30 Sep 2005 02:51:38 GMT, wrote:

wrote:
wrote:

P.S. How often has anybody done a blind test in which they listened for
days? Let's say 4 switches per trial, 2 days per switch, 20 trials:
that's 160 days. Has this ever happened? Ever?

No one who understands human hearing perception would waste his time on
such an endeavor. It's nonsensical (as well as being a bad test).

How would we know what the result would be if we haven't done it?

In exactly the same way that we know that you will never run a
3-minute mile.

Your statement here, and Bob's statement about "elephants that can
fly", are statements about performance. Can my body *perform* to that
level; does an elephant have the *ability* to fly?

This seems to reflect the basic assumption in your paradigm: that the
performance of the test subject in discriminating A & B is a good way
to understand perception.

Whereas I ask, not how the ear/brain "performs," but simply: do the
different sounds A & B produce different experiences? And then I
investigate how one might go about determining if they do or do not.

How about asking yourself this question instead: do the different
experiences arise from objective differences in the sounds? Or, as is
possible, do they arise purely from subjective errors in perception?

That is the precise question I ask myself. That why I wrote "do the
different SOUNDS produce different experiences?"

Different *sounds* implies different waveforms --
physical differences in the compression waves that reach the ear.
But that's not required for you to think you heard something
different.

By the way, you use the word "error".

Yes, because if one perceives a difference when there *is no difference*
that can only be an error in perception. They aren't uncommon...whihc
is why 'science' -- by far the most successful method for modelling
the physical world that we have yet devised -- doesn't 'trust' sense perception
implicitly.

If listening to the same thing
twice produces different subjective impressions, I don't conclude that
necessarily there has been an "error" in perception. I suggest that
context affects perception.

I suggest that you try calling a spade a spade, for once.

--

-S