14 ms·

Peace and quiet is all about the noise in your head

299 points by dnetesn 9y ago

montrose 9y ago
"Kirste found that two hours of silence per day prompted cell development in the hippocampus." This was in mice, but if silence turns out to grow neurons in humans too, that will be big news.
- Mononokay 9y ago
  I could be far off base here, but I wonder if this could be tied to why humans are generally considered more capable of learning in adolescence - the older someone gets, the more noise they find around them. Lecturers' voices, phones ringing, music, cars and the like are all things you hear progressively more after age 3 or so.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Primary schools are extremely noisy environments IME.
    - blunte 9y ago
      Not just the sounds of noise, but the mental busyness as noise... a child's mind is so much less full. As adults we get so accustomed to "noise" that we often don't realize it's there. Every time I turn around, I have taxes or some other painful administrative thing to do. That's noise in my head that buzzes quietly at times or very loudly as a deadline approaches. We have job noise - projects, human conflicts, financial concerns etc. There are home relationship noises - fears, doubts, conflicts, whatever. This is why I suspect the practitioners of meditation claim to have so much peace and such improved intentional focus: they have learned how to turn down the background noise in their minds.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        > This is why I suspect the practitioners of meditation claim to have so much peace and such improved intentional focus: they have learned how to turn down the background noise in their minds. I play Chess, I'm not good but when I'm playing for an hour or two I completely don't think about anything else at all, it's mentally draining but in a good way (I find it the mental equivalent of a long bike ride). In fact my perfect day would be two hours of chess and a three hour bike ride then a nap.
      - magic_beans 9y ago
        Perhaps I was a more troubled child, but my mind was constantly full of buzzing, illogical anxieties when I was a kid. Only now have I been able to outgrow them, and my mind is much more soothed.
        blunte 9y ago
        There's good buzz and bad buzz. Or maybe I should say constructive and destructive. It's possible for the mind to be so flooded with ideas and solutions and other creative thoughts that it can be difficult to focus and complete any one thing before the next demands attention. Either way, gaining some control or having some tool to choose when to quiet the noise can be very beneficial.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dwringer 9y ago
    There's a (loosely) related thread under today's article about John von Neumann's assistant[1] about von Neumann's alleged preference for working with loud music playing (something I've seen corroborated in places like Turing's Cathedral, where it was also mentioned that he liked working with noise in general; to what degree any specific music was preferable, I can't discern, though that book mentioned loud marches). It seems there may be some individual (or, at least, situational) variability with how noise affects productivity and thought. The perceived structure or unstructuredness of the noise in the mind of the listener seems like it also may be relevant, at least from my own experiences - similar to how looking at a wall of code can induce anxiety in novice programmers, but someone familiar with the language and systems employed can see forms and patterns, interpreting what the code actually does and reducing the level of cognitive dissonance that results from looking at it. FWIW, marches can be characterized by a strongly defined and relatively simple structure with a driving 1-2-3-4 pulse that carries the music along and frames our perception of it. Stanislaw Ulam wrote of von Neumann: "If one has to divide mathematicians, as Poincaré proposed, into two types—those with visual and those with auditory intuition—Johnny perhaps belonged to the latter. In him, the 'auditory sense,' however, probably was very abstract. It involved, rather, a complementarity between the formal appearance of a collection of symbols and the game played with them on the one hand, and an interpretation of their meanings on the other. The foregoing distinction is somewhat like that between a mental picture of the physical chess board and a mental picture of a sequence of moves on it, written down in algebraic notation." [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411799 [2] http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1958-64-03/S0002-9904-1958-10189-5/S0002-9904-1958-10189-5.pdf http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1958-64-03/S0002-9904-1958-...
    - Swizec 9y ago
      I'm nowhere near as cool as Von Neumann, but I find that loud noisy music helps me work. The noisier the better. It helps to drown out background sounds that catch the attention. If you hear a door creak or a person speak, that's attention grabbing. Are they speaking to me? Is someone looking for me? Can I add to the conversation? But with noise you are isolated. The attention grabbing sounds don't come through.
  - gowld 9y ago
    Do you find that childhood is quiet?! I think it's been well observed for centuries (before cars and phones and cities) that learning slows down with age.
baxtr 9y ago
> Here’s how Kirste made sense of the results. She knew that “environmental enrichment,” like the introduction of toys or fellow mice, encouraged the development of neurons because they challenged the brains of mice. Perhaps the total absence of sound may have been so artificial, she reasoned—so alarming, even—that it prompted a higher level of sensitivity or alertness in the mice. Neurogenesis could be an adaptive response to uncanny quiet. Just a word of caution: Experiments that work in mice don’t necessarily work in humans [1]. These findings are very preliminary, although interesting. [1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/11/01/the-trouble-with-lab-mice/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/11/01/the-troubl...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jimmies 9y ago
