Being Bored Is Good • Hacker News Board

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#211

Post by lebca » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 8:22 PM UTC

brootstrap wrote: post #10

stcredzero wrote: post #6

If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs when I was a child, I might not have learned how to program computers. I would never have thought so much about spaceships. The original Star Wars trilogy wouldn't have been nearly as cool to discover. I also play traditional music, though boredom wasn't part of my discovering that. However, silence was a big part of traditional music, in the past. You need empty…

Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible. I was recently turned onto this band called Wand. If you want to feel some delicious space in a song, check out Scarecrow by Wand. The video is amazingly simple too. The constant bombardment of shit is so real though. I want to spend time with my wife and kid. Sometimes it's hard…

Could you point out where in the song you hear space? I was interpreting the conversation's use of space to mean silence. Do you mean space in the auditory spectrum, but not in the time spectrum? Meaning, this song is less crowded instrumentally than a house/edm song (auditory spectrum), but does not create space in the time spectrum, say like a Mozart sonata does?

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#212

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

warent wrote: post #91

> Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible. This seems a little bit like a fist-shaking "back in my day!" kind of judgemental statement. Music is a matter of taste and what you're approaching here doesn't relate to the topic.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384256.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#213

Post by cruano » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

bittercynic wrote: post #132

bradhoffman wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a topic I've been pondering lately. Even looking around the internet for technical information/assistance has become harder due to all of the information that is now out there. How can we find sources or information that are truly meaningful and provide great value, rather than just mediocre or non at all?

I think there could be a real opportunity for a hand-curated search tool that addresses this need.

Are we going back to the Yahoo! days ?

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#214

Post by davizao4 » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 12:15 AM UTC

I wonder how many scientists, musicians, sport legends wouldn't exist if their world wasn't boring, and if there wasn't just a very limited pool of things to do, allowing them to become specialists on those.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#215

Post by filoeleven » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

Will_Parker wrote: post #110

warent wrote: post #91

> Modern music is a mirror image of the internet culture as well. Blasted with as many synth hooks and processed vocal melodies as possible. This seems a little bit like a fist-shaking "back in my day!" kind of judgemental statement. Music is a matter of taste and what you're approaching here doesn't relate to the topic.

> Music is a matter of taste I'm mostly with you with one exception. If there's one thing that may be objectively evolved, it is the power of the raw human singing voice. With all its expressivity, dynamics, range, colours, individualism, and overtones. I claim that anyone who studies carefully the pure sound of the voice and what it is capable of will always hear synth vocals as superficial. (I don't care genre, whe…

I’m a huge fan of both the human voice and of synthesis, to the point where my ideal musical space to play in tries to smear the lines between the two in various ways.

Combining singing with synthesis is where it’s at. If you’re specifically talking about computer-generated vox then I probably agree with you. But there’s a whole range of things that can be had with a mix of singing and synthesis that is wonderful to behold.

The standout track for me is Imogen Heap’s Hide And Seek: https://youtu.be/UYIAfiVGluk She can do this live, solo, because all of the harmonies are generated by her voice synth. And the way it reflects her in-the-moment dynamics cannot be matched by a human chorus even if they sank a hundred hours into synchronizing the performance.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#216

Post by brokenmachine » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #168

brokenmachine wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I always wonder: when their week is over, where do people find refuge? Sports, hobbies, entertainment? I just don't understand how people can think about leaving this world without having something that is really their own. How do you live when you're just a consumer? What happens if you lose friends? In my own conception of life, I just don't understand how people can not feel lost if they don't create something th…

> At the end of it all there will be nothing but the heat death of the universe. I'm as non-religious as they come, but I often wonder about this. Any time I spend even a little bit of time thinking about this stuff, I always find myself turning to the thought that, if that truly is all there is, then why does anything exist at all? Like, even on the level of energy/matter. My brain just can't get past the logic of,…

Why does everything need a reason?

Nobody really knows enough about what could happen on timescales that large.

We've invented dark matter to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe because we don't have any proof of why that is happening.

One thing is clear to me though, and that is that both Earth and the universe will outlive me.

