This Is Your Brain on Silence
nautil.us
nautil.us
Two of my biggest points when I try to find a job -
* As small a commute as possible and hopefully public transportation availability (have achieved this time and again)
* Place where I get an office, quiet room. (Have never achieved this)
I've taken to listening to static/brown noise at work to drown everything out. It's not nearly as relaxing as actual silence but it blocks most extraneous noises and doesn't distract me like music
I usually listen to some classical music. It is less distracting than anything else and is pleasant (depending on what you are listening to).
I really like being able to modify things because different kinds of noise block different sounds at different levels with varying effectiveness
#!/bin/bash
play -q -c 2 -n synth brownnoise band -n 1600 1500 tremolo .1 30
Hope it works out for you
I think my love of silence is a big part of the whole foundation for my political and spiritual leanings. I loathe capitalism because it's noisy in all kinds of ways. And zazen, that speaks for itself.
I know many Zen practitioners from Finland. They're all so lovely; I lack words. The whole aesthetic of Zen: lightning on a black sky; the moonshine reflecting in the lake; the far-off bird cry... It's all Finland.
Compare all this to the typical open office. Why do we accept such painful environments? How can some people be so comfortable in full-time office jobs? It chafes on me like a hairshirt.
Sometimes I wonder if that influences how people can handle commotion. I grew up with three little sisters close in age and between them and my mom literally nothing outside of that even registers as a blip on my radar.
I also find that in very quiet environments I can get restless - all anecdotal, but made me wonder about it.
True. I have been really trying to find a job that allows me to work remotely. I have an amazing setup at home, more like a sacred space but no job to use it for.
> I know many Zen practitioners from Finland.
How's the immigration of Finland? I might just move there.
> Why do we accept such painful environments?
Some of us really do not have a choice.
> How can some people be so comfortable in full-time office jobs?
Human beings do get used to and adjust in a new environment but I have seen the irritation in my colleagues and I know what's up with them. I believe it is the same thing as I have, just no private space which is crucial.
Example: Someone at work lost their close family and we assume that it's all hunky-dory after we have offered condolences. But again, some of us just do not have a choice.
The language would be the hardest part, and by that I mean really hard. Finno-Ugric languages (Finnish, Estonian, weirdly, also Hungarian) are, in my opinion, the most difficult languages in Europe.
Even in the middle of the city, with people hustling around, its not noisy. Somehow the city streets, cars and people are quieter.
Same with restaurants, you can actually have an conversation even with a larger table without yelling since everyone in the restaurant talks with a respectful volume.
And you can live in a downtown apartment and hear absolutely no street noise during the day or night.
The quiet times or less noisy places is one of the things I miss. In Bay Area you really need to look for it, to find a place with quietness which is usually far away from highways, roads and apparently people.
Zen is originally from ancient China, where I imagine there was quite a bit of silence. That's not to say the essence of Zen has anything to do with either silence or noise, but I think Zen culture was kind of steeped in rural silence.
If communism is less noisy, it's because the state has forcibly silenced people. You can't hear them because they have a gun to their head. Don't forget that.
As a result, I have a hard time believing Communist cities were significantly less noisy. And while the gun to the head probably happened more than a few times, it's probably not relevant to this discussion.
So far so good
> As a matter of fact, it can be argued that Capitalism and Socialism (the only kind of Communism for which there are historical records, AFAIK) are two competing and closely related patterns that happened to be dominant in the world during the second half of the 20th century.
Socialism is not a form of Communism, but the reverse. Other forms of Socialism besides Communism are in operational existence now, as well as being well attested in the historical record.
And, while Communism's peak was in the late 20th Century, Capitalisms was in the late 19th Century; by the mid-20th Century the influence of Socialist critiques of capitalism had largely seen it replaced by either non-Communist Socialist systems or mixed systems which blended elements of capitalism with elements of socialism (Communism itself mostly took hold in places where capitalism had never firmly established itself.)
I wonder what is your opinion on the similarities between American Capitalism vs USSR State Socialism during the cold war?
