Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes | Hacker News Reader

Earth’s Quietest Place Will Drive You Crazy in 45 Minutes

blogs.smithsonianmag.com

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This story drives me crazy because it pops up on HN every 45 days!

Top instances from Google search:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161333

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053296

For novelty, here is the noisy relative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)

I've used anechoic chambers of varying quietness for making high-quality voice recordings a handful of times in the last year. I have to say that the effect of being inside always surprises me. The air seems to have such an ethereal dullness to it, it's hard to explain. And even though everyone conversing in the room can hear each other in a literal sense, there is a constant feeling of your voice being lost and an inability to gauge the size of the room (probably the lack of echo reinforcement, I assume).

Maybe I'm overstating the experience a bit because I find it so interesting, but most of my close colleagues agreed it evokes a clear emotional reaction.

EDIT: I should say I've done this very infrequently, so I don't make any claims about people being unable to acclimate or what kind of tolerance variance there is. We had a few subjects that didn't think anything of it at all. (Although they were much older; maybe tinnitus diminishes the effect.)

This seems exaggerated.

"In the anechnoic chamber, you take away the perceptual cues that allow you to balance and manoeuvre. If you’re in there for half an hour, you have to be in a chair."

The average person can walk for more than a half hour with loud headphones on without falling over. People use float tanks and other sensory deprivation methods for an hour plus, all the time.

I've been in one of these before briefly, and I'll agree it immediately affects your balance - in a way that wearing headphones doesn't. Not sure why, perhaps the brain only uses these cues below a certain threshold of sound.

That was in a chamber with the lights on, and only for a few minutes. I won't discount the possibility that after a half hour it could be very difficult to maintain balance.

They challenge people to do this in the dark - you would also lose the visual cues. (I struggle to maintain balance in the dark anyway - don't know about you.)

Vision is an important part of keeping your balance and this is in the dark. Try running on an obstacle-free flat surface with your eyes closed.

People use float tanks [all the time]

How well do you 'balance and manoeuvre' in a float tank?

I enjoyed my brief visits to a couple of anechoic chambers. The quiet was very relaxing, and the few sounds that were present I could pinpoint precisely without looking. I think it'd be a useful place to meditate for maybe 10-15 minutes at a time.

Bah hum bug. People vary too much to make a claim like this. It may take some practice but I bet you can learn to deal with it for much longer periods.

Of course, the article says as much when it talks about astronauts.

Sensory deprivation has well-known adverse psychological effects, which is why long-term solitary confinement is known as a type of torture.

I don't even like sitting in my office if it's too quiet. And that's with three dogs running around. I almost always listen to Spotify when I'm working. Interestingly, I can read in total silence and in fact I prefer to. I'm unsure why. Both require concentration.

You surely don't mean total silence like in the article, but in a relatively silent room. I can imagine that you need the silence to build the worlds and for sensemaking, when you read.

The mode your brain works in the office and when reading a book are entirely different. You can visually, emotionally, auditory, or sensually build worlds just using your imagination which is fed by reading the words and sentences of your book. In the office, you can at most have a daydream though. What you do at the office is switching between multiple inputs and silence would only intensify individual signals. That's why many people like to hear music or prefer a little more noise to reduce the intensity the inputs have on you. By input I mean each task you do, including observing things, selecting and choosing the actions you want to do, plan in advance, keep a record and order of things, imagine future action, or dream about outcomes. and situations

Oh yeah I don't mean like....maddeningly silent...just a quiet room without, say, a television. I can read on an airplane and generally that's what I do on transatlantic flights. Luckily, I'm able to read in a car as well, I know some people get sick if they try to read while on the road.

That's true about having a single input that you can sort of control, and I think that makes sense as to why I listen to music while working.

If it was dark and completely silet, yea... I probably couldn't last too long.

If there were lights on like in the picture, of if I had my laptop to surf the net... I imagine I could stay in there for days!

I thought the same, but don't forget about the sounds of your laptop you usually don't hear. And your heartbeat, stomach, all the abdominal noises, even your own breathing noise will start to annoy you. Let's exclude the deprivation from any physical or social contact (ok, admitted. for hackers that's maybe not such a big problem). I don't think that wifi works in such a chamber.

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