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"maybe nobody will know how bad all the pianos are. And then we'll all have slightly worse pianos than we would otherwise have." But not really. Because if I t

"maybe nobody will know how bad all the pianos are. And then we'll all have slightly worse pianos than we would otherwise have." But not really. Because if I truly cannot tell the difference between two objects or the way they sound, then they're the same to me, and I don't lose anything by listening to one over the other. If I could tell the difference, and it was important to me, then maybe I could do something about it. "The pinnacle of human attention cannot be directed at everything, everywhere, all at once. We have to focus our attention on a limited subset of arts and pursuits, where discernment will always be high, and settle everywhere else." This is exactly correct

HPsquared 2y ago
"You might not have noticed it, but your brain did" - H. Plinkett
bluGill 2y ago
But can you tell? I cannot tell many of these when I hear them in the piano tuning context (I've tried and given up). But I can hear how much better the piano sounds after all that is done. Then again, pianos are a bad compromise. There is no way to have octaves and fifths on the same piano, much less thirds (both major and minor). We learn to live with it, but it isn't right, for simple pieces you can tune a piano for that exact song and make it sound much better - but if you get much more complex than "mary had a little lamb" you run into a conflict and some key will need to be two different notes.
- Miraste 2y ago
  The compromise in question is called equal temperament, and it's quite interesting if anyone is curious.
  - InitialLastName 2y ago
    In the case of stringed instruments, equal temperament isn't the only compromise; there is also stretched tuning, which seeks to match the harmonics (rather than the fundamentals) of harmonically related strings to one another (in a mechanical system where the harmonics are neither perfect integer ratios of the fundamental nor constant ratios across all of the strings).
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      and wind instruments can and do bend their notes with their mouths to fit better in the chord than equal temperament
- epicide 2y ago
  > We learn to live with it, but it isn't right, for simple pieces you can tune a piano for that exact song and make it sound much better "Better" is always relative, so it's often more correct to say it is/sounds "different". For example, a true temperament guitar can sound weird/"wrong" to some people. A lot of folks are used to those compromises just being part of the sound. Similar to a "honky tonk" piano: if you tuned it differently, it would come across as a timbre change more than simply "better" tuning. In the grand scheme of things, there are professions and arts that were once considered essential to everyday life and in ways that we today don't even consider. The profession is lost to time, but so is the need. It's the in-between transitional state, where the profession is in the process of dying, that is the most painful period. Some day, the last note played on a piano will be played and lament for the piano tuner will die with it.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    I don't know, I guess everything ends eventually, but people still play the crumhorn, the carnyx, and the eunuch flute.
Miraste 2y ago
The internet has worsened this phenomenon. I, like many other people, have gotten into the habit of appending site:reddit.com to Google searches as search quality declines. This gives better results from actual humans (usually), but it also skews toward people who are invested enough in the topic to post about it on niche subreddits. This leads to, for example, product recommendations that are way out of alignment with what most people need, even if the information about them is true.
- MrLeap 2y ago
  "product recommendations that are way out of alignment with what most people need" I have to disagree. When i dont do the reddit thing, the average quality of material products has been.. very bad. Amazon reviews don't seem to be enough to choose anything with an electric motor or a hinge that won't fall apart in a month of light use.
  - Miraste 2y ago
    Let me give an example: soundbars for TVs. Reddit will tell you to never buy one, because a dedicated speaker system sounds better at the same price. This is true-ish. However, a speaker system requires a large, heavy A/V unit, lots of wires, lots of space, and highly noticeable, if not outright ugly, speakers. A soundbar doesn't have any of those problems, is usually the cheaper option, and still sounds much better than built-in speakers. They're the right choice for most people, but it takes reading between the lines to parse that from reddit posts.
    - Zak 2y ago
      A friend recently asked for budget speaker recommendations and was leaning toward a soundbar. I helped research; I'm a big fan of checking enthusiast communities for product guides, perhaps in part because I maintain one for flashlights. I came across the same advice to avoid soundbars and ended up with a list of powered speakers instead. That's no more complicated to hook up than a soundbar, and my friend was extremely satisfied with the speakers. I think they probably wouldn't have been as satisfied with a similarly priced soundbar. It's not because the soundbar couldn't be as good, but in practice usually wouldn't be. The intended audience isn't as discerning, so products don't have to be as good to sell well. The trick with enthusiast recommendations is to limit scope creep if you're not trying to become a hobbyist yourself. Don't get talked into a complex audio system or a flashlight with fan cooling and 80000 lumens when your needs are basic, but do get the $80 powered speakers and the 18650-powered flashlight with USB charging.
pclmulqdq 2y ago
> But not really. Because if I truly cannot tell the difference between two objects or the way they sound, then they're the same to me, and I don't lose anything by listening to one over the other. If I could tell the difference, and it was important to me, then maybe I could do something about it. Trust me, as a former piano/harpsichord tuner, that the audience absolutely can tell the difference between a perfectly tuned instrument and one that is badly tuned. They just can't put their finger on what that difference is. It's the same as when the viola section of an orchestra is out of tune or the horns drag (both very common problems for amateur symphonies). The overall effect is "muddier" and less "brilliant" than other performances, and you can tell as a listener, but very few people in the audience can say "the violas were flat in the adagio section."
- SirLordBoss 2y ago
  To follow this analogy, isn't it possible then for someone to study precisely what the difference is, and become an expert, thus bringing us back into the level of expertise we were at at the start of the analogy? Surely the experts didn't all learn from each other; who was the first expert? That expert surely learned in some other way, so the only thing lost at the start of the analogy is the time required for someone interested to (re)achieve mastery.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    Sure, related to tuning because it's a pretty closed problem. The expertise in terms of tuning was developed over about ~800 years, but the math for modern tuning was known 500 years ago. It's conceivable that one could re-invent equal temperament and then quickly re-invent the modern tuner given everything we know about electronics and audio processing. However, that knowledge all builds on itself. If we decide that all audio processing is done with RNNs/ML instead of objective ("old") mathematics, then we're going to lose the ability to make a tuner, too, and eventually we'll need a new Fourier to come back up with the Fourier transform. About the tomatoes in the other comment chain? Your guess is as good as mine whether we can recover that knowledge.
    - 2y ago
mlyle 2y ago
There's stuff on the edge, though-- like there was a post here a few days ago, where the commenter was talking about deploying monitoring and measurement into workplaces and finding lots of stuff wrong, and everyone panicking. On the one hand, panicking is unproductive: nothing is worse than it was last week. On the other hand, finding out that a whole lot of infrastructure that was supposed to make your business better, actually isn't doing its job, is still significant. If your e-mail campaigns weren't clickable, and you lost a bunch of business but never noticed, you still lost a bunch of business. It still required uncommon discernment to even notice, but the impact was unquestionable.
- mrandish 2y ago
  > finding out that a whole lot of infrastructure that was supposed to make your business better, actually isn't doing its job, is still significant. Yes, in many contexts discernment matters. More broadly, being able to tell the difference in quality or performance is relevant when you've spent more time/money/effort to have a better result. Even if "no one could tell and it was fine anyway", then you could have saved that time/money/effort and put those resources to better use.
kazinator 2y ago
Even if you can tell the difference between the way two objects sound, there is a leap between that and deciding that one is worse than the other.
aqfamnzc 2y ago
I think about this when cooking. There are 1000 variables like ingredient choice, prep methods, spices used, cook time. Changing one produces an effect too small for me to discern. But when I make suboptimal choices on 20 different variables, they stack up to produce a dish that's noticeably worse. :( How can I do science and improve my skills when I can't observe the difference changing one dimension makes!?
- josephg 2y ago
  > How can I do science and improve my skills when I can't observe the difference changing one dimension makes!? The classic answer to this is you need to improve your capacity to measure. Ie, taste ingredients and things constantly and learn with your mouth how the taste of your tomato will translate into the taste of your curry. Just like the soloist and piano tuner in this story, subtle discernment is a huge part of expertise.