I'd say that a good point was made by Marxists I've known (not of the Leninist/Stalinist persuasion!) who referred to Soviet-style Communism as "State Capitalism" and traced the failure directly back to Leninist vanguardism recreating one of the central problems of capitalism in that it produced a narrow elite class that exercised control of the means of production and ordered society for its own benefit.
I would say that in many ways, during the Cold War, the "capitalist" mixed economies of the West -- even, though less so than some if its European allies, the US -- were more substantively socialist than the USSR and its allise following the same basic structural model.
What alternatives do you have in mind? Everything listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_systems#Types looks like either a form of capitalism, of communism/socialism, or a mix of the two. (There are one or two that might be considered distinct, but they look like they are only applicable at a very small scale, and even then they ultimately look pretty similar to capitalism or communism.)
I assume you're not just trying to draw a distinction between communism and socialism, since you're calling socialism a form of communism. You have another comment claiming it's the other way around, but regardless, the point is that they're very closely related.
>And while the gun to the head probably happened more than a few times
The gun to the head is a necessary component of any communist/socialist system.
>it's probably not relevant to this discussion
The original comment I replied to connected a dislike of capitalism with Zen Buddhism. Buddhists are supposed to care about peace in the world, not just silence for themselves. Communism is anything but peaceful. So it seems very relevant to me.
By example, the Guilds system in Renacentist Europe. Is it capitalism or socialism? Each master had control of his own means of production, and hired both journeymen and apprentices to provide labor, but on the other hand, each master had to answer to the guild at large, and more directly to his peers in the same city. They had pretty strict controls over who could do business where, without intervention of the State, so in our eyes may look like a mix of capitalist oligopoly with socialism...
Except this analysis misses the point that the Guilds system was not about the control of the means of production, but about the control of knowledge and social status. Of course you can say that knowledge and social status are means of production, but that would be true only in a very abstract sense.
Regarding the "gun to the head", I insist it is not a defining characteristic of socialism/communism. Capitalism, and feudalism, and traditional economies, etc, all have their own ways to impose the will of high status individuals over the rest of the people, and more often than not this involves the threat of physical violence. That's why I don't think it is relevant.
[1] Disclaimer, my knowledge of economic systems is limited to 101 classes but still.
> What alternatives do you have in mind?
A lot of the forms that predate the modern nation-state don't look much like socialism or capitalism because both of those (as well as, arguably, mercantilism, which might be distinguished from capitalism) really presume the kind of environment provided by nation-states as a context.
Feudalism, for instance.
But "I loathe capitalism" doesn't imply "I advocate communism."
Capitalism and the kind of communism you're talking about are both violent impositions of large and complex legal systems. Why do I need to like either of them?
The world is run by powerful people, and I generally dislike them. It's structured by systems of bureaucratic power, and I dislike those, too.
Libertarians tend to frame capitalism as being equivalent with liberty and freedom, which makes me laugh out loud.
If I took on debt, that means I voluntarily agreed to have a gun to my head. Surely you see the difference.
Q: I want to get this for use in the office. I hear everything from birds, keyboarding to footsteps. Earplugs are a pain. Would you recommend a pair?
A: Nope - They are designed to cut out noise at higher levels. Solid earplugs are best to cut out noise from birds, footsteps, keyboards (even loud breathing). With these earmuffs you will likely still hear these "quiet sounds". Now if you are around leaf blowers, lawn tractors, heavy machinery, .50 caliber guns, or the like you will be happy with the comfort level that these muffs provide!
The bigger issue for me is they really can't be worn more than an hour or so at a time without discomfort.
Basically I wore them for the majority of the hours of the day (during sleep + while working) for over two years without any issues then I had a some pretty major impacted ear wax and started looking into it more. Apparently ear plugs are not really good for you. Which is unfortunate because there is really no substitute.
Examples:
People who live in consistently loud environments often
experience chronically elevated levels of stress hormones.
“In the absence of sound, the brain often tends to
produce internal representations of sound.”
There seemed to be a type of background brain activity
that was most visible, paradoxically, when the test
subject was in a quiet room, doing absolutely nothing.
I enjoyed reading this piece, and did learn a few things, but it frustrates me to no end when they gloss over stuff like this. Maybe they are not as obvious as I thought, or I missed something that clearly proves them wrong, but my feeling is that the article ignores common sense in a few spots.