American culture of making noise and hyping is tiring and annoying at times. Sports events are the most prominent example. Going to popular sports matches in the US: football, ice hockey, basketball, etc. and you'll be bombarded with ads, noise, hype from the loudspeakers and flashing lights from the huge screens -- every single second you're there. When you watch the Super Bowl, you watch more ads than you watch the game. Going to a soccer game which is the most popular sport outside of the US, the only sound you'll ever hear is when the fans actually make noise. And perhaps, the announcement when they substitute players. By the way, it's quite cool to be in a high-stakes soccer match: There are volunteering leaders emerging from the crowd that orchestrate the people naturally. Noise in sports events are great, but only when they are not from the stupid flashing screens. It's not a surprise to me that the laugh tracks were invented in America. Their presence in modern American sitcoms is annoying at best. But now, I think the producers started to realize that. I think we are happier when we're treated like adults who know how to feel and behave.
- sneak 9y ago
  I don’t go to sports matches very often in any country, but the american habit of yell-talking when dining out at a restaurant ruins most dinners out in the US for me. That, and televisions in establishments in which they are entirely inappropriate.
  - FeteCommuniste 9y ago
    Part of the yell-talking is trying to hear each other over the stupidly loud music and TVs in our restaurants. But I've noticed that even abroad Americans are louder than most nationalities when eating out.
    - ivanhoe 9y ago
      Speaking of the national stereotypes and loudness, just put together more than 2 Italian tourists and they're guaranteed to be the loudest in the room, they're just unbeatable... but they do it with a lot of charm, I have to admit...
curlcntr 9y ago
Taking this another level, and, where I thought the article was originally going, there is an internal dialog going on even with external silence. An aspect of vipassana meditation (and probably others) is when that internal noise silences.
- andrei_says_ 9y ago
  Which starts to happen after the third day of 12+ hours per day sitting 10-day retreat.
- mirimir 9y ago
  That's what I was expecting as well. What Landmark folk call the voice in your head. Which is always interpreting, telling stories, and so on. It's often hard to hear what other people are saying, because that inner voice is so loud. But with practice, it eventually shuts up, most of the time.
sandov 9y ago
I was in Salvador, Brazil this summer and was disgusted by how loud everything was, people on the streets carrying speakers playing music, street sellers screaming, cars honking, I prefer the relative quietness of my southern Chile.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ivm 9y ago
  Hey, I live in the tranquil and magnificent south too! (Though I'm an immigrant.) Can't find your contact details – maybe ping me on Twitter (ivmirx) or via email (ivan at qotoqot.com)?
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Why did you go to Salvador?
  - swah 9y ago
    This is the real question.
- fefb 9y ago
  Salvador is the capital of the Bahia a state of Brazil. The city has almost 3 millions of people, and it is know for its famous Carnaval parties in the summer. What were you hoping for? A silence place?
  - bornonline1 9y ago
    The comment did not imply the expectation for the city to be quiet. But once arrived, they discovered the city to be loud. It seems like you misunderstood the point.
vitro 9y ago
Another thing is advertisement pollution. Just notice it when going around in some bigger cities. Ads everywhere, shouting at you and not letting you to rest. Even if you don't look at them, they are still there, talking to you.
- remir 9y ago
  I agree. Pollution (visual, auditory and environmental) will be a serious problem in this century. This constant stimulation plus the daily stress can't be good for our mental health long term.
- nabla9 9y ago
  Moving ads in video screens around the city are really annoying. They really 'catch your eye' if you are just letting your eyes to wander. I have started to look down whenever there are these ads around.
- procedural_love 9y ago
  This article itself may be paid advertising, perhaps by the Finland marketing board. They even mention VisitFinland.com in the final paragraph. "Science says quiet is good for you." "Finland is a place that is quiet." "You should go to Finland." It's not even subtle but I didn't see it mentioned in these comments at all.
  - magic_beans 9y ago
    If it was a paid ad, it was successful, because now I want to go to Finland.
- mncharity 9y ago
  > advertisement pollution HYPER-REALITY[0] is a fun exploration of ad pollution in AR. Of course one can use similar tech to support quiet. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs (2016)
DoreenMichele 9y ago
