Can science find ways to ease loneliness?
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Build a bit of confidence (gym being the simplest way) and get out there, because whoever you are, there is someone else out there who looks precisely for you. But you aren't gonna meet them if you sit tight, so get out.
Internalize this: you are attractive and you have worth, right now. You are good enough. And someone is waiting for you out there.
What if you're introverted, intellectual and not part of the bread & circus tribe (which should be the case for some people on HN)? What does "get out" mean, then? You won't see me at a nightclub, a bar or any place made for people to socialize over inane discussions, alcohol and crap "music".
That can be parks, museums, gym, hacker spaces and yes also clubs.
A new (ancient) trend, that maybe works for you, is called ecstatic dance. The basic idea is, no alcohol, no drugs, no talking (inside the main area) - just good music and dancing - till ecstasy. Expressing the language of the body. This connects people.
If there are no dancers and you get up there at all the band will probably love it.
They might just not play so mundane after that.
And others who may be the least bit inspired will often get right up there with you, hesitating much less than they would have normally done.
Even if it's all by yourself.
There's a song about that, Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qZ6zc6ts
Where he basically draws the dead up onto their feet, he ecstatically blows them all away, they love him anyway and everybody ends up boogieing like zombies.
>You won't see me at a nightclub, a bar or any place made for people to socialize over inane discussions, alcohol and crap "music".
You won't see most people, they're usually hanging out socially with others they met like that or at equivalent places they prefer to gather whether or not alcohol was prominent, discussions were inane or music was crap.
Or whether there was anything like music at all.
But if there is music, you know what to do ;)
Trust me, I'm a scientist.
OTOH there's a lot to be said for striving to widen social circles using remote technology more so than direct contact. Haven't gotten around to that yet so I don't have much to add there.
EDIT added anyway: Helpful tip: It's probably better to leave your phone at home so it doesn't get broken while ecstatically dancing or anything else. People that are interested in what they see will often be understanding and more than willing to text your phone while it is still in repose back in its coffin. You can then power back up and raise the phone from the grave when the time is right. But it's well recognized that a lot of people need to raise their gaze and their fingers well above the plane of a touchscreen, to further points of interest more than they do.
They might just not play so mundane after that.
And others who may be the least bit inspired will often get right up there with you, hesitating much less than they would have normally done."
Definitely, but it takes a lot of courage to do that. I am a very good dancer and I often was the only one dancing - and yes, the band of course loves it and usually also most other people.
But it is always a struggle to really let go and ignore all the thoughts of what others might think and just take the empty space in front of the band and go wild.
Ecstatic dance in the way I experienced it, is specially made to not have that crowd of judging outsiders and rather tries to create a safe space where everyone can just move how he or she feels like without being judged. (also phones are banned there, so no fear that someone might take a video of you, which is something that defninitely happens when dancing in public spaces).
Every ecstatic dance I attended was different (also on different places, organised by different people) but all of them were worth it.
Go to a local gathering place (cafe, bar, church, literally wherever people hang out), look at the pinboard to find an upcoming thing to go to. Ask people what they do for fun. Whatever you do, don’t look for the “perfect” thing. It doesn’t exist, and waiting for/seeking it gets in the way of you actually meeting people.
Be curious.
Isn’t that a fundamental trait of the intellectual? Consider everything, turn over every stone?
The world is crawling with interesting people who would be your friends.
Socialization is a give-and-take; expect to give (maybe listen to some “crap music” with others) before you can take.
One more thing: it sounds like you’ve built a superiority complex. Kill that. It’s a facade you’ve built to insulate yourself. You’ll never meet others with it … or you’ll just meet other snobs.
Consider that there may be someone out at those “inane” events who feels the same as you, but is out there looking for you to show up!
Addendum: this has momentum. Once you start meeting people and feeling more confident, it won’t feel like work anymore. At that point, you may actually find yourself engaging people like your former self.
Two things you mention that are powerful:
1. Keep it really simple. Just show up. You don’t have to solve what happens next, or make a perfect first impression, or be a perfect person. Give yourself the same grace you would others.
2. The gratitude you feel for having found the group. Imagine how the others you’ve helped feel having found the group.
A great story—thank you for sharing.
And the blanket suggestion that gym somehow solves everything is stupid. Personall experience: I tried it and ended up no better and with knee issues with which doctors can't help (just rest some, sure, like 8 months now since it began). Started playing computer games again and giving less shit about everything, feel happy again. Escapism does work.