For example, not drinking water for a day tends to make me thirsty. Thats a correlation. Is it the cause? Not really. It just sets off a chain of events, which triggers dehydration, and eventually neuro chemical triggers of thirst somewhere in my brain centre.Even that centre is probably not well understood. But we still say "not drinking water causes thirst". it may be possible to mess with that circuitry to avoid these feelings. In fact a lot of neurological drugs prey on this fact.
Causality is a very philosopical subject. But I would argue that for most practical purposes, reproducibility and predictability are often good enough to be useful, even if mechanism is currently unknown.
See manipulation theories in causality (along with some intro on causality calculus) if you really want to dig deep into the beast known as causality.
I've found that many problems, even software problems, can be solved in a completely dark, quiet room. At the very least, it helps reduce stress levels and allows you to try to tackle the problem again when you get back with a fresh mind.
Your own private experiences can be devoid of ads, but private possessions usually cost money.
For example in NYC, if you're taking the subway or bus, your visual landscape is bombarded with ads. If you pay for a cab you have less. If you buy your own car you aren't necessarily subjected to that beyond the billboards and signage you'd find on public roads. If you can afford to live in the Hamptons and take a helicopter to and from Manhattan, you have that much more control over your environment.
But like you said, even Adblock isn't really free.
As for AdBlock, they don't actually charge you - you can get the extension for free. The donation is purely voluntary.
The other time I experience this is when I cross Death Valley and camp on the unoccupied far side (an annual outing). There, also, the wind sometimes dies. But there, even the noises my boat makes are absent, as well as being a very beautiful environment:
http://i.imgur.com/M6iQpyU.jpg
Silence -- like many things, you don't miss it until it's gone.
I've always loved backpacking, but the more connected I've become, the more important these trips have become to maintaining a sense of well being.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2124581/The-w...
edit: oh what the hell, I never saw the certificate picture of the world record before, and that chamber is only -9.4dBA when there are plenty now past -12dBA (though I don't know the rating of the chamber I was in)
This article got me thinking... what if I'm waking up feeling tired not because my mattress is aging and terrible, but because I moved from a quiet house to one that's 500 feet away from some train tracks? Even with a line of trees and other houses between the tracks and my bedroom, you can still hear the trains go thundering by, regardless of the time of day.
Here's an interesting collection of reads:
http://readpiles.com/pile/Environmental-Illnesses,-Chemical-...
How do people think that this open environment can be conducive to productivity? It just blows my mind. We see such studies all the time about silence, yet most companies (especially in the Bay Area) are moving towards the open space layout. Are they just incapable of rationally thinking about this and doing it just because it's the new and cool thing in town and others are doing it?
I always end up being the most productive during holiday season (I wish our company gave us the option to work from home).
Strangely enough, I actually read very well when at a crowded bar. The background music and conversation, even if it's loud, sort of makes my brain focus on the book at hand, and I'm able to concentrate on it as well or better than I might have in a library reading room. Plus, you know, beer.
Personally, sometimes I find it harder to concentrate in total silence, but other times I look for quiet places to relax and read.
I realize giving an office to everyone is not the best (or the most realistic) solution, but I think a compromise can be found, some parts of our office have these large cubes where 2 to 4 people can sit, this keeps you together with your team and makes for easy interaction/collaboration, but at the same time the high walls surrounding you keep the background auditory and visual distractions to a minimum, this way there is something for both the groups of people.
Any office layout is going to have tradeoffs. It seems like the problems you have with open space offices could be solved with a pair of noise-canceling headphones?
Our whole floor is open, we have different departments, and even then I mainly see only a single group talking/collaborating, it's not like suddenly the lawyers are more social and are breaking their cliques and interacting with the marketing teams.
With the last sentence, I am going to assume you are more outgoing and extroverted, because a noise-cancelling headphone will not do much to reduce the external stimuli that I'm receiving from my other senses.
I guess there is a certain level of coziness, safety associated when the world is not able to look at me and vice-versa and it may be hard to explain, but it is vital for me to focus 100%, and I'm sure a lot of people towards the introversion end of the spectrum feel that way.
I also use them sometimes when I need to concentrate.
:crickets: