First off, I'm not entirely sure you can cite yourself as a source, but I laughed.
I just didn't want to reword a long statement which I had already typed up recently, so I quoted that post
in which I cited some other sources.In *some* games a frame of lag can be the difference between winning and losing, but other than Ninja Gaiden Black and some bullet hell games, I dont think many are made with that tight of a window in mind.
Regardless of genre, any game in which reflexes are critical has the potential for instances where any amount of lag will be the difference between winning and losing. A close call, by definition, means that any slight difference will change the outcome one way or the other. In a challenging game, close calls will be frequent.
Of course some genres will present more instances where reflexes are critical than others. Some of my favorites are fighters, shmups, and 2-D platformers, three categories in which responsive control is absolutely paramount, so you can see my concern with the matter. I think my argument is also equally valid for other genres, like FPS or RTS, but applying it to racing games would be more difficult (depending on the game), and it would not even hold water for others, such as traditional turn-based RPG's.
Now lag to the point where every action is delayed after the press of a button Im with you on whole heartedly, but I just dont see a single frame resulting in a game over.
Any amount of lag at all means that every action IS delayed after the press of a button... by that amount!
I dont think human response time can be counted as lag , thats just called reaction time.
What you call it is semantics.
event happens in game engine -> delay -> event is rendered to video and display receives video signal -> delay -> game event is visible to player on-screen -> delay -> player reacts to game event
As you can see, there is a long series of events which takes place in between an event happening in a game and the player reacting to it. Human reaction time is simply the last period of delay before a button is pressed.
It is up to the game developer to minimize the delay between events in the game engine and rendering to video. This period of delay will also be increased when emulation is used. It is up to the developer of that emulator to minimize this effect, and also up to the player to configure the emulator's video and other settings, as well as the emulation hardware in general, in order to minimize it as well.
When using a traditional CRT, the time period between receiving a video signal and being able to see it on-screen relatively instantaneous, but with the average flat panel it is a significant period of delay. So it is up to the player to choose a confirmed low-lag display to minimize this.
The goal of building a proper low-lag gaming setup is to minimize all these other forms of delay ahead of time, so that your own reaction time becomes the only significant contributor of delay during gameplay. That way whether you fail or succeed in the game is only attributable to your own skill and reflexes, never to unnecessary and unavoidable hindrances built into the system.
This is the nature of fair challenge versus cheap and unfair difficulty.
I guess my issue is I don't get your math. You say emulators lag "several frames" (which I'll take as 3 to 5) and LCDs lag "several frames" as well (which means another 3 to 5). I don't know what you're using but I don't think Ive ever experienced 6 to 10 frame lag on a game, except when I used to play Super FirePro Wrestling XP on SNES96 on my P75.
Actually, that is quite an accurate guess.
There are plenty of games in vanilla MAME which lag up to 5 frames or more, while 2 or 3 most is common and 1 is rare. For the average emulator, it may not quite be 5, but the method of v-sync has much to do with it, as triple buffering can add up to 3 frames on its own. 1 frame is practically rock--bottom for any software-based emulation. Calamity and Dr. Venom are doing great things to achieve sub-1-frame performance, making it an extremely viable option. The only thing I know of that is faster is shmupMAME, but that uses hacks to the emulation which remain controversial.
As for displays, if you look at the display lag database I linked to, which lists a good sample size of displays including most of the new models available from 2013, you will see that the average lag is about 2.5 frames when when looking at all displays, and closer to 3.5 when looking at just TV's. The worst examples are in fact nearly 5 frames. I should also clarify that all this applies to all flat-panel technology, not just LCD's. I've used the term LCD a little too loosely at times.
These numbers are all facts, not opinions, just read up on GroovyMAME, shmupMAME, and the display lag resources I linked to. Also, milliseconds means thousandths of a second, not millionths, which is an immense difference. At 60Hz, a frame of video is one sixtieth of a second; 1/60, not 1/1,000,000.
In any case, the theme with emulation and displays is the same. Both present the potential for a significant amount of lag. Being well informed, selecting the best possible TV, the best possible emulator, and choosing the best settings can all contribute to minimizing lag to the point that it is negligible. However, denying the problem and leaving this to chance will most often result in a lot of lag, which will hinder your gameplay to a degree whether you realize it or not.
My favorite part of the post you ask?
.........or they don't want to believe that there is something they're missing and that work is required to fix it.
Then how you state its too much work for you to test it 
I think your suggestion of irony on this matter is poorly reasoned. Whether it's my controls, my displays, my MAME setups, etc., I've done a ton of research to ensure minimal lag in every aspect of gaming
that I'm involved in, and I've taken actual measurements using the high speed camera method to confirm results and make comparisons.
However, this PS2 emulator is not something I will ever use, so why I would put in the time to test it? I already have a real PS2, running in RGB video on a lagless CRT, already interfaced with arcade controls, and I can afford to buy real copies of the PS2 games I'm interested in. What I'm suggesting is that
someone who will actually use it should go ahead and test it.
How lag works, where it comes from, and its implications are all matters of simple reason and fact. I concede that whether or not it should all be important to the player is my own opinion, but I've laid out my case.
No ill-will is intended, but I do enjoy a good scholarly debate.
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