Don Pearce said:

Audio 'borgism can creep up on you.

I think presenting the option is hardly brainwashing -

How, exactly, do you "present the option"? If "the option" is engaging in
"tests", it seems quite impractical to me. Krazy Krooger just fatuously
Kroo-klaimed that one can do meaningful DBTs without a comparator and without
spending a great deal of time. Those are patently false assertions. Perhaps
you can shed some light on this subject.

You just get somebody to plug cables in. You listen. You say "that one has
warmth and speed that the last one didn't have". Or you say, "this one
sounds grainy, so it clearly isn't made with oxygen-free copper".

That isn't "scientific" though, is it? It's clearly not double-blind. And it
sounds time-consuming. How many switches would you have to do to achieve a
statistically meaningful result?

You do that a couple of dozen times, then you compare your list with the
list the guy plugging in the cables has.
You then publish the results in Stereophile (because that is the august
journal you work for), and apologise for all the bull**** you printed in
the past.

Love that scientific mindset. ;-)

which I think we can happily direct to the other side of the argument.

You mean my "argument", i.e. that spending many hours and many dollars to
decide which cables to buy is foolish? If anybody doesn't view the issue that
way, it's a good bet they have issues about audio equipment.

No I mean the argument that says you can get better sound by spending a
thousand bucks a foot on boutique cables.

Why do you care who spends their own money on that stuff?