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Comment by altacc | Hacker News Reader

There's been a lot of talk recently about effects of loneliness and the "loneliness epidemic". What a lot of this lacks, including this article, is a good and correct definition of loneliness. They seem to use the lazy & inaccurate definition of "spending significant time alone", which is very different to being lonely. There's a lot of people who are now able to spend more time alone than before and are happy with that.

Some of the academics I've heard discussing this define loneliness as when a person's social interactions are significantly less than their desired amount of social interactions. It's an individual's perception, not measured time. That seems like a much better measurement as it takes into account human variability.

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I agree. There's a big difference in being lonely and being alone. There's also a big difference between isolation and loneliness. You can be isolated but not lonely, and likewise you can be lonely and surrounded by folks.

The other facet here is that it's easier to choose loneliness than isolation, though it's less likely to be chosen directly. I feel like it's chosen indirectly by choosing avoidance of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the price you pay and risk you take to ameliorate loneliness.

Hardly anyone can fully become isolated. You have to work to live, and so by default you are forcefully un-isolated. Loneliness however can come about by avoiding being vulnerable with others. Men seem to be particularly susceptible to this avenue to loneliness.

For me a lot of loneliness is emotional distancing from others and especially from ourselves.

One thing I have really appreciated in the last few years - even though the naive interpretation, as you said, gets it backwards - is being able to avoid lots of non-enjoyable / productive “interactions”… things like being able to wait in my car to be called back for appointment, rather than sitting in a waiting area.

I’m still masking with a N95. I’m not super high risk, but I am at elevated risk AND I’ve managed to dodge catching it so far. As an autistic person, it’s a bit of a leveler (less so now that most proble have stopped) since a lot of those non-verbal cues are, well, masked. Similarly, I really appreciate that now many more places allow for text/email customer service… again, helpful since I’m not under time pressuew to communicate

It is a better definition, but it's still not complete. For example, if I'm talking to Fred about a movie we both saw, and Fred found it really funny and I found it really tragic, and I can't manage to get my point accross, I will feel lonely. That means that for me, increasing the amount of social interactions can make the problem worse, as that will reinforce that idea in my head that I can't be understood by other people.

This may start to explain why isolated people, esp elders, are so reluctant to reach out to others who are also isolated. You have to confront a lot of difference before you'll find any similarity.

I'd expect there to be a high correlation. People willingly choose to spend less time with friends and devote themselves to activities when the choice is easy because those activities are almost completely fulfilling, except occasionally when they aren't fulfilling anymore but the person is still alone.

On the other hand there are people who can't bear to be alone at all. Which seems like a different issue.

Yes, blessed solitude; medieval writers were often longing for it. Personally I am a totally misanthropic reclusive hermit and I'm lovin' it!

Another thing is in developed countries with domestic ZPG, like US, Japan, Italy, etc. Even if people didn't want to be alone, having none or fewer children means necessarily some will be alone even if they prefer not to.

It will probably be difficult to have any mainstream support of that idea, because allowing people to be alone and think by themselves goes against the society we’ve built for centuries.

Sure, the concept is praised. But even monks were supposed to live in small communities.

There’s of course the not so cynical take of people not bound by networks being harder to rope in a common direction. It’s supposed to be a virtue, but from a position of power it’s a pain in the side.

>There’s of course the not so cynical take of people not bound by networks being harder to rope in a common direction.

It's the opposite. People who are isolated are easier to control. Populations that are isolated find it harder to organize against people in positions of power. If you occupy the upper rungs of the societal ladder, you don't need to be a part of a social group, because your power (from wealth, politics, etc.) can be exercised unilaterally. The only check to their power comes from the people on the bottom rungs of the ladder banding together.

It’s more complex.

When people belong to a group you don’t have to target individuals, you can deal with the group. For instance the audience of a specific magazine can be reached through that magazine, members of an union will follow the union’s decisions, etc. You might need to fight the influencers of the group to have them align with your interests, but that’s only a few people vs multiple thousands of individuals.

A different way to look at it: cults and ideologies also try to rally isolated individuals as they are easier to target, but in the end they need them part of the group to be manipulated, they can’t stay stray sheeps doing what they want in the wilderness.

I think an additional thing being missed in loneliness, as described by the article, is that it doesn't consider that talking to someone via text chat or phone call is not that different in terms of fulfilling social interaction needs.

By the article's definition, I'm an extremely lonely person because I very rarely physically spend time with others.

But looking at pure social interaction, I speak to all of my family for hours every week and have been essentially constantly talking with a couple of online friends (who also share my interests very closely) for several years now, which would be completely unrealistic in-person. So I get lots of social interaction and it's all the sort that I really value. As a result I wouldn't really consider myself to be lonely.

Even when I did have a mainly in-person friend group, it was hard to meet outside of school since everyone has their own things to take care of, so it was usually easier for everyone to just interact via more remote-friendly means.

The easiest place to feel lonely is in a big crowd.

$BIG_CITY is where to go when one wants to be completely alone.

Agreed.

I would offer the word “solitude” to describe willful time alone.

Good point. Not forming families or being part of a tight community seems to be a start to define it better.

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