The Placebo Effect

Uh, that was a very nice rant but this isn't about measurements and observations are often deceiving. 

Good post indeed like usual....Thanks...

Refreshing to listen a brain unplugged instead of parrots....

Even more new science about the ear and the brain ---coming in, just today.

What it says is ’we still don’t know how this ear/brain thing works’.

And someone wants to say that ’blind testing is king?’

That’s it’s all charlatans and palcebo, our imaginations?

that we have to submit to the just the electrical measurements being the arbiter of all things heard?

Are you kidding me?

To point, we still don’t know exactly how we hear, or how well we hear, and that there are variations in hearing quality and capcities that equal the range of intelligence between individuals. Meaning ... the range can be as high as 1 million to 1 (as compared to the human IQ range, re cognitive capacity but especially cognitive SPEED, or rate, over time....)

You can test the below thing on yourself easily.

One pair of cheap foam earplugs. ride the bus or drive your car downtown and then get out at the mall or a big station, etc, and then in the middle of that space (union square, times square, etc)...remove the earplugs.

You will feel your hearing sort out the noise from signal. you will feel it cut out the subsonics of your heartbeat, and the rush of blood in your veins, and so on. It will remove the thrum of air conditioning, buses driving by, subways, and other subsonics. You will feel it tune out that noise and tune in to just the sounds that are relevant to you.

What happened is that your hearing shut down and relaxed it’s processing and filters, as you walked around with the ear plugs in (10-20 minutes). Your hearing mechanism will assume the correct filtering scenarios over the course of 1.5- to 3 seconds, after you pull the earplugs out. You will literally be able to catch it, for some of you, the first time...consciously.

Note that this is automatic, subconscious animal level stuff that is out of your explicit control. But that does not mean that you cannot concentrate and filter. You are sporting the most complex and capable computer known to humanity, and you tend to use it. all day. every day. moving muscles, operating your lungs, eyeballs, and so on. and, thank the gods, you can learn. some much much faster or slower than others and in different ways. so our individual hearing vs the next person is not even close to being the same in level of quality OR type/nature.

Essentially, if you can’t hear it or if I can’t hear it, that does not automatically mean that the next person can’t. Remember. as varied in capacities in the brain tied to their individual hearing as there is variation in intelligence.
Most importantly, if you can’t hear all these things audiophiles speak about, you DEFINITELY don’t get to design or demand any tests or regimen. It should be obvious as to the why of it.