In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.” I was a homemaker for years. A lot of housework is fairly mindless, allowing for uninterrupted deep thought because most folks will not bother you while you are doing laundry. They don't want to be asked to help. I have spent years cultivating a relatively quiet life by American standards. Since my ex moved out, I mostly have not had a TV. I gave up my car years ago, giving up its built in radio along with it. In my household, it is a common courtesy to announce "I am starting up a video (or game) with voices." so as to not startle anyone. People complain a lot about the stress of our 24/7 always on lives in the US. They often lay the blame on computers, smart phones, email notifications and social media. I have a smart phone and computers. I don't feel harried and interrupted and like I can't get a break. My life was quiet before sleeping in a tent for nearly 6 years, but doing that deepened the quiet. I am prone to ear infections. I can't wear headphones because of it. My days were spent in a library. My nights were spent trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed and not have the cops called on me. Games were often played with the sound off. Peace and quiet is necessary to be able to hear yourself think. I think the degree to which constant noise interferes with deep contemplation and self reflection goes largely unrecognized. A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. But I think many people are intentionally avoiding that because the constant flak of noise obscuring their thoughts and feelings is critical to their ability to stay in a relationship that doesn't work or at a job they actually hate. Hearing their own opinions about their own lives would likely compel many of them to make hard decisions and big changes and they would rather not know. That's scary. It's overwhelming. The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.
- flatline 9y ago
  > A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. I tend to agree, but it may take time to see therapeutic effects. That initial period of quieting, at least for me, through meditation, was more chaotic than the noise. It turned everything upside down, everything I thought I’d known about myself was pretty much wrong. I’d just been telling myself stories for years and when I stopped listening and believing they were the truth - wow. I don’t think you necessarily need to have anything external change in your life for it to be a big adjustment.
vinceguidry 9y ago
I do a lot of meditation and trance work, and I can say that trance is all about training yourself to ignore things that demand your attention. Both the body and the mind will issue such demands. Stimulation becomes a "resource," one that you want to get rid of as fast as you gather it. But the easiest way to get rid of it is to not gather it in the first place. As you get deeper into trance, other things you're not so skilled at ignoring start to make themselves known. You need to learn how to ignore those too. Otherwise you just don't have a whole lot of fun. The brain can ignore practically anything. Many psychological disorders involve the brain not being able to ignore things that most people can ignore, such as OCD or tinnitus. If I'm in a weird state, tinnitus can become really awful. But most of the time it's not a thing. I submit that 90% of tinnitus cases could be solved with some guided meditation, and 9% of the other 10% needs the attention of a TMJ specialist. Maybe 10% of 10%.
remir 9y ago
I went to Target when they (briefly) came to Canada and was surprised and delighted by the absence of music in the store. I'm sure some people were weirded out by that, but I found it refreshing and peaceful.
- doseofreality 9y ago
  They were also a forerunner in not using the loudspeaker system to page various employees.
tpallarino 9y ago
Attention has now been made a commodity, so good luck finding peace and quiet if you don't have the money to buy it
- m_fayer 9y ago
  I feel like this can't be said enough. Various kinds of minimalism, which are really just different ways of being left in peace, are now pleasures that are only reachable by the privileged classes. So of course these pleasures find a lot of enthusiasm here. Not that I'm any less enthusiastic than most here, but we shouldn't forget that out industry contains some of the worst offenders when it comes to distraction and interruption.
mattbgates 9y ago
The voices in my head may or may not agree with the voices in your head.
hyperpallium 9y ago
During silence, the brain consolidates, much as muscles strengthen after exertion, not during. This consolidation consists in making information fit together "better", by seeking patterns and other redundancies - resulting in both compression and insight. A role also assigned to sleep. It's more basic than intellectual consolidation, but things like the concept of a chair. (Not the philosphical concept of a chair, but some particular person's actual concept). But it also explains why we have spontaneous insight when disengaged, e.g. in the shower.
intrasight 9y ago
Anyone reading this Nautilus article should also read the counter-point article from 2016 http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/noise-is-a-drug-and-new-york-is-full-of-addicts http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/noise-is-a-drug-and-new-york... Lewis Black, a comedian, couches his praise of noise in a cynical one-liner, noting dryly, “The reason I live in New York City is because it’s the loudest city on the planet Earth. It’s so loud I never have to listen to any of the shit that’s going on in my own head.”
craftyguy 9y ago
Wait, this is a joke, right?? : https://i.imgur.com/LsjFa8O.png https://i.imgur.com/LsjFa8O.png (Ad tossed up immediately upon opening the article)
tlrobinson 9y ago
For some reason I intensely I dislike that "Silence, please" slogan. Maybe it's lost in translation, but to me it comes across as scolding. I actually want to go to Finland and make a lot of noise right now. Maybe I've been browsing https://reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists https://reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists too much lately.
throwaway76025 9y ago
Protect your ears and don’t get tinnitus. Some people ruin their futures (aspiring musician or audio engineer).
andrewbinstock 9y ago
I wish hotels would be graded on how quiet they are.
juhq 9y ago
"...and a vibrant cultural capital the size of Nashville, Tennessee..." ahh yes, as a finn, I know all the us cities/states and their size and instantly compare finnish cities to us counterparts. Indeed I do sir.

