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Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

As much as I agree with you, I think a lot of introverts would have a different take.

Silence only works like that when all the extroverts are busy yapping away. If silence becomes trendy amongst extroverts, they will create the same pressures you temporarily found relief from.

All "no" policies (no talking, no running, etc.) eventually turn into a form of bullying (see reddit if you didn't have a childhood like that). All the interesting conversations would be "shushed" as swiftly as anywhere else with a power tripping moderator.

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>If silence becomes trendy amongst extroverts

That sounds like an impossibility, unless these extroverts are communicating non-verbally. How do you do the "extro-" part of extrovertedness without talking?

Non verbal communication, physical closeness to others, clothing/make-up/hair style, messages on belongings are some more ways to express extroversion

Silence can be used to assert dominance. That's why I referenced "the rules" people might be familiar with in a school setting.

Maybe I can paint a clearer picture in your head if I asked you to imagine how silence would be used during an interrogation or by the main character of an action movie?

Silence used to be a very popular choice by previous generations of extroverts and it wasn't "relaxing". It created the very same tension that compels people to make small talk (and fools of themselves) nowadays.

>how silence would be used during an interrogation

No, not really. If anything that makes it more ambiguous, since I can imagine several different ways for silence to be used in such a scenario.

>or by the main character of an action movie

An action hero asserts dominance not by silence, but by physicality.

>Silence used to be a very popular choice by previous generations of extroverts and it wasn't "relaxing".

Was it? How do you know? Why aren't you giving those examples instead of these ones?

The problem is that there is a “yes” policy, a sort of social pressure that you must say something.

The opposite “no” policy is also not something to aspire to. Both are artificial policies.

The silent retreat simply helped me to see the “yes” policy even existed in the first place so I could start let it go.

Letting go of all policies is where the flow seems to happen.

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