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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

Another thing I wondered about is the impact of automation and volatility on, for lack of a better word 'involuntary' micro social interactions.

Until fairly recently people had 'forced' social interactions when doing their finances, shopping etc. Even if involuntary they 'trained' people's social skills and withered away at their acquired/innate social anxiety.

Furthermore, even in these situations the persons you interacted with, the cashier at the supermarket, the bank teller, the shop assistant, were often there for a fairly long time, so that all those social-micro-transactions added up over the years. Yes, they were 'strangers', but stangers you to some extend 'knew' or where familiar with. Being around those made you less lonely.

Now you do your banking through an app and a teller machine, you shop online, and if we are to believe the proponents soon your pizza and beer will be delivered by a drone and your online groceries and other purchases by a self driving van. The few contacts in those situations you might still have are not with the same person, but with randos fulfilling a 0 knowledge scripted for efficiency procedure. These interactions can't compound into a latent unspoken social bond and thus contribute nothing to alleviating the feeling of loneliness.

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I agree with you 100% but I have an interesting personal anecdote, pretty much the opposite.

When I was young I was very shy, painfully shy even into my early 20s. All social outings were family reunions or church.

But I liked computers. So in the early 1990s I bought a computer and tried this thing called the Internet.

By chance I discovered IRC. It was a world of strangers who interacted in real time. I could converse without facing or looking at a person. And at the time I used it for help when working on my PC so I'm a way it was forced interaction.

I've often thought if it wasnt for IRC and other Internet chat applications my life would be quite different. It helped crack my shell of shyness.

In a way you're right interacting with people is the key. But in my situation it was slightly different.

Or maybe you would have grown out of the shyness naturally over time as you found your place in the world and grew into an adult. Guess we’ll never know eh.

IRC back in the days was literally another world. It was something special. You could bond with other online users like family members even though the only thing you knew about them was their nickname. We have more advance technologies now but we would never be able to experience anything like IRC again. Slack and Discord servers today are not even close.

I remmeber having the same deep interactions on ICQ!

>> Slack and Discord servers today are not even close.

Is it true ? i remember reading that game communities are a very good place to meet new friends. Is it true ? why ?

Also are there any other good places online ?

I think because you're a bit jaded and have had the experience of IRC as your first relay chat makes you bias towards it, whereas a kid experiencing Discord for the first time might have the same feelings as you did towards IRC.

There's a word for the phenomenon you describe: nostalgia.

Uh, IRC still exists. Not only that, but you can use IRC in the browser, on places like Freenode and Snoonet.

I'm currently on freenode #reprap right now, talking to 300 some different people. We're still doing exactly what you're nostalgic for. And, I've met a handful of them in person at 3d printing conventions. (Link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=reprap to chat on IRC right now)

Just because shiny new thing's moved in, doesn't mean that the old thing still isn't in use!

I'm also the same nickname on freenode as I am here. And still cranky as ever!

I don't think that is the opposite though.

We've mostly burnt the bridge you used to get there.

In the 90s BBS's, IRC and even ICQ had sites to connect people where people would list interests etc, people had ICQ or other icons on their home page to connect and just randomly chat. BBS's and interest groups would have meet ups and yearly BBQs etc. There was an openness, perhaps a little naivety, to connecting with strangers who would eventually become close friends. There was a special sort of novelty being in a conversation with 3 people from all around the globe at the same time.

Now it seems to me much more about connecting up your existing networks. Friends on Facebook or whichever chat program, but not much for random new connections. Meetups are rarer too unless you've joined a local Facebook cycling group or similar. People aren't as open to connecting with the unknown as it's probably a scammer/spammer etc.

I can understand why my kid's generation might feel it's more difficult now. Especially if they don't have much in the way of existing networks.

I would like to add games to the list of counterexamples. Still works today.

Even though I never made friends online (as I was not so into it) I know friends who did.

Does it still work?

