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Comment by tsotha | Hacker News Reader

>Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking.

I agree on the "plagued by magical thinking" part, but not all these people are idiots. Some of them are quite intelligent, in fact. I think they just want to be "in the know", and are able to suspend their normal skepticism in order to belong.

One of the smartest and most productive programmers I ever met was taken in by this nonsense. He replaced all the metal bolts in his power supply with teflon because the metal bolts disrupt the magnetic field around the transformer and you can hear that, maaaan!

He did have a nice sounding system, for which he spent about $10k more than one that would have sounded the same.

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> but not all these people are idiots

Not to be picky, but it bugs me to see when people talk about two different things and don't understand each other.

Intelligence is not a linear value that could be compared like "person1 intelligence > person2 intelligence". With both of these terms there are always skipped implication of the area of intelligence.

By "idiots" he meant "small amount of/incorrect knowledge in the area of audio quality and human hearing", and by "intelligent" you mean "big amount of knowledge and efficiency in the area of writing computer code".

If you're going to be "picky", please be picky about something you understand. A "small amount of/incorrect knowledge" is ignorance, not a lack of intelligence. When you label someone an idiot you're not talking about his lack of knowledge. You're talking about his intelligence.

Now, if by "idiots" he means "ignorant people" then he's using the word incorrectly. But there's no actual indication that's what he meant. At some point you just have to assume people mean what they say.

And despite what people want to believe, the last fifty years of psychometrics research indicates there really is such a thing as "basic intelligence" (which they call "g"), and people with more of it do better on a wide range of intellectual tasks. So you really can say "person1 intelligence > person2 intelligence".

What you are referring as "basic intelligence" is actually a combination of neuroplasticity and general knowledge. Neuroplasticity is a speed at which brain can learn new things, but even then you can't say "person1 neuroplasticity > person2 neuroplasticity". That is because brain is composed of many parts that can have different plasticity. Also neuroplasticity (i.e. "intelligence") is not static and can even change over time depending on what parts of the brain are most active.

Yet again, none of what you've written here is actually true. I suggest you peruse the wiki page.

James Randi has a speech (you can probably find it on Youtube) about how it is easier to fool smart people than average people. Smart people think they can't be fooled.

The most generous approach to audiophiles is to allow for a placebo effect. i.e. they get greater enjoyment from listening to what they believe is a perfect sound system, regardless of whether the gold-plated cables actually do anything.

I think that's exactly right.

> not all these people are idiots. Some of them are quite intelligent

You can be very intelligent in one domain and be a complete idiot in every other domain. The result ends up being unless we're talking about that one domain, they're an idiot.

I would refer to that as knowledgeable and ignorant rather than intelligent and idiotic. It doesn't really make sense to say that Gary Kasparov is an idiot regarding the construction of log cabins. Rather, he is an intelligent person who is ignorant of the construction of log cabins.

> it doesn't really make sense to say that Gary Kasparov is an idiot regarding the construction of log cabins

It does if he starts voicing 'iditotic' opinions and beliefs as to the construction of log cabins.

I have to laugh at this, really

But I suspect the metal ones are better. More magnetic shielding

So, IF your audio system uses a linear power supply (and it should) AND it is badly filtered (it should have good filtering) you can hear the 60Hz/50Hz from the power network (assuming it's not creeping in your system through other means as well - most likely they are)

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