Is a gold-plated HDMI cable really worth it (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

(Without getting heavily into politics or religion).

Though on the other side of the coin, most people have to have something to believe in. Whether it is expensive speaker / hdmi cables, star wars, star trek, sports teams, certain musical bands, certain movies + tv shows, etc ....

Otherwise people's minds will navigate into something else.

Emperors in ancient times knew this very well. Hence the "bread and circuses".

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I imagine some of the valuation aspect of this stuff will also vary substantially based on our regional living standards and cost of living (and associated income levels).

While ecommerce has leveled the playing field a whole lot on the supply side, it hasn't quite (yet) for the demand side (ie. consumers)... although we're probably gradually getting there as incomes across regions even out (at least for the 99% anyway) -- and this pandemic may have accelerated that quite a bit...

_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

(Without getting heavily into politics or religion).

Though on the other side of the coin, most people have to have something to believe in. Whether it is expensive speaker / hdmi cables, star wars, star trek, sports teams, certain musical bands, certain movies + tv shows, etc ....

Otherwise people's minds will navigate into something else.

Emperors in ancient times knew this very well. Hence the "bread and circuses".

Well, we're not all Commander Data (nor Datum ) afterall... and even he wanted to be more human despite being essentially perfect at playing the violin, haha...

_Man_

 

[jcroy]

You know... it was fun(ny) back in the early 90's reading about some "heretic" reviewer for Stereophile (Sam Tellig IIRC) raving about trying some lamp cords instead of multi-$K cables for his speakers (alongside all the other $$$ reviews) at some points...

Back in the day, I knew of folks who would not believe the technical measurements for anything which contradicted what they believed (or wanted to believe). Some didn't even believe in doing blind testing.

Blinded experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The odd part was that some of these hi-end stereo enthusiasts had a background in electrical engineering. Such highly technical folks still refused to believe in technical measurements or A/B blind tests, which showed the cheap equipment didn't sound any worse than the expensive equipment.

 

[edee_em]

Back in the day, I knew of folks who would not believe the technical measurements for anything which contradicted what they believed (or wanted to believe). Some didn't even believe in doing blind testing.

Blinded experiment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The odd part was that some of these hi-end stereo enthusiasts had a background in electrical engineering. Such highly technical folks still refused to believe in technical measurements or A/B blind tests, which showed the cheap equipment didn't sound any worse than the expensive equipment.

Today we have millions of people who don't believe science that will help mitigate/prevent serious illness and/or death so I'm not that surprised that they don't think science is needed to decide between one cable or another. It's like you mentioned, they will read/watch what supports their point of view, whether it's based on science, ideology, bias, ignorance, enlightenment or simply, who gives you the most money.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Most people probably just aren't big on seriously believing in one thing or another, but just want what's comfortable and convenient mostly in the moment (and easily recognizable as significantly beneficial), which does often/generally involve rituals/habits to large degrees, but not necessarily substantial beliefs per se... other than to be free enough to do whatever they want...

Science (or anything else all that deep and serious) of whatever kind isn't real enough for most people until they've experienced something clearly life impacting about it... or at least been raised and nurtured to believe in (what's been taught of) it... but not necessarily beyond (what they already learned and may be ingrained) as might be needed as our collective knowledge and understanding expand (or be revised/corrected)...

IF your science requires substantial inconvenience to them, they're naturally inclined to push back to varying degrees... until they experience their life being negatively impacted by their disbelief of that scientific finding...

OTOH, if your science (and engineering) clearly benefits them in obvious ways w/out major offsetting negatives, they'll wanna embrace it... even if it may indeed come w/ negatives they're not quite aware/understand (and some in-the-know might be incentivized to not reveal)...



Me? Yeah, spending a bit extra on (some, but not all) speaker cables (and analog interconnects and that Furman line conditioning, surge protector) definitely involves some of that... For me, the $ cost is not too high to require utmost scrutiny to choose and/or DIY, which all also come w/ opportunity costs if we're honest about all this...

_Man_