I'm very appreciative of the level of silence I can enjoy on a regular basis. I recently moved into a semi-private office at work (one other guy working with me, but he's pretty quiet), and when I get home my wife goes to school - I have a few hours of noise while I hang out with my toddler, then he goes to bed and it's back to quiet until she gets home (and subsequently goes to bed).

I'm also somewhat introverted and find excessive noise (for a fairly low value of excessive) pretty overwhelming/exhausting. My brain is constantly working on some challenge I'm facing, usually from multiple angles; trying to marshal all those ideas into a single, coherent train of thought is a mental exercise. Trying to do that with some inane television show in the background is a non-starter.