Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 396 posts

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#291

Post by TylerE »

jcal93 wrote: post #31
altacc wrote: post #19

There's been a lot of talk recently about effects of loneliness and the "loneliness epidemic". What a lot of this lacks, including this article, is a good and correct definition of loneliness. They seem to use the lazy & inaccurate definition of "spending significant time alone", which is very different to being lonely. There's a lot of people who are now able to spend more time alone than before and are happy with t…

I agree. There's a big difference in being lonely and being alone. There's also a big difference between isolation and loneliness. You can be isolated but not lonely, and likewise you can be lonely and surrounded by folks. The other facet here is that it's easier to choose loneliness than isolation, though it's less likely to be chosen directly. I feel like it's chosen indirectly by choosing avoidance of vulnerabilit…

One thing I have really appreciated in the last few years - even though the naive interpretation, as you said, gets it backwards - is being able to avoid lots of non-enjoyable / productive “interactions”… things like being able to wait in my car to be called back for appointment, rather than sitting in a waiting area.

I’m still masking with a N95. I’m not super high risk, but I am at elevated risk AND I’ve managed to dodge catching it so far. As an autistic person, it’s a bit of a leveler (less so now that most proble have stopped) since a lot of those non-verbal cues are, well, masked. Similarly, I really appreciate that now many more places allow for text/email customer service… again, helpful since I’m not under time pressuew to communicate

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#293

Post by Nomentatus »

Zababa wrote: post #57
altacc wrote: post #19

There's been a lot of talk recently about effects of loneliness and the "loneliness epidemic". What a lot of this lacks, including this article, is a good and correct definition of loneliness. They seem to use the lazy & inaccurate definition of "spending significant time alone", which is very different to being lonely. There's a lot of people who are now able to spend more time alone than before and are happy with t…

It is a better definition, but it's still not complete. For example, if I'm talking to Fred about a movie we both saw, and Fred found it really funny and I found it really tragic, and I can't manage to get my point accross, I will feel lonely. That means that for me, increasing the amount of social interactions can make the problem worse, as that will reinforce that idea in my head that I can't be understood by other…

This may start to explain why isolated people, esp elders, are so reluctant to reach out to others who are also isolated. You have to confront a lot of difference before you'll find any similarity.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#294

Post by adrianN »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275
chii wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> makes everything bland, homogeneous and fungible. which is what makes it cheap and available. If you ran your own farm stand, the goods you produce would be some 2-5x more expensive than a factory farm could've sold for. The modern wealth is predicated on such specialization and scaling. It's why artisanal products are so expensive.

Artisanal products are so expensive because we make them so. By default if you buy something in a store, add 5% to the value by improving it and want to sell it on eBay, they'll charge sales tax on the full sale price even though you already paid sales tax on 95% of that. To avoid the double taxation you have to file paperwork, which most people don't know how to do, and pay filing fees, which eat into your already-m…

Artisanal products are expensive because human work is expensive. You can either have a machine that produces a million bland identical tea cups a day for a cost of a dollar per cup or you can have an expert potter produce two dozen artisanal tea cups a day. Even if the potter works for minimum wage and materials are free it's several times more expensive.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#295

Post by fragmede »

0F5 wrote: post #222
Gustomaximus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me he was not alone, as he had friends and spent time with them. Is this example conflating 'alone' to the seperate issue of him being unable to find a sexual partner? Also generally I'm sure there will be outlier examples of 'see he was alone in the past' but I feel we have to approach these from a 'generally' view to understand the bigger picture as examples of one may be good for context, but can tend to…

I think technology is fundamentally opposed to the human experience. What will happen when AGI agents are more empathetic, caring, attentive, funny, supportive, soul-nourishing than any human could ever be? On every level that a human can enjoy and appreciate the company of another human, computers will do it better. It’s like the concept of infinity… you are forced to accept all these strange outcomes that are logic…

date someone who doesn't speak your language. Then, you're forced to use an AGI translator app to talk to one another. Thankfully, the app also adjusts the tone of what you're saying to come off empathetic and caring whilst translating

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#296

Post by kuramitropolis »

0F5 wrote: post #174
fleddr wrote: post #164

Not being lonely used to be automatic as society forced you to interact and meet with lots of people just to function. Religion might force you to church where you meet most of the community regularly. It goes far beyond just the purpose of religion. You'll know about every life event of every member, learn about businesses in the community, might meet new friends or even a spouse. The only social institute that come…