299 points by dnetesn 9y ago

"Kirste found that two hours of silence per day prompted cell development in the hippocampus." This was in mice, but if silence turns out to grow neurons in humans too, that will be big news.

Mononokay 9y ago
I could be far off base here, but I wonder if this could be tied to why humans are generally considered more capable of learning in adolescence - the older someone gets, the more noise they find around them. Lecturers' voices, phones ringing, music, cars and the like are all things you hear progressively more after age 3 or so.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Primary schools are extremely noisy environments IME.
  - blunte 9y ago
    Not just the sounds of noise, but the mental busyness as noise... a child's mind is so much less full. As adults we get so accustomed to "noise" that we often don't realize it's there. Every time I turn around, I have taxes or some other painful administrative thing to do. That's noise in my head that buzzes quietly at times or very loudly as a deadline approaches. We have job noise - projects, human conflicts, financial concerns etc. There are home relationship noises - fears, doubts, conflicts, whatever. This is why I suspect the practitioners of meditation claim to have so much peace and such improved intentional focus: they have learned how to turn down the background noise in their minds.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      > This is why I suspect the practitioners of meditation claim to have so much peace and such improved intentional focus: they have learned how to turn down the background noise in their minds. I play Chess, I'm not good but when I'm playing for an hour or two I completely don't think about anything else at all, it's mentally draining but in a good way (I find it the mental equivalent of a long bike ride). In fact my perfect day would be two hours of chess and a three hour bike ride then a nap.
    - magic_beans 9y ago
      Perhaps I was a more troubled child, but my mind was constantly full of buzzing, illogical anxieties when I was a kid. Only now have I been able to outgrow them, and my mind is much more soothed.
      - blunte 9y ago
        There's good buzz and bad buzz. Or maybe I should say constructive and destructive. It's possible for the mind to be so flooded with ideas and solutions and other creative thoughts that it can be difficult to focus and complete any one thing before the next demands attention. Either way, gaining some control or having some tool to choose when to quiet the noise can be very beneficial.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dwringer 9y ago
  There's a (loosely) related thread under today's article about John von Neumann's assistant[1] about von Neumann's alleged preference for working with loud music playing (something I've seen corroborated in places like Turing's Cathedral, where it was also mentioned that he liked working with noise in general; to what degree any specific music was preferable, I can't discern, though that book mentioned loud marches). It seems there may be some individual (or, at least, situational) variability with how noise affects productivity and thought. The perceived structure or unstructuredness of the noise in the mind of the listener seems like it also may be relevant, at least from my own experiences - similar to how looking at a wall of code can induce anxiety in novice programmers, but someone familiar with the language and systems employed can see forms and patterns, interpreting what the code actually does and reducing the level of cognitive dissonance that results from looking at it. FWIW, marches can be characterized by a strongly defined and relatively simple structure with a driving 1-2-3-4 pulse that carries the music along and frames our perception of it. Stanislaw Ulam wrote of von Neumann: "If one has to divide mathematicians, as Poincaré proposed, into two types—those with visual and those with auditory intuition—Johnny perhaps belonged to the latter. In him, the 'auditory sense,' however, probably was