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Comment by nonrandomstring | Hacker News Reader

> I wish more people would work on noise pollution

Absolutely agree.

It's one of the most insidious kinds of pollution that has big effects on mental and cardio-vascular health, and is accumulative.

Everything from aircraft, to emergency vehicle sirens, to construction and poor housing, is slowly killing people.

In Europe we've actually made big leaps forward with regulation, building standards for isolation, and abatement laws. But these often go unenforced or even flippantly dismissed and mocked because people don't recognise the harm pathways and effects.

Whenever this topic comes up I am reminded of this (very funny) curmudgeon's screed "On Noise". Although Arthur Schopenhauer was "serious" about this, his acerbic style only gets more funny with time [0].

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm

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Some progress in Europe yes but the harms are still far from getting enough attention and policy responses. One problem is that there's so little organized effort against noise pollution, there's need for a movement with grass root organizations that puts sustained pressure on this issue.

Also, the noise pollution regulations that are in place exempt trains.

Contrast with John von Neumann, who "could not work without some noise or at least the possibility of noise. Some of his best work was done in crowded railroad stations and airports, trains, planes, ships, hotel lobbies, lively cocktail parties or even among a bunch of shrieking very minor minors whooping it up."

People can be different

A very good point. I find myself helped by having the radio (quietly) on for certain tasks. But for others, only silence will do. I'd love to see more modern and detailed cognitive studies of this sort of thing. Many years ago my audio/acoustics students did some bachelors final projects on "distraction" (focus, concentration and annoyance of noises) and that was interesting. Some people scored higher on SATS style tests while pumped up on drum'n'bass, others were totally destroyed by it, IIRC the most devastating soundtrack was random cartoon SFX :)

I’m more impressed if his best sleep was done in noise areas.

I think this is the classic introvert/extravert axis.

Introverts are chronically overstimulated, and seek to reduce stimulation.

Extraverts are under-stimulated, and therefore work better with even more stimulation.

Of course going from silence to noise is trivial in this day and age. Going from noisy to silence is still difficult even with the best ANC.

Persistent noise pollution increases stress levels..And I felt the impact of this myself when construction work started near my office. It’s very hard to concentrate.

Unfortunately, where I live, more and more people have dogs. It's now a risky proposition to live in an apartment in a closed city block, because it's almost guaranteed that someone will leave a dog barking outside for hours.

It's all about whip cracking! Who knew that was such a thing. Like the mindless honking horn of the past. Thanks for sharing :)

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