I mention this because I have a certain interest in people who claim to be connoisseurs of one kind or another, and the double blind test is a good way of testing those claims. For example, there is a subculture of self-proclaimed audiophiles; people who dish out thousands of dollars for cables or speakers that are supposed to significantly increase the quality of sound. Check out this link for people bragging about spending 10 or 20 grand on a set of speakers! A similar sort of thing is seen with wine lovers or coffee aficionados.
Pseudo-scientific explanations are particularly in the domain of audiophiles. For example, it is thought that hanging your cables from the ceiling produces a finer quality sound than running them along the floor because if they are lying on the floor there will be more impedance on the currents or something. There's a pretty good look at audiophiles here; the author of this blog quotes one manufacturer trying to sell some sort of sound quality-enhancing "box"
The Blackbody ambient field conditioner enhances audio playback quality by modifying the interaction of your gear’s circuitry with the ambient electromagnetic field. The Blackbody eliminates sonic smearing of high frequencies and lowers the noise floor, thus clarifying the stereo image.Don't try too hard to figure out what all this means - it means very little. But it sells. Pear Cable sells a 12 foot cable for over 7000 dollars! The "anjou" cable. James Randi, famous for offering one million dollars to anyone who can prove their paranormal abilities, extended his prize to the makers of the anjou cable if they could prove in a double blind test that their product was noticeably superior to cheap cables. No prize money has been awarded.
Many of the same principles extend to wine and coffee lovers. Studies of the former show that people really can't objectively distinguish between a $5 Bordeaux and an expensive aged wine. There was even some doubt about whether people could tell the difference between red wine and white wine dyed red! In the coffee study I linked to it appears that there is no difference in taste between Starbucks and Wal-Mart coffee. So, what does all this mean? Should everyone start drinking coffee at MacDonald's?
I am inclined to agree with the author of the wired article linked above. Our subjective experience counts for a great deal. When we associate memories and feelings with a particular product we in a way change the product to conform to our imagination. There is nothing wrong with that - it's, as they say, how we do. If that 50 dollar bottle of wine has a certain pleasant history with you, then go nuts. But it also pays to be aware of that subjectivity, because if we forget it we can easily become dupes. Marketers are aware of this human propensity, you can be sure, and if attaching some technical babble to a product means you can jack up the price and loyal consumers will still buy it, then that is what they'll do. Same goes for, say, the word "artisan" or "organic" (not to say these don't honestly apply to anything, but they can be used to dupe people).
But there's another side of me that wonders what other motivations people have for buying premium brands. Could it be that for some people, buying the $5 Bordeaux is a humiliating experience? Is there a certain amount of pride that comes with buying the expensive wines? If pride and humility are found to be at the bottom of these choices, do they come from a reasonable place?
And, of course, sometimes there really is a difference. There is a world of difference between a genuine micro-brewed IPA and some cheap bottled swill bearing the same name. I know I could taste the difference. But those are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I'm not so sure I could distinguish between two genuine IPA's.
Anyway, bottom line: nobody needs to burn 7000 dollars on a cable.
I think pride and status have a great deal to do with it actually.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking personally, I subsist in my normal life on the cheapest cask wine you can get (still quite decent really). I have also, on vanishingly rare occasions, tasted glasses of wine from bottles that cost upwards of $40. Probably the premium wine does often have a little 'extra something' about it, but it's not something I'm willing to spend $40 on every other week. In fact, the main difference is between the majority of red wines which is pretty alright and the small minority of cleanskin red wines which are occasionally vile. Generally, a shiraz is a shiraz is a shiraz (allowing for minor subtleties.)