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Comment by aperrien | Hacker News Reader

>I hate everything about this on so many different levels.

>That people are so lonely that they invest emotionally in an AI is flooring.

The vehemence for the individuals in your statement is telling. What should lonely people do if they have physical or emotional problems problems that prevent them from easily going out and interacting with others? What happens to such people who are to poor to afford the ~$170 per hour fee for professional psychologists? It seems to me that your statement is that these people should just not exist. The sad thing to me is that I've seen a lot of people with this same viewpoint of disregard.

I just wish people would treat each other with more kindness and understanding.

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Bold of you to assume I'm not one of them. I struggle with autism. I very seldom leave my house for anything but work or buying groceries. I struggle with maintaining friendships. Post-COVID-19, I'm still working from home even though the risk isn't there in terms of COVID-19.

>What happens to such people who are to poor to afford the ~$170 per hour fee for professional psychologists?

This is a failure of a country's healthcare system. I can access it all day long in the UK. I'm not even saying "Rule Brittania", we have plenty of problems with our healthcare system due to underfunding, yet spaffing countless billions away on projects that amount to nothing.

The missus's family live in America. Access to psychiatric and physician adjacent medical services due to what insurance will cover is something I think about regularly. Your many assumptions about what I apparently think says a lot about you, and also tells me that you didn't read my other comments about this not being fit-for-purpose in terms of safety.

Virtue-signalling and assumptive to imply that I don't treat people with kindness and understanding. Bold of you to assume that every commentor on HN is responding from an America-centric POV.

You being one of them doesn't mean you understand all the other people and their problems, nor that you know the solutions (or what isn't the solution).

I live in EU country with universal healthcare and yet we have serious issues with availability of mental healthcare, and some people here would make use of something like this.

To be very specific about the availability: I couldn't find a psychiatrist for over 2 years, and finally found one at a private clinic - that I have to pay for, the price is similar to the US quote in absolute terms.

Bold of you to assume...

many of the americans that yearn so hard for the nordic systems have only seen the brochure, and not seen how it actually is. Even most people living in the nordics dont fully grasp just how bad things are unless they are deeply inside it themselves.

im not saying the US system is perfect, far from it, but there is definitely a case of "grass is greener" going on, and people tend to focus extremely heavily on the bad things they see/experience locally, and are completely oblivious to negatives elsewhere

> This is a failure of a country's healthcare system.

The problem is wider than the healthcare system.

Given current mental health needs in the US it's doubtful that we have enough therapists to meet those needs (note that most people cannot make appointments in the 9-5 time slots so most people are competing for 6-9 or 5-7).

If you look at how some of the nordic countries have approached mental healthcare it becomes clear that making mental healthcare available is dependent on a widespread social safety net that really gets in people's business in a way many in the US would oppose.

Many people's health problems really come down to things like "I have to work 70 hours a week to make ends meet" or "I'm broke because no one will hire me because I'm a felon". Therapy can help a little for these people, but in practice reducing load on the healthcare system means solving their problems which is politically harder than just healthcare reform.

I'm glad you can access mental health care all day long in the UK. I've seen people have very very different experiences. I have a friend who lives in a university town where the NHS mental health community team whatever person gave up and quit years ago and has yet to be replaced.

But the NHS does have an anchoring effect on the price of private care. You can find decent therapy for $50-$70/hour.

I don't consider myself an autist but I also seldomly leave my home, even for groceries (thanks to covid, there are plenty of delivery options now). I just don't see any utility or pleasure in talking to people. Well, I'm older, no longer need to earn money and no longer need to reproduce.

whatever things they do, talking to an AI should not be one of them. this is not vehemence for individuals but (for my part) utter distain against use of AI in its current form as a medical device.

the reason AI companions work is because humans have a strong imagination and we are able to live inside an illusion. like some people deep dive into books or games, or virtual reality worlds. but they remain an illusion, and just as it is considered unhealthy to get too attached to these imagined worlds, it should be unhealthy to get attached to an AI companion, especially for those who have issues with mental health

Weird take. It's like --

hammyhavoc: It's shocking that people have been reduced to eating their pets. This is terrible.

aperrien: Why are you so unkind, hammyhavoc? do you not understand that they are hungry? What are they supposed to eat? Show some empathy!

It misses the point entirely. We're not here judging Sophie for whatever Choice she made. We're judging the concentration camp where she's trapped.

You write:

> It seems to me that your statement is that these people should just not exist.

This again is weird. It takes a bad situation in which people find themselves, and turns it into an identity for them. We're not talking about a "right to exist" for the poor and lonely. The people should obviously exist; the poverty and loneliness should not.

Why not go one level deeper and see that depression and loneliness at this scale only came with modernity? They were far, far lower in traditional societies which modern technology didn't touch. Trying to fix what technology brought upon men with more technology is a delusion. See the book: https://ia800300.us.archive.org/21/items/tk-Technological-Sl...

Do you have data for that or is that just romanticizing the past? Small communities can be nasty places for somebody who doesn't fit in.

Large communities can also be nasty places for somebody who doesn't fit in or tick certain boxes. See historic treatment of anybody not white in the USA, treatment of anyone not heterosexual up until relatively recently, see current treatment of anybody trans. See treatment of women in specific very wealthy countries even today where they aren't allowed to educate themselves or drive a car.

Racism, homophobia, sexism et al still occur even in large and modern societies, as it does in small and unadvanced ones.

That's all without even touching the topic of religion (Spanish Inquisition, treatment of Muslims post-9/11 et al), or the topic of Nazi Germany.

To be clear, I don’t advocate for any traditional society, I advocate for specifically a Muslim traditional society. They were free of the ills of modernity and ills rooted in part of human nature like racism, and still to a great extent are.

You can read the book for that. Plenty of examples there.

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