The Absurdity of it All

 Few points:

First, your general point -- "dogmatism is bad" -- seems easy to grant. To that I would only add, "Mean people suck."

Second, people who have learned to listen may have more to say than people who haven't, regardless of age. I used to think that if I was having a problem with my computer, I could just ask any nearby teenager or twenty-something. Turns out, most of them don't know how these things work, either. Find someone who knows, and age is irrelevant. Indeed, people using computers longer know more because you had to do more to get them to work, early on.

Third, if my hearing is that of a 50-something, why wouldn't I want the advice of someone in my generation, with a roughly commensurate hearing ability? We don't ask kids about the taste of wine because their taste buds are not in the same state as ours, and their preferences are wildly different.

Possibly of interest: "We propose that age-related hearing loss may be associated with poor micronutrient status. Two of the most common vitamin inadequacies in the elderly are vitamin B-12 and folate (15).....The cochlea of the inner ear is where much of the hearing loss in the elderly is believed to occur (23). The cochlea is highly vascularized and is supported by a single artery. High homocysteine concentrations associated with low vitamin B-12 status, low folate status, or both were shown to be a risk factor for cerebral, coronary, and peripheral vascular disease (24). Perhaps high homocysteine concentrations associated with poor vitamin B-12 or folate status also adversely affect blood flow to the cochlea. Low vitamin B-12 status may also impair myelination of the neurons in the cochlear nerve...." https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/69/3/564/4694205

@perkri  I really enjoyed reading your list of tweaks and the rationales for each of them! I'm still learning, so can you tell me how you listen to each tweak to determine what difference it's made and whether that tweak is working or not? Serious question because the only thing that will keep me from going down a rabbit hole is a process by which I can know (a) whether a tweak has done something and (b) the degree and character of it. Thank you.

@johnspain  Agreed. Hard for some to accept, but what we perceive is something developed with others. Sure, we taste things or hear or see things with our particular apparatuses, but interpretation is a socially mediated ability, like language. That’s why people take wine tasting or art appreciation classes. The notion that hearing-with interpretation is an individual-only ability is an anachronistic idea. It is, in a word, silly.