I don't play online games any more, but my impression is they mostly moved from guild and group style like MMOs, where you got to know people and probably chatted on Teamspeak as well. Now they seem to be mostly random individual match-ups either for pvp or for a dungeon. That seems like it would take away many of the possibilities.

The element that you might not be aware of is Discord. Primarily a chat and voice communication app but its divided up into individual servers run by community members for free where each is like a Slack server if you are familiar with that software.

I'm not in the child age group, but I've made friends this way as a 31 year old.

I think it’s fair to consider IRC a social tool. It’s build around small communities made up of people who both belong to and run the various rooms. So within that you have a social structure, you have familiarity and you have social hierarchies.

This is different from most “social” platforms on the modern web. Reddit, twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, instagram, hackernews and so on are all global villages, operated by a centralized organ which doesn’t really moderate. So you have anarchy, no-familiarity, no structure and no real visible hierarchy.

When you were on IRC you’d meet the same people every day, you got to know them and they you. By contrast we probably won’t ever run into each other again once we finish this specific conversation. You might not even read my post unless you specifically chose to do so.

A lot of the internet is like this now, and there is really nothing social about most social media.

I don't think is has that much to do with technology. Just that the people who got online in the 90s were likely more curious about new things and other people than the general population (while there were certainly exceptions). The opposite is probably true today, especially in things like tech or other general Internet things.

The problem with the facebook analogy is that you can make private groups that you can heavily moderate.

IRC had closed or private channels and the open channels were heavily moderated as well. I was a #linux moderator on EFnet for several years.

I believe the success of IRC is not due to the greatness of the tool but the userbase. It was pretty much university students world-wide and a few others. Similar behaviours, trainings, ideals etc. Facebook has a lot more diversity and thus conflict.

I agree with most of your points but part of this bit is incorrect:

> Even if involuntary they 'trained' people's social skills and withered away at their acquired/innate social anxiety.

Humans don't have a shred of innate social anxiety except perhaps in some odd pathological cases. Any parent who has dealt with a toddler that has yet to learn to talk will tell you that much. Toddlers who can't speak yet try very hard to interact with their parents and whoever else they meet. They've a fascinating ability to get themselves understood by their parents.

Science will tell you that much too. Humans are basically hardwired to communicate. Intensely. So much so that if you gather a bunch of deaf kids together without supervision they invent their own sign language. [0]

With that being said, kids do learn (or unlearn [1]) things at school. Including how to "socialize" (or not).

[0]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040920071439.h...

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_cre...

As someone with moderate/severe social anxiety, the idea of not having it seems just crazy to me.

How much of your anxiety boils down to just not feeling confident about the appropriate actions to take or words to say in social situations? That's something that can be remedied for anyone with a little focused education.

>How much of your anxiety boils down to just not feeling confident about the appropriate actions to take or words to say in social situations?

You're enabling your own prescription by making the problem easier, viz. reducing the problem of anxiety to "not feeling confident about the appropriate actions to take", which, I might add, is also a redundant claim since its taking an effect of anxiety and elevating it to the cause.

Asking how much was due to a specific cause isn't "reducing the problem". Anxiety is among the most treatable of all mental illness.

I'm not reducing the problem. I'm defining it, so that it can be solved.

Anxiety, for most people, is not unsolvable but is just tedious because it often comes from multiple sources. I'm diagnosed bipolar, ADHD, OCD, you name it... I am no stranger to anxiety and the physical aspect of it which cannot be dealt with "logically".

But lack of confidence, in one's life, one's friends, one's job, one's ability, etc... this is a major source of anxiety in the modern world and is very treatable.

I can handle myself socially, and have been told I’m very gregarious and easy to be around and talk to. I just always think about the absolute worst case and long chains of events that might happen from my input. Combative or argumentative situations are the worst, especially in lower trust situations.

