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

I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 252 posts

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#111

Post by jdale27 »

Anechoic wrote: post #85
gms wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is money able to solve this problem, through better sound insulation in one's house?

Better sound insulation can help reduce the noise level from external sources inside a home, but 1) does nothing for outdoor areas of your home (a patio or porch for example), and 2) becomes completely ineffectual if you open a window.

Indeed. For example, dual-paned windows are fantastic, but since air conditioning is relatively rare in dwellings in the Bay Area, you effectively can't use them for sound insulation for several months of the year.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#112

Post by gchpaco »

scarmig wrote: post #107
anigbrowl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West Coast houses are made not to hurt when they fall on you True, they're junk. In most places it would be smarter ot make them out of brick, and the chances that they'll fall on the occupant are very low indeed. Some of the oldest (pre 1906) houses in SF are made of brick, ditto in Oakland.

As it turns out, brick buildings are much more prone to complete collapse than wood houses during earthquakes, owing to the greater flexibility of wood. Or are you making the argument that that conventional professional wisdom is incorrect?

Unreinforced brick will indeed fall down in even modest earthquakes. In new construction it is possible to sink rebar into the wall, at which point it is at least the equal of concrete (and certainly more attractive); however a lot of people don't want to bother with perceived time and expense and so we go back to concrete and stick framing.

Much construction in California is penny wise and pound foolish. It is routine to omit insulation from the walls in new construction, never mind that it will pay for itself in savings on heating and cooling bills. Wooden houses can be destroyed in an earthquake if the quake shakes them off their foundations; fixing this is simple and easy during construction but, again, wasn't done for a long time. I believe the only reason it is done now is code requirements—it would not overly surprise me to learn that the builders can't be bothered even in new construction.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#113

Post by wisty »

scarmig wrote: post #107
anigbrowl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West Coast houses are made not to hurt when they fall on you True, they're junk. In most places it would be smarter ot make them out of brick, and the chances that they'll fall on the occupant are very low indeed. Some of the oldest (pre 1906) houses in SF are made of brick, ditto in Oakland.

As it turns out, brick buildings are much more prone to complete collapse than wood houses during earthquakes, owing to the greater flexibility of wood. Or are you making the argument that that conventional professional wisdom is incorrect?

It's not really the flexibility. Masonry is strong in compression, but heavy, and relatively weak in tensions. It tends to crumble under its own weight.

But yes - brick is good in a hurricane, but a death trap in a quake..

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#114

Post by lars512 »

The flip side of noise, distraction and interruption is people. I still find it hard to get this part of my working life just right.

On the one hand, to do really thoughtful work does require quiet and isolation, something that's difficult to get in open-plan spaces. On the other hand, avoiding garden paths and finding better ideas also requires the kind of impromptu chatting that happens with others around. Plus, company is nice.

I feel like my ideal would be an office with two sections, the "library" and the "coffee shop". The library part is dead quiet, by design and by convention, somewhere always available when you need to focus. When your work is more mundane, you need a break or you feel like company, you can emerge and work around others in the more traditional open plan environment (i.e. the coffee shop).

It doesn't seem that many workplaces are able to provide both environments well. Most favour just the latter.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#115

Post by marban »

tomasien wrote: post #82
pg wrote: post #68

It's so true. I can do routine work with noise, but not the kind that requires insight. The sad thing is that noise is yet another example of the phenomenon of "the tragedy of the commons." Which means things tend to get noisier and noisier. In fact, what has surprised me most about living in Palo Alto is how noisy it is. You'd think living in the suburbs would at least be quiet. It is on weekends. But the problem wi…

A mild level of ambient noise is proven to increase creative cognition aka make you a better CREATIVE thinker. Just saying http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048 from coffitvity.com

I usually do my best work with music, street noise and chatter from the TV at the same time. The more variety, the better.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#116

