Scientists and Objectivity
"Scientists should be objective. If everyone approached things by scientific method we'd get somewhere." Peter Baxendall.
The problem here is that if everyone was totally objective about everything then there would be no new ideas because ideas and theories are subjective items. They don't exist in the objective world until someone thinks them up and speaks or writes about them.
There are no "laws of nature" until someone comes up with them, and they last only as long as it takes someone else to come up with new ones. The old ones are then ignored, forgotten if they conflict with the new, or are incorporated into the body of knowledge if they don't.
Science is not objective; science is subjective, first and foremost. And throughout the ages it has suffered because scientists could not accept new ideas. They could accept new facts, and fit them to existing theories somehow, but accepting new ideas was difficult. That is caused by a lack of confidence. Not confidence about facts or theories, but self-confidence and being able to be wrong.
Many people (of both the scientific and non-scientific persuasion) are intent on getting the facts, by which they often mean as getting the right answer to a problem. But this can lead to a state of mind which tends to rely primarily on the facts that they themselves have discovered, which they feel allow them to promote theories to explain phenomena as being some kind of final statement, or at least a stepping stone to The Truth.
What is really necessary is to be able to produce a theory which fits the facts and yet still be able to accept it is wrong. In other words, have confidence that you are wrong even though your solution appears to be the correct one.
Unfortunately there are those who, because their theories fit the facts, assume they are right. And because they are confident this is so, they then have to endure a conflict within themselves when either the facts change, or a new theory, which contradicts their existing one, also fits the facts.
Hifi is a classic case of the push and pull between subjectivity and objectivity. Advocates of various good sounding pieces of equipment often assume that this is due to a particular feature even though other items without that feature sound good to others, despite apparently inferior objective measurements, thereby leading to conflict such as that between belt and direct drive enthusiasts.
Which leads us back to subjectivity again, so really we don't get anywhere at all when value judgements are involved, as in the anti-skate debate. In that case, there are facts and opinions, and the conflict arises because the facts appear to contradict the opinions. What happens then is that some people hold that, because of the facts, opinions on sound quality must be wrong. Others hold that because of their opinions regarding sound quality, the facts are irrelevant.
It's all very like politics, where politicians love to think they are dispensers of the The Truth, and are happy to quote facts when its suits them and condemn Fake News when it suits them.
The reality is that facts change with new information, and all news is fake, given that the complete, whole story is never told. The best you can do is find out as much as you can for yourself and make up your own mind.
Personally, I just let people have their opinions regarding whether or not something sounds good. There are no absolutes, not in hifi nor in life.
