I Just Don't Hear It - I wish I did

It saddens be that so many people ascribe their lack of understanding of some of the many phenomena within our world to the nature of the world, itself, and not themselves.
I've grown so tiresome of all those, "I can't understand how, therefore it must not be," arguments.
"I don't understand how this tweak could work, so it doesn't."
"That flies in the face of current theory, so those claims must be false."
If science, herself, were to operate within those parameters, it would never advance.
What hubris! "To me, evolution just doesn't seem possible. So the theory is false."
"I don't see how the world could come to be without a creator, so there must be one."
"I do things for a reason. So, nature does, too."
We live in a world where anthroporphism has run amok,
The world of high-end audio is no different.
If we can't explain it, it must not work.
If we can't reconcile the theory behind something with our own (generally, quite limited) precepts regarding kinetics, or electro-magnetism, or quantum mechanics, or gravitation, or the strong and weak nuclear forces--then we are being conned!
What a bunch of horsesh*t!
Friends, reality doesn't give a f*ck what you think.

A few of the conundrums with which we "audiophiles" are faced are:
1) The varying degrees of our acuity of hearing bear no relationship to our bankbooks.
2) Listening is a learned skill of which most of us have little.
3) I suspect that, ofttimes, the developer of an expensive tweak
a) Doesn't, really, know why it works, so they posit something that may be absurd, or, at best have little to do with anything, and
b) Won't simply admit that the cost of the product has nothing to do with the cost of its manufacture but, rather, with an attempt to recoup the R & D involved in its development.
(This is exactly the same as a pharmaceutical company trying to recoup its investiture it a newly developed product before it must be offered in generic form.)

One sad truth is that many "audiophiles" lack either the faculty, or training, or both, to discern those heightened sonic attributes for which they so often pay so dearly.
It would not surprise me if less than twenty percent of you reading this, now, can hear well enough to discern what those "golden-eared" ones can.
Furthermore, I suspect that very few of the "golden eared" have honed their listening abilities sufficiently to make effective use of what effectively remain naught but latent abilities.
So, many of us are just wasting money, when we tweak.
And many of the rest of us are simply not getting our money's worth.
Though the fault, in both cases, lies, solely, within ourselves and bears no relationship to the genuine efficaciousness of the product, or procedure, in question,

Now, I'm off to play drinking games with Christopher Hitchens and shall see you on the morrow.

Well, it does depress me that the sort of thinking I attack in my post leads to things like my good state of Texas wishing to stop teaching evolution to my children.
As it all applies to audio, not so much.
Your attempt at a reductio ad absurdum retort falls rather flat,Tholt.
I never said that "pretty much everybody has no idea what they're hearing", implying that they "therefore have no basis to judge if it's truly good or not".
I was referring to those subtle sonic attributes affected by tweaks.
And, yes, most people can't hear them.
That doesn't mean they can't tell good sound from bad, though.
Why would it? Does not possessing the taste buds of a first class sommelier mean one can't appreciate a good bottle of wine?

Then, you make another generalization.
For one thing, people who design audio equipment are, generally, not the same ones who sell tweaks.
And, not all people who design tweaks fail to understand why they work. Besides, that's hardly the point.
Suppose someone tries out forty types of glue putting a speaker they designed together before settling on the "right one".
Does it, then, follow that they would, or should, know why the one they, ultimately, chose sounded best? Of course not. If they possessed that sort of knowledge, they wouldn't have had to try out the first thirty-nine!

Just because some discoveries are stumbled upon doesn't mean they all are. Sound engineering principles don't fall by the wayside because of any of this.

You seem to be saying that what applies to some people applies to most. And that what applies to most, applies to all, creating your own absurdity.

That being said, I agree that, for many, paying more for differences they don't actually hear is a joke.
How much have YOU spent on jars of rocks, for instance?
Do you, always, do well in double-blind testing?
My accuracy rate is, typically, about 85%.

Oh, and, my god! Why do I always keep hearing that, "Nietzsche is dead."--God joke, year after year? What does that even mean, really?
Ha, ha. Nietzsche died. The joke's on him? In what way is that a witty comeback, or retort? You mean, he thought he wouldn't?
After all, one of Nietzsche's points was that we ALL die--as did that Jesus guy.
Upon the arrival of The Second Coming, we'll know the joke really was on Nietzsche. Because that means that after he died, he found that he, still, existed, albeit in the afterlife.
At that point, he, probably, looked around and said something like, "Uh oh." In German.

And did you hear the one about Ergo, the Philosophy student, who, when writing of Descartes' dictum, "Cogito ergo sum" responded, "Cogito sum Ergo"?

I'm not a (secular) humanist, btw.
I'm not really sure what I am and don't care.
As long as I'm not late for dinner.