hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2502.txt

Episode: 2502
Title: HPR2502: Volume Of Thought
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2502/hpr2502.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 04:15:36

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This is HPR episode 2,500 and 2 entitled Volume on Thought.
It is hosted by Lost in Drunks and in about 7 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is Lost in Drunks attempt to measure the volume of his own thoughts.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Hello, this is Lost in Drunks and you'll have to forgive the sound quality I'm in the car right now as you can probably hear.
But it shouldn't be too too bad, I hope, anyway.
Today I wanted to talk about something that I noticed.
It's just regarding myself and the way I hear and the way I think.
Basically, we've all heard that term, something, something was so loud that I couldn't hear myself think.
And I found that to be very true for myself.
Now some people don't seem to have a problem with it.
Any amount of noise can be going on and they have no problem concentrating whatsoever.
But I don't have that capability, not really.
If there's a lot of noise, especially a lot of distracting noise, not white noise or steady noise, like a loud machine in the background, almost anybody can work through that.
But say a television is on or a stereo, music is blaring.
And it can be so loud I literally can't keep my thoughts straight.
And I got the thinking about that.
What is the volume of my thoughts, my internal thought process?
What volume is that?
That a certain volume of external noise can upset it.
So I did a little test.
I put on my media player and I increased the volume of some music, bit by bit by bit, until I noticed that I couldn't keep my thoughts straight.
They started getting jumbled and screwed up.
And so for myself, it turns out that my internal volume is around negative 30 decibels.
Now for people who work with audio, that's a concrete thing.
For other people, it is not.
So what that amounts to is that my internal dialogue, that is to say, when the volume of the music gets to about 30 minus 30 decibels, I can't think straight.
It starts to get really screwed up.
And that's, again, that's not steady noise, that's a jumble of noise.
Jumble of, well, to me, it would be noise.
It's stuff I don't want to hear, and it's interfering, right?
Minus 30 decibels is where I'm thinking.
And beyond that, I just can't keep a coherent thought.
It's very difficult to concentrate.
I make mistakes.
I speak too loudly because I'm trying to hear myself think in my head.
Now, there's probably been many, many tests done.
Lots of, you know, lots of investigation about the internal volume of your thoughts.
But I find that really interesting and a little strange.
And I'm actually kind of interested to find out how other people react.
Because, of course, the circumstances are always going to be different.
I can take much louder orchestrated music, that is to say classical type music,
than I can say rock, rock and roll.
And I can take almost anything louder if there isn't a human voice involved.
Because I guess there's just this natural wiring we have that if there's a voice,
we tend to hear it.
We tend to listen.
But if there isn't a voice, it tends to be a lot easier.
So that minus 30 thing comes with qualifiers.
You know, in this case, in this particular situation,
it was music with a voice, right?
Now, I haven't done the same test exhaustively.
I haven't done it with classical and then with just a rock instrumental
and then with rock and roll music and then with polka music and then with blue grad.
I haven't, you know, I haven't done that.
And I strongly suspect that depending on what kind of music you enjoy,
will make that very different.
In this case, it was rock music with a voice.
So I find that kind of fascinating in a way.
You know, and again, I'm sure there have been tons of tests done,
not only by scientists and such, but also by companies that, you know,
put out things like headphones and all of that sort of thing.
But this is the first I've really encountered it myself and measured it with anything
besides someone making noise and irritating me.
And I'm wondering if other people have noticed that.
If there's a certain level where beyond that, they literally cannot think.
Or perhaps there's a certain type of music.
Maybe you hate it so much that even a small amount of it is distracting.
Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe you love it so much.
A small amount of it is distracting.
But for myself, something like music, like conversation, like chatter,
like people laughing, people telling jokes or stories.
If I'm trying to do something else while all of that is going on,
there is a definite and it turns out to be a very hard limit to the volume I can deal with
before I start getting confused.
And I found that very interesting.
And I thought perhaps I would just share that out.
I would suspect that it's well worth some investigation,
just some sort of citizen science in play where you test it out with some friends,
where you put on a wide variety of different sounds, you know, different kinds of music
than people just chattering as opposed to say an audience waiting before a show.
That's almost like white noise.
It's kind of a steady sort of thing that never really changes.
And you can't really pick any one thing out over anything else.
And that tends to fade in the background.
And where does white noise play into all this?
How high can that be before it's distracting?
Does it have to be painful before it's distracting?
And of course, it's whatever you're used to.
If you happen to work maybe you're a roadie for a rock band,
you're probably quite used to thinking straight while that music is playing,
because you have a job to do and the music is going and you got to do it
and you got to contact people and you got to talk to people.
So I'm sure you can get used to almost anything,
but this has been consistent throughout my life.
I just never had a level where I could measure it, but now I do.
At least with rock music.
So anyway, that was just a little, little thought that I wanted to pass along.
Thank you.
And if you have any thoughts on this, please put them in the comments of this episode
or better yet, maybe go and do that test.
See what it does and then come back to HPR and do your own episode
because you have thoughts, you have experiences, and we want to hear about them.
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