So no matter what happens to the universe, it's not my problem and I'm back to, "it's my choice whether I just sit here depressed about my imminent demise, or just forget about that which I have no control over and just try to enjoy myself as much as I can".

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#217

Post by brokenmachine » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #174

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of it all there will be nothing but the heat death of the universe. I'm as non-religious as they come, but I often wonder about this. Any time I spend even a little bit of time thinking about this stuff, I always find myself turning to the thought that, if that truly is all there is, then why does anything exist at all? Like, even on the level of energy/matter. My brain just can't get past the logic of,…

For all we know, we live inside a black hole, as far as we understand the matter in the universe and it's size. The size of the observable universe line up with the event horizon of a black hole with the same mass. It may be a coincident. Or perhaps our universe it all there is, and it doesn't expand infinitely, but will begin a pullback at some point leading to a new big bang. Or maybe we're just simple 3d beings, a…

>For all we know, we live inside a black hole, as far as we understand the matter in the universe and it's size. The size of the observable universe line up with the event horizon of a black hole with the same mass. It may be a coincident.

Is that true? I thought the whole reason they came up with dark matter was that the universe was expanding faster than the amount of detectable matter inside it would suggest.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#218

Post by antepodius » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #217

hvidgaard wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all we know, we live inside a black hole, as far as we understand the matter in the universe and it's size. The size of the observable universe line up with the event horizon of a black hole with the same mass. It may be a coincident. Or perhaps our universe it all there is, and it doesn't expand infinitely, but will begin a pullback at some point leading to a new big bang. Or maybe we're just simple 3d beings, a…

>For all we know, we live inside a black hole, as far as we understand the matter in the universe and it's size. The size of the observable universe line up with the event horizon of a black hole with the same mass. It may be a coincident. Is that true? I thought the whole reason they came up with dark matter was that the universe was expanding faster than the amount of detectable matter inside it would suggest.

That's dark energy. Dark matter would slow down the expansions of the universe, and they came up with that to explain the rotation curves of galaxies: they're flat- all the stars in e.g. the Milky way go around the center in the same amount of time- but that shouldn't be the case going by just the matter we can see. Ergo, dark matter.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#219

Post by antepodius » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #194

natalyarostova wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising a productive, kind, and compassionate human being is very hard, and very much an achievement. You reduce it uncharitably by claiming it's simply 'birthing.'

> You reduce it uncharitably by claiming it's simply 'birthing.' Isn't that exactly what it has become? Right now we are struggling with a massive environmental catastrophe, which is largely caused by overconsumption. One of the best ways to fight that is to simply have fewer consumers [0], yet somehow that's something barely anybody even dares to talk about because we can't take from people the "freedom" to keep bir…

What are you talking about? Birthrates in developed countries are below replacement rates. If anything, in developed countries, more people should be having more kids.

If you want to decrease the number of consumers, here's what you do: Go to every developing country in the world and speed up its movement aping the western development arc so that it gets more money, suburbia, feminism, etc. Until everyone's miserable, alone, and nobody's having kids, like in Europe, Korea, or Japan.

Re: Being Bored Is Good

#220

Post by antepodius » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

cataphract wrote: post #143

vageli wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't make it to Bach's level of achievement you'll be forgotten instantly. Enjoy simple things, life is beautiful without setting bs goals, play music, draw, dance, do some woodwork, who cares you'll most likely suck at it compared to the masters, just enjoy the process My experience has been the complete opposite. There are teachers whose memory I still cherish to this day because of their tender yet firm…

Does it even matter that one gets remembered by a few more centuries (if mankind's lucky) before we destroy ourselves (or ultimately by the Sun boiling the planet) rather than after one's grandchildren or so die?

Depends what the possible futures you're envisioning are. If some crazy hive-mind/brain-upload/matrioshka brain/turn the universe into computronium future happens, what you do now could influence part of the course of that.

I don't get the 'either we destroy ourselves, or the sun explodes'. If we don't destroy ourselves now, there's no way humans just stick around in the solar system till the sun explodes- at one point, some civilisation will invent brain uploading or general AI or something, and then they'll go and eat the Galaxy. It's either that or total extinction. I can't envision a very likely future where humans survive for Billions of years as-is.