Noise Pollution

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Jordan Fermanis, Sara Nonu and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing noise. Nick, feels like quite a broad subject, noise. Off you go. Do you find yourself suffering from irritability and covering your eyes often and being sweaty? Yes. Making poor eye contact with people and covering your ears? Yes. Do you find yourself suffering from muscle tension? Yes. Fidgeting and restlessness, sleeplessness and fatigue? Now you mention it. You could be a victim of noise. I, someone said something on the internet the other day, I think. A noisy place itself. Right, which I had never thought about and I thought was really interesting. They said cities aren't noisy, cars are noisy and I thought you're right. Like we think of cities as being noisy but actually what cities are, the noise of a city is that constant background noise of combustion engines, hundreds of thousands of combustion engines. I think this person who said that was really stupid. There's a city out there, you can barely hear a thing right because there's no cars currently. Well that's because there's windows and walls and stuff. But the point is that cities by themselves ought to be perhaps the gentle clatter of a cartwheel, the hubbub of voices, gentle hubbub and perhaps a horse whinnying. But in recent years it's been noisy. Cities are noisy now, right? The industrial, the noise of industry. But the point is that cities are noisier than ever in fact and that the European Environment Agency says, guess how many people they think die of noise each year in Europe? In Europe? They're going to say 100,000. No, it's less than that, it's 10,000. Okay. But it's still 10,000 too many. They say that they add up the costs they think of excess deaths due to just annoyance and sleep disturbance. These are descendants of the beast in Beowulf, aren't they? Yeah, it could be. Hypertension, coronary heart disease and stroke, all caused by noise. So there's a lot of oral noise, right? And then if you look at, and we think it's costly, and of course lights as well. There's particularly lights from screens, for example, but also lights in general. They're not noisy. Exposed to lights, but it's the same idea. It's overstimulation of your senses. Use of screen time is strongly associated with lower psychological well-being, according to some studies. So it says amongst 14 to 17-year-olds, high uses of screens, i.e. seven or more hours a day, were more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with depression, diagnosed with anxiety, treated by a mental health professional, or to have taken medication. Sarah, is Nick nicking all your points? No, I- I'm 100% okay. Nick away. But the point is that these are two forms of noise that we have, is lights and visual stimulation from screens, oral noise in the background. And I feel like I'm constantly bombarded by sources of noise, and it's very difficult to switch them off. And is it bad for us? And, you know, are we, what can we do about it? Noise. Nice. There you go. No, noise. Nice. Yeah, I just want to be excused and be a grumpy old man for a moment, okay? I've got a favourite little activity that I do, I think it's kind of what we're talking about, is if ever I'm on a train, an overland train, I like to sit there and just by twisting my head to see how many different signs I can see, different points of information, okay? Because there's usually about 30-ish. Wow. Yeah. And it's from things like, you know, don't open this window, don't smoke, or here's an advert for you. And, you know, and they just, and it's incredible how many there are. And I just sit there going, the world is going mad. Yeah. And you can't switch them off. You can't make them go away. But here's the thing. And if I would say, if I would sort of grab the person next to me and say, have you looked at all these signs? Don't you think it's mental? Isn't it crazy? That person would think that I'm the mad person. I'm not the mad person. It's the world. You're the only sane man. I'm the only sane man. Anyway, I feel that, yeah. Yeah. So noise, noise. Sarah, weigh in.

Speaker B: 00:04:47

Do you think this actually has anything to do with age? Not saying that you're old. But I've just had this thought that when I was younger, my mum works in a very loud, noisy environment where there's music playing 24-7. And that to me was fine when I was younger. We'd get in the car, not in a club. I'd actually hate this, to be honest. I'd hate the thought of seeing my mum in a club.

Speaker A: 00:05:12

Is it okay if you tell us what your mum actually does?

Speaker B: 00:05:14

Oh yeah. My mum owns a Tampin Bowling Centre.

Speaker A: 00:05:17

Oh, cool. Does she?

Speaker B: 00:05:18

Yeah, she does.

Speaker A: 00:05:19

How cool is that?

Speaker B: 00:05:20

So it's really noisy. She's got the lanes going, the pins, the music, the people, everything. And when we would get in the car, when we'd leave, she would want silence. Like I'd want to put the radio on and listen to noise. And she'd just be like, I get really annoyed. I'd listen to stuff all day. I just want quiet. And I never understood that. But now as I'm older, I'm also kind of like, when I've been somewhere noisy, I just want quiet. And then another thing just occurred to me. It's like when you're driving down the street and you're looking for an address and the music's on and you turn down. You have to turn it off. There's less noise so you can concentrate more.

