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The Quiet Ones

nytimes.com

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Re: The Quiet Ones

#111

Post by MemorableZebra »

I'm surprised no one found this condemnation of a society "constantly getting louder with this new internet generation" to be oddly similar to the idea that "each successive generation is getting more and more immoral" -- an idea that I would argue has not only been thoroughly debunked, but also rather impossible as well.

Of course I'm not saying that overall our cities haven't increased in their background volume by virtue of more people and things such as air planes and leaf blowers, but to go another step further and call a entire generation of people inconsiderate and loud because they're used to being on a "solipsistic" internet smacks of a classic sense generational moral superiority.

And I'm also just as surprised that to come here, with as good of a community as I feel HN has, after scanning through the comments section, not a single person mentioned this in the first comment in each comment-tree. Instead it was a mess of "well, yes, us quiet people are so superior...".

Re: The Quiet Ones

#112

Post by ikawe »

jgannonjr wrote: post #35

Did anyone else notice the hidden text "#@$%&!" at the end of the last paragraph? Does this have some kind of meaning or purpose, I can't figure out why it would be there... We’re a tribe, we quiet ones, we readers and thinkers and letter writers, we daydreamers and gazers out of windows. We are a civil people, courteous to excess, who disdain displays of anger as childish and embarrassing. But the Quiet Car is our t…

A passive aggressive is unveiled?

"shhh" == "fuck you" in the quiet car

Re: The Quiet Ones

#113

Post by the_cat_kittles »

jrockway wrote: post #107
the_cat_kittles wrote: post #92

In Japan, you get a level of public acoustic courtesy that is wonderful. Coming back here made me realize how outrageous it is that we tolerate things like people talking on a cellphone on an otherwise silent bus.

I remember taking the Shinkansen when you could still smoke on the train. Coming back here made me realize how sane it it is that we don't tolerate things like smoking indoors.

yes, I'm not saying Japan is strictly better...

Re: The Quiet Ones

#114

Post by furyofantares »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #97
pg wrote: post #81

My life has been a search for quiet for as long as I can remember. I think the fundamental problem with noisy people is not that they're inconsiderate, but that they don't have any train of thought to interrupt, and they thus don't realize the havoc they're wreaking. When I was living in Providence, working on On Lisp , I told my loud but well-meaning neighbors that I was writing a hard computer book, and that made t…

I keep late hours in part because, once everyone else goes to bed -- not just housemates but my entire town -- everything becomes still and quiet, and in that stillness I'm finally able to think more deeply, more clearly, about anything. You've probably already had your fill of argument for the day, but I think that assuming that noisy people don't have a train of thought to interrupt is a little bit uncharitable. (I…

This reminds me of an anecdote from Feynman about what sorts of mental things he could and could not do while counting seconds, and how it was different for different people. His counting was internally verbal and he could do anything that didn't require him to speak or anything else that was internally verbal.

On the other hand, a mathematician he knew was able to do lots of mental things while counting that Feynman couldn't, and wasn't able to do other mental things while counting that Feynman could, because the other guy counted visually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...

Re: The Quiet Ones

#115

Post by jamesjyu »

AngryParsley wrote: post #108

A lot of the problem is caused by cell phones. People talking on phones are usually louder than in-person chatter. And while a conversation is distracting, half of one is worse. Also, cell phone conversations on public transit seem to be more common than talking in-person. Everyone has a phone, but not everyone takes the train with a conversation partner. Different cultures have different rules about mobile phones. W…

They've done studies showing that listening to half the conversation is the key to why it's annoying http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/05/cellph...

Re: The Quiet Ones

#116

Post by [deleted] »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #80

Is the "Quiet Car" really as intellectual as Kreider makes it out to be? Is it really full of readers and intellectualists, people that take pride in knowledge and are aloof from the mundane? This is an interesting situation: put the people you're most likely to enjoy a good, thought-provoking, intellectual, factually-backed, philosophical conversation in a car together... where they take a vow of silence for the dur…

[deleted]

Re: The Quiet Ones

#117

Post by georgeorwell »

pg wrote: post #81

My life has been a search for quiet for as long as I can remember. I think the fundamental problem with noisy people is not that they're inconsiderate, but that they don't have any train of thought to interrupt, and they thus don't realize the havoc they're wreaking. When I was living in Providence, working on On Lisp , I told my loud but well-meaning neighbors that I was writing a hard computer book, and that made t…

Carrying a lively conversation, possibly one with lots of laughter, actually involves paying a lot of attention: to the things people are saying, to their body language, to their feelings, to your own feelings, to the appropriateness of what you're saying, to the way that you're saying it, to thoughts that you have that you want to express but perhaps can't, and to the timing of things, particularly in the case of making jokes. It hopefully even involves paying attention to whether or not you're annoying people who aren't part of the conversation.

As someone who prefers absolute solitude for reading and writing, I can be very introverted, and I completely understand wanting things to be quiet. However, I think it's mistaken to assume all noisy people don't have any train of thought to interrupt. I think it's just as possible to be mindfully extroverted as it is to be mindlessly introverted. As for percentages and stuff, I'm at a loss; my bias is to assume mindlessness is more common than mindfulness regardless. I guess the difference is that mindless extroversion tends to be more obvious than mindless introversion.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#118

Post by vsync »

jgannonjr wrote: post #35

Did anyone else notice the hidden text "#@$%&!" at the end of the last paragraph? Does this have some kind of meaning or purpose, I can't figure out why it would be there... We’re a tribe, we quiet ones, we readers and thinkers and letter writers, we daydreamers and gazers out of windows. We are a civil people, courteous to excess, who disdain displays of anger as childish and embarrassing. But the Quiet Car is our t…

I read this article in the printed newspaper at a coffee shop today.

The "message" at the end of the article was a graphic of a finger over a pair of lips. Presumably from the description in the article it is Amtrak's "Quiet Car" logo.

No idea how or why it ended up the way it did online.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#119

Post by [deleted] »

jerf wrote: post #37

Sometimes, the urbanites on HN will pile on suburbia, wondering how anybody can live there. This is one of the reasons I often feel the same way, only in reverse. As I sit here, I can not hear any sounds not originating in my house. While I certainly visit the places with Musak, loud bars, et al, I don't live there. It isn't as grating when there is surcease. I'm not saying that Here It Is, The Reason Suburban Living…

[deleted]

Re: The Quiet Ones

#120

Post by Evbn »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #80

Is the "Quiet Car" really as intellectual as Kreider makes it out to be? Is it really full of readers and intellectualists, people that take pride in knowledge and are aloof from the mundane? This is an interesting situation: put the people you're most likely to enjoy a good, thought-provoking, intellectual, factually-backed, philosophical conversation in a car together... where they take a vow of silence for the dur…

The trains have WiFi, right? Setup a local text chat room / irc channel
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