In a way, it boils down to “not feeling confident about words I say”, but the problem is I seem to overvalue bad outcomes, or at least think about them deeply rather than assume the very likely path will happen. Some of it is lack of a quick-witted theory of mind mapped to others (asd, add, who knows) and some is past trauma where many people I knew growing up did a lot of hurtful things. The weights on how must one feels they can trust the average person are very slow to change - and the what-ifs seem to come on nearly automatically.

Coming from childhood trauma, I empathize and agree that it can be frustratingly hard to control the feelings and anxiety caused by it even decades after the fact.

I also have had problems with being too trusting in the past and lately I've been having social anxiety I thought I'd solved return because I've been trying to make conscious changes to my social behavior and it leaves me feeling lost sometimes when I have to ignore my instinctual response and then can't think of anything else to say.

It may comfort you to know that you aren't alone in feeling you need to reevaluate how much you trust those around you.

Social research in the last 3 decades has revealed that, in America, and thus probably other modernized countries, as late as the 80's, people when asked if they could trust most other people generally said that they felt they could. This is not the case anymore. Now, the average person will proclaim that most people are not not trustworthy. People are reporting less friends than ever. I personally have a quite small group of friends, after I carved out most of them after having 4-6k stolen from me in the last couple years from various people I once would consider friends.

Isolation and mistrust have been bred into our society in the last quarter-century, and it has had disastrous implications on our ability to open up to others. We are starting to feel the effects of this as, on a global scale, the isolation people are experiencing causes them to lose empathy and adopt zealous and hyperjudgemental attitudes.

Why has this been happening? What's the motivation? Well that's the homework assignment. ;)

> Humans don't have a shred of innate social anxiety except perhaps in some odd pathological cases.

This is not true at all. Baby's, even at a few months old, run the gamut from excited to meet new people to shy and withdrawn around strangers.

I have a friend whose son, at 6 months old, was well socialized but completely uneager to interact with people he didn't know.

And I've met plenty of toddlers who hide behind their parents and don't come out, and plenty of toddlers who run up to everyone they come across and say "hi".

Clinical social anxiety is much more than shyness.

Shyness and/or fear around strange adults is a healthy biological response. Even children raised in isolation and who show immediate fear of other new children are still quick to make friends when introduced to pre-school (a terrifying experience altogether).

Children who cannot be socialized effectively by around age four (5% of boys, a much smaller % of girls) usually end up punished explicitly by society in their later youth and early adulthood.

There is a stage, fairly early on, in a typical kid's life where they get very shy about strangers, and hide behind their parents whenever a stranger is there. It's not immediate, that's true, but after they have gotten old enough to know which adults are familiar, anyone who isn't seems to become frightening (until they learn to get over that, which in most cases they do).

I have similar worries about AI. Example: I never let computer programs reply for me by clicking pre-written responses to emails or messages. The designers of those products are making the mistake that the less you have to think about things the better, but I think that you have to use your brain or you will lose it. Even those simple routine tasks (like talking to a bank teller for three minutes) provide essential cognitive exercise.

I don't refer to tech devices as "smart" any more -- they are "stupid" phones and "stupid" speakers, because that's what they are going to do to people in the long run. Programmers shouldn't try to make computers think for people or automate too much, because even smaller thinking tasks are essential.

What's funny about this statement is I'm similar... but just recently I told the "pre script" to fuck off, then I realized I wrote exactly what was already pre-written.

So, maybe it isn't making you dumber if you think about what you want to say and then pick the one that is closest or exact.

Maybe there are other things around worth thinking? I can think of plenty ... that keeps my brain from becomming a lazy pile of grey cells.

I think AI tends to be a race to the bottom due to human nature. If one isn't paying attention (and most people aren't), all youtube video recommendations lead to things like mindless fail-videos.

Not really want to defend the algorithms here,(I also don't know what videos exactly show up as I am not so into it) but fail videos can be funny. Humor is a sign of intelligence. I would not declare it to be the bottom if it ...

