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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

> Is the ubiquity of headphones just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, edging us even deeper into narcissism and unsociability?

No.

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Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud and full of background noise. Think piped music, announcements, adverts, engines, etc etc..

> Maybe the ubiquity of headphones is telling us that our shared spaces are too loud

Or maybe the shared spaces are plain boring. I don't know what the author expects people to do on flights, but I'm not going to be twiddling thumbs for any flight longer than 30 minutes. Substitute headphones for paperbacks or newspapers, and the rant would still be relevant (for the lack of a better word).

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends)? Seems to me that's the kind of thing the article is hinting at.

> I'm not sure if it was intentional or not but it's interesting all of your alternatives are solitary activities? How about talking to the people you are travelling with (family/friends)

It was intentional, and my point was that the author wasn't really railing against headphones exactly: humans have been engaging in solitary activity in public for eons, and the author is attempting to headfake readers into believing it's a recent phenomenon.

> How about talking to the people you are travelling

When traveling with friends/family, I usually talk to them. With strangers it's a dire gamble: on one hand, I choose my travel music/movie/book ahead of time and they are guaranteed to be interesting. On the other hand, the gent or lady the next seat over could be a great conversationalist or they could be really annoying and I won't tell them to shut up for civility's sake.

Being bored can be very benefitial. A lot of inventions and solutions to hard problems came when people were "bored". Just like you cannot hear a faint voice in a loud environment you may miss some quiter stuff if you are constantly overstimulating yourself.

> Being bored can be very benefitial

Might as well be, but I choose to take my boredom in moderation. Even with personal entertainment, a 12 hour intercontinental will have it's boring moments

> A lot of inventions and solutions to hard problems came when people were "bored".

My counter-thesis is that the solutions come when people are "relaxed" or "distracted", not necessarily "bored". I have had my fair share of Eureka moments on walks or in the shower.

I dunno. After many years of music filled flights, I've recently starting using earplugs, instead of music, with my Bose noise cancelling headphones and have found it quite rewarding. I can't sleep on flights, but the kinda silent (boring) time has been great for closing eyes and reflecting on events/work/etc.

As always, nobody is impressed that you found a reason not to read the article. As a general rule, if you couldn't even make it to the first line, you probably aren't capable of making a useful comment.

50-odd upvotes says otherwise

Every kind of crap can get upvotes given enough people with no judgement.

I didn't read the article either, but he/she is likely simply refering to Betteridge's law of headlines that states "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

This is a valid point, and I am quick to avoid reading articles with such 'click-baity' headlines myself.

Maybe you should have kept reading, you'd have found out the author agrees with you

It still wouldn't have been worth reading though. If an article uses a click-baity question, but acknowledges that its premise is a dumb one that people have used for years, that doesn't forgive it and suddenly make it a worthwhile article.

(Yes, I did read it, and wish I had closed it sooner.)

Betteridge wins again.

Aha! I was right...https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12090920

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