Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

Not being lonely used to be automatic as society forced you to interact and meet with lots of people just to function.

Religion might force you to church where you meet most of the community regularly. It goes far beyond just the purpose of religion. You'll know about every life event of every member, learn about businesses in the community, might meet new friends or even a spouse. The only social institute that comes close is school but school is not forever.

To stay in touch with friends, you were forced to actually go to them.

To look up information, you were forced to go to a library.

To discover music, forced to go to a record shop.

To eat whilst not cooking, forced to go to a restaurant.

Top enjoy photography or whichever other hobby, forced to go to a hobby club.

So without religion and post-school, as you maximally use all technology and conveniences available, you're now not meeting anybody. Unless you purposefully organize it. The defaults changed.

Wrong. My college chemistry textbook had a small aside about an important organic chemist in the 1920s who was responsible for many foundational organic chemistry techniques and theories. I forget his name. The blurb ended with his death — he committed suicide after lamenting that his friends always had female partners on the weekends while he, on the other hand, was always alone. The man died of loneliness in the 1920s. Later editions of the textbook removed the blurb entirely… how stupid and foolish.

If you have an amazing personality then you will want to hang out all the time and have lots of sex and everyone will oblige you because you’re fun to be around. It doesn’t matter what the context is. Yeah, if you’re one member of a 25 person Inuit tribe, you won’t be lonely ever. But just because a bunch of people in the USA are narcissistic idiots who are intolerable to be around doesn’t mean anything about the way the world is going.

Seems to me he was not alone, as he had friends and spent time with them.

Is this example conflating 'alone' to the seperate issue of him being unable to find a sexual partner?

Also generally I'm sure there will be outlier examples of 'see he was alone in the past' but I feel we have to approach these from a 'generally' view to understand the bigger picture as examples of one may be good for context, but can tend to be used as a confirmation bias of sorts against a bigger picture.

I think technology is fundamentally opposed to the human experience. What will happen when AGI agents are more empathetic, caring, attentive, funny, supportive, soul-nourishing than any human could ever be? On every level that a human can enjoy and appreciate the company of another human, computers will do it better. It’s like the concept of infinity… you are forced to accept all these strange outcomes that are logically sound but make no sense. That is what AGI will be and AGI is the logical end of technology. There is no humanity at end of that road. And the outcome is very bad overall. But that doesn’t change the fact that people have been lonely a long time and there are more reasons for loneliness than technology. Better to see clearly regardless of the context.

Stop intelligent machines!

That is the future for AGI under capitalism. (See "Her" 2013 movie.)

A different path is for sufficiently advanced technology to help humans connect with each other and strengthen those connections, like organizing playdates for children (of course subtly enough that it doesn't come off as infantilizing). I don't think that can coexist with the attention economy though.

date someone who doesn't speak your language. Then, you're forced to use an AGI translator app to talk to one another. Thankfully, the app also adjusts the tone of what you're saying to come off empathetic and caring whilst translating

Honestly? That "blurb" sounds more like bullying than it does an actual commentary on what likely was the truth.

For those curious who this is, it's Wallace Carothers, the inventor of Nylon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Carothers

>narcissistic idiots who are intolerable to be around

>want to hang out all the time and have lots of sex and everyone will oblige you

Same people.

Not to mention, the specialization and unbundling of each of these into separate aspects becomes a business opportunity to the point that if enough people decide to pay to play, the orignal free versions lose a critical mass of support and cease to exist. Thus, it becomes less and less possible to participate socially without participating in monetary exchange. This represents a financial barrier to social participation and all of the second-order effects that entails.

Spot on.

Even with religion it's entirely possible to be a good religious person without ever really interacting with anyone. Suit up, go to Mass/Worship/Synagogue/Whatever, do the prayers, etc, smile at people, leave. (The joke is "doing something religiously" means for only an hour on Sunday, after all.)

You have to work at it (though to be fair, it seems every religious group will have the person who will start conversations with anyone) - but you have to work at it anywhere.

One recommendations I'd make is don't look for "age group" things - because this will often overlap with people looking for dating partners, and that can be all sorts of confusing and messy. Be open to joining or working with groups that contain people older, younger, or of all ages.

Disagree. I was absolutely miserable when I was forced to meet with people in real life, although I enjoyed some interactions, deep down I never liked hanging out with them. Unless you are very lucky and born in a location where you can easily find like-minded people or if your personality is suited for meeting random people and not having any preferences in friends (kind of people who can be friends with anyone they meet), then being forced to meet people is hell. I'd rather have online friends that have similar interests/sense of humor etc... Than have forced and shallow "real" relationships where I have to change who I am in order to fit in.

Church in this context is a third place, the place outside of work and home.

Church is one option

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

There aren’t a lot of good examples that can replace church. Church was literally a forced outing for everyone once a week. A barbershop or pub is not even close to being the same thing.

I agree none of the other examples are as ubiquitous, I also don't like the examples where there is an expectation you pay at some point.

Just GP described the concept without naming it.

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