For it to work, your brain needs to recognize the activity and how it is supposed to work the proper way, so you can laugh about the wrong way done. And also learn about how to not do it like this. And simply relax and let go. Needed for the brain from time to time

(but like I said, I also have not seen those videos in a while.. and I like hikes in wild nature for relaxation)

Skillfully creating humor might be a sign of intelligence, but I don't think that mindless consumption of it is. Fail videos are fast-food humor, simple enough for a little kid to laugh at.

Fail videos were just one example. Other examples are listicle videos, gossip videos, and general clickbait. AI tends to drive people towards consumption of mental junk food rather than making them smarter, better people.

I don't know, they used to say the same thing about writting.

Socrates was right in some ways, but there are differences. Writing has caused damage to memory abilities (I work in a related field), but it has large benefits for cultural knowledge. Offloading our thinking about email responses or decisions about what we do with our time into AI doesn't have any real benefits for society. Having computers do your routine thinking for you is like refined sugar for the brain -- it can be attractive and addictive, but I think it's a bad idea in most cases.

Someone once made the same point about fitness, you used to have to roll down your windows manually, but now its automatic. More and more muscle functions being eliminated by automation. Add them all up and it makes a difference.

Now that many new cars are coming with have high-def wide-angle rear view cameras, I don't really need my neck muscles anymore. At some point we'll "evolve" to rocks... rocks with wifi.

as much as "rocks with wifi" made me giggle, it also made me sad cause its very true.

That's already a thing: https://hackaday.io/project/2058-wifi-rocks

I am thinking, evolve more like people in WALL-E. Blobs of flesh with no muscle definition or ability to use them.

So basically like the people in WALL•E .

That reminds me of a TED talk I saw where the speaker was saying that something he's noticed with a lot of academics and tech types is that they only care about flexing their mental muscles; their bodies are only useful for moving their brain from one place to another, so a lot of what they build is done to make it so they have to use their bodies less.

Except for the brain works better when the body is healthier.

My experience in Silicon Valley is that tech workers are drastically more fit than the general public.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson

I picture something more like floating, life-extension vats where people spend their whole lives, getting entertainment, VR images, and drugs piped into their brains. Robots will do everything else.

Living involves the acts of experiencing the real world and doing things for yourself.

"In The Year 2525," from the year 1969: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2525 (youtube link in "External" section is weak, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew01FGfOZdE)

That's where fat acceptance has brought us.

That's a really interesting point. I recently bought an adjustable (height) desk and I use it on-and-off as a standing desk. I prefer to write code standing, and watch TV/play games sitting. To adjust the desk, I need to pull out a handle and turn it round and round for it to raise or lower. I need to do this a few times a day as I get tired of standing after some hours, which is a convenient stopping point to alternate tasks to take breaks from coding.

I was thinking of building a little motor that can raise and lower the desk, ideally to a voice command. Wouldn't it be neat to say "<assistant of choice>, (raise|lower) the desk"?

Honestly, I'm going to scrap that project right now. While it would be interesting to learn how to build it, you're completely right we're getting lazier every day. Maybe I should be raising and lowering the desk myself.

Thank you.

More and more muscle functions being eliminated by automation.

Only trivially small ones that we'd do a few times a week. There's still lots of physical activity that we do (eg walking around, carrying things like shopping, sex, etc).

Plus, many people have replaced the small manual activities like opening car windows with going to the gym. Anyone who has a sedentary desk job but tries to live a relatively healthy lifestyle probably does far more activity than their parents would have done if they had desk jobs.

> Only trivially small ones that we'd do a few times a week. There's still lots of physical activity that we do (eg walking around, carrying things like shopping, sex, etc).

Not everywhere — one of the major reasons fitness (and BMI) is correlated with walkability of a city is that in many typical US cities, you barely have to walk anymore, while in the more walkable cities driving is less possible, and you’ll walk or cycle much more, and usually use transit more (which means walking to/from the stops).