very abstract. It involved, rather, a complementarity between the formal appearance of a collection of symbols and the game played with them on the one hand, and an interpretation of their meanings on the other. The foregoing distinction is somewhat like that between a mental picture of the physical chess board and a mental picture of a sequence of moves on it, written down in algebraic notation." [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411799 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411799 [2] http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1958-64-03/S0002-9904-1958-10189-5/S0002-9904-1958-10189-5.pdf http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1958-64-03/S0002-9904-1958-...
  - Swizec 9y ago
    I'm nowhere near as cool as Von Neumann, but I find that loud noisy music helps me work. The noisier the better. It helps to drown out background sounds that catch the attention. If you hear a door creak or a person speak, that's attention grabbing. Are they speaking to me? Is someone looking for me? Can I add to the conversation? But with noise you are isolated. The attention grabbing sounds don't come through.
- gowld 9y ago
  Do you find that childhood is quiet?! I think it's been well observed for centuries (before cars and phones and cities) that learning slows down with age.

baxtr 9y ago

> Here’s how Kirste made sense of the results. She knew that “environmental enrichment,” like the introduction of toys or fellow mice, encouraged the development of neurons because they challenged the brains of mice. Perhaps the total absence of sound may have been so artificial, she reasoned—so alarming, even—that it prompted a higher level of sensitivity or alertness in the mice. Neurogenesis could be an adaptive response to uncanny quiet. Just a word of caution: Experiments that work in mice don’t necessarily work in humans [1]. These findings are very preliminary, although interesting. [1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/11/01/the-trouble-with-lab-mice/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/11/01/the-troubl...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jimmies 9y ago

American culture of making noise and hyping is tiring and annoying at times. Sports events are the most prominent example. Going to popular sports matches in the US: football, ice hockey, basketball, etc. and you'll be bombarded with ads, noise, hype from the loudspeakers and flashing lights from the huge screens -- every single second you're there. When you watch the Super Bowl, you watch more ads than you watch the game. Going to a soccer game which is the most popular sport outside of the US, the only sound you'll ever hear is when the fans actually make noise. And perhaps, the announcement when they substitute players. By the way, it's quite cool to be in a high-stakes soccer match: There are volunteering leaders emerging from the crowd that orchestrate the people naturally. Noise in sports events are great, but only when they are not from the stupid flashing screens. It's not a surprise to me that the laugh tracks were invented in America. Their presence in modern American sitcoms is annoying at best. But now, I think the producers started to realize that. I think we are happier when we're treated like adults who know how to feel and behave.

sneak 9y ago
I don’t go to sports matches very often in any country, but the american habit of yell-talking when dining out at a restaurant ruins most dinners out in the US for me. That, and televisions in establishments in which they are entirely inappropriate.
- FeteCommuniste 9y ago
  Part of the yell-talking is trying to hear each other over the stupidly loud music and TVs in our restaurants. But I've noticed that even abroad Americans are louder than most nationalities when eating out.
  - ivanhoe 9y ago
    Speaking of the national stereotypes and loudness, just put together more than 2 Italian tourists and they're guaranteed to be the loudest in the room, they're just unbeatable... but they do it with a lot of charm, I have to admit...