HPsquared 2y ago

"You might not have noticed it, but your brain did" - H. Plinkett

bluGill 2y ago

But can you tell? I cannot tell many of these when I hear them in the piano tuning context (I've tried and given up). But I can hear how much better the piano sounds after all that is done. Then again, pianos are a bad compromise. There is no way to have octaves and fifths on the same piano, much less thirds (both major and minor). We learn to live with it, but it isn't right, for simple pieces you can tune a piano for that exact song and make it sound much better - but if you get much more complex than "mary had a little lamb" you run into a conflict and some key will need to be two different notes.

Miraste 2y ago
The compromise in question is called equal temperament, and it's quite interesting if anyone is curious.
- InitialLastName 2y ago
  In the case of stringed instruments, equal temperament isn't the only compromise; there is also stretched tuning, which seeks to match the harmonics (rather than the fundamentals) of harmonically related strings to one another (in a mechanical system where the harmonics are neither perfect integer ratios of the fundamental nor constant ratios across all of the strings).
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    and wind instruments can and do bend their notes with their mouths to fit better in the chord than equal temperament
epicide 2y ago
> We learn to live with it, but it isn't right, for simple pieces you can tune a piano for that exact song and make it sound much better "Better" is always relative, so it's often more correct to say it is/sounds "different". For example, a true temperament guitar can sound weird/"wrong" to some people. A lot of folks are used to those compromises just being part of the sound. Similar to a "honky tonk" piano: if you tuned it differently, it would come across as a timbre change more than simply "better" tuning. In the grand scheme of things, there are professions and arts that were once considered essential to everyday life and in ways that we today don't even consider. The profession is lost to time, but so is the need. It's the in-between transitional state, where the profession is in the process of dying, that is the most painful period. Some day, the last note played on a piano will be played and lament for the piano tuner will die with it.
- card_zero 2y ago
  I don't know, I guess everything ends eventually, but people still play the crumhorn, the carnyx, and the eunuch flute.

Miraste 2y ago

The internet has worsened this phenomenon. I, like many other people, have gotten into the habit of appending site:reddit.com to Google searches as search quality declines. This gives better results from actual humans (usually), but it also skews toward people who are invested enough in the topic to post about it on niche subreddits. This leads to, for example, product recommendations that are way out of alignment with what most people need, even if the information about them is true.