All this adds up.

Most of the US is low-density and built for cars, so not a lot of walking happening. Also some people in the city will take a Bird or Lyft scooter automating out walking

> barely have to walk anymore

It's not so much that as that you CAN'T walk around in most cities. The last place I lived Walmart was several miles down the road which had no sidewalks and was trenches for water 3 inches from the road. No bike lanes, no nothing. It isn't that most of America is difficult to walk through, it is impossible (if you don't want to be hit by a car at least).

It adds up a lot. I split my time between a typical suburban car-centric city (Minneapolis), and a place just off the El in Chicago.

The weeks I am in Chicago I lose weight without really trying - simply from walking to/from the train every day and around the neighborhood running errands. Then of course lunch in the office which of course is another walk away. All those little walking trips add up to miles/day without even noticing and add up to a noticeable change in weight loss/gain.

Minneapolis it's rare to walk more than 100ft (to a car and back) to go anywhere - unless you make a concerted conscious effort to take time to walk for the sake of walking.

The cool thing is, you can still do all of those things today.

There's really nothing stopping you from walking into a grocery store and talking to people if you want.

You could also go outside for a walk to get some exercise. You'll meet plenty of people along the way (unless you live in the middle of no where).

That doesn’t address the point - which is that as a whole, micro-interactions are reducing. Just because you have the option, doesn’t mean people are doing it as much.

> That doesn’t address the point - which is that as a whole, micro-interactions are reducing. Just because you have the option, doesn’t mean people are doing it as much.

It doesn't matter if people aren't doing it as much. It only matters what you're doing.

If you goto the grocery store, or the bank, or a shop or anything like that, there's always going to be tellers handling customers. Your opportunities haven't gone away or have even been diminished.

> It doesn't matter if people aren't doing it as much.

Yes it does. Threads of society are being cut, which is not only causing loneliness, but also emotional distancing, political polarization, demonizing folks in other camps, etc.

> Yes it does. Threads of society are being cut, which is not only causing loneliness, but also emotional distancing, political polarization, demonizing folks in other camps, etc.

The post I replied to mentioned specifically small talk with various clerks and tellers.

Those clerks and tellers are still there today, just like they were 20 years ago. If you walk into any of those stores listed, you'll find human beings present to have micro social interactions with.

I know because I was a teenager back in the mid/late 1990s (no cellphones back then) and I was super shy back then and talked to almost no one except for a small group of close friends. You can't really blame technology for being introverted. It's a lifestyle choice. There's nothing wrong with it too, but you need to be real with yourself and realize you're actively making the choice to live that way.

Nowadays there's an unlimited amount of chances to have micro-conversations. I see it (and do it) every day. I mean just today I went to the post office because I wanted to ship a box. It's a rare occurrence, but I saw some women standing on a separate line waiting for a passport. So I approached her and asked how long do passports last nowadays and we got to talking. Next thing you know, we're 1 minute into talking. It ended when they called her up, and that was it. Micro social interaction complete.

I think blaming technology is just a cop out. If you went to a concert or something, I'm sure you'd have an opportunity to talk to dozens of people, but if you choose to stand there with your face buried in a phone and not talk to anyone then you can't blame your phone for loneliness. It's on you.

> I think blaming technology is just a cop out. If you went to a concert or something, I'm sure you'd have an opportunity to talk to dozens of people,

Agreed, if we're talking about individual people blaming technology for their non-participation. But it's not a cop-out to say that society as a whole is being nudged away from social interactions, and that there are real negative effects on everyone.

Furthermore, there are large groups of people for whom the convenience of online shopping/banking/etc. far outweighs the cost of "getting out", even factoring in the real or perceived benefit of interacting with people at the store or bank -- people with small children, caregivers, poor people, invalids, etc. Although technology has improved quality of life for many such people, society as a whole suffers the effects of the loss of many personal micro-interactions with them and the gradual social fragmentation that results.

