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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

> But in a future where robots sound and objects look increasingly sentient, we might be less inclined to seek out behaviors to abate our loneliness. Indeed, one recent study titled "Products as pals" found that exposure to or interaction with anthropomorphic products — which have characteristics of being alive — partially satisfy our social needs, which means the human-like robots of tomorrow could kill our dwindling urge to be around other humans.

So basically Chobits was right all along.

https://youtu.be/aB50gL4rpiM

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Or Tom Hank's character in Castaway, putting a face and hair on a basketball and calling it Wilson.

As someone who's fairly reclusive outside of work I'm frightened by this prospect. I'd rather be anxious and have to deal with people from time to time than be so utterly alone that I'm forced to treat my cereal box as a surrogate for a friend. That just sounds horrible on so many levels.

Swap out 'cereal box' for 'WoW char' or similar and it's already a reality for some.

I'm always amused by people expressing alarm from future things that they won't be there to experience. Like a Victorian ranting about Tinder. Who cares what you think? You'll be dead, and the people alive then certainly won't share your reservations.

I'll be 75 in 2050.

Your Tinder profile: This isn't even my final form.

1) People get massive political signalling points by talking about global warming. Where's my social love for being concerned about loneliness? Just being realistic about things, you are far more likely to suffer from loneliness in the future than from global warming.

2) Also relates to attitudes toward having children, such as not having them, or trying to raise them into my ethnic cultural beliefs, or let my culture die and the kids can get their culture from TV and the internet (which you'd like to think would be PBS and HN, but could just as likely be "married with children" reruns and 4chan)

I don't know, that attitude seems awfully shortsighted to me. You could dismiss efforts to save the environment and combat climate change by the same logic: "Who knows, maybe our children will be just fine with us radically altering the ecosystem..."

I think the argument ignores that:

a) we can make some educated guesses about future generations - based on ourselves and our own ancestors;

b) the future might be here sooner than you think. To take climate change again as an analogy, first predictions have seen the deadline for CO2 adjustment somewhere around 2100. Over the years, the deadline has been moved further and further back. Similarly, 2050 is an estimate that might as well be wrong, given the current pace of technological innovation.

It's more about what makes us human is being lost. The ability to socialize, even if you're bad at it like me, is a big part of the human condition. If we let capitalists continue to alienate us from each other all we'll become is just smarter cows. And my complaint isn't even remotely like that of a Victorian complaining about Tinder for one good reason: I don't care with whom you socialize or how. But latching onto corporate brands in place of a fully sentient being is a recipe for permanent slave mentality. And I'd rather someone make a friend with a robot (like in the film Robot and Frank) than pledge undying love to a corporation. A corporation and its "brands" aren't our friends. It's why I despise companies like Apple because they've tried (and in some part succeeded) in shoving the lifestyle consumerism crap down our throats.

I didn't read the study, but my guess is they're not taking about literally pretending that things are people (like in the movie examples) - but that you develop empathy towards a device and interact with it/attach value to it in ways that were reserved for social interactions before.

If you replace the box of cereal with a smartphone, I think you can already spot that today. I also know at least two people who have given their cleaning robot a name and (semi-seriously) treat it as a pet. And let's not even start with realdolls...

That's creepy TBH. Even though I have some respect for those who made things like a smart phone possible I don't see my iPhone as indispensable beyond its utility. I won't cry when my iPhone finally stops working, so I can't imagine how anyone could develop any affection for theirs.

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