I really hate that attitude. Not everyone works, sleeps, awakes at the same time. People who work night shifts or are natural night owls should have just as much right to enjoy their hours of awakeness as anybody else. Why are the daylight hours ‘OK for noise’, yet the evenings aren’t?

I’m a natural night owl and sometimes get awoken early by rubbish trucks, or just noisy people, shouldn’t I have the same rights?

If you’re a light sleeper, get some ear plugs

There is a chronic issue that being part of a group, for example by living in a city, has benefits, but it also comes with friction. Trying to find best practices for reducing the problems without destroying the fundamental value of group association is always a struggle. One best practice is you try to arrange things to align with group norms so as to inconvenience the fewest people and the reality is that most people sleep at night and work or go to school during the day.

I will add that I tend to be a night owl.

I never said I deserve quiet, I pointed out the discrepancy. It's the sleeper that desires the quiet, but different people sleep different hours of the day, especially in a city. I don't write off to my local council every time I'm awoken at 8am by a rubbish truck, even if I'd only gone to bed a few hours before. Why should people who are awake at so-called 'normal hours' be afforded any additional sympathy? And why should their desires override others? What makes them special?

Are people who are awake through the night 'lesser people'? Or not as important in your world view?

If I can sleep through the daywalker's noise, then daywalkers can sleep thru the nightwalker's noise. And if not, then they're probably living in the wrong part of the city. I find it endlessly perplexing that people will move to places known for the nightlife and then start complaining about it once there.

I'm not arguing that night owls are lesser people. I'm just saying these sorts of conflicts are basically inescapable. They have existed as long as humans have and there is no magic wand solution.

Everyone would like the entire world to work well for them as an individual. Therein lies the rub. We would all like to be able to make noise when we feel like it and to have undisturbed sleep at will where other people are expected to be quiet during that time. The reality is we have two possible choices here:

1. A small number of very powerful people can impose their will on everyone else like that while the majority live in misery.

2. We struggle to find best practices that work reasonably well for as many people as possible.

The second scenario is what most modern cultures typically shoot for. Since night owls are in the minority, policies tend to favor day people.

In theory, we could insist everyone be quiet all the time. In practice, this interferes with industry, commercial, recreation and generally having a life. So in reality we need to demarcate times when an acceptable amount of noise can happen so life can happen.

There are no simple answers. It's a complicated problem.

If the majority decided to torture the minority, or enslave them, or segregate them, I assume you would consider that immoral, right? And that the majority shouldn't just have carte blanche to do whatever they like to the minority - democracy isn't about 'screwing the minority'.

So, if the sound does really make life "a misery" then isn't that accepting of the torturing of people who have to sleep during the day? Isn't that immoral? The majority inflicting torturous sound on the minority during their sleeping hours?

Or, is it actually the case that the sound isn't really that bad, and that we should all learn to be a bit more accommodating to the fact that in a city people live and work on different schedules, and that your nighttime hours are not sacred. And using your majority position to inflict your will on other people's waking hours just so you can enjoy your sleeping hours is unjustified.

If you live in a city, in an area that's known for it's nighttime scene, I don't see why you should have any special privileges. Just like I don't expect any special privileges because I often sleep the hours that many are awake.

I said and did no such thing. I'm sorry you seem to be so angry about this, but I don't see any reason why I should be a target of that anger.

I don't intend to reply further to your comments here.

For example, take a look at this google streetview link [1]. That is The Egg nightclub, it's on York Way in Central London. It was a very industrial area when the club was built. If you pan the camera around, you'll see the residential flats that have been built in the past few years. They are now trying to get the club shut down. There are two other ex-clubs in a 100 metre walk of that point that suffered a similar fate.

This is unacceptable in my opinion, and this is what bugs me about this nonacceptance of nighttime culture - especially in areas where it's often the cause for the regeneration of an area in the first place. Those things made the area cool, the gentrified move in, they kill it.

When I said you implied that we should "write them off as irrelevant and we shouldn't even bother to look for a solution because the majority have decreed it"

I was referring to this:

> In theory, we could insist everyone be quiet all the time. In practice, this interferes with industry, commercial, recreation and generally having a life.

Where you appear to state that industry, commercial, recreation and [day time people] having a life is more important than a sizeable minority of human being's quality-of-life. Now, maybe that was a leap too far, but the implication I got was that the majority are more important and that a subset of humanity is irrelevant and should basically be ignored, because finding a solution is too hard; or even just having a bit of understanding that people have different cycles rather than forcing their world to be shut down whilst they're awake, is too hard.

[1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5417762,-0.125419,3a,75y,7...

As stated above, I am also a night owl. This is a different comment by me criticizing how this was handled in this case:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17220149

But I don't even actually want to read your comment in full, much less check your links, because you have left repeated ugly personal attacks of me in specific, which is not a good faith argument and is not exactly how you "win friends and influence people."

Have a nice day and all that.

There aren't any repeated ugly personal attacks, there isn't a single personal attack as far as I can tell. Nor are my responses targeted at you, I have responded to a number of people in this thread. The closest thing I can see is where I picked up on your use of language likely to bias a reader's opinion, I never picked up or discussed any aspect of you or your person though, it was entirely on topic. If there is anything I am truly sorry, that really isn't me. My arguments were entirely in good faith.

Have a nice day yourself.

Earplugs don’t save from lowfreq noise that goes through walls, floors and beds almost intact. Disclosure: I’m sleeping from 5 to 10 times a week, not having any fixed time as a ‘morning’.

(edit: I often confuse disclaimer with disclosure)

So, minority opinion should always be ignored?

> or get some isolated nightclubs.

One of the major problems in London in the past 5 years has been the smoking ban. So these nightclubs which were previously sealed now have people outside smoking, which has caused additional conflict. It's not as simple as isolating a club or bar.

> Status quo is that most people sleep at night (and mostly drunk if not)

Wow. So people awake are night are drunks? Fantastic. They're not awake for any other reason? Like they did a night shift and want to eat late? Or they want to go shopping when they're not at work? Or ... /* lists all the reasons people do stuff during the day */

This notion that we should be awake and work during the day and sleep during the night is one that's been forced upon us. If you look into the sleeping pattern of the middle ages you'd realise it wasn't always like this, and we're not all like that [1]

> Earplugs don’t save from lowfreq noise that goes through walls, floors and beds almost intact.

I've used earplugs when in places which are noisy, I have found they're absolutely fine for this purpose. It's usually mid and high pitched sounds that are more jarring if you're trying to sleep (the human voice). Things like music which is repetitive is quite easy to tune out because of its repetitive nature.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783

Every minority should be satisfied, but not in the way that heavily affects majority, imo. Health and stress is not a someone’s joke.

>So people awake are night are drunks?

No. But at night you have a much higher probability to meet one who is drunk (from majority) and one is enough to disturb many. That’s what I meant trying to remain concise, sorry for this overstatement.

Unfortunately, any earplugs I tried didn’t stop lowfreq and I’m very sensitive to it (can’t sleep at all). Sleep patterns are a problem for me too, as I already mentioned. I didn’t downvote you (and it doesn’t mean anything since it’s probably emotional here), but at least you can see how much people are affected.

Edit: grammar