Great video

I'm not sure what point you're making by posting this link. The video in the link, if taken on face value, seems to confirm your close-mindedness and the unscientific positions I have always seen you and EW take, in equal measures. So, was it to say that you only learned now, after seeing the video, that you are closed-minded? If so, have you been taking steps to correct that behaviour? These in bold are some quotes from the vid that illustrate the point:

science promotes and thrives on open mindedness because advancement of our understanding about reality in which we exist depends on our willingness to consider new ideas....

I agree that believing in concepts that are not scientific without curiousity is being closed minded. This video was about believing in the supernatural. No one here has expressed such beliefs (TMK), so I'm again not sure why you think it is relevant? What this video is saying is that both sides of a belief must pursue the phenomenon to properly interpret evidence and understand causal connections. I have never seen that be the case with you two.

Its important to remember that unless Beth says something like "Ghosts do not exist", she has made no factual claim requiring justification or indicating a closed mind.

Both you and Ethan have however, an infinite number of times. So was your point to show that you make factual claims requiring justification, for which you provide none? Or that you are both closed-minded people?

If you have difficulty accepting that other people don't share your beliefs, then that's unfortunate for you. If knowing someone's beliefs differ from yours causes you to lose a sense of perspective when talking to them, so that as soon as you hear certain trigger words (reef knots, frozen photographs) you start grafting inaccurately assumed attitudes on to them (crazy Beltist fuckers), you're no longer communicating. You're meerely rehearsing your own prejudices. And that is TRULY closed minded.

Excuse my addition of words in parentheses to the narrator's assertions. I am of course referring to you saying this to me recently:

ncdrawl wrote: "When I start tying reef knots in my curtains or putting photographs in the microwave or whatever the shit you beltist fuckers do, then call me crazy."

What your partner said would also illustrate the act of being TRULY close-minded, that the narrator in the video was warning you against:

Ethan Winer wrote: Agreed fer sher. My point here isn't so much that all amps are the same, as that we can readily assess everything needed using only four parameters. This is what the believers object to so strongly. They claim there's more to audio reproduction than that, and they cite imagined specs such as "musicality" and "revealing" and even that PRAT nonsense. This comes up less with power amps than expensive wires where the vendors have no legitimate way to show why their speaker cables are better than zip wire. So they invent BS terms.

Both groups seem quite happy to accept scepticism when they do, but not when they don't. For these people, open mindedness seems to mean "agreeing with me".

No better example of this than when you, Ethan, Scott, Buddha, David L., Joamonte, AlexO and most here absolutely refused to be skeptical about the idea that Ethan calling the S-Art graph data as bogus may have been a lucky guess, with a 50-50 chance of getting it correct. Particularly when it was shown by me, JA, SAS and others that Ethan never accurately identified anything wrong with this data, and was very vague in his earlier criticisms of it.

It would be absurd to suggest that we need evidence for everything we're told. We don't need to back up everything we say.

That's said in the video. Yet it seems every time someone here mentions having positive experiences with something you, Ethan, James or other cynics have dismissed outright, they are required to provide "valid scientific evidence" for their personal experiences, or else it is written off as "autosuggestion", etc. Again, the S-Art issue provided many examples of that. Members who had personal experience hearing the S-Art devices, their experiences were never considered to have any validity, by you and other irrational skeptics. Nor were reams of positive identifications made by any number of professional reviewers considered to be any sort of evidence in its favour. Maybe you would prefer a rule like they have at Hydrogen forums, where any personal experience a member wishes to relate about a product that isn't considered "proven" according to them, must provide scientifically validated evidence before posting?

Demanding valid evidence may lead you to reject ideas that are poorly supported, but nonetheless valid.

If you reject conflicting evidence and counter-arguments without consideration, but demand that others accept -your- arguments, and what -you- regard as evidence uncritically, not only is that close-minded, it's controlling, arrogant, and presumptuous in the extreme

The forum is littered with examples of you and Ethan behaving in just this way. So NC.... what have -you- learned about yourself from the video?

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I'm not sure what point you're making by posting this link. The video in the link, if taken on face value, seems to confirm your close-mindedness

and your pissing all over thread confirms the fact that you blah blah blah blah blah.

