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Comment by pdknsk | Hacker News Reader

This is very strange to me. How can it not distract? Some guy beats up his wife, or worse, and knowing so helps you coding? I would have never guessed it. I understand the notion about a certain mood, as in Blade Runner, but that's carefully arranged fiction. This is real life. (The last sentence probably reads more dramatic than intended.)

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> knowing so helps

I understand that some people can't help but listen to the voice, but for me, it is difficult for me to hear details and it quickly turns into background noise.

Sometimes it does. It depends. For instance, if I'm listening to NPR, Democracy Now, or other news shows and podcasts, those are usually too distracting. I can't get any real work or reading done if it's too engaging. "Silence" can be golden. Then there are other forms of vocal information that seem to recede well enough in the background yet remain there just enough to decide whether to actively listen.

It might be put in terms of working around others. Ideally, the noise others make will enter subconsciousness enough to concentrate yet remain aware of anything 'worth' listening to or someone snapping in my face. Basically, you just have to experiment on yourself. Do what feels right for you. If someone's constantly fighting for concentration against surroundings, then that person needs to change surroundings. And moods constantly change.

Emotions are humanity. Life is real life. Moreover, good movies are far more than mere fiction or the sum of their parts. To people with vivid imaginations and deep empathy, any [medium of information], "fact" or fiction, powerful enough, can be experienced viscerally as with "real life" even if only in that moment.

I think this confusion is a stereotypical introvert vs extrovert thing. The interrupting human voices and drama distract and exhaust some, while focusing and energizing others.

I can listen to music while doing grunt work, but I need silence to concentrate. There may be a language issue WRT "coding" where design and implementation needs silence, minor optimization and bug fixing is possible, maybe more enjoyable, with music.

There may be more factors beyond these two.

Air Traffic Control feeds can be easier to let blur, since they lack any sense of drama. They do tend to be less busy late at night, though.

It's noon somewhere.

(I don't know where you get your ATC feeds but maybe you can get ones from across the world)

You might be able to work around that by using dispatches in a lunguage you don't know. Russian or Swedish police radio chatter would have similar sense of urgency, etc, but you wouldn't know the specific Bad Things that are happening.

For me the police radio is usually just unintelligible chatter with lots of distortion and noise. I could maybe understand a word or two, but that would require concentrating on it. Now it just creates an atmosphere.

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