The Noise Miners
As regulators turn an eye toward noise mining, I wanted to meet some of those who will be affected
What most people don’t understand about noise is how hard it is to find the good stuff.
You can get noise anywhere; most noise is just sitting on the ground, waiting for you to pick it up. Coincidences — “coinkidinks”, as collectors sometimes call them — can be had by the dozen just outside your front door. As I arrived in this small university town, home to one of the largest noise mines in the country, I planned to see how the high-quality noise was dug, and to learn about the often-forgotten people who dig it for us.
Kathy met me for coffee the morning I arrived in town. She has been noise mining for 20 years. Her father was noise miner, and his father too. Her worry was that changes in regulations might make noise mining harder and end what, for her, is more than just a job: it is a family tradition.
“Today I read about these new warning labels they’re proposing for mined noise.” She points to her local newspaper. “Tell me who’s going to buy noise when it’s got a f — ing warning label on it?”
She showed me a picture of her seven year old son. “What sort of future is he going to have if the noise mines fold? None, that’s what. This town is a noise mining town; without the mines, what’ve we got?”
Everyone I met was anxious about the future of the noise mine.
“These regulators in their ivory towers have no idea what it’s like down here. It’s more than just warning labels; they’ll destroy our traditions, our entire way of life!”
After lunch the first day, I headed out to the mines to see them for myself. I met Roy — everyone calls him “King” — at the gates. Roy said that people want their noise, but they don’t want to pay for it.
“If we’re not out here digging, what are people going to read about? Do they think the stuff in PNAS or Psychological Science just appears out of thin air? Hell, I saw something in the Times recently about some noise I mined myself. Proudest moment of my life.”
He said people don’t understand the challenges they face.
“We’re out here everyday, doing the dirty work finding noise and then polishing it into the hypotheses everyone loves. It’s not easy.”
He passed me a helmet with a light and a respirator. The air is hotter and thicker down in the mines.
As we rode the elevator down, he complained about the younger noise miners. “Rule 1 of noise mining is you respect everyone else’s noise. You don’t, you know, really buy their noise, unless you need to, but you respect it. These days, some people don’t have the respect they used to.”
I asked him who he meant, but he wouldn’t say.
As the elevator stopped at the deepest level of the mine, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Then the doors opened and I peered out into the pitch black, silent tunnel. My breath was taken away. It was the closest I had come to experiencing nothing.
And then we turned our head lamps on.
When the light met the walls of the tunnel, I saw brilliant noise dancing all about. Here, the shiny gold glint of a social psychology experiment that can support any hypothesis regardless of the results; there, the dazzling reds, greens and blues of a brain imaging study with five participants. Nowhere else have I seen such exquisite noise.
Roy noticed my astonishment. “Now you know why we do what we do. There’s no other job like it.”
He led me down a tunnel, all the way to the end, where it was freshly dug. “I found this yesterday. Look.”
I shone my light where he was pointing, and I saw it: a fresh bit of noise, one that been exposed to the air for only a short time. It was simpler than the others. “Noise mining is a funny thing,” he said. “When you first see a bit of noise, it doesn’t look so impressive. But as you work it out of the rock, it gets more and more refined.” This process, he explained, is called “shucking.”
“They’ll take everything we have! If they shut down the mines, where is Psychology Today going to get their material? People depend on us! Real jobs!”
He wondered at the first noise miners, years ago. “How did the first miner look at noise like this and think that we could make something so beautiful out if it? I don’t know, but I’m glad they did.”
Roy led me back up to the surface. The noise miners were having a meeting about some of the regulations that were being proposed for noise. He told me I could attend.
The meeting was contentious.
Frank, an older man who had been mining noise his whole life, was livid. “They’ll take everything we have! If they shut down the mines, where is Psychology Today going to get their material? People depend on us! Real jobs!”
A few of the younger miners pressed back, explaining that no one wanted to close the mines; the proposals were for some mild regulation. But their words found little sympathy among the other miners.
“These regulators in their ivory towers have no idea what it’s like down here,” Roy said to the group. “It’s more than just warning labels; they’ll destroy our traditions, our entire way of life!”
No consensus was found at the meeting.
Later that night, I had dinner with Sue, her husband Dave, and her two teenage children Jack and Sam, all of whom have jobs related to the mine. Sue is in charge of “pressing” the noise, which is local slang for creating the finished packets they call “press releases.” Dave is a miner, and Jack and Sam both work polishing noise into hypotheses.
The whole family was nervous about the regulations, but the children were optimistic. “I think people need noise so much that even with the regulations, the mine will be fine,” Sam told me. Jack proudly agreed. “We’re noise miners. We’ve always found a way.”
Before I left that night, the family showed me something special. On their mantle was a wooden box engraved with their family name. Inside the box was one of the most brilliant pieces of noise I had ever seen, polished into a hypothesis, and made into an elegant fact. The piece was the work of this family from start to finish.
“I found this embodied metaphor noise deep in the mine three years ago.” Dave told me. “It wasn’t so pretty at first, but the shucking sure revealed a beauty! Jake did a great job on the polishing, too.”
Sam piped up, proud of her own work. “I made the fact!”
Dave beamed. “You sure did!”
Sue told me that the noise was featured in Psychology Today and Buzzfeed. “We’re just happy we can be a small part of peoples’ lives, giving them the noise they need to start a conversation with a stranger, argue with their friends, or confirm their own pre-existing biases. It’s a small thing, but that’s what makes noise mining so special.”
As I left town the next morning, I felt sad for the families that have depended on noise mining for so many generations. They sense their livelihoods and traditions under threat from bureaucrats who don’t really understand them. Will this town still be here in 30 years?
For my own part, I hope so. It would be a shame if the grace and charm of these humble folk and their customs were lost because people stopped appreciating their speciality. Noise mining is more than just a job; it is, truly, a form of art.