I'm afraid your whinging whiny response only confirms that either personal character attacks, or running away, are the only two ways you are able to respond to challenges to your arguments. In trying to discuss the purpose and content of this video you posted I am on topic and hardly "pissing all over the thread", which is exactly what I just saw you doing with Kait's thread by the way, since this wasn't a "thread" until I responded. This was just you posting a video link saying everybody should watch this segment on critical thinking, and a response saying "Good video". I presume you advocate what was being said in the video by promoting it. Except that your behaviour on the forum most certainly does not, nor those who's behaviour you defend. Hence the reason I asked you why are you posting it? Obviously, not to debate the issue, from what we see here! I've seen you be a truly obnoxious trolling jackass and knee deep in pissing contests, including those you've started, and one can see many examples of your pissing handiwork in the S-Art threads recently, where you were trying to defend Winer. But that doesn't mean I'm scared witless of debating you as you seem to be with me, every time I try to see if you're even capable of having an intelligent debate on any subject you bring up! Nor do I call you childish insulting names as you are constantly doing with me and others, or go into screaming fits every time I see you coming.

Maybe you should just wear a sign on your forehead that says "I may sound loud, arrogant, very opinionated and totally wrong about everything, but please don't even appear to challenge anything I say. I hate that, and it drives me to profane fits of anger."

If you did, people would leave you alone.

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at this point, I am comfortable calling you a troll

LOL! Oh, I reached that point of "comfort" in calling you a "troll" quite some time ago. About the time you wrote this to me, I'd say:

ncdrawl wrote: "truth be told, I just enjoy screwing with you. You are an easy target. Racists normally are. "

The really disturbing thing about you though, is that you also feel "comfortable" in just casually calling people "racists", during your many troll outings. Which might be less disturbing if you actually had a reason to call someone that. But you don't. You simply make these libelous accusations because you feel like it, as any good troll does. Of course, when I asked you to provide even a grain of evidence for your defamatory accusation, you refused to do so. Big surprise there! Even more disturbing, was the fact that according to you, I wasn't even a "racist" at first! When I objected to you frivolously accusing me of being racist in order to score "points" in a pissing contest where you were scrambling to try to defend EW, you softened your position, and said I had made "ethnocentric comments". Then you went on to blather some spiel about "accountability for one's words" and your insistence that people post under "real names and not handles". Which was again, another fine example of unhinged hypocritical irony coming from you, as you were already refusing to provide accountability for your own words and continue posting under a handle! When I calmly asked you to tell me what comments I was supposed to have made that you felt were "racist" ("what racist comments"?), you then backtracked and wrote "I said your post had racial underpinnings". So when pressed to defend your allegations against me, your "racist comments" become a more vague "racial underpinnings".(!) Shortly after that however, this "comfort level" of yours grew to flat out calling me a "racist"! (see above), for these very same "ethnocentric comments with racial underpinnings" that you never named, and only ever alluded to! So first you deny implying that you were calling me a "racist" over these unnamed comments you claim I made, then you decide to call me a "racist" over the same unnamed comments? Then you continue squawking to others about "accountability for their comments" when you constantly refuse to provide any for yours?

I frankly don't know how you expect anyone to take you seriously, when you make so many empty and contradictory statements? Seeing that you are "comfortable" making trollish "hit and run" false defamatory accusations against people, that you refuse to support, do you wonder why I'm having a harder time telling you and Big E. apart? Anyway, since you're obviously not interested in debating the topic you brought up of "critical thinking", just refrain from commenting any longer to me in this thread and I'll do the same!

Yeah, sadly... the video starts off in a big 'pile'o'shit' way, with a pre-determined negative position. It starts by killing the the idea of open mindedness FIRST and then goes on to 'prove' that anyone thinking otherwise is full of it and gullible.

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Yeah, sadly... the video starts off in a big 'pile'o'shit' way, with a pre-determined negative position. It starts by killing the the idea of open mindedness FIRST and then goes on to 'prove' that anyone thinking otherwise is full of it and gullible.

Having an open mind does not mean that you let your brain fall out of your skull, guy.

There really is an intense need for critical thinking in the audiophile arena.

I'm sure some don't agree.

How can you tell when someone is thinking critically? Oh, yeah, now I remember...