Speaker A: 00:05:57

Yeah, people often say, I'll turn the radio down so I can see better. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. So you seem to be saying, yeah, there's a lot of noise around. And as we get older, it gets worse. I think it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jordan, any sort of initial point?

Speaker C: 00:06:10

I looked at a study that sort of was saying that cities are becoming noisier. Things to do with population growth, loss of rural land to urban sprawl, the lack of adequate noise regulations, noisier vehicles, busier airports. All these things are actually creating more physical noise around us. I even came across a term called secondhand noise, which is used to describe noise that is experienced by people who did not produce it, similar to secondhand smoke. And then also these anti-noise activists.

Speaker A: 00:06:49

Yeah, I mean, my own noise is fine. I love my own noise. Yeah. Make it all the time. It's other people's noise I can't stand.

Speaker C: 00:06:59

Jordan's okay? Yeah, I'm not sure. Should I respond?

Speaker A: 00:07:02

No, ignore that. Just doesn't like people. For the base sort of thing, yeah.

Speaker C: 00:07:08

And yeah, I came across these anti-noise activists who campaign for things like noise insulation standards and stuff, but they're probably just lots of disgruntled old people.

Speaker B: 00:07:20

Yes, see, I told you, it's age. Sorry.

Speaker A: 00:07:23

Let's kind of bring it back a little bit. I mean, our question that we want to ask, I think, is, is there too much noise? And also, is there more and more noise? It feels like we're saying there probably is more and more noise. And it's really bad for us. Yeah, and it's really bad for us. But also there's an age sort of thing where our tolerance seems to decrease as we grow older. Where do we want to go with this? I mean, of course, to an element, we've talked about just, you know, oral noise, but also we could be talking about digital noise. I mean, what does noise... I've talked a little bit about visual noise. Who wants to grab this, Jordan?

Speaker C: 00:07:56

I was just going to say on that point, on the physical side is that I think it is something that is getting worse because I saw an article that said in Paris, they're legislating to reduce speed levels and noise and bring noise decibel levels down by three decibels. Such a Parisian thing to do. Because there's been a lot of pushback. But there has been some pushback because some people say part of living in a vibrant capital city is there is noise. So I'm not sure how much of it we're supposed to live with or how much it should be regulated as well.

Speaker A: 00:08:33

I mean, look, I just want to jump in with something. Yes, there is too much noise. Yes, it is harmful. Yes, it does get too much. And yes, it is perhaps worse as you get older. Only about a couple of months ago, I remember I booked myself into a little hut in some woods in Wales or on the border of Wales. I wouldn't be mad and go all the way into Wales. But it was just because I was just absolutely frazzled and fried. And it was sort of sitting at a screen too much and too many people in my house, lockdown, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I did just need to do as your mum does, you know, sort of just turn it all off. I've had too much. So, yeah, I mean, yes, it is. I mean, look, is that the end of the podcast? That's it. Well, no, because why is it hard to do that? That's the question. Because I mean, let's say that that's true. Two things really. First of all, I don't think we really believe that cognitive noise is as bad for us as, say, physical pollution. But it is, right? It is. Well, hold on. It's as harmful. Hold on. Ten feet, 10,000. Well, that was just noise, wasn't it? It's a harm. But it's a harm. Let's say it's harmful. But we sort of think, well, you know, you should be able to somehow ignore it. We definitely don't take it as seriously. You breathe in a bit of pollution and it gives you cancer. People go, yeah, that's bad. But if you listen to noise and it makes you anxious and depressed, people are kind of less inclined to say, well, that's something we should tackle. I don't know why. So there's that. There's that whole sort of perception issue. But the other thing is that I feel like, and I think this touches on this question of information overload, which we haven't really talked about yet. Even though we know that it's good to turn off noise, to turn the TV off and not look at your phone and turn the radio off, we don't. I feel like there is some kind of psychological equivalent of fear of missing out. That means that we sort of are going to get sucked, we get sucked in. There's this draw of that stimulation, despite the fact it's bad for us. Or maybe it is just a sort of chemical kind of thing, sort of dopamine sort of fixed sort of thing. Yeah. So what do we do about it? But I mean, yeah, we haven't really touched on this issue of kind of information noise or sort of digital noise. Absolutely. Sarah?