> I think blaming technology is just a cop out.

Oh, tech doesn't prevent one from seeking out social interaction. But it really does seem to reduce unplanned & opportunistic interaction.

Maybe I'd chat with people on my way to work. Problem is, they're most likely sitting in a car. Or riding a bike. Or blasting music from their headphones while staring at their phones.. actually, maybe I'm sitting in a car too. Or not, because technology enables remote work and I don't have a commute.

Same phenomenon when I go for a walk or jog. People are preoccupied with their devices.

> Maybe I'd chat with people on my way to work. Problem is, they're most likely sitting in a car. Or riding a bike. Or blasting music from their headphones while staring at their phones.. actually, maybe I'm sitting in a car too. Or not, because technology enables remote work and I don't have a commute.

Sweeping changes like cars vs walking is definitely a big deal but let's not forget about trains too. Technology allows us to group together for decent amounts of time. Every time I take the train to Manhattan there's hundreds of new faces for a ~90min trip each way. I almost always end up in a conversation with someone for a majority of the ride.

A few weeks ago I flew to CA and had ~6 hours of flying in either direction. Ended up talking to a few people (layovers, etc.) and had in depth conversations. Technology helped with that too.

> Same phenomenon when I go for a walk or jog. People are preoccupied with their devices.

I walk ~4 miles a day and have been for 5+ years. There's plenty of opportunities to talk to people and I don't even live in a big city, just a medium populated suburban area in the US. If I really wanted to, I could talk to 15 or 20 people a day. That's just walking past other people walking or people hanging out for lunch outside of the main mini-town area, etc..

If it were a populated area like Manhattan, there would be thousands of opportunities in a few hour time span. Just an endless sea of people waiting to be approached.

>There's really nothing stopping you

OP's point was that there's nothing forcing us to do those things, not that there are now barriers.

> You'll meet plenty of people along the way

If you talk to anyone walking/running in city centers prepare for harsh stares and people walking ever so slightly faster to get away from the presumably crazy guy. At least that's most definitely how I would react.

I think this is a cultural thing. I grew up somewhere around Europe and random people talking to me on the street would be a big nono, I would run for my life; would definitely at least give a weird look and increase my speed. When I moved into the Bay Area for undergrad I saw this is completely normal here. So, I started talking to randoms too, and it usually feels very much when you feel lonely and at the supermarket and some dude asks about what you're cooking tonight.

That's really fascinating to me. I live in LA (for over 3 years now) and literally no one on the street, in a restaurant, or a store has ever just started talking to me. I would be startled and probably expect you to ask me for money if you did that to me here. Is the Bay really that different?

Never lived in LA (been there for a few hours once), so I don't know. In Bay Area I lived in Berkeley for about 4 years and occasionally visited San Francisco and the the South Bay for entertainment etc, I would say the cultural atmosphere is similar. As I said I was talked to by strangers on the street (and especially in a market e.g. Trader Joe's, Safeway, The Dollar Tree etc...) on multiple occasions.

Currently living in Boston, MA. It's definitely not as usual as the Bay Area, people are significantly "colder" (for the lack of a better word) but I wouldn't say talking, or smiling to a stranger would be as weird as in Europe. Maybe LA is different than both the Bay Area and Boston area (although Boston being in itself significantly different than the Bay Area in the first place)

No offense, but it might have to do with the way you seem to strangers. You get a sense of a person and sometimes you feel that you can talk to randoms; that they're interested and/or you're on the same mental wavelength. These senses are important, because even in the USA, where talking to randoms is common, you still want to avoid "bothering" people. So there is still risk of inconveniencing someone with an unwanted conversation, or making them feel uncomfortable, and this is still a big social no-no.