Wrong. My college chemistry textbook had a small aside about an important organic chemist in the 1920s who was responsible for many foundational organic chemistry techniques and theories. I forget his name. The blurb ended with his death — he committed suicide after lamenting that his friends always had female partners on the weekends while he, on the other hand, was always alone. The man died of loneliness in the 19…

>narcissistic idiots who are intolerable to be around

>want to hang out all the time and have lots of sex and everyone will oblige you

Same people.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#297

Post by kuramitropolis »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #172
fleddr wrote: post #164

Not being lonely used to be automatic as society forced you to interact and meet with lots of people just to function. Religion might force you to church where you meet most of the community regularly. It goes far beyond just the purpose of religion. You'll know about every life event of every member, learn about businesses in the community, might meet new friends or even a spouse. The only social institute that come…

Not to mention, the specialization and unbundling of each of these into separate aspects becomes a business opportunity to the point that if enough people decide to pay to play, the orignal free versions lose a critical mass of support and cease to exist. Thus, it becomes less and less possible to participate socially without participating in monetary exchange. This represents a financial barrier to social participat…

Spot on.

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#298

Post by WalterBright »

tobyjsullivan wrote: post #199
edmundsauto wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Isn’t it more nuanced? In order for someone to not need a wife for laundry service, we rely on the manufacturer. We rely on electricity. It seems like we become more tightly dependent (single directional graph) on more people in order to feel superficially less intertwined. I think people need other people more tha…

> we rely on the manufacturer. We rely on electricity. We rely on having money. And we rely on a mature economy where someone is willing to solve every problem in exchange for that money. In an individualistic society, each person is expected to earn their own way and then pay to solve every problem they may have. In more community-oriented societies, personal earnings are less important than a strong network of frie…

> This movement toward individualization correlates very strongly with the capitalism.

This idea never made sense to me. Capitalism is organized around people self-organizing to form companies. One man companies don't get much of anything done. There's nothing whatsoever about free markets and capitalism that prevents or discourages people working together.

BTW, even small voluntary collectives don't work. Jamestown didn't work, the first year the Pilgrims tried a collective didn't work, the kibbutzen in Israel doesn't work (they get subsidized by the government funded by taxes on capitalists).

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#299

Post by zamfi »

kuramitropolis wrote: post #286
NegativeK wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some craft clubs, but what's the point? Anything you can make pales in comparison to what you can get for a couple of bucks from Amazon. This is unhealthy. > There are a bunch of hobbies but they also seem pointless when you look at a few Youtube videos and see all the popular channels doing exactly what you would like to but a million times better. This is unhealthy. Over a decade ago, I had to accept th…

>The end product isn't what you walk away with; it's the time you spend enjoying doing something. Well, good luck enjoying anything when you're surrounded by environmental feedback that points to its futility. Picking up hobbies so that you have a socially acceptable excuse to interact with to people is ass-backwards.

> Well, good luck enjoying anything when you're surrounded by environmental feedback that points to its futility.

You're only surrounded by this feedback if you already buy in to the ideology that if you're not The Best™ at something then it's not worth doing.

This is a very toxic perspective.

The millions of people who learn to program/woodwork/paint/cook/etc. by watching YouTube videos certainly don't buy into this ideology, and have no problem enjoying it. I think the issue less "environment feedback that points to futility" and more your own perspective here.

People have hobbies for many reasons, "socially acceptable excuse to interact with people" is just one of them, as is "demonstrate exceptional mastery".

Re: Americans are choosing to be alone, but we should reverse that

#300

Post by WalterBright »

dangus wrote: post #148
UweSchmidt wrote: post #125

The fundamental force behind this is individualism. Every single technological innovation has made it easier for the individual to function better alone. Every societal change has emphasized the individual right over the (real or perceived) benefit of the collective. This trend seems to accelerate and absolutely nothing that is happening in western society even remotely suggests a possible turnaround. You can take ac…

I think this analysis, and the analysis of the opinion article, jumps to too many conclusions. This article says that the trend has started since 2013. In what way has American individualism changed since then? I would say it hasn't. How could American culture shift that much in less than 10 years in this specific span? I don't buy that explanation without more thorough study. American individualism has existed far l…

> We've been sitting in cars by ourselves since the mid-century.

Before that we've been riding horses by ourselves.

Before that we walked by ourselves.

Post reply on HN