Speaker B: 00:10:40

Yeah, no, that's right. And I think also, if you think about looking at the psychological effects of too much noise, as we mentioned already, there's depression and anxiety that can come from overstimulation, particularly looking at our devices, our phones, social media, imagery that we just see on TV in terms of how people should look or behave. And then there's also that thing that Nick mentioned before, the fear of missing out, which also increases depression and anxiety. And then there's also the physical effects of too much noise in terms of digital devices and the things we're doing. You know, we get eye strain, bad posture. One of the things that even affects me is like sleep, because you go to bed, your phone's beside you, you're always accessible, someone's always messaging, you've got to, you know, moderate that.

Speaker A: 00:11:30

Wasn't there something about, but what about the absence of this stuff, if this stuff is withdrawn? Yeah, well, you're making it sound like a drug, really. It's like cigarettes, isn't it? Like, it's bad for you, smoking, but it is extremely hard to give up. But also, it makes me think, like, imagine if you were teleported through space and time to some sort of, you know, some medieval times, or even, you know, an island off the coast of Japan or something a thousand years ago. And there you are having a chat with the person there. Well, maybe there's a whole bunch of us lot and a whole bunch of them lot. They've gone on tour to the Midlands. And everyone's getting on well, right? Yeah. But the people back then, so afterwards, you have some researchers go along and say, what do you think of the other people? I think the people back then would say, they're all right, but they need to chill out a bit. They need to calm down. And they're twitching all the time. And they're a little bit, you know, they need to, and maybe us lot would go a bit slow paced. They were a bit boring. They were a bit, you know, just, I don't know. That's, that's what it makes me think. I'm sure people used to be more chilled out than they are now. I don't know. I digress. I want to hear from, I mean, Jordan.

Speaker C: 00:12:39

Well, yeah, I've read, come across something that takes this idea of noise in a slightly different direction. Noise as it sort of relates to decision making and cognitive psychology. Um, because Daniel Kahneman, who's the author of Thinking Fast and Slow, uh, has got a new book called Noise. And it focuses on how judgments made by humans are strongly influenced by relevant factors. Um, irrelevant, irrelevant factors, like, like our mood, the time since we last had a meal, the weather, the, the chance and pressure variability of, of judgments, um, that he calls noise. Um, and it's, and it's sort of this variability that presents a different type of error, um, that can arise not just from bias, but from, from noise. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:13:34

Well, I think it's, I think it's interesting that it feels at first glance, you might think, well, that's a bit different. That's a bit of a different thing. But like the concept of noise and information theory is, is basically the, that the sender's message has a chance of being received by the receiver differently. So that, you know, the message has a chance of being scrambled in some way. Um, and that is the same phenomenon, really. So in this Kahneman book, you know, the idea is that there's, let's say there's the right answer, there's the decision you should have come to, and then it gets poked about by all of these things, the things that Jordan mentioned, you know, so what you end up with is a very scrambled version of what that decision should have been. And it could be very different. So, you know, the examples they use as sort of, you'd take a hundred judges and present them with the same information about an offender, and they will give you a hugely different range of, um, potential punishments, which they would hand out. And that's, that is, uh, bad, right? Because it means that you're not, whatever the right answer is, and we don't know, but whatever the right answer is, it suggests that a whole bunch of them are wrong. And I think the reason why we find noise so hard to deal with is because it is essentially having the same impact on our cognition. You know, that noise is, is stopping you being able to, um, you know, to perceive things properly. That's the idea. So, you know, literally in the case of actual oral noise, you know, if someone's trying to talk to you in a noisy club, you can't hear them. That, that's the same phenomenon. It's the same, same thing about the message being scrambled by external factors. And we have evolved to try and eliminate that. Um, you know, but I think the, it's interesting that technology pulls, keeps pulling us in with the promise of information, but what it keeps delivering is noise. It's an overload of

Speaker B: 00:15:25

information in terms of being able to make a decision. You've got so much information coming to you via so many things. Not only is it, is it like actual noise and it's the stuff you see on screens and the stuff that you can Google and find on the internet, but how are you supposed to actually come up with any clear answer to anything if you're being so overstimulated and

