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

Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

ourworldindata.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 116 posts

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#41

Post by andkenneth »

wink wrote: post #39

Not sure if I missed it but this only count in-person interactions as spending time? It's not that I feel 100% like I'm spending time alone if I'm on voice chat with friends, or even chatting or playing games. Maybe it's an edge case of the people who grew up on IRC but... sure I am home alone but I'm still interacting with people for most of my awake time after work (Interestingly I never counted texts as that, mayb…

I had a flatmate who I played games with before moving in with him. After we moved in, sure I saw him here and there around meals, but in some cases if we were on slightly different schedules we could literally go a few days without seeing eachother, while still talking over a game of Valorant or Overwatch every night, just like before

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#42

Post by hackernewds »

wink wrote: post #39

Not sure if I missed it but this only count in-person interactions as spending time? It's not that I feel 100% like I'm spending time alone if I'm on voice chat with friends, or even chatting or playing games. Maybe it's an edge case of the people who grew up on IRC but... sure I am home alone but I'm still interacting with people for most of my awake time after work (Interestingly I never counted texts as that, mayb…

The illusion of being together when being virtual probably is the single largest reason for isolation. not to mention, when your friends/partners/siblings are texting other people while next to you - you're not even getting their 100%, as they could have.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#43

Post by hackernewds »

em500 wrote: post #29
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

For thousands of years, most people just couldn't move very far due to physics and economics. The were mostly forced to be neighbours with family. It's always valuable to have good relationships with neightbours, whether they're family or not. As the old Dutch saying goes "Beter een goede buur dan een verre vriend” ("it’s better to have good neighbour than a distant friend"). (I think that's an adaptation of a sectio…

It's nice to be family with your neighbors. But it's best to be neighbors with your family.

The family bond really supercedes anything else (in most cases)

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#45

Post by wink »

hackernewds wrote: post #42
wink wrote: post #39

Not sure if I missed it but this only count in-person interactions as spending time? It's not that I feel 100% like I'm spending time alone if I'm on voice chat with friends, or even chatting or playing games. Maybe it's an edge case of the people who grew up on IRC but... sure I am home alone but I'm still interacting with people for most of my awake time after work (Interestingly I never counted texts as that, mayb…

The illusion of being together when being virtual probably is the single largest reason for isolation. not to mention, when your friends/partners/siblings are texting other people while next to you - you're not even getting their 100%, as they could have.

You can call it illusion, I call it talking to the same friends I'm sadly not seeing every week and then continuing our online discussions in person, or vice versa.

I've actually tried to hint that I'm not trying to convey this as a complete replacement, it works fine for me. I personally don't feel alone when I can talk to certain people over the internet, but I do when I am not conversing.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#46

Post by dotancohen »

badpun wrote: post #33
lucumo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. I feel it is as unnatural as not having cholera roaming around: better than the natural state of affairs. I love my family, but family vacations make me want to run away screaming. Having to live with family would break me.

In human's natural state (hunter-gatherer), most of the deadly infectious diseases didn't plague us. They only started jumping to humans when we started doing animal husbandry (new diseases got to us via close living with animals) and when we started living in dense cities. Both conditions were only met circa 10k years ago.

That's also around the time where our natural tooth defenses started to become overwhelmed, and cleaning of the mouth, tongue, teeth, and gums became necessary.

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#48

Post by juliendorra »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #17

Whenever I have a family vacation, I can’t help but think how unnatural our present lives are. For thousands of years, we essentially just lived with and around family. Yet now I get to see my entire family for a few days every year. Some cousins I haven’t met in years. The people I spend the most time with everyday are also the people I care the least for - colleagues and acquaintances. I don’t have a solution. But…

Language ruined everything, as it allowed us humans to update and maintain our social network (not the digital ones, the in-brain one) without seeing or (like apes do) touching each others for days. Our groups/tribes jumped from 30 members maximum (chimpanzees) to 100-200 (Dunbar’s number, calculated from a meta-study). That’s nearly 7 times more close relationships, and no need to see more than one or two daily to keep track!

From there, it’s all downhill, with writing allowing even bigger groups, distant communication, the printing press, telephone, allowing our small brains to manage huge social networks across the world and over the years.

Really, language is the source of all these fake, distant relationships!

Good articles to read, even more if you are building or studying internet social networks, communication tools, etc.

"Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective" https://attach.matita.net/ziorufus/Dunbar%20gossip.pdf

"co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans" https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/1993/dunbar199...

They are part of the material I use in my ´History of Tech Design´ class! ( https://workflowy.com/s/strate-history-of-te/a4ID6kKtznLwQC7... )

Re: Who do we spend time with across our lifetime? (2020)

#50

Post by ntlk »

hackernewds wrote: post #43
em500 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For thousands of years, most people just couldn't move very far due to physics and economics. The were mostly forced to be neighbours with family. It's always valuable to have good relationships with neightbours, whether they're family or not. As the old Dutch saying goes "Beter een goede buur dan een verre vriend” ("it’s better to have good neighbour than a distant friend"). (I think that's an adaptation of a sectio…

It's nice to be family with your neighbors. But it's best to be neighbors with your family. The family bond really supercedes anything else (in most cases)

It’s nice unless your family is awful.
Post reply on HN