Except, you are the one who brought up the term 'straw man'. Maybe re-read your prior points...like: "No, because it is not the responsibility of the person running the demo what the audience do with their money. If the general hi-fi buying public are not willing to take responsibility out of the hands of people who write about hi-fi for a living, or demo it for a living, or sell it for a living, and develop a robust process for their purchasing decisions when evaluating first-world luxury purchases of a non-essential variety, then that's their problem."
Thanks, Davey.
I'll make this my last post.
I would have preferred to be shown where I justified deceit (as opposed to where I place the onus for how the consumer spends their disposable income on them rather than gurus or experts) (1), but in the absence of any such evidence, I'll say this...
People believe in extraterrestrials. People believe in UFOs. People believe in gods. People believe in vampires. People believe in four leaf clovers. People believe in love at first sight. People believe in Santa. People believe in moon landing conspiracies. People believe in jars of magic stones that increase soundstage palpability and midrange bloom. All despite the fact no such robust scientific evidence exists whatsoever.
The willingness of a given population to be deceived is usually much, much greater than the number of individuals willing to deceive them. Some of them even sign up to "audiophile societies", because they believe that sonic nirvana is only a ceramic/carbon composite tweak away - at least, that's what reviewer X wrote in The Absolute Stereophile (2).
Am I saying I don’t care about people being deceived? No. I do care, especially for those closest to me. But I can’t do much about what other people are willing to believe. And, in any case - and to repeat what I have tried very hard to articulate in my previous posts - in all the above examples, the measurable impact and scalability of real-world harm is low to zero.
I’m sorry I can’t put this any clearer than I already have.
Enjoy the thread.
Best,
853guy
(1) Note: I make a distinction between disposable income and investments. I believe I covered that in the last paragraph of post #34.
(2) I won't get into the logical fallacies associated with appeals to authority here, and the need for individuals to justify expenditure relative to the recommendations of those with no skin in the game, i.e. guys who get paid to host cable demos.