I never understood this stigma about hermits/social isolation in western societies. In the east, it's much more accepted.

Reading this piece I got the impression that the writer and persons interviewed were HORRIFIED by what they discovered. It seemed to me as if "having friends" was pretty fucking high in their list-of-important-things-in-life.

I was very amused by this, almost started laughing in fact. Human relationships are not for everyone I'd say, in fact there are many healthy people that view them as pointless waste of time at best.

Technology will solve this little problem once and for all, in this century. I won't go as far as AGI but when house keeping robots become ubiquitous which is surely less than 20 years down the road, society at large will have to evolve and primitive points of view as described in this nytimes piece will basically disappear.