As someone with a history of loneliness, I’ve have no shortage of businesslike interactions with strangers and acquantiances. The problem has always been a lack of close relationships with emotional weight. The effect of superficial interactions on my mood is neutral at best, and sometimes negative (as a reminder that my interactions stem from business necessity and institutional circumstances rather than interest and choice).

I recently realized that I am using (overusing) text-chat to compensate for a lack of real face to face interaction. As such I have deleted all my instant messaging accounts, in an attempt to force myself to face the loneliness and get out and meet people. (Also eliminated YouTube and surfing, for the same reason.)

So far, I'm just really sad and lonely, but that's a good thing, because I was already feeling that way, I was just suppressing it with technology.

I'm checking out communities in my area that meet up regularly. Most of my friends hang out very rarely, and I'd like to meet people and join organizations that meet up on a regular basis.

Also have been working on my social skills and limiting beliefs: learning to make small talk, remember people's names, and recognizing unkind thoughts about myself, which create anxiety and prevent me from beginning or continuing conversations -- and choosing to think kinder, more constructive thoughts instead.

The big "aha" moment for me was realizing, there was an age for me (about 9 years old) when I wasn't shy at all! Because I didn't have all these shitty beliefs about myself. So I've been exploring them, and letting them go.

This was commonly understood in medieval times. Aquinas says our mutual dependency forms social ties.

This is kind out of scope, but ever since Deus Ex (the game), I have wondered what the big deal about Aquinas is. Never found his work all that interesting.

What about compared to that of all his contemporaries?

Could you explain, for people who don't know that game?

Aristotle's writings were making their way into the European world and were causing a controversy over whether the truths of the scripture were consistent with truths of philosophy. Aquinas provided a comprehensive treatment of the question, demonstrating to the best of his ability the two sources of truth were consistent.

I did not understand most of what he wrote. I thought he was being too obtuse. So I have been reading contemporary explanations of his ideas ( like those from Edward Feser ). I have a slightly better opinion of Acquinas today

I read a bit of him in college - what he pushed isn't all that special now nor something that stands out as a "holy crap" like predicting the existence of atoms but he had some influence with theodicy and other catholic foundations. While qualifying that a woman isn't at fault for being raped if she didn't enjoy it is horrifyiny misogynistic it was sadly progressive for his day. One amusing thing he had to argue against was that the Roman Empire fell due to abandoning the old gods and that if God was a real/superior power then they shouldn't have fallen.

In general very few things are getting worse in society. What is happening is that things are getting more unequal. When you lack power any excess will be made to serve someone else. It isn't like driving an hour to a busy supermarket was the height of social interaction. And social interaction has always been about your status in society. In the end it is a choice of who is going to give up what.

I find the occasional conversation with an Uber/Lyft driver something that many of my friends actively talk about. It does feel like a very unique social interaction that is distinct from (at least) my experience with taxis or any other form pf transit (i.e. more likely to sit in front, no barrier between rider and driver, more "casual" drivers)

Good points, and I wonder if increasingly interactions with people will be because the automation is breaking down.

Chase can't seem to get emails alerts for my son's CC working. Well, they work everywhere but gas stations. They have a category of alerts for gas stations, so there's just some bug somewhere. I've spent hours trying to get them to fix it, and the conversations are always unpleasant.

This isn't the only interaction like this. I've had similar ones with other banks, Google, and other companies in the last last. All negative. All because automation is failing to do something important.

That's a pretty terrible ending, if the only time we talk to humans will be to correct mistakes that software/hardware make.

What have we wrought?

I also wonder how much of recent 'tech' is due to not very articulated desire to do away with the burden of these social interactions. Something I did want to before[1] but maybe it would be better (and maybe we'll see it this way later) to just revamp the current structure and way we exchange to each other. To make a bold myopic summary, internet is kinda breaking us apart.

I used to always use the automatic check out at the supermarket, because I used to dread being forced to interact with a stranger (who often doesn't even want to be there, or interact with me!)