curlcntr 9y ago

Taking this another level, and, where I thought the article was originally going, there is an internal dialog going on even with external silence. An aspect of vipassana meditation (and probably others) is when that internal noise silences.

andrei_says_ 9y ago
Which starts to happen after the third day of 12+ hours per day sitting 10-day retreat.
mirimir 9y ago
That's what I was expecting as well. What Landmark folk call the voice in your head. Which is always interpreting, telling stories, and so on. It's often hard to hear what other people are saying, because that inner voice is so loud. But with practice, it eventually shuts up, most of the time.

sandov 9y ago

I was in Salvador, Brazil this summer and was disgusted by how loud everything was, people on the streets carrying speakers playing music, street sellers screaming, cars honking, I prefer the relative quietness of my southern Chile.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ivm 9y ago
Hey, I live in the tranquil and magnificent south too! (Though I'm an immigrant.) Can't find your contact details – maybe ping me on Twitter (ivmirx) or via email (ivan at qotoqot.com)?
fiatjaf 9y ago
Why did you go to Salvador?
- swah 9y ago
  This is the real question.
fefb 9y ago
Salvador is the capital of the Bahia a state of Brazil. The city has almost 3 millions of people, and it is know for its famous Carnaval parties in the summer. What were you hoping for? A silence place?
- bornonline1 9y ago
  The comment did not imply the expectation for the city to be quiet. But once arrived, they discovered the city to be loud. It seems like you misunderstood the point.

vitro 9y ago

Another thing is advertisement pollution. Just notice it when going around in some bigger cities. Ads everywhere, shouting at you and not letting you to rest. Even if you don't look at them, they are still there, talking to you.

remir 9y ago
I agree. Pollution (visual, auditory and environmental) will be a serious problem in this century. This constant stimulation plus the daily stress can't be good for our mental health long term.
nabla9 9y ago
Moving ads in video screens around the city are really annoying. They really 'catch your eye' if you are just letting your eyes to wander. I have started to look down whenever there are these ads around.
procedural_love 9y ago
This article itself may be paid advertising, perhaps by the Finland marketing board. They even mention VisitFinland.com in the final paragraph. "Science says quiet is good for you." "Finland is a place that is quiet." "You should go to Finland." It's not even subtle but I didn't see it mentioned in these comments at all.
- magic_beans 9y ago
  If it was a paid ad, it was successful, because now I want to go to Finland.
mncharity 9y ago
> advertisement pollution HYPER-REALITY[0] is a fun exploration of ad pollution in AR. Of course one can use similar tech to support quiet. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs (2016)

DoreenMichele 9y ago

In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.” I was a homemaker for years. A lot of housework is fairly mindless, allowing for uninterrupted deep thought because most folks will not bother you while you are doing laundry. They don't want to be asked to help. I have spent years cultivating a relatively quiet life by American standards. Since my ex moved out, I mostly have not had a TV. I gave up my car years ago, giving up its built in radio along with it. In my household, it is a common courtesy to announce "I am starting up a video (or game) with voices." so as to not startle anyone. People complain a lot about the stress of our 24/7 always on lives in the US. They often lay the blame on computers, smart phones, email notifications and social media. I have a smart phone and computers. I don't feel harried and interrupted and like I can't get a break. My life was quiet before sleeping in a tent for nearly 6 years, but doing that deepened the quiet. I am prone to ear infections. I can't wear headphones because of it. My days were spent in a library. My nights were spent trying to be quiet enough to go unnoticed and not have the cops called on me. Games were often played with the sound off. Peace and quiet is necessary to be able to hear yourself think. I think the degree to which constant noise interferes with deep contemplation and self reflection goes largely unrecognized. A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. But I think many people are intentionally avoiding that because the constant flak of noise obscuring their thoughts and feelings is critical to their ability to stay in a relationship that doesn't work or at a job they actually hate. Hearing their own opinions about their own lives would likely compel many of them to make hard decisions and big changes and they would rather not know. That's scary. It's overwhelming. The noise that enables remaining stuck is like an anaesthetic.

