I see the issue with ABX blind testing

I wonder if botrytis realizes he has wandered into a blind alley.  He has mixed up the concept of ABX testing by a panel for commercial sales with a home user selecting components for his audio system.  

To put it in terms botrytis brought up- would he criticize a homebrew distiller for not using ABX testing on his product?  That would make no sense.  A homebrew distiller is making his product for his own personal consumption and so will of course brew it to his tastes.  Would botrytis accuse him of bias for making it taste the way he wants?  He added ingredients without blind testing to see which ingredients are the best?  How dare he.  Of course this is nonsense.  The brewer makes his elixir the way he likes it.  

An audiophile sets up his system to sound the way he wants it to sound.  He is not setting up a commercial adventure to sell copies of his system to others.  Therefore, to suggest that a person must do ABX testing of the components he selects or else he is just fooling himself is a ludicrous concept.  

Here‘s a thought.  Go into a high end restaurant and tell the head Chef that if he didn‘t ABX blind test all of his ingredients then he is biased and wasting money on expensive foods and spices for his meals.  See how that goes.

The common ground here is that we pretty much all recognize that we as humans have biases, and I’d venture to guess most of us aren’t opposed to ABX testing.  The difference here is that the @botrytis believes we are completely incapable of overcoming our biases or listening objectively, and thus the only valid way to judge audio equipment is ABX because we as humans are incompetent and are just fooling ourselves.  So if I hear a silver interconnect and a copper interconnect and find the former brighter and hyper detailed and the latter warmer and more natural sounding and prefer that latter I’m just hearing my biases and need ABX to confirm my impressions.  Especially audiophiles who’ve listened to lots of gear and have identified what sounds good to them know what they hear and ultimately vote with their hard-earned dollars accordingly.  The fungal disease doesn’t believe people who have long experience listening to a wide variety of gear constitutes valid training or expertise in being able to judge audio equipment but that somehow scientists and musicians have a more valid form of training for this purpose.  Ha!  When it comes to choosing audio equipment nothing is better or more valuable than broad listening experience, and you can’t get that by reading books, understanding scientific method, or playing an instrument.  I’d much sooner trust a seasoned audiophile’s recommendations with years of listening experience over a scientist, engineer, or musician with less listening experience and perspective any day.  Hell, I know lots of musicians and all but one have crap audio systems and are completely clueless and incapable of assessing audio equipment or systems because they have no experience or perspective to be able to do so.  So how does all that musical training translate to audio?  It doesn’t much like you wouldn’t want a foot doctor to do brain surgery — they’re completely different disciplines and while I’d certainly like a violinist to help me choose a violin or a scientist to help conduct an experiment I’ve no interest in their opinions on audio equipment if they have little experience in listening to home audio.  So yeah, it’s possible to gain valuable experience and perspective and to train your ears to hear salient differences between audio equipment and systems, and if you don’t have that experience I don’t care what your other training may be because it doesn’t make you a better or even a useful listener or evaluator of audio equipment.  Or you can just bury your head in the sand and believe we are complete slaves to our biases and that listening experience counts for nothing.  If that’s what you believe then it begs the question why even be here at all because it’s nothing but a collection of biases and so are obviously then meaningless to you.  Maybe you just get off on being a troll here, and that’s just a sad existence and absolutely pointless and useless here.

These same techno cultists will soon advocate for A.I. system knowledge connection with the brain as the only one having value then, scientists would be connected on the machine without which "purely human science " will have no  value anymore. You dont need To ABX DBT a machine and all knowledge is "standardized" and sanitized as the propagandist Popper anticipated it. Rationalism conflated with Reason .( read Michael Polanyi instead he is deeper but less known and was himself a working scientist, which Popper never was)

For these techno cultists the concept of meaning is reducible to bits.

Goethe is an idiot and their A.I. a God...

The next mankind division will be political no more , no more stupid left-right superficial debates arranged by Corporations masters as WWF wrestling matches, which only idiots only takes as serious but division between those who are connected to A.I. and those who are not for the sake of the hive.

All anticipated by the Calvinist Mandeville in 1714. Stupendous.

I think @botrytis is mixing up spirit competition where a panel of judges is used to taste and score a product with what takes place in a distillery, where only one person, a master distiller , is responsible for taste and consistency of the final product. If there was a panel blind tasting whiskey at a distillery it would resemble this thread.

When it comes to my system, I’m that master distiller.
 

Why are we still entertaining this endless flow of skeptics?

It‘s simple.  We have trolls with no real interest in audio that make comments to the contrary apparently out of boredom.  To call someone arrogant or foolish for building a stereo system based on their hearing is nuts.  Blind testing has a purpose and a place.  If a person is unsure of their own hearing to build a stereo, that‘s ok.  It doesn‘t have to be a DYI hobby.  Many people just want a turnkey stereo system so they can enjoy their music.  A dealer can set up a system that sounds good to them or they can hire someone to set up their system.  Many of us enjoy the journey almost as much as the destination.  

I go listen to someone‘s stereo and maybe I like it or maybe I don‘t.  It‘s all about my bias vs. the owner‘s.  Maybe I like a song someone else doesn‘t.  Most of the time we benefit hearing other systems and gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our own.  I personally do not need to be blindfolded to do that.

Imagine if car magazines tried to do double blind drive tests of cars.  Now that could get interesting.