MrLeap 2y ago
"product recommendations that are way out of alignment with what most people need" I have to disagree. When i dont do the reddit thing, the average quality of material products has been.. very bad. Amazon reviews don't seem to be enough to choose anything with an electric motor or a hinge that won't fall apart in a month of light use.
- Miraste 2y ago
  Let me give an example: soundbars for TVs. Reddit will tell you to never buy one, because a dedicated speaker system sounds better at the same price. This is true-ish. However, a speaker system requires a large, heavy A/V unit, lots of wires, lots of space, and highly noticeable, if not outright ugly, speakers. A soundbar doesn't have any of those problems, is usually the cheaper option, and still sounds much better than built-in speakers. They're the right choice for most people, but it takes reading between the lines to parse that from reddit posts.
  - Zak 2y ago
    A friend recently asked for budget speaker recommendations and was leaning toward a soundbar. I helped research; I'm a big fan of checking enthusiast communities for product guides, perhaps in part because I maintain one for flashlights. I came across the same advice to avoid soundbars and ended up with a list of powered speakers instead. That's no more complicated to hook up than a soundbar, and my friend was extremely satisfied with the speakers. I think they probably wouldn't have been as satisfied with a similarly priced soundbar. It's not because the soundbar couldn't be as good, but in practice usually wouldn't be. The intended audience isn't as discerning, so products don't have to be as good to sell well. The trick with enthusiast recommendations is to limit scope creep if you're not trying to become a hobbyist yourself. Don't get talked into a complex audio system or a flashlight with fan cooling and 80000 lumens when your needs are basic, but do get the $80 powered speakers and the 18650-powered flashlight with USB charging.

pclmulqdq 2y ago

> But not really. Because if I truly cannot tell the difference between two objects or the way they sound, then they're the same to me, and I don't lose anything by listening to one over the other. If I could tell the difference, and it was important to me, then maybe I could do something about it. Trust me, as a former piano/harpsichord tuner, that the audience absolutely can tell the difference between a perfectly tuned instrument and one that is badly tuned. They just can't put their finger on what that difference is. It's the same as when the viola section of an orchestra is out of tune or the horns drag (both very common problems for amateur symphonies). The overall effect is "muddier" and less "brilliant" than other performances, and you can tell as a listener, but very few people in the audience can say "the violas were flat in the adagio section."

SirLordBoss 2y ago
To follow this analogy, isn't it possible then for someone to study precisely what the difference is, and become an expert, thus bringing us back into the level of expertise we were at at the start of the analogy? Surely the experts didn't all learn from each other; who was the first expert? That expert surely learned in some other way, so the only thing lost at the start of the analogy is the time required for someone interested to (re)achieve mastery.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Sure, related to tuning because it's a pretty closed problem. The expertise in terms of tuning was developed over about ~800 years, but the math for modern tuning was known 500 years ago. It's conceivable that one could re-invent equal temperament and then quickly re-invent the modern tuner given everything we know about electronics and audio processing. However, that knowledge all builds on itself. If we decide that all audio processing is done with RNNs/ML instead of objective ("old") mathematics, then we're going to lose the ability to make a tuner, too, and eventually we'll need a new Fourier to come back up with the Fourier transform. About the tomatoes in the other comment chain? Your guess is as good as mine whether we can recover that knowledge.
  - 2y ago

mlyle 2y ago

There's stuff on the edge, though-- like there was a post here a few days ago, where the commenter was talking about deploying monitoring and measurement into workplaces and finding lots of stuff wrong, and everyone panicking. On the one hand, panicking is unproductive: nothing is worse than it was last week. On the other hand, finding out that a whole lot of infrastructure that was supposed to make your business better, actually isn't doing its job, is still significant. If your e-mail campaigns weren't clickable, and you lost a bunch of business but never noticed, you still lost a bunch of business. It still required uncommon discernment to even notice, but the impact was unquestionable.

mrandish 2y ago
> finding out that a whole lot of infrastructure that was supposed to make your business better, actually isn't doing its job, is still significant. Yes, in many contexts discernment matters. More broadly, being able to tell the difference in quality or performance is relevant when you've spent more time/money/effort to have a better result. Even if "no one could tell and it was fine anyway", then you could have saved that time/money/effort and put those resources to better use.

kazinator 2y ago

Even if you can tell the difference between the way two objects sound, there is a leap between that and deciding that one is worse than the other.

aqfamnzc 2y ago

I think about this when cooking. There are 1000 variables like ingredient choice, prep methods, spices used, cook time. Changing one produces an effect too small for me to discern. But when I make suboptimal choices on 20 different variables, they stack up to produce a dish that's noticeably worse. :( How can I do science and improve my skills when I can't observe the difference changing one dimension makes!?

josephg 2y ago
> How can I do science and improve my skills when I can't observe the difference changing one dimension makes!? The classic answer to this is you need to improve your capacity to measure. Ie, taste ingredients and things constantly and learn with your mouth how the taste of your tomato will translate into the taste of your curry. Just like the soloist and piano tuner in this story, subtle discernment is a huge part of expertise.