Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Quiet Ones

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 397 posts

Re: The Quiet Ones

#211

Post by 46Bit »

joezydeco wrote: post #71
cletus wrote: post #13

I sympathize with whoever criticized the guy for loud typing. Seriously, it's distracting/disruptive. I learnt to type on (manual) typewriter too but laptops and keys don't need to be stabbed with the force of a thousand suns to register the press. It can be just as loud as people talking and (IMHO) can be harder to tune out. After all, we're used to hearing people talk all the time. Oh and while I'm in the mood for…

I'd like to know how loudly you need to type to exceed the ambient noise on an Amtrak car, of all places.

I've not ridden Amtrak, just Caltrain, but as regards UK trains the answer is that background noise doesn't matter.

People generally talk loud enough to happily hear each other over any background noise. They tend not to notice, either.

As such, when businesspeople consider the quiet car somewhere for meetings because everywhere else has noise, everyone in the car hears exactly what they are discussing.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#212

Post by 46Bit »

potatolicious wrote: post #83
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…

I'm typing this right now from my apartment in Midtown Manhattan. I hear nothing except the humming of the two USB hard drives on my desk. All in all, this is the same amount of noise I grew up hearing in a quiet suburban neighborhood.

What floor are you on?

Re: The Quiet Ones

#213

Post by biesnecker »

droithomme wrote: post #193
noonespecial wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occasionally I enjoy attempting to communicate entirely with cliches. Its easier than one first imagines. Your own little "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" moment.

It's usually Shaka, when the walls fell when I do this.

It's funny how things like this can sit totally dormant in your mind for years and years, and at the first mention everything floods back. And just for a silly ST:TNG reference.

Our minds are amazing machines.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#214

Post by VexXtreme »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #173
portlander52232 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with suburbia was that there was always yard equipment going, plus dogs and teenagers. These loud, punctuated sounds always bothered me much more than the regular, low din of a city. Moreover, most of the noise in cities in from automobiles, which are mainly a problem inflicted upon us by suburban development.

... and there are neighborhoods in the centers of cities, typically residential with little car traffic, that are very quiet. Tokyo has a lot of these. It doesn't have a single "downtown", but rather a large number of busy centers, usually around railroad stations, and in many parts of central Tokyo, the "infill" between these is residential single-family housing or small apartment buildings. In many of those areas,…

The biggest problem with Tokyo is a lack of laws against public disturbance in terms of noise people are allowed to produce.

All is fine and dandy until one of those stupid delivery trucks shows up near my building at 6am blaring "Hidari e magarimasu, gochuui kudasai. Hidari e magarimasu, gochuui kudasai. Hidari e magarimasu, gochuui kudasai". For people unfamiliar with Japan, various trucks here are not only equipped with visual (light based) turn signals, but audio based ones as well. This means that whenever they are taking a turn, they are blaring from their speakers "Turning left, please be careful. Turning left, please be careful" ad nauseam.

Seriously, is that really necessary? Not to mention trucks with loudspeakers playing loud music promoting new bands and what not. I find Tokyo to be anything but a quiet city.

To make things worse, sound proofing is so terrible in Japanese houses and buildings (construction standards are really poor here compared to the ones we have in the west), that despite living on the 6th floor I can often make out contents of the conversations of loud drunk groups returning from izakayas at 1am.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#215

Post by ncarroll »

esharef wrote: post #179
VexXtreme wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the same way. I always find it perplexing how most people can't spend literally 10 minutes in complete silence with their own thoughts without getting anxious. I notice this mostly with the younger generation these days (young women especially). They literally feel the compulsion to always have some sort external stimuli coming in, usually in the form of a constant stream of music from their phones/MP3 players.…

"young women especially" really?

Sure. Why not? Listening to music while in public sends the clear signal that she doesn't want to talk to you or anyone else. I think young people use earphones as a way of finding some privacy in an over socialized world. A pretty good adaptation, I would say.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#217

Post by dsirijus »

purplelobster wrote: post #208
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…

I grew on on the country side. On an island. In the middle of the Baltic sea. In the winter, it would get so dark that I couldn't see my hand before my eyes, and couldn't hear a single sound. Actually this had some strange effects on me, being sort of a sleep walker and all. I would often wake up in the middle of the night being confused, not knowing where I was. I had to feel my bed, find the floor, the walls, the f…

I grew up in similar conditions, and only now that you've mentioned it, I made a connection of awaking to not knowing where you are and confused to such sensory deprivation. I don't recall that happening ever in urban areas. Quite contrary, I'm now extremely light sleeper, and wake to full awareness almost instantly. Interesting.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#218

Post by peteretep »

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…

> 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?

No.

> 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 duration of the ride.

Perhaps the worst place imaginable to find interesting conversation is in groups of self-selected "intelligentsia". People talking to each other who are getting a sense of validation from sounding clever leads to the kind of drivel that makes Ayn Rand fans over-excitable, and other people despair of the state of humanity.

If you're looking for thought-provoking and intelligent conversation, cultivate a group of friends who you like listening to, but at NO POINT advertise it as some kind of salon. If you're in a big city, there are often large groups of people who work in finance with brains the size of planets, and absolutely no intellectual outlet. I have had great success with "dinner clubs" where the stated aim is to eat good food and drink nice wine... Alternatively I have been led to thoughts of homicide by people gathering to have "clever conversations".

Re: The Quiet Ones

#219

Post by megablast »

nlh wrote: post #158
bpatrianakos wrote: post #75

Oh, the quiet car. I ride the quiet car every weekday to and from work into and out of Chicago (except ours is Metra, not Amtrak). His description of it is completely accurate. The people on the quiet car tend to be thinkers, readers, writers, and I dare say just a bit more intelligent than the average rider. I've had the same experience before. For some reason people think the signs and the announcements don't apply…

While we're on this subject, a related rant/question: Why are so many people so totally oblivious to so many announcements, signs, and otherwise? You've all seen it: Boarding a plane, for example. "Ladies, and Gentlemen, we're boarding rows 1 - 5 now. Thanks." And as sure as Spring, there will _always_ be someone from row 324 who gets in line. The staff are far more polite than I'd be: "Sir, we're boarding rows 1 - 5…

Non english speakers?

People who have just arrived at the gate, and are a bit confused, and also afraid of missing the plane. Is this the last call?

Especially when you are rushing for your 4th connecting flight on a 30 hours trip.

Re: The Quiet Ones

#220

Post by peteretep »

brianchu wrote: post #4

The funny thing is that two months ago when I was taking a train in France with some friends, instead of having a quiet car, they had a noisy car. And it was really quiet in there, by our American standards. There were quite a few elderly couples in the car, it seemed. We were talking and laughing and were probably the loudest on the car. At the end, the person I was traveling with who knew French remarked that the f…

One of the following things is true:

* Americans speak louder than other people

* Something about the American accent means spoken American travels further and more piercingly than other languages

* People expect Americans to be louder, so there's massive selection bias at work...

Having travelled long and far, I suspect it's all three...

Post reply on HN