Usually knee issues do not heal with resting, but with moving. And rather get worse over time while remaining passive (in resting position only some blood flows through the whole knee, and the muscle detoriates quickly and without a strong muscle, even more stress gets onto the knee)
So unless you have a very special condition where competent doctors especially said, only resting will help, rather get active again with light activity. Walking, cycling, dancing, climbing, ...
Every exercise that moves the body, without putting too much stress on it.
It's not over yet, there will be excercise, waiting in line for a specialist, but not walking/cycling/dancing/climbing, execises you do at home when you have an injury.
Anyway, I tried to exercise, I got an injury, and I felt worse than without exercise, cause something was taken away from me.
My experience with bandages is, only use them when you absolutely have to. Otherwise your body gets used to them and sees even less need to make the knee work on its own.
In general, I am not a doctor, but went through years of working out how to fix bad knees and went from doctor to doctor, operation etc. (most doctors were actually very bad for anything not routine)
What helped in the end, was establishing a habit of doing special knee exercises whenever possible. And lots of adequate sport in moderation. Climbing and Trampolin may sound crazy, but are actually pretty good for the knees if done on a light level and also walking barefeet helped a lot. In general, trying to get the muscles around the knee as strong as possible, as then the muscles can hold your knee to replace whatever is broken inside your knee.
"Anyway, I tried to exercise, I got an injury, and I felt worse than without exercise, cause something was taken away from me."
And I would be careful with your conclusion, in my opinion you just did too much of wrong exercise. That is bad, yes (and is also what messed up my knees initially). So maybe try to find activities or exercises that are fun, but not too hard. And yes, it sucks not being able to do, what you could do before. At some point I allmost thought I would never be able to run again. And I definitely will never get back to the state of before - but I managed to do quite a lot again. Anyway, all the best for your recovery.
That said, I started a gym routine last year to try and relieve anxiety. I'm quite limited (you have no idea how much you use your hips until you get 8/10 pain for a few days after aggravating them). So it means low-impact activities and upper-body workouts. I didn't think it would make any difference in my appearance; I just needed to move in any way I could. After a few months I started getting comments about putting on muscle and overall looking better. (I lost of lot of weight which is more attributable to cleaning up my diet concurrently to a gym routine) A co-worker I met assumed I must be ex-military which I found funny because the childhood illness I had is specifically named in their document of medical exclusions. I don't think it's any secret that people treat you better when you appear more fit, and it is something that you have some control over.
But I don't believe that looks are motivation enough to get you to the gym every day (at least for me it is not); it's much better to do it for your well-being. Ideally, you can find exercises that both workaround your injuries and that you enjoy. Also, it's not like you need to go hard at the gym for two hours a day every day of the week; just do what you can and take pride in what you are able to achieve within your limits.
I've spent a lot of my life regretting my circumstances in unhealthy ways which I ultimately regret. I can't say that everything is wonderful now or even good, but they are better.
The answer is that being in need of emotional comfort does not imply the ability to provide it, so after some time they are bad fit even for each other. The same goes with "why don't unattractive people date each other".
Good analogy.
How is it "actively" harmful?
Negative? Maybe. Harmful? Doubtful, but lets give you the benefit of the doubt anyway.
actively harmful (different from just harmful)? I do not see it.
I'm not sure what "the answer"is, but I think those who work in and with information systems in the broadest sense, might contribute to its cure.
I have sometimes spent 6 months alone in wilderness and eventually the Inner Voice kicks in. It seems to be a mechanism to maintain sanity. Upon returning to civilization the Voice soon disappears.
In my case the Voice is a film director, mostly Werner Herzog, who might say, "now the subject has finally lost his marbles and does not make bear-proof stash for his food".
Pay people more, work them less.
You think financial pressure has zero bearing on your mental health?
What bearing does your mental health have on your capacity to form and nurture relationships?
If you read the article then you’d know the org has been given 5M euro and so far has come up with:
> strategies such as joining clubs or pursuing hobbies
You’ll need spare cash and spare time for those solutions.
>> strategies such as joining clubs or pursuing hobbies
I could have saved them $5M by loaning them my copy of “Bowling Alone”
> strategies such as joining clubs or pursuing hobbies
I have to go online to find the clubs?
In America, there's consolidation everywhere in search of greater efficiency and profits. From local tennis clubs merging into city-wide organizations managed through an app to monopolies emerging in corporate landscape.
Only the orange site would get angry at someone suggesting they should be paid more and have more free time to pursue their interests.
Perhaps you’re feeling the transition in increased disparity between minimum wage and cost of living that occurred ~30 years ago?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-inflati...
> all of human history worked
And you are also correct. They probably had a tough life and for those humans, the reward was survival and more. I can only imagine waking up on a cold morning, no running water, stepping out on the fields, using average manual tools. They probably stuck around in groups.