If it is still not obvious... then the idea of you being excluded from enforcing or deciding or demanding test regimen and type is REALLY way off the end off the limbs and out in the weeds of foolishness and incapacity.

~~~~~~~~~~
Researchers move one step closer to understanding how the brain processes multiple conversations at once

Conducting a discussion in a noisy place can be challenging when other conversations and background noises interfere with our ability to focus attention on our conversation partner. How the brain deals with the abundance of sounds in our environments, and prioritizes among them, has been a topic of debate among cognitive neuroscientists for many decades.

Often referred to as the "Cocktail Party Problem," its central question focuses on whether we can absorb information from a few speakers in parallel, or whether we are limited to understanding speech from only one speaker at a time.

One reason this question is difficult to answer is that attention is an internal state not directly accessible to researchers. By measuring the brain activity of listeners as they attempt to focus attention on a single speaker and ignore a task-irrelevant one, we can gain insight into the internal operations of attention and how these competing speech stimuli are represented and processed by the brain.

In a study recently published in the journal eLife, researchers from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University set out to explore whether words and phrases are identified linguistically or just represented in the brain as "acoustic noise," with no further linguistic processing applied.

"Answering this question helps us better understand the capacity and limitations of the human speech-processing system. It also gives insight into how attention helps us deal with the multitude of stimuli in our environments—helping to focus primarily on the task-at-hand, while also monitoring what is happening around us," says Dr. Elana Zion Golumbic, of Bar-Ilan University’s Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, who led the study.

Zion Golumbic and team measured brain activity of human listeners as they listened to two speech stimuli, each presented to a different ear. Participants were instructed to focus their attention on the content of one speaker, and to ignore the other.

The researchers found evidence that the so-called unattended speech, generated from background conversations and noise, is processed at both acoustic and linguistic levels, with responses observed in auditory and language-related areas of the brain.

Additionally, they found that the brain response to the attended speaker in language-related brain regions was stronger when it "competed" with other speech (in comparison to non-speech competition). This suggests that the two speech-inputs compete for the same processing resources, which may underlie the increased listening effort required for staying focused when many people talk at once.

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So... you want people to be forced to deal with blind testing and science has just shown that they have no idea what the F* we are testing for (FOR DECADES!!), and that they have no access to the primary mechanism and it can’t be measured except via people listening and reporting back.

Oh yeah...the big central thing in science that the measurement people have real problems with.

Observation. In science, OBSERVATION IS KING. It starts with ’I observe’, and goes from there.

I observe. I hear something. (Or hear an absence of).

So, you’ve got a component to the test that you can’t put a number on, and you can’t get rid of it by saying that if ’it can’t be measured, it can’t be real.’

To try to force that on the complex equation would literally equate with a form of insolent self forced retardation of the most blinkered kind...and to make everyone else conform to those demands.. a blinkering of the self or an incapacity to reach the complexity of the question at hand.

where one would invalidate themselves from being involved in the question, at all. Simply by opening one’s mouth and making blind testing demands and to be saying that numbers are all that counts.

What insanity.... and that’s audio science review and audioholics, in a nutshell.

Bent and distorted with inherent limitations which are grossly visible to all who can see...

And for the love of god, please grow up enough to keep it to yourselves. Thank you.

If placebo effect exist in audio, then it works both ways. If you strongly believe that cables have no effect on sound then you won't hear the difference in double blind testing - negative placebo effect.

Yes, of course I'd never say otherwise. I understand bias affects us all to deny it is silly. 

I know that when I first compared more cables, I did not want to like them because I didn't want to buy them...no one buys stuff they can't return or resell for cost...maybe need to watch out for reverse placebo effect...

If placebo effect exist in audio, then it works both ways.  If you strongly believe that cables have no effect on sound then you won't hear the difference in double blind testing - negative placebo effect.

+1 teo_audio

The film on Gore Vidal (The United States Of Amnesia) is fantastic! I was a watcher of Firing Line, the PBS show hosted by William F. Buckley. Bill and Gore---a regular guest---really got into it, usually on an intellectual level, sometimes more personal. Both brilliant and very educated, but polar opposites in political philosophy.

Thanks from my soul i just begin to watch it....

