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Who Americans spend their time with, by age

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Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#421

Post by CalRobert »

nitrogen wrote: post #419
giantDinosaur wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill-health, loneliness, road deaths, pollution, ultra-expensive infrastructure: if 'technological progress' is the city designed around the car, I want none of it.

Technological progress is the ability to go where you want, when you want, even if it's 2AM, without having to worry about catching something or being stabbed on a train, and all of your things are with you when you get there. If you don't find a way to provide that benefit, you will never upend the car.

Cars are really, really, handy. I love mine! But I also think helicopters are cool. Both should be severely restricted within the city.

Letting me go where I want, when I want, means I can't let my kids go anywhere, ever.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#422

Post by Viliam1234 »

ip26 wrote: post #406
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a culture we have to figure out a better way that allows everyone independence & freedom to either work or stay-at-home parent, while providing a support network. Do we, though? It seems the past generation had a very nice thing going about 30-40 years ago. Fast forward and our societies are literally crumbling around us, what once took one man going to an average job to provide is now taking two full-time people…

I absolutely echo your complaints. But the old way had significant problems too. Hopefully we can find something better than either.

Two possible approaches, one social, one technical:

The social approach is to change a culture so that we make deep friendships for life. Like having a new family, except by choice. Make it normal for friends to buy houses next to each other, so that in future they can help each other take care of kids, cook for each other, and other things family members could do for each other. This could help people live in a commune of their own choice.

(The obvious problem: two people get married, each of them has a different group of friends. In some sense this is a nice problem to have, because it assumes that many people already have communes. Still a problem.)

The technical approach is to make houses like Lego bricks, with standardized dimensions, that can be picked up from one place and placed to another place. To make relocation easier and cheaper than it is now. So again, you have a group of friends, and you agree to live together. Except, if you find new friends, you move to live close to them.

In places where most homes are rented, this is a potential product for a very rich company: make a few buildings in different parts of town, with identically shaped flats (or maybe two or three types of flats of different size, each type existing in each building) and provide a furniture that is easy to disassemble and reassemble. Part of your offer would be the possibility of cheap and simple relocation: if someone chooses a different bulding where a flat of the same type is available, you could disassemble the furniture, move it, and reassemble in the same shape in a week. You could also provide some related services, such as redirecting mail coming to the old address.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#423

Post by Viliam1234 »

nitrogen wrote: post #419
giantDinosaur wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill-health, loneliness, road deaths, pollution, ultra-expensive infrastructure: if 'technological progress' is the city designed around the car, I want none of it.

Technological progress is the ability to go where you want, when you want, even if it's 2AM, without having to worry about catching something or being stabbed on a train, and all of your things are with you when you get there. If you don't find a way to provide that benefit, you will never upend the car.

People regularly getting stabbed in trains doesn't feel like a technological problem.

Seems like there are two attractors in the mass transit space:

Attractor 1: The mass transit is safe and clean. Everyone uses it, because it is convenient. Because everyone uses it, people care about keeping it safe, clean, and convenient.

Attractor 2: The mass transit is dirty and dangerous. Only poor people use it, because they have no other choice; all middle-class people use cars. Because no one important uses mass transit, no one really cares about making it less dirty and less dangerous.

From what I heard, the former attractor seems more frequent in Europe, the latter in USA.

There are also other things involved in the attractors, such as width of roads, sizes of blocks, whether sidewalks exist or not, etc. These would be even more resistant to change.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#424

Post by dredmorbius »

touisteur wrote: post #410
cgriswald wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of distance is a boundary. People can travel, use cell phones, or any other method to get past distance. It is only a logistical complication. Psychological and emotional boundaries are required. Cutting off contact by itself is not enough. You have to communicate that you are cutting off contact. That's what establishes the boundary. In many cases you won't get a restraining order if you haven't establishe…

I agree with you, seeing how even my spouse's 16h-drive-away mother is still managing to insert herself into her child's life several times a day. I can see on my wife's face she's been talking to her mother when I get home. Even with new recent boundaries set (we're not visiting anymore, no more answering the phone or WhatsApp 33 times a day and then when not answering right away having other family call to argue th…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25393419

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#425

Post by giantDinosaur »

nitrogen wrote: post #419
giantDinosaur wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ill-health, loneliness, road deaths, pollution, ultra-expensive infrastructure: if 'technological progress' is the city designed around the car, I want none of it.

