Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

Building human-centric places isn’t only about density. Variety of density is good. Places where people can walk, ride bikes, and hang out with friends and family are good.

Congested 6-lane roads aren’t good, whether in cities, suburbs, or rural areas in between.

If everyone followed the rule of avoiding these topics, I wonder how many people would never hear an opposing opinion, maybe even a more beneficial one, to the one they've grown up with. I think these topics should be encouraged.

That said, the moment you disagree with someone on one of these topics, some people will definitely fly into a small rage, or instantly cut off contact with you, or even slander you to others, or some mix of these.

Ultimately, I think that's fine. For one thing, you have just learned that this is someone you probably don't want in your life anyway, because they can't handle disagreement in a civil way.

And you learned it fairly quickly and at a small cost. Even if they slander you, people whose opinions you'd actually care about will generously take their word with a large dose of salt, especially based on their character, since such a character usually has other tells too.

So my current stance is to just be open to these topics.

Just yesterday, while I was sitting here at the library, someone approached me and asked me to watch his phone while he used the restroom, in case ICE came in and took it. He was joking, but we went into a slight conversation about politics in general, in which we found out that we disagree on certain topics, and he almost took offense at me disagreeing. I was friendly and open to him the whole time, and he was friendly when he left to use the restroom. But when he came back and sat back down, and later left the whole library, he left without even so much as a goodbye or wave. It seems like he just didn't like me anymore because of my disagreement. And that's fine with me. Both would have been fine.

It seems counterintuitive to restrict where people can be, and expect them to meet new people. I don't want to use my office to socialize, I prefer to make friends that I share interests with.

I see some people in this thread have had success with coworking spaces, that sounds better than an office, at least.

You have said that 'feeling safe' is 'unhealthy' because it's not 'real'. But constantly feeling and being unsafe, even if it is warranted by circumstance, is worse in every way.

We, as a society, do not support the agency to children to escape horrific circumstances. These online communities are a stop-gap against this active failure.

Ideally, they wouldn't need to escape at all, but that's not the conversation we're having.

You must have opinion and they all must align perfectly like mine. Case and point people's behaviors around the 2024 election.

Russian? You better be the most outspoken anti Putin-ist . Jewish? You better be sorry for the Zionists at every turn. Queer? Oh sorry you work for Google and even if your department has nothing to do with the current bads you're bad too, stop stealing from artists with AI. Those are some extreme and blatant examples but ones I've witnessed cause people to get excommunicated no matter how bleeding of a heart they have for the causes people rhetorically crucify them over.

I'm not going to pretend you should be fine if say, a literal unironic nazi is trying to cozy up in your book club, or some clown is constantly bringing up "hot takes" needlessly on your baseball club. But these constant purity tests typically remove all nuance and leave both sides heavily alienated, leaving many to fall into a hedgehog's dilemma of fearing interactions lest they're accused of things they simply are not.