I ran into this quote, relates to some of my recent comments about what I've
been reading from Jourdain about the perception of music"
jj grumpy old skeptic wrote in
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=31803
Basically, at each of the three classical stages of memory, you lose a LOT
of information (partial loudness, short-term
feature, long-term auditory object), and since you can GUIDE what you
remember, it's very easy for the memory of two IDENTICAL presentations
to be recalled as different SIMPLY DUE TO WHERE AND WHAT YOU FOCUSED ON
during the listening."
Two very important points:
(1) Comparisons based on long term listening by definition don't consider
all kinds of small differences.
(2) Comparisons based on long term listening accentuate the effects of the
listener's biases.