My point being is that people want to be rich and loneliness takes a backseat. The least lonely people I know are all working class and near the poverty level. In contrast, most of the well off people I know are a lot more lonely.
Why indeed? Your bosses must love you defending your own mistreatment. You should put this quote on your CV.
> you can always work less.
Do you honestly think you can tell that to a person struggling financially while working 3 jobs?
> most of the well off people I know are a lot more lonely.
In a society of such aggressive wealth disparity as ours, a result of underpaying and overworking the majority of the population, a lot of wealthy people self isolate, and become lonely, because they had to harm others to get that wealth or are afraid the poors will try to take it from them.
Do those wealthy people somehow deserve my sympathy, or the focus of the efforts of this scientific inquiry, more than the people working multiple jobs yet are unable to ever retire?
Also, orthogonal lines share a common point of intersection.
If that’s the case then how do you solve the proximity problem when you have $0 and 0 free time?
Honestly this thread is chock full of: “I’m rich and still lonely!” people who are so far off the mark on rationalizing my suggestion that I feel a need to amend my gp:
“pay people more, work them less, and learn how to have empathy for other people”
Then “interacting” would be a requirement again.
I'll certainly be going back to work, but more because it gives me a sense of purpose and less because I think working is a necessary (or even good) solution to address loneliness. My comment was intended to highlight that there's no silver bullet to this issue.
Modern society has many alluring activities which don't necessitate forming bonds with other humans, the world keeps shifting around even if you stay the same, and it's easy to find yourself dissatisfied with the status quo while also feeling like your lifestyle is an accurate reflection of the way you desire to live.
Five years ago I was in a relationship, shared a house with 5 other people, social media wasn't as stigmatized, and my peers and I were all in our twenties. I had transitioned to fully remote work, but I felt overwhelmed by the amount of personal interactions I was having. Space was more desirable than connectedness.
Fast-forward a bit, I moved out of a group living situation post-covid, broke up with my partner which segmented our friends, many people settled down with children and stopped going out, and Facebook became uncool. These things happened slowly, and I was enamored with my job, so it didn't weigh on me as it was occurring. Then, when the job was finished, I realized I had settled into a lifestyle where I had no external pressure to leave the house, could go weeks without using my voice, didn't have readily available ways of quickly connecting with people, and that I would need to take significant actions to address the situation in ways that I'd never needed to in my life thus far.
Adding a job back into the mix will help in some ways. Management certainly forces me to use my voice. And, of course, it's possible to put myself out there and make friends with twenty-somethings who want to go out all the time, but it feels less natural when there's a larger age gap. It's a lot of work, too, as it's easier to meet friends through friends than forge relationships from scratch. I can change my personality entirely and decide I want to settle down, to try and better guarantee having a close partner, but that's certainly never been something I've seen myself doing. Or I can try to re-envision myself as an extrovert and try to find it implicitly appealing to socialize rather than just something that addresses a need, but that's never been a trait I've seen in myself.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I feel my personality and desires have remained consistent throughout my life, but society and culture has shifted around me. If I want to be less lonely then I need to change myself and build an appreciation for activities which result in socialization, or settle for different/worse interactions that are still useful for addressing loneliness, but these decisions weren't necessary in my teens and twenties. People were just around all the time. And yes, I'm sure some of that has to do with people being busy working, but it's a lot more than that, too.
I addressed this elsewhere in this thread, but my comment was addressing the people who do suffer from these issues.
You are lucky you have the privilege you do. You are unencumbered by these basic needs, and so will have to look harder at finding solutions to your problem with loneliness. Maybe therapy? You, again, have the rare combination of both the time and money to be able to try that.
But you are likely in a <1% of the population category, and hey, sometimes things written on the internet are meant for people other than ourselves.
Like the other 99% of everyone.
I do hope you find your tribe again.
What evidence ca you provide?
I feel like all of the articles I read about comparing work across time say people worked less before industrialization; although I think it’s a silly thing to compare and more of a thought experiment.
Either way what relief does your position provide, even if correct, to the many underpaid and overworked people living in your city?
How does your opinion fit into the current uptick in people having to work multiple jobs, and people saying they will be unable to ever retire.
Ultimately, this raises the question of whether all this actually ultimately places us in a better position, e.g., the state of humanity as seen in something like the anime Darling in the Franxx. Interestingly, this is similar to the notion that poorer people that work less desirable jobs for less money are less lonely.
Citation needed.
Aside from despising the “productivity” defense, the 4 day work weeks has shown to increase “productivity“.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-four-day-workwe...
