"Gareth Magennis" wrote in
message



This debate between Scientists and Objectivists is never
going to be resolved to eithers' satisfaction.

This is especially true since most audiophiles who throw
these terms around don't seem to know what the generally
accepted meanings of these words are. I pointed this out in
pretty good detail and by citing some pretty fair references
as part of my opening remarks at the HE2005 debate with John
Atkinson. While I didn't quite come right out and say it,
Atkinson tortured these words in the style of Saddam Hussein
in his publicity blurb for the debate.

Scientists insist that unless things can be explained in
their terms, and only those terms that are currently
known about qualify to be such terms, then such things
are either imaginary, or "magic" or some other falsity,
again according to their own defined meaning of the words
"false, true, proof etc".

That would be sheerist BS. Scientists have literally
centuries of experience dealing with things that they can't
fully explain.One of the most if not the most fundamental
rules of science is that any particular explanation is
provisional, and only valid until it is falsified. The
falsification of long-standing beliefs is very common in
Science. Furthermore, beliefs that are in essence falsified
continue to have valid applications in broad areas of
scientific endeavor.

Ojectivists, on the other hand, are not scientists - they
just know what they experience and don't know how to
explain it in currently known scientific terms, or they
simply aren't that interested in this intellectual
persuit.

This would also be sheerist BS. So-called audio
objectivists are just people who are more comfortable
applying a fairly small and simple requirements to their
observations and beliefs. For example most so-called
objectivists affirm the validity of bias-controlled
listening tests. The whole idea of bias-controlled listening
tests is simple and common-sense. The basic idea of bias
controlled listening tests is that relevant influences that
are not directly related to hearing be managed in a
reasoanble way during the listening test. Furthermore, a
listening test is kind of a subjective evaluation, and if
objectivists were really the narrow fools that certain
people like to make them out to be, they should have no
interest in subjective evaluations of *any* kind. But these
so-called objectivists are quite interested and involved in
subjective evaluations, which brings the very fact that they
are called *objectivists* by some into question. Why are
these *objectivists* so interested and involved in
*subjective* evaluations? Perhaps they are not
*objectivists* at all but some kind of *subjectivist* after
all?

It must be very frustrating for them to be
confronted by scientists demanding that they explain
themselves in terms that may well be unexplainable at the
present.

As I explained just a few paragraphs back this is a straw
man argument based on Gareth's poor understanding of audio
objectivists and science itself.

How anyone can believe that anything can be shown to be
"true" is beyond me.

Well, now we get down to Gareth's *real* problem. He doesn't
really believe in anything at all. He seems to doubt that
anybody can believe anything.

All that can really be shown,
surely, is that an obsevation does not seem to agree with
the model, or hypothesis, that attempts to explain its
existance.

This ignores the converse possibility that an observation
can agree with a model or hypothesis. In the real world, as
opposed to Gerth's world of constant disagrement,
observations may or may not agree with a hypothesis.