> Then you start to realize that even the best ear is still subjective, and people will hear things if they want to hear them.

urgh yes.

When I was recording something, I routed an (audio)compressor/gate combo. I was twiddling something on the effect and convinced myself that it was making a change.

Looked to my left, the person was vehemently agreeing with me, I looked behind, the other person had a face like I'd farted. A while later I realised that I had routed the output into a muted bus. (ie I couldn't hear the output of the effect, only the raw original)

Here's a great example, https://youtu.be/f-QxLAxwxkM -- a CD trimmer that (paraphrasing) "improves your audio quality" and was lauded by audiophiles.

If you want a good laugh, have a look at this forum thread - it's like these people are from a different planet. So many posters saying that the NVMe drive has improved the clarity and "richness" of their sound. Fortunately it's a harmless kind of ignorance.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/62753-nvme-ssd-desi...

It's actually beneficial ignorance. Money is transferred from those who don't know what to do with it into the broader economy.

I doubt any kind of ignorance is beneficial. Ignorance and stupidity are one of humanity's biggest blights, so the less we have them, the better.

Many of the systemic problems we have today are the direct result of greedy and intelligent people.

A hypothetical world where all people are one deviation smarter would probably be way more dangerous and stressful. The number of highly intelligent sociopaths would explode, leading to exponential damage.

Perhaps, but also tons of issues come from people's stupidity and shortsightedness. People become greedy and callous in large part due to bad childhood experiences, and bad childhood stems from parents being stupid or making bad decisions (like having children while 17 years old). The only way to stop the perpetual vicious circle of bad parents raising another generation of shitty parents (and shitty people in general) is to improve people, not by keeping them ignorant.

I can see your point, but it makes it very hard for new comers. I was talking to someone the other day who had bought 3 DACs for different purposes to listen to YouTube sound on their edifier speakers and headphones. Its difficult to tell them they could probably not bother with the dacs, but there's a whole echo chamber about these things that confuses the new comers.

Think of it this way: on a purely logical basis, it's better for society if money is in the hands of people who understand its value and hope to do useful things with it. I'm not claiming to be one of those people; I would definitely waste it all myself.

Of course, we can't easily transfer money like this from the frivolous to the useful for a ton a reasons. Life isn't a fairytale. But the next best thing is to have them spend their money so that at least it can power some form of growth.

It's not that these newcomers deserve to be mislead by echo chambers, but rather that if they demonstrate so little regard or respect for their money by failing to do much research or understanding what they're buying in detail, especially if they are buying something extraneous to begin with, that I don't see a moral or ethical problem to keep them spending. If anything, the money should be parted from the well-to-do fool, if only to provide macroeconomic support to the rest of the population.

Well, you're assuming that everyone can just learn electronic engineering and get the optimal solution, things don't work that way. It's an interesting viewpoint though.