Interesting that of all places Phil McAuliffe was in Korea. Korean culture is very welcoming. Once a connection is made, one becomes part of the family.
At times loneliness can spur one to push past fears such as travelling alone or attending an event solo.
Who knows? I've internalized "hell is other people" innovative ways my entire life
If Television stayed live, local, honest, people you seen around your local town, it would encourage engagement. youtube could have focused on sharing videos with friends, could have ignored likes/dislikes and didnt focus on popularity and parasocial relationships. Facebook could have encouraged not on finding, adding, expanding, friends and engaging on the platform, but instead encourage real connections by encouraging prodding for real world meetups suggestions on games to play in person, finding people who like to do the similar things and suggesting times and places they can do it together with a focus on existing friends and connections. And not showing as much on what people have done but what they can do together.
Its not that these things aren't possible on the networks now but its not how these sites use their influence and primary resources, and really it would be stupid for them to do, because they are businesses and their goal is to make money, they will only improve peoples lives as long as it doesn't get in the way of making money. Part of use realize what they are doing we know they put profits above us, but they deliver what we expect a little bit of happiness a little bit of connection, we know it wont satisfy us but its easy, real easy with no risk, why put effort in for maybe a solid human connection when you can have that quick and easy hit right now.
If you read this far, why is scientific studies, or science in general not going to fix this? Because even if there is perfect research that spells out exactly the issue and lays out exactly how to not be lonely 2 things are going to happen.
1. Companies will exploit it in a way to make money if not right away then over time putting us right back to where we were. 2. We wont do it because we prefer the easy/fast way even if its worse.
this isnt going to change, its not that we cant have real connections, its just we have never had so many easy alternatives before, for a lot of people being alone has become the default we grew up with instead of the exception.
And looking that the dates, they were all mid-century construction and I realized that nothing like them is being built today (at least in my awareness). I don't mean that particular style, but nothing with any style at all; it's all homogenized, optimized, and built-to-cost. It's another part of the lesson of my lifetime that we live in an economy, not a country.
As Feynman says, figuring out which of our theories are true, and which of our ideas are subject to the illusion of explanatory depth is important. Especially when it comes to things we think we know, like interpersonal relationships and our own psychology.
True, the social sciences are quite young compared to other scientific fields. But already we have estimates for distinguishing what impacts between and within person variation in loneliness. At the moment, most of this work is done at a very general level; the work tries to characterize various populations of people.
However, one of the newer / more cutting-edge methods of studying things like loneliness involves pinging them multiple times a day to see how their emotional state is changing over time. (So called Ecological Momentary Assessments if you are curious.) Some researchers are using such designs to try and figure out / model what makes an individual tick.
Clinical psychology, anecdotal folk wisdom, research psychology, and potentially even Neuroscience will eventually converge. In my opinion, one semi-unique challenge is that the set of skills that makes one a good researcher and one a good people person are not highly correlated. This doesn't matter for Chemistry (etc.), but I think it matters more for the social sciences.
I’m skeptical that a lot of these questions even can be answered scientifically at all, but rather confident that they’re not going to be by the existing system.
The fact that there's variation doesn't at all imply that any of it is any good. It could vary from "embarrassingly flat-earth-theory-in-2024" bad, to "unable to produce a falsifiable hypothesis" bad.
And even when some of it is good (controls, reproducability, etc), it gets completely ignored by practitioners[1]. Imagine if doctors prescribed eye of newt even when there's studies proving the efficacy of paracetemol.
[1] By practitioners I mean therapy and therapists. You could send 100 random people to 100 different therapists and all of them would report that a followup visit has been recommended. As far as therapists are concerned, there is no such thing as "You're perfectly normal. Congratulations and come back only when you have a problem"
That would seem to have a strong Heisenberg problem. "I'm not so lonely any more, sociologists keep asking for my important opinion."
All hands on deck meant more when it actually required all hands to build a church or barn.
We can’t use history to understand how to relate to the world anymore. People were often wrong more than right and far less civil. All those people socializing in the past were forced to under threat of violent burning at the stake or being sold into slavery.
Just LARPing historical patterns without contextualization is insane
Can we please stop starting articles with fucking anecdote leads, Jesus Christ it's been like twenty years of this, get a new thing my God.
2) Pick up a religion and just put in the minimum effort (i observe shabbat)
3) Consume psilocybin when weed doesn't work or you need a tolerance break
4) Pick up a hobby with community online/offline
5) Argue with people on X
6) Play games with strangers
7) Join a club with common interests
8) HN
9) Volunteer
10) Absolutely avoid social media like DM'ing with ppl
11) Travel
surprised you did not mention physical exercise. that is by far most helpful.