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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

#261

Post by bearl »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #214
johnfn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

So you actually disagree, it’s not the prices, it’s the tech. I agree. The person you responded to claimed it was prices not tech.

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

#262

Post by mtalantikite »

icameron wrote: post #249
squigz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?!

I’m not OP but similar in age and remember when it wasn’t always like that. You could talk to someone who was reading the paper on the bus, they wouldn’t be annoyed. Being in public it was fair game. There would be conversations happening between strangers. Now it’s silent on the bus and everyone is on their phones nobody is chatting up strangers.

Can confirm. Also of the same age, and if I was at a cafe reading a book or doing my math homework when I was younger, it was totally fair game for someone to ask me something or engage me in random conversation. If I was really on a deadline and couldn't be interrupted I wouldn't have been at the cafe in the first place.

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

#263

Post by dv_dt »

rayiner wrote: post #155
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…

Coal miners in 1890s appalachia had healthier and more active social lives than american white collar workers. This does not have anything to do with economics.

Economics drives longer working hours - don't American averages exceed Japan now?

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

#264

Post by Workaccount2 »

bluecalm wrote: post #235
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…

Yeah but it's meaningless. The struggle with losing weight comes from difficult to overcome hunger pangs. Advising people about calorie restriction is the same as advising an alcoholic to just stop drinking. It's easy if you can do it but if you can you wouldn't have a problem to begin with. It is missing the problem entirely.

The good thing about calorie counting is that you can dial in the speed at which you want to lose weight. And then it becomes more about discipline than pushing through hunger.

But yeah, no matter what it is going to require mental effort.

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

#265

Post by OKRainbowKid »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #201
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…

This excuse is so tiresome. Generations before you lived through far worse than whatever supposed hell you doom scrolled your way into believing. The world is literally better than it’s ever been. Go experience it instead of complaining about vibes.

The world might be better than it has been throughout most of history, but the trend seems to be pointing downward, and to me it seems like we are steering towards several tipping points (or cliffs, phrased more dramatically), and the people in power seem to have little interest in changing course.

This drags me down immensely, even though economically, I am doing alright. It seems like short/mid term economy/GDP is all that governments are optimizing for - actual well-being of the average citizen seems pretty far down on the list.

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

#266

Post by ajkjk »

lentil_soup wrote: post #245
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…

Is that actually true? Do we have data for that?

Two separate questions, with possibly uncorrelated answers.

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

#267

Post by rayiner »

IgorPartola wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal miners in 1890s appalachia had healthier and more active social lives than american white collar workers. This does not have anything to do with economics.

I am not saying you are wrong but from what I understood that alcoholism and depression were quite prevalent in those times. Do you have sources for what you are saying?

I was just using coal miners in Appalachia as a widely known example of poor people. I’m not familiar with those specific folks, but from personal experience, fisherman in Oregon, immigrant service workers in Queens, and farmers in Bangladesh have active social lives. My aunt and uncle live in Canadian high-rise housing projects and they have multiple large gatherings every week.

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

#268

Post by salawat »

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.

And why shouldn't they be? The Xenials and late boomers intellectual chops got funneled into an industry specifically intended to attack and monopolize their attention loops and data. To their credit, they're probably having a healthier response to the entire thing than I do by pushing back against further unwelcome intrusion even if it's still pretty subconscious for a lot of them at this point.

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

#269

Post by Aurornis »

IgorPartola wrote: post #142
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’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…

> 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 cocktail costs you an hour of your life because you work for minimum wage, you’d rather stay home and watch TikTok.

These comments are so strange to read. There’s an entire world of people out there doing things and socializing without buying cocktails or $100 amusement park tickets to do it.

You don’t need to pay anything more than what it takes to get you to someone else or a common meeting spot like a walk through the park.

In the fitness world there’s a never ending stream of people who complain that they want to get in shape but can’t afford a $100/month gym membership. When you explain to them that the $20/month budget gym is fine or you can buy some $30 quality running shoes on clearance, they either disappear or get angry because you’ve pierced their excuse for avoiding the activity. I tend to see something similar when you explain that you don’t need to buy $8 coffees or $100 amusement park tickets to socialize with people.

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

#270

Post by MattGaiser »

kylecazar wrote: post #159

AI is incapable of solving loneliness. It's a biological signal we have (thanks to evolution) to seek social connections with other humans , for things like reproduction and survival. Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model. All it can offer is a distraction and an illusion, because it has no humanity. Note: I don't even think dogs solve loneliness. They can…

> Mentally healthy people will never be less lonely as long as they know they are talking to a model.

What is the basis of this? Artificial synthetics can trick every other element of the human body. Why not the brain?

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