I recently began doing a job that requires me to smile at and greet strangers all day long, and I found myself doing this automatically off the job as well. So now I find myself having pleasant interactions with supermarket staff, and looking forward to saying hello to them.

The other day, after taking the automatic checkout out of habit, I realized that I had missed a great opportunity to connect with another human being, by choosing to use the machine instead. Then I thought, all of society seems to be headed in this direction, and it seems sad.

On the other hand, making life more efficient in this way does free up the time we previously had to spend interacting with strangers, and we are now free to use that time to create deeper, more meaningful connections with friends.

We agree on both the fact that society is aiming toward that (for various reasons), and that less fulfilling jobs don't .. fulfill the employees (cashier jobs).

For the habit of social interactions, I have an anecdote:

I rarely go out, I was invited to a friend 30th birthday, went there quite nervous, wasn't happy most of the time, bored etc etc. The next day I felt in a much improved mood. I believe that even when slightly negative, being surrounded with people, the random thoughts of everybody, etc has a very profound effect on your brain that reset or refill something that you can't when you're alone, even if you're doing 80% of things you like and enjoy uninterrupted.

For time freed, at least you're using it for friend time :)

It doesn't make any sense to blame technology.

Believe it or not there are plenty of other cultures that have access to the same technology but don't produce the extreme isolation that's common in the US. There's much more powerful forces at work here than online banking and ecommerce. The reality is that in the US and likely the UK traditional social networks and graces have disintegrated. It's a cultural issue which is mostly deliberate.

Indeed. Studies are only finding moderate correlations of loneliness and technology use.

The variables with the largest regression coefficients predicting loneliness in this study [0], were poor neighborhood safety (.61), being single (.47, even with children .50). Being married most strongly protected against loneliness (−.42).

I'd bet modern day loneliness is mostly caused by an interplay globalization/automation, stagnating growth and gender equality. All of them diminish the need for all kinds of social interactions in a big way. With improving welfare and increasing economic independence, women less likely need to find a reliable partner. Careerism forces them to marry late (or not at all) and makes men less appealing to them. Simultaneously, globalization and automation are destroying local economic opportunities, thereby lowering the social value of men even more. Deteriorating economic prospects lead to more crime, decreased neighborhood safety…

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394670/

Exploring datasets from http://next.nomics.world, I'm finding no link between gender equality and population density adjusted loneliness. But, removing outliers with excessive loneliness for their population densities (MT, CZ), I'm getting a moderate correlation (.4) between gender inequality index and male loneliness (male to female loneliness ratio among 24 to 34 year olds), so my model might explain male loneliness in particular. Haven't looked into the other factors I've conjectured.

Ok, I'm an idiot. It's likely women who are less likely lonely. N is small though.

I don't think technology is necessarily to blame, but it definitely can exacerbate the problem, especially in a highly individualistic culture like that of the United States.

I think urbanization also plays a huge part in the trend. I grew up in a rural area, with pretty much most of my family located within a two-hour drive. This included my mom's side, who all grew up an hour away from where I did (which is where my dad's family is from). So it was easy for me to connect with family and friends, and I knew a lot of their friends' kids, etc.

Urbanization is changing this, though. People are leaving the rural areas (and for good reasons admittedly), but it's destroying the bonds that they form during their childhood and that continue across generations in some cases. Even a short stint away of 4 years, like what I did when I left to go to University, can make the connections difficult to reactivate when you come home (especially based on difference of shared experiences with those who didn't go to university, or who went somewhere local instead of out-of-state, etc.). And that's assuming your friend group from high school/right after stays around and doesn't leave the area themselves.

And, when you get to a new city, especially if it's after university (where you're forced to interact with people and where it's fairly easy to make friends), there's a good chance of knowing so few people it makes it difficult to enter social circles that don't involve work. Having hobbies definitely helps with this, but that also depends on having money in a lot of cases, and time in all cases.

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