Speaker A: 00:15:44

there's just too much out there to try? Yeah. I feel like we've, I feel like we, it's like obesity in that we evolved in an, a time of scarcity, um, i.e. all of human history basically until recently, uh, and have evolved a desperate urge to find sugar and consume it because it's so scarce. Um, and of course when we are able to manufacture it for essentially for free, that then leads us to just massively over consume it. And it's the same with information. You know, we've evolved to want information because it's useful. That's why we've evolved brains and stuff, you know. Um, and now we have information literally for free. We're massively over consuming it. But also I think something occurs to me that, I mean, as a slightly side point, but slightly central as well, which is the, the, the word noise in itself suggests the, what we're talking about, because if we limit it to the moment, just oral noise, well actually you could use the word sound, but the word noise actually, I would suggest it can and often implies too much of that sound, right? And, and so if we do think about noise in date within data, it's inherently got a sort of negative aspect to it of too much of this. I think it's, it's signals that don't carry meaning, although I would say it's what noise is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Um, have we cracked this? Have we done this? I mean, we haven't really dealt with how to, how to, how to do about it. I mean, I don't, I'm not, I wouldn't say it's an easy problem to deal with. Okay. Take phrases, go off into a hut. Yes. Which kind of works for a bit, works for a bit, but it doesn't last. No. It does make me think about, yeah, when I used to be a scuba diver, one of the reasons why I knew this bloke, he said, the reason why I go scuba diving is because my wife can't come with me. And so, and so, and so she, so it's just, it's just nice and nameless. Yeah, just nice and quiet. That's what he liked about it. I mean, we haven't, one of the things, we haven't really talked about uh, the incentive problem here either. And we haven't criticized marketers yet. So let's do that. Um, which is in an attention based economy, which is what we are moving towards more and more, which is where services are kind of in inverted commas free. Um, but you know, they depend on advertising, um, and advertising depends on you seeing the adverts people, you know, service providers have a massive incentive to pull you in and keep you there. Um, and, uh, you know, that's one of the reasons why every website wants to send you notifications, why all the apps want to send you notifications. They want to keep you going back to their app all the time. And I'm constantly fighting against it. I'm always having to turn off notifications. Um, you know, I can't just switch them all off because I do want my text messages to come through, my phone calls to come through, but it's like, it's just infuriating. It feels like a massive waste of everyone's effort that we all have to go around constantly saying no to notifications. But, um, yeah, I, if, if I didn't know how to turn off notifications, my phone would just be going bing bong bing the whole time. Um, it would be unbearable, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, you know, a fundamental problem with, um, the digital economy that, that they, they need, you know, it's, it's, they need actively to go and get you to get your attention instead of, instead of waiting for you to go to them. Well, let's talk about that a little bit. So, um, is there too much noise in your lives? And if you feel there is, what do you do about it? Nick's just talked about notifications. Um, uh,

Speaker B: 00:19:15

Sarah? I have limited the amount of ways people can contact me. So I do not have WhatsApp and everyone I know can't believe I don't have WhatsApp. I have messenger and I have like

Speaker A: 00:19:30

texting. Basically you have to send semaphore through her window. Yeah. Precisely. But the

Speaker B: 00:19:36

problem is I am terrible at responding to messages. Like people will text me, they'll send me something on messenger. Um, they can contact me on FaceTime cause I've got an iPhone. And then obviously email and I'm on Instagram. That's it. But if you were to message me, you can guarantee I will not respond on any of those. If I just added WhatsApp, it would just be another

Speaker A: 00:19:58

thing of people. It feels a bit one-sided therefore. And you're just, everyone's constantly trying to get hold of you. Why shouldn't you be able to just get hold of Sarah? But why does she want to have the avenue open so you could get rid of messenger? Well, I live in England and my mum lives in New Zealand. Okay. So it's almost like you've got a secret channel because nobody uses messenger. So you've got a secret. But the thing is like in New Zealand, like when I left there,

Speaker B: 00:20:24

like people really didn't use WhatsApp. So I've just kept messenger. But over here, WhatsApp seems to be quite a thing, but I'm just like, no, I don't need another thing where I'm not responding. And I feel bad, but I think most of my friends know that. I get a bit annoyed with

Speaker A: 00:20:37

WhatsApp. I obviously don't have the notification switched on because they'd be going off all the time. But I don't like the way that it encourages you to read what's there. And it's, whereas I'd rather it was more like sort of bulletin board like, oh, who's around? You know, is anyone interested? And there's no expectation to reply. But the problem is it notifies you all the time. Everything is like, oh, we've got 26 unread messages in this one. You just feel compelled to scroll through them just to make it go away. It's sort of in between a bulletin board and a chat app. And because there's no cost to adding people, you end up on all kinds of conversations, which then look bad if you walked out of. Yeah. Sarah?

