Quick Reply to One Point by DevilsAdvocate
DevilsAdvocate says this:
>PianoTeacher, you seem to like long posts, so I’ll give you one in return,
You have a certainly valid point for the conditions of a scientific test. But, I have at least tried to point out in other posts in this thread that this is not a scientific test -- it is a challenge to prove paranormal ability.
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My response to this is, succinctly, that you have misdescribed what the test is about. What you have done is to substitute your biased position -- "that ridiculous GSIC effect must be a paranormal claim" for the manufacturer's claims (honest, lying, fraudulent, or just stupidly false), and assume that you KNOW that if GSIC worked, it would be by paranormal means, not normal means. I know that you may object to how I've inferred that but before you do, read on to the end of my points about where any alleged paranormalism might occur., and how to falsify that. As I see it, this has nothing directly to do "with what Wellfed hears or claims to hear".
The first problem I see is that, despite my extremely logical inferences of what GSIC "really is", based on my (amateur and partly professional) understanding of science, I am actually claiming that I do *not* know anything about it, nor whether or not it could be related to paranormal phenomena, or just "hidden esoteric science", or whether Wellfed's perception is related. I have *no* data. We have no examination of the device. We have no metrical test of the device. We have no JREF test of the device. We have...nothing. Just "stuff" that people say.
The second problem is, that an understanding of what GSIC *claims* it can do, by having an effect on the way that the digital data is permanently encoded on the disk, is unexplained. And according to their claims, a permanent physical change occurs on the CD. Therefore, no paranormal phenomena are occurring at all DURING PLAYBACK if the disk is physically changed so that the digital-to-analog conversion is different; the paranormalism -- if any, and claimed here exclusively by you -- is happening at one discrete time in the past, the 2-seconds of the GSIC application. FROM THAT POINT FORWARD, no paranormal phenomena are occurring. NONE! Wellfed plays the disk and thinks he hears the change. Now, if the disks were actually physically changed, then Wellfed MIGHT be able to hear the change through normal no-paranormal effects. And he might be hearing other things and incorrectly attributing them to GSIC...and he might be so confused that he really doesn't know; and he might be making it all up.
We can only INFER paranormalism several steps away from what Wellfed "hears".
We need to know if what Wellfed reports is a real effect, or a delusion, or a confusion of an acutely-focused but not very scientific and well-organized listener. I hate to say it, but we must also consider the possibility that he is not truthful.
Another way to test for the inference of paranormalism is indeed TO SEE IF THE DISK IS PHYSICALLY CHANGED...a relatively straightforward process that nobody seems to have done with precision. (I wonder why?)
Now, assume that Wellfed has been lied to. He has been told "our device changes the disk; it will permanently sound better because we have re-arranged matter on the disk." But he doesn't know any engineering. He believes this lie. And he hears "nuances" all the time, and they are often subtle and elusive...and his mind plays tricks and he thinks he's confirmed them. But testing his assertions is actually not directly a test for paranormalism, it is a test of his credulity and absolutely organized and repeatable listening faculties.
Remember: the manufacturer claims that the PHYSICAL DISK IS CHANGED. Once that change occurs, there are no fairies dancing around paranormally.
We can only test Wellfed's claim and see if he can repeat his perceptions against reference disks. If they don't match, we infer scientifically only that he failed to match up disks with expectations. It is a rather large leap from that, to asserting that we've tested for "paranormalism". It takes a couple of steps, including one that even the manufacturer isn't claiming, to attach this to "paranormal belief".
I know I seem to be splitting hairs. But this is the trouble and the paradoxes posed by tricky advertisers using pseudoscientific jargon. Is it paranormal to have "changed pits on a disk"? No. Changed pits cause (or might cause) changes in the sound. We should simply AVOID testing per Wellfed, and test for CHANGED DISK PHYSICALITIES.
But, we don't: because we want to "test for paranormal beliefs" and have a bit of fun with a naive person, who knows little about engineering, with high confidence that we will make a fool of him.
The fact that *I* cannot readily explain what could happen during that 2-seconds does not automatically lead to the conclusion that "a paranormal event is the only explanation" and we must falsify it.
Now, look at it this way. You make up a phony product that does not work (which we all suspect). You want to exploit the credulity of nuance-seekers lacking scientific knowledge, and baffle them with BS. Paranormalism is the first thing that rationalists think of when their testing process runs out of steam. But, unfortunately, DevilsAdvocate: MINE has not run out of steam! *I* have not BEGUN to test!!
I can test the disk vis-a-vis an untested disk; I've proposed how. It involves NO human listeners.
Only *then* am I prepared to think about asserting "this is a paranormal claim" because I have -- now, take a deep breath, everybody! -- falsified repeatably, with scientific process and metrics, THAT THE DISKS DO NOT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFER, except for normal expected pressing-run variations.
Ooops! Variations. Differences. Normal in any comparison of two copies of the same disk. Ugh.
Yet, I can never achieve a Platonic test of non-identity because as I've shown, no two copies of a given title of a CD of the same music ARE ACTUALLY IDENTICAL.
