Why do many discussions about sonic performance disintegrate into technical discusions?

The fact different folks have a different basis to look at and understand and make sense of the World around them.
The most basic would be a divide between thinkers and romantic types.
Thinkers want an explanation, Romantics want to know how it feels.
And, often, never the two can agree on much at all.
Thinkers want the technical detail and call that the truth. Romantics dismiss that, and call the way they respond and feel about the things to be the truth.
This very simplified but does point out the difference and why the problems arise between the two (most basic) types

People write what they know from experience…shocking! Also, I’m not sure if a car analogy (in which I’ve indulged as I want people to know how sophisticated and cool I am) actually works as cars have design absolutes that can be easily tested, although how you "feel" about cars is another thing. Also it’s sexist and utterly inaccurate to state things like "They (women) are not interested in this infantile nonsense and rightly so, they have better things to do." I can’t let a lame comment (and any other ignorance based sexist nonsense) like that slide as it simply perpetuates stereotypes that just don’t fit in the world today, and it’s not good for anybody. I live in a world populated by many smart, artistic, and strong women, always have, and sexist generalities are simply lazy and kind of dumb. Note that the only reason many women are less likely to be part of the technology world is due to those exact stereotypes promoted by frightened men, religions, and subsequently weak minded women.

What percentage of Audiogon members are women? If you are referring to my comment above, I think you misconstrued my intent. I was not making claims about women’s intelligence and scientific capabilities, which I believe are absolutely equal to men’s. It’s a fact, that technical fields are dominated by men. There are well-documented cultural and historical reasons for this. How many women are choosing to go into EE? Why when I watch videos from the audio shows are the great percentage of people there male, white, and over 50?

The gear-head discourse is important to those who enjoy and find it meaningful. It’s not accessible to a great majority of folks, not because they lack the apptitude, but because they lack the background and the interest. The early days of personal computers were all about CPU performance and clock speed. How many people know or care about the CPU they have in their laptop? Hobbyists, gamers, those in the industry? We need both approaches. The highly technical will lose the vast majority, but perhaps that is of no consequence.

The American hifi mags have perpetuated the myth that it’s all about components. This CD player is class A and that amp is class B. Any component can slot into any system.

We don’t listen to components, we listen to systems. In some systems the components integrate well and are more than the sum of their parts, and some systems just sound disjointed and out of sorts. The Brits have emphasized this for years.

Some of that has to do with specs and how various components electrically interrelate, and some just comes from a knowledge base of others who have tried various combinations of components. 

It would be hard to buy a fine watch without knowing how many complications it has, and hard to buy a car without knowing how many cylinders it has, it would be hard to buy a diamond without knowing the three Cs, of course, unless it was going to end up at the end of your cantilever. We live in a technical world where we try to quantify our purchases using various metrics.

I addressed your first paragraph by noting sexist discrimination and cultural issues that contribute to your "it's a fact" statement, and the second paragraph does't apply to anything I've said although maybe that wasn't aimed at my comment…I welcome any approach as relevant, and anyone who doesn't should get out more…example: "You like it because it sounds good to you or maybe because you think it's technically superior, or both." Or maybe it just looks cool…smells good…it's shiny!