It has become common knowledge that some things—food, porn, outrage-share inducing articles—exploit a mismatch between our evolutionary heritage and the modern world, and do so at our expense. It seems, however, that we’ve collectively neglected one particular contemporary, omnipresent superstimulus: sound.
You've definitely made the case to me that I should try out silence more often. Though my anecdotal experience thus far is that there is a big difference between soft, simple ambient music, and loud catchy music with lyrics. From the evolutionary perspective, we have only recently gotten access to enormous food variety and it's been even more recent that we've gotten access to unlimited porn. But music has been around forever, so we're mostly dealing with a difference in quantity than a difference in quality. Still I think you may be on to something.
On silence
You've definitely made the case to me that I should try out silence more often. Though my anecdotal experience thus far is that there is a big difference between soft, simple ambient music, and loud catchy music with lyrics. From the evolutionary perspective, we have only recently gotten access to enormous food variety and it's been even more recent that we've gotten access to unlimited porn. But music has been around forever, so we're mostly dealing with a difference in quantity than a difference in quality. Still I think you may be on to something.