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Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

ekin.substack.com

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Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#21

Post by jcun4128 »

ninjinxo wrote: post #12
rosstex wrote: post #2

This article does everything except actually answering the question in the title.

I think it may be a GPT3 blog: > Noise is necessary for our brains to function in an orderly fashion. In the book The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver says that “The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.”7 Andrew Smart adds that “there are many circumstances in which the addition of the right amount of noise actually boosts the signal.” So within the randomness of the noise, we can achi…

Hmm imagine a GTP3 based VTuber on YT that used a random character generator

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#22

Post by jdowner »

zzzeek wrote: post #8

went looking for some interesting neurological findings and found a very poor repurposing of a Nate Silver quote that was referring to statistics, not neurology.

I had a similar hope. Not long into the article, it was apparent that the author was not using the term 'noise' in a particularly well-defined way. For me, 'noise' is unstructured sound. People talking is structured, which is why it is a problem. I used to block out people in the office by listening to heavy metal, but in the end I found listening to actual noise was more effective for me to get my work done. So I was hoping the article was going to dig more into that side of things.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#23

Post by jjtheblunt »

munificent wrote: post #16

I've worked in private offices, cubicles, open plan offices, coffeeshops, libraries, and now many many hours in home both when other family members are around and when they aren't. I spend a lot of time thinking about sound and focus. The conclusion I came to is that humans have a few emotional needs in order to reach deep focus: 1. We need to not be distracted and we need to feel certainty that we will not be distra…

your point #1 is _exactly_ what i've learned empirically too, and with great unbounded frustration trying to explain it to a particular super manic super adhd super video-watching person i'm married to.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#24

Post by odyssey7 »

munificent wrote: post #16

I've worked in private offices, cubicles, open plan offices, coffeeshops, libraries, and now many many hours in home both when other family members are around and when they aren't. I spend a lot of time thinking about sound and focus. The conclusion I came to is that humans have a few emotional needs in order to reach deep focus: 1. We need to not be distracted and we need to feel certainty that we will not be distra…

And yet, as a freelancer/work-from-homer, I am told that my coffee shop receipts are not tax-deductible.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#25

Post by randcraw »

iroddis wrote: post #4
Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #3

I am Deaf myself and using my hearing aids all of my life. One thing I discovered that silence is the best productivity focus for me. During my job, I always keep my hearing aids off. This helps with my ADHD as I am easily distracted when there is a sound involved, sometime causes me to ‘hyperfocus’ in my “world” than doing my job. And interesting that I found that keeping my hearing aids off makes the time around me…

I have similar issues with distractibility with sounds. Music sometimes helps, and white noise is good, but sometimes I’d love to be able to just turn my ears off. The worst situation is feeling the need for enough audio stimuli to feel “right”, but that level is too distracting to allow for focus.

I find that wearing hearing protector earmuffs (like the 3M Peltor Optime, which cuts 30 dB) cuts out so much sound that I feel almost stone deaf and the rest of the world goes away. It takes a little practice for them not to be disquieting, but it helps if I turn my attention elsewhere.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#27

Post by gzer0 »

munificent wrote: post #16

I've worked in private offices, cubicles, open plan offices, coffeeshops, libraries, and now many many hours in home both when other family members are around and when they aren't. I spend a lot of time thinking about sound and focus. The conclusion I came to is that humans have a few emotional needs in order to reach deep focus: 1. We need to not be distracted and we need to feel certainty that we will not be distra…

This is articulated particularly nicely and captures what I have observed myself. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#28

Post by saila »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #20
munificent wrote: post #16

I've worked in private offices, cubicles, open plan offices, coffeeshops, libraries, and now many many hours in home both when other family members are around and when they aren't. I spend a lot of time thinking about sound and focus. The conclusion I came to is that humans have a few emotional needs in order to reach deep focus: 1. We need to not be distracted and we need to feel certainty that we will not be distra…

good observations, I’ve had some similar theories that you have better articulated https://noiz.io was a lifesaver during quar’. virtual coffeeshop, artificial rain storms, even an ST:TNG-style outer space hum

https://mynoise.net/ is my goto for noise. I usually go for basic pink or brown noise, but they have a bunch of other fun and interesting sounds too.

I have pink noise playing pretty much all the time at home. Not only does it mask some intermittent ambient noise, it's also too quiet without it. (Edit: I use sox in the terminal for this. Install sox then play -n synth pinknoise.)

Just noticed the same person made https://noises.online/ too, which is like a simplified, browser-only version of myNoise ... and you can share mixes like https://noises.online/player.php?g=ca3fa3ib3

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#29

Post by anonu »

Having worked on a trading floor: noise is all around you: whether its people shouting at each other or the non-stop drone of CNBC in the background.

I can say that the former was always very distracting but the latter was always welcome and did boost productivity and focus.

Re: Why noise is necessary for our brains to perform at a high-level

#30

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

motohagiography wrote: post #15
Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #3

I am Deaf myself and using my hearing aids all of my life. One thing I discovered that silence is the best productivity focus for me. During my job, I always keep my hearing aids off. This helps with my ADHD as I am easily distracted when there is a sound involved, sometime causes me to ‘hyperfocus’ in my “world” than doing my job. And interesting that I found that keeping my hearing aids off makes the time around me…

Very odd question, but if as a person experiencing difficulty hearing who can get partial hearing from a hearing aid, can you experience binaural beats, which are essentially non-sound neurological artifacts of the brain processing and filtering slightly different tones? Meta analysis of them here, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-018-1066-8 , full paper is on sci-hub. Almost everything about binaural…

I am not sure if I can hear binaural beats. I tried a few of them in the past and always found them… mm what that word… like “metal rubbing on other metal” sounds which I don’t like and felt randomized. They don’t work for me. I am not sure if my hearing aids have something to do with it. Hearing aids does modify the sounds from the microphone and amplifies & output various range to get closer to “normal hearing level” to the ear. So, I don’t know if my hearing aids is outputting the binaural sounds correctly as it is intended to.

It is hard to find sound generators that would produce rhythmic beats rather than randomizing few beats here and there. Something like “beeee boop beeee boop beeee boop” or “swish bah swish bah swish bah” beats is what I prefer. My partner always looks at me funny everything I dance when my top-loader washing machine is on because it always produces simple rhythmic beats. Same for my dishwasher sounds.

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