I read 2 novels of Vidal....Great mind....I never catch anything he say being stupid, or even completely wrong... i invite you to listen to his discussion without compromise with "the repulsive dark Vador brain" of Roy Cohn, the "grey matter" behind Trump void and behind McCarthism communist paranoia .... It is on youtube and you will understand Trump methods  completely...

He has a heart behind his mind....And he was too singular to be a sheep in any crowds....Peace to him and he loved his country enough to criticize it....

The film on Gore Vidal (The United States Of Amnesia) is fantastic! I was a watcher of Firing Line, the PBS show hosted by William F. Buckley. Bill and Gore---a regular guest---really got into it, usually on an intellectual level, sometimes more personal. Both brilliant and very educated, but polar opposites in political philosophy. 

It’s funny, I was thinking arguments denying the effect of bias in hearing reminds me of creationists denying evolution and low and behold as if sent from heaven here’s C. S Lewis tossed into the fray. I retreat to my trench.

Like usual superficial thinker equate Darwin with the late Darwinian materialist interpretation and they equate C.S. Lewis with the late cultist bible belt interpretation...

But  sorry one cannot ever look for science in a comic book....

And today confirming the prescient criticism about "scientism" of Lewis, now we are there, with transhumanism cult and tyranny in Google and behind some big corporations more powerful than states...

There is no "SCIENCE"  at  the singular, except for cultist , like there is no WORD of GOD at the singular except for cultist....

There is sciences in the plural, and many inspired spiritual texts coming from all cultures in the plural ...

Sciences are not reason, only a part of it....Religions are not completely irrational, only a part of them in each one of them....

Read Cassirer to know what science is and what other cultural forms are..... After that try Goethe....This will correct Newtonian view of science without being obliged to immerse yourself in quantum mechanics interpretations...

By the way Newton was too much intelligent to be a newtonian only....

@artemus_5  Thank you. 

Scientism effect

The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism - YouTube

Great man....C.S. Lewis was the best friend of Owen Barfield...A Goethe disciple...
Great video....

And Ernst Cassirer , a Goethe disciple also, explained what Lewis was seeing through but without explaining it completely....

Thanks.....

BTW @hilde45

Good post

The Dunning Kruger syndrome effect

Believing Your Own Hype: The Dunning-Kruger Effect - Flofinder

Scientism effect

The Magician's Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism - YouTube

Maybe Gore Vidal was right when he called this country the United States of Amnesia.

i dont think he was wrong often....

😊

Some here seem to forget how on another recent thread, there was an actual explanation and account of how real testing is done by someone who does it for a living.

The testing that is always harked on these threads is not considered a test methodology.

Maybe Gore Vidal was right when he called this country the United States of Amnesia.

Or maybe Goebbels was right when he proffered that the Big Lie, said often enough, can become conventional wisdom.

Or maybe, if we all clap long and loud enough, Tinker Bell can come back to life.

All the best,
Nonoise

One thing that is ABSOLUTE-

It is REAL that your wallet has been depleted.

We all know audio reproduction is outside known physics and human audibility limits. To think silly things like placebo effect or confirmation bias could remotely apply to humans in their den of audio tweaks is outlandish not to mention those crazy ABX or DB tests being relevant for anything other than testing mayonnaise.

You always miss the point and then sarcastingly accuse all set of audiophiles to refuse to play the game of blindtest and refuse placebo effect...easy strawman argument....

Do you think that i think that placebo dont play for me in all my listening experiments? They do, saying otherwise and putting your words in my mouth is the perpetual strawman argument where you confine yourself in a false STATIC dichotomy between what is subjective and what is not....

But placebo live at the borderline frontier between audible and inaudible.... Only fool can explain with placebo, most effects "sustained", very audible change, in time tough.... Are you one?

And are you like those wo dont trust their own ears to the point refusing ANY listening experiments of their own in case they could be deluded by placebo ? Are you afraid of your own mother? Because placebo is the MOTHER of all perception by the way....


Science is not something from a comic book resembling a war between subjectivist and objectivist, it is a bit more complex and less stupid than these "cultist" distinction like in scientology between those who are "clear" and those who are not....With a "blindtest" two separate the to in an "audit"....

Dont need blindtest for my culinary experiment either , and for my contemplation of the "illusive" rainbow.....

and some wander into hot retorts of projected fantasy about other people's thoughts on the nature of reality and testing it.

We all know audio reproduction is outside known physics and human audibility limits. To think silly things like placebo effect or confirmation bias could remotely apply to humans in their den of audio tweaks is outlandish not to mention those crazy ABX or DB tests being relevant for anything other than testing mayonnaise.

