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Comment by chadash | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: John von Neumann, arguably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, claimed to do some of his best work in front of the TV. In my personal experience, I know plenty of engineers who don't mind noise. I think it's a personal thing more than anything and it's hard to generalize.

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Using JVN who was one of the most distant outliers of human cognitive performance ever seen as an example is not helpful.

A TV is not calling you to chat every 15 minutes, or even talking anything important work-related to distract your focus. It's just noise, the same as working listening to music.

An aside, but an important distinction is that a TV is definitely not something that is going to interact with you, it's just background, it will not change it's behaviour without specific defined inputs (remote control); It cannot affect you either except for the changing of light in the room and it's fully controllable without impacting anyone else.

It's the difference between sitting next to a busker in the street for 8hrs per day and listening to recorded music on your phone.. in that it's a _huge_ difference.

When I'm really cranking away at something, I like loud music. Like, really loud. I really don't like silence ever, to be honest, and I don't consider myself a member of the 'communicator' group.

Second this, although perhaps not as loud. I prefer music for concentration, which has melody and harmony, rather than ‘silence’ which is usually interrupted by noise such as chatter or scruffing or chairs scraping etc.

countercounterpoint: he was choosing to sit in front of the television.

I think this is it -- he had control. Once others are free to intrude into your space, injecting distraction, all is lost.

Anecdotally, I often (during evening/side projects) work with a TV on in the room.

However a TV is entirely different than people being around me. There's noise from various directions, distances, and volumes—not to mention the awareness of people being near which always heightens my awareness of a situation, distracting from what I am trying to focus on.

I find I can focus pretty well in a noisy coffee shop, but if I'm in an office and someone on the desk next to me starts having a conversation, I lose all focus.

I think generally it's easy to know you won't be needed by other patrons in a coffee shop, or that their chatter won't require you to weigh in or judge, so your brain just keeps an ear out for normal danger noises.

At work, headphones off, my brain is subconsciously trying to keep me informed about the noise around me in the workplace, so that I can respond if needed (generally I'm not) not helpful, brain. :P

Attention control with distracting external stimuli is associated to higher intelligence.

Source?

You can google “attention control intelligence”. For more info “attention control aging” for more studies on the ability to focus declines as we age due to cognitive decline.

TV to Von Neumann was probably like white noise to the average person. Plenty of people use white noise to help them think, fall asleep, etc.

Yes, I need the sound of air-con to help me fall asleep.

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