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We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

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Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#211

Post by dismalaf »

twoodfin wrote: post #210
dismalaf wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager those coal miners spent a lot less (relatively) on housing and had cheap venues to socialize.

Real per capita disposable income has been on a steady upward trend for decades: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0 Unless socialization activities like bars or athletics are major outliers, it seems likely that in income-relative terms, the average American has much cheaper access to social activities. (Unrelated, but if you squint at that chart you can see why Trump got elected, almost & then actually reele…

That graph starts 70 years after the aforementioned coal miner scenario...

And yes, in the 1800s housing was comparatively cheap because land was close to free and you built your own home. Same goes for booze and venues to drink it because you made your own and there was zero regulation.

Today everyone is being choked by the relatively high cost of real estate (inflation looks ok because we have cheap durable goods like electronics). The death of 3rd spaces is well documented.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#212

Post by galangalalgol »

simianparrot wrote: post #191
daymanstep wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For years, i tried to lose weight with gym and dieting. I failed, and now i know i probably never had a chance to, it was a scam all along. In what way is dieting a scam? You literally just eat less, and you will lose weight as long as you're on a calorie deficit.

I have yet to meet a single person that doesn't lose weight steadily but surely down to a healthy level by even just _attempting_ 16/8 intermittent fasting combined with at least 30 minutes of cardio every day -- even a brisk walk will do as long as it makes you warm and sweat. Even if you miss some days with cardio and only manage 12/12 with intermittent fasting some days, it's literally impossible for the body to g…

I tried 20/4 with 90 minutes every other day. It got me from obese to merely overweight, but stuck there. My doc told me to stop with the IF, that while it worked, it wasn't ideal nutritionally, and had me eat healthy meals three times a day with a high protein snack. Weight still isn't quite into my healthy range, but I feel way better and all my numbers are better.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#213

Post by Xss3 »

doug_durham wrote: post #196
Workaccount2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing weight is done in the kitchen, not the gym. In fact exercise makes you crazy hungry, which sabotages tons of people's weight loss efforts. It's better to lose weight, learn how your body and calories work, and then start implementing gym work.

I can't imaging losing weight consistently without exercise. Diet is most important. However even for the most obsessed of us counting calories is difficult to get right all of the time. Muscle mass consumes calories and exercise creates a deficit. Both provide margin that help account for calorie counting mistakes. I find that exercise forms a virtuous cycle in dieting. If I go on a 500 calorie bike ride that's 500…

You need to learn how to handle hunger. To control your own urges. Once you do, dieting becomes easy, the only part that sucks is the low energy and irritability.

Intermittent fasting is a great teacher in this regard.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#214

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

johnfn wrote: post #194
IgorPartola wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to offer an alternative explanation than AI to this. Shit is just too damn expensive. If you want to go hang out with friends it will cost you $4-8 for a cup of coffee. A dinner starts at $50/person. A trip to an amusement park is over $100 easily. The median individual income in the US currently is just over $65k/year or about $32.50/hour. That means half the workforce makes less than that. When an 8oz cock…

I don't buy this explanation. There are plenty of things you can do together that don't cost very much - or anything at all. You can go take a hike. You can go to the park and hang out, or play a board game. You can go to a court and play pickleball. Heck, go to the library! All these things are free and many people do them.

I totally agree, though I'd like to frame OP's argument a little differently in a way that makes more sense I think.

I agree the "shit is just too expensive" is a pretty lame excuse. I think to back when I was a poor ballet dancer around college age, and we always found lots of cheap things to do - a lot of it was like you said, usually just going over to people's houses to hang out, or doing stuff in the city that was cheap or free. Going out to restaurants was a rare treat, and it was almost always a cheap dive place. I had to laugh about the comment about the expense of "8 oz cocktails" - we weren't drinking cocktails, we were drinking 6 packs of Natty Light in someone's studio apartment.

