In Praise of Silence | Hacker News Reader

In Praise of Silence

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

75 pointsrobg11 comments

At the risk of breaking the "silence" here (15 upvotes and no comment?!), let me add this:

"Less than three minutes after an event, we expect a world of talking heads to pronounce judgement on the meaning of what's transpired."

We don't really expect it in the sense of wanting it. We expect it because we've been conditioned to instant noise on everything and now would find it creepy if something interesting (broadly defined) happened and there was silence. Reason is, all those media guys who want to draw our attention to sell their customers's products cannot survive on delivering Just the Facts, Ma'am. There are only so many known facts concerning any issue, and they are usually a little harder to come by than mere sentiment and opinion, wrapped in human interest drivel. I often imagine what a typical news article, even in a generally good paper like the Grey Lady, would look like if boiled down to just the facts. I'd die for a medium that gave me just the facts and remained silent when it was done delivering (or still in the process of hunting for) them.

As for the more personal connections, I routinely find people are genuinely annoyed or even take it personal when I turn my phone off or don't reply to email. I don't even have a Twitter account and just today shut down my FB page, but people do expect it -- even though they know I'm not the social type. Even harder to do in work environment where bossman or colleagues expect to be able to call you anytime. Sigh... Similar to the media, I often ask myself what they would say if they just gave or asked me actual information/content, without the whole yadayada wrapper. I think it's some sort of validate-my-existence/status/whatever thing but I ain't no psychologist, so...

Well it would be a very boring world if we did not comment on what occurred. It does not hurt you to take a minute to say hi, how is your wife and children before getting to the facts!

"I'd die for a medium that gave me just the facts and remained silent when it was done delivering (or still in the process of hunting for) them."

Would you?

Thing is, there are many mediums that do give you just the facts and then shut up when they have no more facts to report. The Edgar database at the SEC gives you the financials and relevant business information on every publicly-traded corporation in America. The Congressional Record (and more user-friendly sites like govtrack.us) gives you the full record of everything that our legislators discuss. API documentation and the source code gives you all the facts about most software libraries. Many scientific academic journals give you just the facts on recent scientific discoveries.

How much time do you spend reading these, vs. time spent listening to mainstream media, blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, and other opinion-based media?

Problem is, we're not wired to make sense of "just the facts" without overlaying some sort of interpretation on top of it. Except for people with full-blown autism, facts themselves are generally quite boring. They become meaningful only when we overlay some sort of story on top of them. But coming up with stories that can explain a set of facts is mentally exhausting, so we'd very much like to outsource that to some other person.

"...there are many mediums that do give you just the facts and then shut up when they have no more facts to report."

Edgar et al. was not what I had in mind. More like a cross between them and today's news. The difference between data and information. Would it be too much to ask for more information and less interpretation? I don't know possible solutions either, perhaps a Wolfram Alpha type interface is already the friendliest interface to data possible, but then again it's not (yet) connected to "news events". One has to actively go and ask specific questions.

I would like to see more facts in news reporting, but I don't think you can divorce this from interpretation. Facts by themselves are boring. You won't even remember them unless you're given some conceptual framework to fit them in with what you know.

" ... solitude is the school of genius"?

Also, television and silence are of different realms. To misappropriate GK "Silence--don't know how that works on radio". I no longer even have the radio on while commuting.

[Edit] I recommend the remarkable documentary film "Into Great Silence" by Philip Gröning as a supporting argument.

Lacking a leafy back garden where fricking hummingbirds visit (tweetingtoohard moment there), I'm reduced to getting my occasional insights in the morning shower. But I still agree with the first 90% of the piece. Too bad about the (lack of) conclusion.

Ah, well. Weren't I so deprived, I'd eventually think of an insightful comment mentioning McLuhan's electric external nervous system, and feedback loops working at ever higher frequencies. Besides that, I'm sorry oppressed by the 7-line HN comment box. That's, like, 3 tweets. Fermat's syndrome(TM).

>Lacking a leafy back garden where fricking hummingbirds visit (tweetingtoohard moment there)

Yikes, I think I might be guilty as charged.

http://twitter.com/purrp/status/884420908

Don't sweat it. Just casually observe it did not carry head-mounted micro-lasers ;-)

What I took from it as the conclusion was that long stretches of time without distraction are perhaps a necessary condition for deep intellectual exploration. From my experiences i've formed the same conclusions and this is the reason I live alone, don't own a TV, and am currently trying to limit my use of the internet as much as possible (ironic I know considering i'm wasting my time here, but i'm getting better I swear!).

I'm starting to believe that any important intellectual truths have to be discovered for oneself, and that the only way to do this is to be alone with only your thoughts.

The worst violator of silence ever invented was the 4 way split screen of simultaneous talking heads.

The only one of these I ever want to see again:

  +----------+------------+
  | ******** | ********** |
  | ******** | ********** |
  | **       |     **     |
  | **       |     **     | 
  | ******** |     **     |
  | ******** |     **     |
  |       ** |     **     |
  |       ** |     **     |
  | ******** |     **     |
  | ******** |     **     |
  +----------+------------+
  | ******** | **      ** |
  | ******** | **      ** |
  | **       | **      ** | 
  | **       | **      ** |
  | ******   | **      ** |
  | ******   | **      ** |
  | **       | **      ** |
  | **       | **      ** |
  | **       | ********** |
  | **       |  ********  |
  +----------+------------+

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