Technological progress is the ability to go where you want, when you want, even if it's 2AM, without having to worry about catching something or being stabbed on a train, and all of your things are with you when you get there. If you don't find a way to provide that benefit, you will never upend the car.

I'm not that interested in 'upending' the car, in the sense of getting rid of it, but creating much more balanced systems and urban design as seen in countries like the Netherlands - where you have the choice of multiple ways to achieve every goal, and where you don't have to drive to have a safe commute. The city designed around the car is just poor urban design for any goal other than the convenience of the car.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#426

Post by PEOPLEgetoff »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #199
Swizec wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom always said ”Move far away enough that your parents can’t visit in their slippers, trust me you don’t want that kinda meddling” I moved to USA. “Damn it I didn’t mean that far” ~ mom My sister lives with her boyfriend in his mom’s house. There is indeed a ridiculous amount of meddling even though they’re technically separate households.

The further I have moved from Family the more I have started to wish I was closer to them physically. Especially this year when our normal yearly gatherings were disrupted.

Right. Totally.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#427

Post by irrational »

tripzilch wrote: post #386
irrational wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is cooking crappy work? I’m a man, but I would love to spend a lot more time cooking. I do all the cooking on weekends and holidays/vacations because it is so much fun. I love it when I have my six week sabbaticals since I can cook everyday.

> I’m a man > I would love to spend a lot more time cooking > I do all the cooking on weekends and holidays/vacations because it is so much fun. I love it when I have my six week sabbaticals since I can cook everyday. This is exactly the kind of choice that we were talking about which does NOT exist in the "happy multi generational example" that we were talking about.

I'm just saying that cooking isn't necessarily crappy work, whether you can choose to cook or not.

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#428

Post by BurningFrog »

smileysteve wrote: post #413
BurningFrog wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Blue Tribe is an alternative religion is many ways. The Red Tribe still has Christianity, so they don't need another one.

Disagree vehemently

Which is the typical religious response :)

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#429

Post by WhyNotHugo »

burlesona wrote: post #36

The thing that seems crazy to me is how much time alone increases with age. There are many many reasons for it, but one thing I think is especially sad is how much this is a consequence of our built environment. If you live in a village with multiple generations of a family around, it’s much easier for grandparents to be involved day too day in helping with little things in the village, especially keeping an eye on t…

> The thing that seems crazy to me is how much time alone increases with age. There are many many reasons for it, but one thing I think is especially sad is how much this is a consequence of our built environment.

Huh, amusing way to see it.

Introvert here.

I see it as a natural progression. "Finally, I don't have to be around people all day and can have lots of time to myself!".

I'm actually impressed at how few Americans live alone under the age of 30. I guess having roomates is more of a thing in the US...?

Re: Who Americans spend their time with, by age

#430

Post by wing-_-nuts »

nine_k wrote: post #342
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #11

I don't even want kids. I don't know why the 'time spent with one's children' line hurts so much, but it does. It sharply rises, before plummeting at age 40. That's got to be a jarring transition. No wonder so many folks have trouble with the 'empty nest' and mid-life crisis.

Obviously enough, attitudes like this weed themselves out of the gene pool. I'd like to paraphrase an old HN comment which said that maybe eventually a culture will develop in which industrial and post-industrial transitions would not drop fertility, that is, the propensity to have more children than needed for mere reproduction. With every post-industrial country having fertility rate below reproduction level, such…

See idiocracy for a cheeky take on this idea.
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