Response to Pup
Pup commented:
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Piano Teacher wrote, way back up there somewhere:
"How I could *possibly* want to *help* promote a phony, paranormal piece of audio mythology by analyzing this DOOMED protocol, is beyond me."
I'm not sure if that's a rhetorical statement, or feigned ignorance as a debating tactic, or an honest statement of puzzlement.
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The answer is that I intended it as a sincere expression of frustration, since I cannot understand how the repeated admissions of my biases as one who tends to be a "Dogmatic Skeptical Atheist" with respect to allegedly paranormal audio claims, can be called a PROMOTER of those claims; and that one could overlook the very real evidence of my critical thinking about this in the posts that I've made. I conclude, therefore, that the person who paranoically believes I am a "spy" and phony is merely pulling my chain (the most likely explanation).
You have taken, of course, one sentence out of a long series of related logical inferences, and may do with it what you like. Quoting out of context is a favorite technique of propagandists.
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If it's the latter ["an honest statement of puzzlement"], it shows naivete about how people behave when approaching a test that might reveal their fraud or expose their mistaken beliefs.
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I am not naive. I have both read rec.audio and its subdomains for years; and have debated on two other newsgroups for classical music lovers and astronomy buffs. I am almost 60 years old and have used the Internet for a long, long time. Naivete could perhaps explain my bewilderment at the antisocial raging I occasionally saw back around 1993 or 4, but now the noise-to-signal ratio and bizarre harrangues in many places on the Internet are "standard operating procedure." I am not the slightest bit naive about that.
I am assuming that you missed the explanation of who I am and what I've done professionally: being an audio engineer and technician, and a person who has conducted various types of complicated tests of equipment by both instrumental analysis and aural means. I have also been employed by a large optical company to do double blind tests of filters. There is a lot more that you may find, if you look back. It might tend to help you diffuse the notion that I am "naive", which you conclude from the isolated statement you quote.
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You've said repeatedly that even if the GSIC treatment made some real difference to a CD, this particular protocol would fail to show it.
That parallels things we've heard many times before:
"The effect is real, but I'm not sure I can prove it if... I'm under pressure, there's a skeptic in the room, I do it for money, etc..."
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You are projecting that I am LYING and MISDIRECTING and attempting to fool people.
Consider this alternative possibility: that I am attempting to control for biases, and variabilities, and errors during the test. In order to do so effectively, I have to make considerations of possible aspects of the entire gestalt of testing Michael, and his CDs, by means of his protocol, with respect to standard controlled procedures for double blind test protocols.
Because I am personally biased to believe that -- take a deep breath now -- GSIC IS NONSENSE (which I have said over and over, in most of my posts, repeatedly), I also would control for my own biases and attempt to neutralize them, if I were designing the protocol.
Perhaps you would prefer that a biased tester just conduct a bias-influenced test, as long as the outcome agreed with WHAT YOU THINK.
I don't. I don't care about "what I think at the moment". Science constantly moves forward and refines and adjusts the working hypotheses of any given moment.
So I must prepare to isolate my BIAS and PAST EXPERIENCES as an audio tester and sound professional,
from effecting the test. To do so, I have to examine all MY biases, and those of everybody else having anything to do with examining the test protocol; conducting the test; analyzing the results; and being the test subject.
We do this by laying all our cards on the table.
I'm biased; I think the so-called GSIC effect simply does not exist; but I have to neutralize my bias so that it does not affect the test. To do that, I CONTROL for my bias, and that of others, on a basis of being well-informed about all possible test-properties.
One of them is the "speculation that the effect exists"; another possibility is that "the effect is irrelevant because the protocol has a built-in failure modality and no single individual human tester is likely to succeed"...so on, so forth.
The fact that I would identify and try to follow the logical consequences of these various conditions, scientifically, is a proper part of conceptualizing the entire gestalt of the test.
You are projecting INTENTIONAL DECEPTION on my part by making this suggestion, and the only way to falsify that hypothesis is to examine it critically. The only evidence that may be offered here, colloquially, in this forum is whatever persuasive intellectual argument I could muster, and you are not constrained to find it convincing at all. By mere "argument" here, I can not actually convince you that I am not a LIAR; a FRAUD; or a "superior being from the Planet Xorax". Or a demented person. I can convince you of NOTHING, by merely typing into my browser posting field, other than that I take you seriously and want to consider your question responsibly if you so infer it.
I would rather not, however, allow the serious question of the test protocol be diverted semantically into sophistries.
Best,
PianoTeacher
I think I can guess why there's no permanent version, can't you?