It is said that the sound of silence is more deafening than any other audible sound...why is that so?

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Cecilia

The author to the book The Butterfly and the Diving Bell, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who lost hearing from one side due to his massive stroke, said that he hears far away sounds a hundred times as loud and it's deafening. Here's a transcript.

"My right ear is completely blocked, and my left ear amplifies and distorts all sounds farther than ten feet away. When a plane tows and ad for the local theme park over the beach, I could swear that a coffee mill has been grafted onto my eardrum. But that noise is only fleeting. Much more disturbing is the continuous racket that assails me from the corridor whenever they forget to shut my door..." (p.95, 1998)

My sister, who has a bit of a hearing problem, says that she hears this ring all the time and it makes her really mad.

This question actually made me search and here's what I got. Sound waves come in amplitudes and frequencies. Each animal species has something called a "normal hearing threshold", which allows each one to hear a particular range of frequencies. With humans, when we lose the ability to detect the frequencies in our normal hearing threshold, we say the person is hearing impaired. If different frequencies are played at the same amplitude, the sound can be loud, quiet, or inaudible. So, I guess if our ear bones, ear drum, and/or areas in the brain that control hearing were damaged, then we would not be able to capture the normal frequencies that carry speech, and other frequencies can come into our ears, making things louder than we normally hear. In order to help the hearing impaired hear human speech, they have to amplify the appropirate frequencies to be louder than the other noises that come in.

So, I guess the answer is, that human ears and brains are built to capture sounds within a certain range of sounds, but when the system is broken, other sounds, both louder and softer (with the louder sounds predominating)... or is it higher and lower?... come in to our heads, making it deafning.

Powered by Detroit

white noise. Silence brings you down to earth with reality. All the things you pay little attention to like dripping faucet, electronic hum, crickets.

When it's completely silent you can hear yourself think and you may not like what you're hearing. If you have ringing in the ears or tinnitis, it's that much more annoying.

Listen, Listen Good.

Because my ears ring all the time. Without noise to soften the ringing it gets too loud.

stingjam

We are so used to hearing sound (even our own heartbeats) that the absence of sound becomes a huge shocker. EVen standing up in an isolated recording studio 'sounds' weird for first timers. In a recording studio, it isnt PERFECTLY silent, but can be quiet enough to make the point. Silence is unusual. Being in a silent environment feels almost 'unhealthy'.

There is nothing to hear.

Jaimee seeks HARMONY!

More whirlwind happens in your nugget when you dont hear anything. Your senses tends to get more sensitive...resulting to a typhoon that could clog your head.

Icebeam

Silence can drive one into insanity.

You start to hear voices, sounds that aren't even real, and you can loose yourself entirely.

Anne C

because 'silence' implies mystery and apprehension.
What man hears in silence is not its loudness, rather his greatest fears and insecurities.

Lapu-lapu arf

Agree it is deafining.

When you are deaf you don't hear anything.

When it is silent you don't hear anything too....

aaah kaya pla =p

makuleth_41

i really don't know the right answer for that. but i believe in that, i hate it when i don't hear anything. it scares me when it's so quiet, imagine if someone or something suddenly whispers to your ears but there's no one around you, what would you do!?! :x

Farticus

Whoever said that obviously never went to a Motorhead concert.

pero_102

because if you are in a relationship and there was an LQ, it is harder to bear silence and a poker face.

balagoong

silence is golden but at right time. if at wrong time it is very awkward and deafening. if your making a speech and everyone is so quiet you can hear a pin drop could be spech is so boring.

Juan C

you just feel alone when you don't hear anything...

Aref H4

It is merely a hyperbole.

Which is:
overstatement, overemphasis, magnification, inflation, embellishment

Or, translated in Pinoy slang: "Bola lang yan!"

Man is a social creature. His civilization has made him oriented to hearing sounds in his daily life. To re-assure him that everything is alright in the world. When this re-assurance is taken away, he would be so disoriented that it may take the efffect of a shock, thus the allusion to "deafening".

Sharon

I never heard of such a thing. But when there is no noise, we are left with our own thoughts, and our thoughts can drive us crazy at times.

Mickey the zombie

anne cs silence is so defeaning.freak!

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