Understanding Speech in ''Noise'' or Free Energy Minimization in the Soundscapes of the Anthropocene

Listening to speech in the presence of irrelevant sounds is ubiquitous in the modern world, but is generally acknowledged to be both effortful and unpleasant. Here we argue that this problem arises largely in circumstances that our human auditory system has not evolved to accommodate. The soundscapes of the Anthropocene are frequently characterized by an overabundance of sound sources, the vast majority of which are functionally irrelevant to a given listener. The problem of listening to speech in such environments must be solved by an auditory system that is not optimized for this task. So what does it mean to ''restore'' hearing for people with hearing loss? How might evolution optimize the sense of hearing for our world today? Building on our previous work on the two-competitor model and incorporating an active inference approach using free energy minimization, we argue that the answers to these question have implications not just for the study of human audition, but also for the development and broad awareness of hearing aids and cochlear implants, as well other auditory technologies such as ear buds, immersive auditory environments, and systems for human-machine interaction.