The same superficial mind ask for blindtest and allege for placebo about anything....Then accuse audiophiles to refuse blindtest... i love blindtest, organize one near my city i will go..... It is an educational show.... Nothing less, nothing more, save for superficial brain....i dont need blindtest in my assessing experiments amounting to hundred CUMULATIVE small changes....."blackbox" single experiments are enough....

No piano tuner need blindtest....With your own audio system you are the tuner....Let  some idiot figure it out with scientism...



Great post teo_audio

You stated that placebo effect last about 15 minutes and that something objectively obvious needn't involve it. 

I've pointed out before that placebos, in medicine, work only for so long as the manifest reasons will always assert themselves, and for that reason, is a lousy analogy to use in audio.

Hearing something amiss is no less a way to ascertain something as seeing something is. It's just the use of another sense. Parlor tricks can fool anyone but after a good listening to cues you are familiar with, you can tell the difference. 

The whole purpose of these tests that amateurs require intentionally omits the way one familiarizes oneself with something by hastening the sampling rate. Like I said, it's a parlor trick that can reduce any certainty to no better than that of a coin toss. But they get to say it's all sciencey.

All the best,
Nonoise

I would agree that placebo effect is an actual physical reaction.  The problem I have is when it's denied placebo effect happens in audio perception. 

Interesting post. Just a quick question for clarification. You write,

"Bottom line, placebos can result in perceived improvement even where no actual improvement exists."

Since perception (and pain, of course) is strongly associated with physical mechanisms, then a placebo must be doing something to those mechanisms, correct?

If that’s right -- and it seems it must be -- then "perceived improvement" is "actual improvement" it’s just not "longterm improvement."

This seems like a trivial point upon which to ask for clarification, but it’s important to recognize that there is nothing "subjective" at work in placebos. They do have effects, and those effects have physiological concomitants, it’s just that their effects do not indicate they’re addressing underlying mechanisms which, if addressed, could have longer term affects which would be perceptible as well.

Sound right?

I like the upgrade effect.

Don't expect nothing but jumping through hoops trying to deny the obvious on this forum J. Chip.

No.

Just No.

One can’t apply the idea of ’knowing’ to the equation, in the attempt to solve it... if most of one part of the equation is an unknown.

And the unknown is the human hearing mechanism.

We know that this quandary remains unsolved.

So to call ’placebo, they’re all fooling themselves’, is just cr*p. Cr*p at a blind projecting level that is pretty well wholly anti-science.

The equation keeps changing almost every day, if one is paying attention.

This just in, literally today:

Research challenges decades-old understanding of how we hear sound

"The research group, led by Professor Anders Fridberger, previously discovered that the tectorial membrane functions as a reservoir for calcium ions, which are needed for the hair cells to convert the sound-evoked vibrations into nerve signals. The researchers followed the motion of the calcium ions in the ducts, and their results suggest that the calcium ions flow through the ducts to the hair cells. This may explain how the hair cells obtain the large amounts of calcium ions needed for their function. The study has also shown that the stereocilia on the inner and outer hair cells are bent by the tectorial membrane in similar ways. The next step of the research will be to understand in more detail how the calcium ions are transported, and identify the protein or proteins that make up the newly discovered calcium ducts.

"Our results allow us to describe a mechanism for how hearing functions, that is incompatible with the model that has been accepted for more than fifty years. The classic illustrations in the textbooks showing the hearing organ and how it functions must be updated. The mathematical models used in research to study hearing should also be updated to include these new findings," says Pierre Hakizimana.

New information about how hearing functions may eventually contribute to the development of cochlear implants, hearing aids that are inserted into the cochlea and use electrical stimulation to restore hearing for children and adults.

"Cochlear implants are an amazing solution for treating hearing loss, but they can be improved. A deeper understanding of how the inner hair cells are stimulated by sounds is important to optimize how cochlear implants stimulate the auditory nerve," says Pierre Hakizimana."

~~~~~~~~~~~
Where this sort of revelation goes on and on and on, if one bothers to do the legwork of what science actually requires... if they want to get into the weeds of what we hear, how we hear, what audio reproduction means, how to improve it, what audiophiles say they hear, what the limitations of measurement are, and so on.

It is a MASSIVE subject, with complex unknowns and knowns that have deep complexities and aren’t really capable of being resolved as those ’knowns’ are deeply colored and shifting about due to their connectivity to the unknowns.

Science says one can’t declare it all being placebo... as that would be an emotional decision with limited depth and would be wholly anti science and more political and a personal internal struggle involving limitations of the given individual self... which is then selfishly writ large upon the outer world.