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Comment by reportgunner | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to be insensitive or offensive but this has always seemed like an XY problem to me.

There are certain activities that humanity needs to do that need to produce noise, that's just how it is (e.g. building houses). We as a society have acknowledged this and that's why we have laws that restrict the activities to certain hours (e.g. 6:00 to 22:00 in my country.

I also can hear the noises and they are also not pleasant to me, but I have learned to deal with it mentally or physically (leave while the noise is being made until it's illegal to make it).

I see it as an XY problem because it seems that the people who mind the noise think that they can make it go away by "muting" or "ignoring" the noise instead of accepting that the noise is inevitable and learning to deal with it.

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When someone is using a tool, improving their house, working in their yard, I have very few issues with that psychologically. Yes it's a bit irritating, but generally my neighbors are courteous enough to not do that at night, and I can certainly talk to them like adults if it becomes a problem.

When it's a dog barking multiple times per second, in that deep boomy hound voice that is impossible to cancel in any way shape or form, for the 6th straight hour... I see red.

One of these things is reasonable. One of these things is not. When someone is driven to extreme lengths to try to block out the sound, it's somewhere in their personal second category of noises, and it's often *persistent.* In my case, I'm reasonably convinced that the only true solution will be to move, as I'm a musician and need actual quiet. Sometimes the damned dogs take away entire days.

You assume other people are not more bothered by sounds than you. Also, I don't see how this isn't an example of 'dealing with it'.

You say you physically leave your house to escape the noise sometimes - getting a pair of noise-cancelling is significantly less disruptive to one's activities in comparison.

Don't get me wrong, I did not mean to disagree with the article, it was an interesting read.

By physically leaving the house I was slightly hinting at the occurence where some of the buildings were not expected to be used for home working (or "being in use" during working hours) and therefore the construction and standards couldn't have considered that this might be a problem. (the rest of the time is covered by laws mandating no noise during night).

I feel extremely priviledged to appear to not be bothered by noise, although that's who I have always been - just as the people who are bothered by it.

Often times writing an e-mail in silence can be objectively less important for the society than someone building or maintaining a house. Other times people do make unnecessary noise or they make it at a time where it's expectably inconvenient to others around them - see germans not recycling glass at certain times of the week or not running a washing machine during late hours.

All in all it's a complex problem of society vs individual (vs another individual)

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