Is there hope of bridging the subjectivist/objectivist rift?

jazdoc said:

This thread reminded of the Stereophile article about Subjectivists and Objectivists from April 1992 "Across The Great Divide" by Barry Willis. The combatants change but the arguments don't. Here are a few highlights:

"The vociferousness with which this issue is being argued is unjustifiable. Neither side has a case which ultimately can be proved or disproved. Both positions consist of strongly held opinions backed by statistical and anecdotal evidence, both have elements of truth, and both are seriously flawed. As in most disputes, fanatics on both sides take themselves far too seriously....

The time has come to stop the vicious and unreasonable ridicule of colleagues with whom we do not agree. Rancor and hysteria have no place in the quest for scientific knowledge, or in the pursuit of the elusive musical truth. This internecine dispute serves only to distract us from that great passion which unites us: the love of music."

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Basically what I said

jazdoc said:

(...) The time has come to stop the vicious and unreasonable ridicule of colleagues with whom we do not agree. Rancor and hysteria have no place in the quest for scientific knowledge, or in the pursuit of the elusive musical truth. (...)

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The big issue is when people can not accept the OR and insist in making it an AND, with one of them dominating the other, and do not understand we are still a far way from achieving it. Then coexistence can be a problem ...

microstrip said:

Jack,
I hope you are not referring to a digital scale!

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Of course I am! ROFL!!!!

I say we will bridge the rift right after we solve world hunger and bring peace to the mideast.

I think it'll happen when the planet runs out of water. No water, no pee, no pissing contests.

There is a simple reason that objectivists and subjectivists continue to have disagreements. In a nutshell, the things we measure don't have a lot to do with the human ear's hearing rules. One of my favorites has to do with harmonic distortion and the use of loop negative feedback:

The Objectivists have as an ideal that the circuit in question should have no distortion. To accomplish this the traditional method is to apply negative feedback as a correction to the circuit. The problem is that this does not work perfectly, although it does work. What happens is that most even-ordered harmonics are eliminated or severely reduced, however odd-orders can actually be *increased*.

Now it was proven back in the 1960s that humans object pretty quickly to odd ordered harmonic distortion and can hear trace amounts. OTOH most people will not object to up to 30% THD if its all composed of the 2nd. So when negative feedback is used, its possible for it to result in a circuit that measures quite well but sounds objectionable.

We run into this all the time. This is why you see so many zero feedback designs that have turned up, especially in the last 20 years (most SETs are zero feedback). It turns out that the ear brain system uses odd ordered harmonics to determine how loud a sound is (something that is easily proven with very simple test equipment BTW). This is why we can hear very subtle amounts of odd ordered distortions.

Essentially the need to get zero distortion (objectivist ideal) is pitted against the very real aspect of how our ears actually work (subjectivist issue). We are not going to resolve this until the spec sheets are designed to show specs that actually relate to how our ears hear, IOW you should be able to tell how an amplifier or preamplifier will sound from the spec sheet. Right now we can't do that, although there is sort of inverse correlation with very low THD figures likely being a bad thing (incidentally, IM distortion is something the ear also hears, so if this figure is low that is usually a good thing).

I have posed just one example, and there are many more.

I don't see them as separate camps. The are roads that take you only so far. If you want to make it all the way you'll have to get off the one rodd and travel the other.

Ok, let’s bring the objectivist – subjectivist debate to its final conclusion.

Maybe you experienced this yourself or at least you probably have witnessed it a couple of times.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, get a child and after two years they split as they can stand the sight of each other. They even need a lawyer because the hatred is so big, normal communication is impossible.
Has the boy changed, has the girl changed? No.
Has there been friends suggesting that marrying is not a good idea because the other is not the right type. Probably but for sure this information is completely ignored.

This is typically for passion, the stronger the passion the more it deprives us of our reality testing.
Conclusion: the subjectivist method sucks if it is about reality.

But I need a woman.
I asked my psychologist how to get one without falling in the trap of subjectivism.
He told me that science is about the general not about the specific.
Science struggles a little when it is about the individual.
He also told me that if you have a strong theoretical framework, you can make accurate predictions.
Unfortunately psychology doesn’t have such a strong theory.
However, you can always stage an experiment to find out and of course this experiment should be conducted double blind.
His advice, go to bed with as many women as possible but do so in an entirely dark room.
DBT you know.
Not being one to ignore the advice of a man of science I did.
I can assure you the scientific method is great, it is f**king great.
But one caveat. As the experimental condition was DBT, I wouldn’t recognize the women out in the street and neither did they recognize me.
So I remained all alone.

Conclusion: the scientific method sucks if it is about the individual.

Vincent Kars said:

Ok, let’s bring the objectivist – subjectivist debate to its final conclusion.

Maybe you experienced this yourself or at least you probably have witnessed it a couple of times.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, get a child and after two years they split as they can stand the sight of each other. They even need a lawyer because the hatred is so big, normal communication is impossible.
Has the boy changed, has the girl changed? No.
Has there been friends suggesting that marrying is not a good idea because the other is not the right type. Probably but for sure this information is completely ignored.

This is typically for passion, the stronger the passion the more it deprives us of our reality testing.
Conclusion: the subjectivist method sucks if it is about reality.

But I need a woman.
I asked my psychologist how to get one without falling in the trap of subjectivism.
He told me that science is about the general not about the specific.
Science struggles a little when it is about the individual.
He also told me that if you have a strong theoretical framework, you can make accurate predictions.
Unfortunately psychology doesn’t have such a strong theory.
However, you can always stage an experiment to find out and of course this experiment should be conducted double blind.
His advice, go to bed with as many women as possible but do so in an entirely dark room.
DBT you know.
Not being one to ignore the advice of a man of science I did.
I can assure you the scientific method is great, it is f**king great.
But one caveat. As the experimental condition was DBT, I wouldn’t recognize the women out in the street and neither did they recognize me.
So I remained all alone.

Conclusion: the scientific method sucks if it is about the individual.

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Vincent, you crack me up

It would be a great way to end this thread unless others want to continue to smolder the fire

As Greg has always repeated "you can't generalize to the specific."

As for making love to women in the dark. I think it was a dark room in the "Crying Game."