Speaker B: 00:21:19

Like for me, the other thing is, there's also, and we've touched on it, but like the anxiety of getting a message. I get quite anxious when I've like got a message and I like if someone's getting a hold of me. And I didn't have that when I was younger, but as I've gotten older, that's, that's kind of come through. And I think having more noise and having more things does not help

Speaker A: 00:21:41

it at all. I don't know if it's the opposite of that. I remember when I first got a mobile phone, I got annoyed that my mum could constantly get hold of me. And she was always just calling me and texting me and leaving me voicemails, which would always say, hi, just calling you can't get hold of it. I hope to see you later, bye. You know, and that, and actually, and then increasingly irritable variations of that. And I miss sort of not being able to get, you know, being, you know, incommunicado really. So I miss that. Now it's almost a statement if you're not going to answer

Speaker B: 00:22:09

your phone or whatever. Yeah. I would just prefer it if people just got hold of me when like something they need to get hold of me and I don't need to have like a hello, how are you? That sounds really mean, but I'm happy just being in my own little bubble. I should be more

Speaker A: 00:22:22

circumspect with my communications. Yeah, that's right Fraser. Whenever I see an email from you,

Speaker C: 00:22:26

I'm like, oh no, not Fraser. Jordan. I'm sort of just thinking about the next sort of stage of this, which I guess is like Facebook just released the metaverse or sort of showcased what that could be like. And that looks really noisy. If we think getting like a WhatsApp notification on our phone, but this is like a whole VR world of potential noise and distractions and stimulations. So I think it's probably something unavoidable and maybe we have to sort of learn to cope a bit better with it perhaps, because I don't know that it, I think it's not, noise isn't going away anytime soon. I don't think. No, I don't think there's an easy fix.

Speaker A: 00:23:10

It's like saying what's the easy fix for obesity? It's like, well, it's a fundamental problem with our, and a mismatch between our desires and our capabilities now. And I think, you know, these tech companies have worked out how to grab our attention and give us stuff we don't, which is bad for us. And there's no easy way around that short of some incredibly draconian government measures to ban Facebook. But the problem is Facebook won't be happy until there, if there's one person somewhere not sat in front of Facebook right now, they are going to work out a way of drilling into that person, you know? Jordan, we skipped over you a little bit. You said something, but I wanted to hear about you and whether you feel you live in a noisy world

Speaker C: 00:23:52

and what you do to mitigate that. Yeah, I think I probably do. I try to reduce my screen time. That's probably like, I try to not use my phone at night time and just revert to books and tactile things. I think that's one way of doing it, but I also don't have children. I don't have, I don't know. I don't have reasons maybe that I need to be near a phone at this stage.

Speaker A: 00:24:19

Yeah. My world feels quite noisy, but also part of this, I've got three kids in my house. And then I say to myself, like, well, you know what? These are the good times, actually. That bad when they've all left home. Yeah. We like, oh, I'd love to hear that little chatter of tiny, that screaming and bickering. I missed that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The trip to A&E. Yeah. By the way, just talking, I was just considering yesterday my own WhatsApp usage, which has increased quite a lot in the last year or two. But I was just thinking about my favorite WhatsApp group that I'm a member of, which is, it's just me, my wife and my teenage daughter. And we're on, I named the group and I called it Cat Ladies. And it is exclusive for giving updates on our cats in our house. And like the hilarious things they've been doing and pictures and videos and stuff like that. This is what I was about to say. This noise that I moan about, I'm the problem. I'm absolutely. Another bloody cat. Yeah, exactly. Because cats are boring, but be rude to leave the WhatsApp group. Yeah. I'd be rude to my wife and my daughter. Yeah. Okay. We'll stop there. All right. Thanks as always for listening. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for topics, you can email us at podcast.alephinsights.com. We'd love to hear from you. If you've enjoyed the podcast, Jordan, what should you do? Try to block out the noise

Speaker C: 00:25:45

and hit the like and subscribe button. Correct. We'll stop there. Thanks as always for listening.

Speaker A: 00:25:51

I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Sara Nonu, Nick Hare and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.