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[email protected] outsor@city-net.com is offline
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Default Magicians have a lesson for audiophiles, randi redux

When someone claims all one has to do to distinguish between wire or amps
or cd players etc. "is listen" they would be advised to consider magic
and why it works. The bottom line is that the brain plays with the
information it recieves so that "glorious midrange bloom" is most likely a
product of same alone.

Now science and people who do magic join to explore how the brain has its
way with "objective" reality. The brain invents perception events it
wants to seem real based on stored notions and expectations of what is
really out there. It is most likely that midrange bloom is the result of
the sag in the wallet that goes with it. How can we confirm this? Just
don't let the brain know between two bits of gear which is being played
and the braim cann't mess with what it can not distinguish and which
cann't trigger stored perception forming information and expectations..

One person mentioned in the below article is "the amazing randi" who is
better known these days for his million dollar challenge for people who
claim supernormal powers. A couple of years ago he challenged stereophile
mag and like to show by testing certain claims about audio products which
they reviewed suggesting that bits of wood and the like could change
acoustic reality.

After a bit of tussle on this news group the editor of that mag dismissed
the entire thing as not his cup of tea because randi was not being a good
sport. There was the "he said she said" kind of thing seen recently and
what seemed an attitude that it was all beneith the editor to be asked to
confirm claims his mag appears to support. Needless to say randi has
still the million dollar prize.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12magic.html

One theory of perception, for instance, holds that the brain builds
representations of the world, moment to moment, using the senses to
provide clues that are fleshed out into a mental picture based on
experience and context. The brain uses neural tricks to do this:
approximating, cutting corners, instantaneously and subconsciously
choosing what to "see" and what to let pass, neuroscientists say.
Magic exposes the inseams, the neural stitching in the perceptual
curtain.
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