Post by digikata »

staccatomeasure wrote: post #75
pg wrote: post #68

It's so true. I can do routine work with noise, but not the kind that requires insight. The sad thing is that noise is yet another example of the phenomenon of "the tragedy of the commons." Which means things tend to get noisier and noisier. In fact, what has surprised me most about living in Palo Alto is how noisy it is. You'd think living in the suburbs would at least be quiet. It is on weekends. But the problem wi…

Im in Mountain View and I can tell you that at least half of the problem is shoddy construction. East Coast houses are made to keep out weather and West Coast houses are made not to hurt when they fall on you. And this issue is going to make someone a billionaire in the future. Urbanization is well under way and people are only getting noisier and more crowded. Also, another area for huge improvements is in the legal…

I lived in a California Craftsman house for a few years, and plaster-on-lath construction on the inner walls was great. The higher density & mass of the material masked sound better than drywall, but also provided additional thermal mass so very little AC was required for most of the season. Just circulate outside air at night to cool the house, and close up the windows in the morning to stay cool for the day.

Modern tech exists for good acoustics, it's simply a matter of cost - houses near areas that need noise-abatement routinely get fitted with it, but developers are cheap and will skip it if at all possible.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#117

Post by precisioncoder »

auggierose wrote: post #66
superuser2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Noise is bad for concentration" isn't exactly an extraordinary claim. What makes you skeptical?

Because it is not scientific to accept something because it sounds plausible. For example, I can work without problems at quite a high level of noise if it is regular, like traffic noise.

I can also work with regular noise that's why I drown out voices with Russian or Japanese heavy metal, or electronic music. If I'm working on heavy concentration work I always have earbuds in.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#118

Post by precisioncoder »

superuser2 wrote: post #57
doorhammer wrote: post #24

It's an opinion piece, so it's sort of anecdotal and hazy by nature, I guess (ymmv). I'm not going to complain too viscerally about it. The problem I have, though, is that the entire piece basically says "noise kills productivity" but the only linked research is saying that "exposure to aircraft noise increases morning saliva cortisol levels in women, which could be of relevance for noise-related cardiovascular effec…

"Noise is bad for concentration" isn't exactly an extraordinary claim. What makes you skeptical?

While not extraordinary by quantifying and studying it we can learn to understand the mechanisms behind it. If we understand concentration and thought better we can start implementing habits to maximize those values. Seems like a pretty decent goal to me.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#119

Post by tzs »

SeanDav wrote: post #2

I see a lot of developers using earphones and listening to music while doing their stuff. As someone that prefers relative quiet I have always wondered if this makes them more, or less productive. This article would tend to indicate the latter but of course there is a big difference (generally) between music and noise.

I find it is a tradeoff. For the deepest thought, I feel I'm best in a quiet environment. However, if I've got to have sound, then music I'm very familiar with is better than something more random.

For instance, from my office I can hear the tech support people. If I'm trying to solve a hard problem, and I can hear some support person trying to explain for the 10th time to a customer that if the customer schedules our software to run overnight, the customer has to leave the computer on overnight for this to work, I'm probably not going to be able to think effectively about my problem.

If I then put on the headphones, open Spotify, pick a playlist that I've listened to a hundred times, and turn the volume up enough to mask the support person, then I can pretty much ignore the music and concentrate on my problem--maybe not quite as hard as if I had quiet, but enough to feel useful and not get frustrated.

Re: I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

#120

Post by tzs »

jmtame wrote: post #62

This used to be a problem when I started working at a company in 2009. Lots of office noises and conversations going on, I couldn't focus. Pretty sure I have an oversensitivity to noise too, as mentioned in this article. The solution for me was buying a (not cheap) pair of Bose QC15 noise-canceling headphones. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

That worked? I had to deal with conversations happening near my office a while back, and looked into noise-canceling headphones, but the reviews and articles I read claimed that they didn't do a good job on voice. They were designed for the kind of continuous noise you get from things like airplane engines, not for sporadic things.
Post reply on HN