Before I can assert that the disks ARE changed, I have to weight that assertion.
Ooooops! We add some "ambiguities" here; some complexity! I have to factor the "average or mean or median differences in physical structure between random paired untreated samples of a single title", against "the measured physical differences between a an allegedly "treated", and untreated, CD." I have to use controls and statistical weighting to decide the order of magnitude of difference, and then to break that down by further scientific investigation to see what could have caused it -- if the disks ARE significantly different, and I cannot ascribe that to normal production errors because it is outside the "window" I have earlier established.
OOOOps! I don't find myself ready, now, to declare: paranormalism. I always find "differences". What next?
I still have not run out of steam. I can do those tests, and more experiments of the physical differences of what happens when the disks are played, by using data analyzers to record, and then by using a specialized computer program to compare, bit by bit, the raw output of the CD player photodiode. Plotted over time, the raw stream of bits MUST be different, if the disks are different; and we can also measure BEFORE error-correction and quantify differences and see if they were caused by mis-reads, or by some global pattern shifting that MIGHT indeed infer "GSIC effect".
Having falsified that, I might likely conclude "there is no GSIC effect; it's a fraudulent lie."
Or, I might instead prefer to do other kinds of electrical tests or optical tests that measure the properties of the CD. Perhaps we might speculate, "GSIC effect if real might not MOVE THE PITS AROUND, but use properties of the plastic substrate to alter the reflections -- or somehow introduce 'subtractive phase variations', etc." (Remember my explanation of Dynagroove's actual real "subtractive distortion cancellation"? It would be theoretically posssible to propose that there are physical ways to introduce refractive index variations that would change the photodiode response to the data stream. So, even if the pits "were not moved", can we KNOW to a scientific certainty that the plastic's transmissivity and refractive properties WERE NOT ALTERED? No, we can't. But we can test for that!
I finish those tests and make my conclusions... perhaps there I have falsified GSIC effect.
Indeed, I can also do my earlier type of "analogue subtractive difference test" in order to derive the actual electrical analogue differences of the mixed, phase-reversed audio signals of two synched disks (one treated, one untreated.) Controlling for system noise levels and other factors, I can measure any "difference" signal in the analogue audio output, and then quantify it in comparison to the difference signals derived from control disk pairs that were untreated. Another analysis is performed: have I falsified GSIC effect yet? I don't know at the moment because it's a thought experiment, but I *could* do it in the lab.
I have shown that there are several tests I would INSIST on performing -- ignoring the stupid, silly, time-wasting JREF-Wellfed test, which is ridiculous and pointless! -- and if none of them falsified GSIC effect, and NO OTHER SCIENTIST could falsify it over a considerable period of time...then we can all start to safely assert:
GSIC CLAIMS ARE PARANORMAL
and can give up on good practical tests, and do a more intelligently crafted Wellfed-JREF test, since only NOW do we all conclude, with more than mere bias, that we THINK the GSIC is either (a) non-existent; or (b) a paranormal claim.
You are leaping past all physical science, DevilsAdvocate, in asserting NOW that promoting GSIC is promoting paranormalism, and that if Wellfed "hears" something, it is because somehow he has "paranormal ability".
But, wait!!!!!!
I showed that Wellfed's part in the test is NOT a test of paranormal ability: because the GSIC advocates say the sound is different, because the DISK HAS BEEN CHANGED.
So, we nullify the Wellfed-JREF test of paranormal ability.
We must INSTEAD test ONLY for the assertion that "something paranormal happens when the GSIC is put on top of the player."
That is an ENTIRELY different test than testing Wellfed.
I summarize:
1. GSIC people claim the CD is permanently affected.
2. An altered CD sounds different: that is normal, not paranormal.
3. Testing Wellfed's claims about what he hears is therefore not a direct test of paranormal ability. Since the unverified assertion is that THE DISKS ARE DIFFERENT AFTER TREATMENT, the non-paranormal, normal factors affecting what Wellfed might hear are not, by definition, a test of paranormal ability.
4. After science has exhausted all known rational testing procedures, we can assert, in the absence of any other solution, that GSIC effect is caused by paranormal factors.
5. But the paranormal incident would only happen during the 2-second period of time the GSIC gadget allegedly works. It has nothing to do what Wellfed might or might not hear through REAL PHYSICAL DISK CHANGES that, down the line, cause a NORMAL effect on what Wellfed could perceive.
6. Wellfed must, perforce, be removed from test altogether, and another test must be crafted to verify the existence of paranormalism vis-a-vis GSIC.
I fear, DevilsAdvocate, that you have abandoned science and rushed to indulge in your own bias, which seems to me to be "I accuse certain audiopiles of paranormal beliefs, likely to explain their reports of nuances." This bias of yours is SO STRONG that you want to subvert rational scientific processes that could actually provide meaningful data, to "test" poor (maybe deluded, maybe misinformed, maybe sneaky) Wellfed.
I have to say that I was so arrested by the top of your reply to me, and had to formulate this complicated logical response, that I did not finish dissecting your remarks, which I shall do later; apologies.
PianoTeacher