But what I think has changed is that it's so much easier to not be bored with modern tech, even if it makes you lonely. There is TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, multiplayer gaming, etc. It's just a lot easier to sit at home with these kinds of entertainment, so the "activation energy" required to go get up and plan things with friends just feels a lot higher.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#215

Post by squigz »

xtracto wrote: post #164
stdvit wrote: post #97

> Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. They actually don't. Everything from dating and fitness to manufacturing and politics is in decline in activities, and more so in effect and understanding. You can't convince (enough) people anymore that it is even important as many…

I'm a 44 yo Xenial, not too old, not young. That is, I'm part of the "walkman generation" . It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance. Society nowadays is pretty ugly. Younger generations seem very isolationist to me.

> It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance.

Have you considered that maybe it's you, and you're just interrupting at the wrong time? Imagine someone's reading a book and you interrupt them and then you blame them for getting annoyed?!

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#216

Post by markus_zhang »

mr_toad wrote: post #66
xandrius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loneliness is not mere solitude. Loneliness is not being happy with being alone, solitude is the state of being alone. I couldn't find a word for specifically being happy about it. So, loneliness is intrinsically negative, otherwise one wouldn't feel that way.

> I couldn't find a word for specifically being happy about it. The German word waldeinsamkeit roughly translates as the feeling of peace from being alone in the wilderness.

I really love the concept of living in a cabin in some woodland close to river or lake or sea, and study deep topics such as Math/Physics/sys programming.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#217

Post by akimbostrawman »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #5

I don't think we are ready for the risk of mass manipulation through AI relationships. Imagine if Elon decides tomorrow morning that he wants to encourage all of the users of his AI relationship app to support Trump?

Right that would be extremely dangerous to our democracy[1] Only the TV and mainstream media are allowed to manipulate opinions.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#218

Post by Workaccount2 »

phyphy wrote: post #183
Workaccount2 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your body is a machine that burns calories. Give it less calories and it will burn its calorie stores. You are right that there are a lot of scams that complicate this fact as much as possible to get money from you. But rest assured, if you calculate your TDEE (many simple calcs online), and food scale your calories ( everything you eat) to a diet -500 under your TDEE, you will lose weight (or you are a perpetual mot…

Confidently incorrect. Body builds what it thinks it needs. Lifting weights? It will think you need muscles. Living sedentarily? It will think you are conserving evergy and you need fat reserves. Running daily? It will think all the needs are met and you need cognitive strength.

You are just restating what TDEE is.

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#219

Post by michaelt »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #184
xtracto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a 44 yo Xenial, not too old, not young. That is, I'm part of the "walkman generation" . It surprises me how people are less and less open to socialize, to the point that some even see you with disgust if you DARE to interrupt them from.their mobile phone trance. Society nowadays is pretty ugly. Younger generations seem very isolationist to me.

Same gen (42). I feel like we have a really unique lens on all of this, too: old enough to remember being in a smoky bar, socializing (not healthy, but fun as hell), but also young enough to have had some technological exposure at a crucial time of our youth. We _leveraged_ technology for socializing in person. Our online pursuits were around organizing lighthearted social goofiness like "getting iced", LARPing, and…

> I guess at some point people started taking themselves way too seriously. Worrying about what others think, or something, I don't know.

When I was a teenager, precisely one guy had videoed his teenage self waving around a broomstick like a lightsaber, and had it end up online. Video cameras and editing equipment were rare and expensive. And that one man was a cautionary tale, not to wave a broomstick like a lightsaber anywhere there are video cameras.

Now the video cameras are in everyone's pockets 24/7, and with the internet connection built in. Is it any wonder nobody's waving a broomstick like a lightsaber?

Re: We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness

#220

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #127
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current systems are about as good as they'll get: we can make them a bit better in fields where we can cheaply generate synthetic data, but human communication is not one of them. (And even where you can generate synthetic data, your efforts would usually be better spent assembling a purpose-built system.) Sure, I probably could make something more effective, using non-LLM technologies (given a large enough b…

The current system we have are as good as they get? You’re just making this statement out of thin air? Did you not notice a trendline of technological improvement of AI? > Sure, I probably could make something more effective, using non-LLM technologies (given a large enough budget), but… why would I, or anyone else, do that when it'd be obviously harmful, with no benefit? Technology will improve. The likelihood of yo…

> Profit and self interest often at the expense of everything else is what drives progress.

Xerox PARC. Bell Labs. Academia. Wikipedia. You must have a rather narrow and useless definition of "progress".

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