flatline 9y ago
> A lot of people could probably skip therapy entirely if they could just arrange to hear themselves think. I tend to agree, but it may take time to see therapeutic effects. That initial period of quieting, at least for me, through meditation, was more chaotic than the noise. It turned everything upside down, everything I thought I’d known about myself was pretty much wrong. I’d just been telling myself stories for years and when I stopped listening and believing they were the truth - wow. I don’t think you necessarily need to have anything external change in your life for it to be a big adjustment.

vinceguidry 9y ago

I do a lot of meditation and trance work, and I can say that trance is all about training yourself to ignore things that demand your attention. Both the body and the mind will issue such demands. Stimulation becomes a "resource," one that you want to get rid of as fast as you gather it. But the easiest way to get rid of it is to not gather it in the first place. As you get deeper into trance, other things you're not so skilled at ignoring start to make themselves known. You need to learn how to ignore those too. Otherwise you just don't have a whole lot of fun. The brain can ignore practically anything. Many psychological disorders involve the brain not being able to ignore things that most people can ignore, such as OCD or tinnitus. If I'm in a weird state, tinnitus can become really awful. But most of the time it's not a thing. I submit that 90% of tinnitus cases could be solved with some guided meditation, and 9% of the other 10% needs the attention of a TMJ specialist. Maybe 10% of 10%.

remir 9y ago

I went to Target when they (briefly) came to Canada and was surprised and delighted by the absence of music in the store. I'm sure some people were weirded out by that, but I found it refreshing and peaceful.

doseofreality 9y ago
They were also a forerunner in not using the loudspeaker system to page various employees.

tpallarino 9y ago

Attention has now been made a commodity, so good luck finding peace and quiet if you don't have the money to buy it

m_fayer 9y ago
I feel like this can't be said enough. Various kinds of minimalism, which are really just different ways of being left in peace, are now pleasures that are only reachable by the privileged classes. So of course these pleasures find a lot of enthusiasm here. Not that I'm any less enthusiastic than most here, but we shouldn't forget that out industry contains some of the worst offenders when it comes to distraction and interruption.

mattbgates 9y ago

The voices in my head may or may not agree with the voices in your head.

hyperpallium 9y ago

During silence, the brain consolidates, much as muscles strengthen after exertion, not during. This consolidation consists in making information fit together "better", by seeking patterns and other redundancies - resulting in both compression and insight. A role also assigned to sleep. It's more basic than intellectual consolidation, but things like the concept of a chair. (Not the philosphical concept of a chair, but some particular person's actual concept). But it also explains why we have spontaneous insight when disengaged, e.g. in the shower.

intrasight 9y ago

Anyone reading this Nautilus article should also read the counter-point article from 2016 http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/noise-is-a-drug-and-new-york-is-full-of-addicts http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/noise-is-a-drug-and-new-york... Lewis Black, a comedian, couches his praise of noise in a cynical one-liner, noting dryly, “The reason I live in New York City is because it’s the loudest city on the planet Earth. It’s so loud I never have to listen to any of the shit that’s going on in my own head.”

craftyguy 9y ago

Wait, this is a joke, right?? : https://i.imgur.com/LsjFa8O.png https://i.imgur.com/LsjFa8O.png (Ad tossed up immediately upon opening the article)

tlrobinson 9y ago

For some reason I intensely I dislike that "Silence, please" slogan. Maybe it's lost in translation, but to me it comes across as scolding. I actually want to go to Finland and make a lot of noise right now. Maybe I've been browsing https://reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists https://reddit.com/r/firstworldanarchists too much lately.

throwaway76025 9y ago

Protect your ears and don’t get tinnitus. Some people ruin their futures (aspiring musician or audio engineer).

andrewbinstock 9y ago

I wish hotels would be graded on how quiet they are.

juhq 9y ago

"...and a vibrant cultural capital the size of Nashville, Tennessee..." ahh yes, as a finn, I know all the us cities/states and their size and instantly compare finnish cities to us counterparts. Indeed I do sir.