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Comment by pier25 | Hacker News Reader

Of course this works. We replaced many (most?) human interactions with digital ones via messaging apps, video chats, social media interactions, forums, online video games, etc.

I have some friends I've made online I've never met in real life. It's people with whom I have a great affinity and it would have been impossible to meet IRL because they're so spread around the world.

It probably could be argued this virtualization of human relationships started way before the internet with television shows.

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> I have some friends I've made online I've never met in real life. It's people with whom I have a great affinity and it would have been impossible to meet IRL because they're so spread around the world.

I read this pretty often and it has always interested me, because I've been using internet communications for many years (chat rooms, message boards/forums, MMO games, Discord, open source, etc etc) but never found much real connection with the people I've met online.

Offline I have a good circle of close friends and find it easy to meet and get to know new people/enjoy social events, but it has always sounded really foreign to me when people talk about their close online friends, or when I read about, say, an in-game wedding between people who have only ever known each other inside a game world. I've had plenty of pleasant interactions and long-term acquaintances with people online, but never what I'd elevate to describe as friendship.

Obviously I understand that this is other folks genuine life experience and I am different in some way in that regard, it just makes me curious. I wonder if there has been any sociology/social psychology research on this topic.

I’ve had these experiences in the days when IRC was still a thing, and there were very heavy doses of idealization and fantasizing involved. I believe that is typical but I can’t be sure.

Eventually it will be weird when long context memory really works and your LLM friend remembers your past feelings and your past experiences much better than you do, and relates to it in a matter that your human friends can' hope to.

"You felt like this 325 times before. In December 2002, when you passed your final exam for college, it seemed to really help when you took a walk. In June 2016, you also felt better when you took a shower and put on a good looking shirt, then called your dad. Maybe you can try that?"

I'm sure they could figure out how to act "forgetful", as some people with really good memories already do.

I don't think it's a bad thing, just that it will have weird consequences when you can't hope to have as deep & personal conversations with your friends / therapist as you can with an LLM

I think a lot of people will love being able to have deep and personal conversations at all

Id say those are human interactions but over virtual medium

When you're talking to LLM, it's as if you would be talking to other humans that wrote the text the LLM listened to during training. So it's a form of human to human interaction.

It is at best a narrow form of interaction. I have yet to see an LLM to just hit you because of what you said or refuse to further engage for good, for example.

Yeah, it's a bit polite. But what you describe might happen in LLM powered computer games.

A game that ends forever if you offend a character or physically hits you (will games be allowed to create physical harm)?

I mean, youtuber's have programmed mods to give themselves electric shock when they get damaged in a game. Also various "hardcore" game modes that delete themselves when you die.

I'm sure they will _try_.

And we've already seen this kind of human-AI interactions that rely on digital medium - with bots appearing on popular social media platforms, some designed to impersonate human behaviour.

that's deep, specially if you apply the thinking that whenever you don't know if something is real or not, you can ask if it's useful for your reality and if it is, then it doesn't matter if "it's real" or not.

I think it only becomes sad, if people start being manipulated and enter in relationships that are not good for them but companies start exploiting the blind spots of human psychology, which is already happening with people addicted to gambling and pr0n, and you could argue social media too if not used educationally or going beyond healthy entertainment.

Like influencers playing to the crowd of bots on twitter?

What about books?

Good point

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