501–510 of 1001 posts
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A sufficiently advanced ai that tricks humans would be a human life itself…
one day, some sick mind will do a study with a baby who is only exposed to AI without any real human contact
> 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…
Though it's popularized to blame social media and phones, economics should not be overlooked. Pay for young generations is lagging and restaurants and bar prices are super high. Public spaces for informal gatherings has shrunk - eg fewer malls
In 90s in Europe, my socializing was predominantly "walk down to the pedestrian zone and meet your friends for a walk". Not sure how it is there these days - Canadian social life today is indeed highly correlated with movies / restaurants / expenses.
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Bullshit. Most people can afford grabbing a beer in a supermarket and going to the park. They just choose not to. I think the real change is that nowadays it's just easier and more practical NOT to maintain friendships. Yes, it's lonely, but it's more efficient.
Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.
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You have to take into account the fact that rent and other necessities have exploded in relative cost. In the eighties I might save up months or even 1-2 years for a nice television set, but my rent/mortgage, food, etc. was relatively inexpensive. Now, I can go buy 15-20 decent televisions a month for the same amount it costs me to pay my rent or mortgage here on a 0-2 bedroom place, and I live in a shithole backwood…
Yep, and it's only accelerated. > In the eighties I might save up months or even 1-2 years for a nice television set I remember times from the late 80s and early 90s where my parents would have to save up to repair the VCR, or that time we had to get the PC Monitor repaired; back then the 100-200$ in repair costs was way cheaper than 'buying a new one'. First house I rented starting in 2007 was 500 a month [0]. Our f…
I paid $700 for a two-story, 2bed/2bath unit in a quadplex in 2013 in this city. Last year, when I moved back, I was paying $750 for a tiny 400sqft studio apartment the size of my old apartment's living room.
My landlord was lagging on getting me my new lease to sign for another year. Turns out, I was a bargaining chip. A new landlord just bought the building at the beginning of this year and raised the rent to $850, out of the blue a month before my old lease expired. This was a ~13% sudden increase in expenses, and we do not have rent control.
He said, and I quote, "I like the community you have helped build here[0], I don't want everyone to run off, so I don't want to increase rent too high, too fast." (He wanted to boil the frog)
Our immediate response was to find a home in our neighborhood and purchase it. The median price is around $380-550k in this neighborhood, and that nets you almost no yard and maybe 700-1800sqft in living space on average. This is the oldest neighborhood in the city. It has a long, colorful history, and was originally settled by ex-slaves.
Today, when a home goes on the market in this neighborhood, it is usually snapped up by either private equity or rent-seeking landlords within 1-2 weeks, renovated and either flipped for way more to a gentrifying population, or most-often leased out to younger people who are then priced out of owning their own property.
We found one which was considerably cheaper than the average, but have to put in about $50k worth of work for it to be up to code, fix the foundation, the roof, completely rewire the home, repairing and refinishing the floors, repainting, and more. It's a great home, a good deal for the area, but it is very old, badly-maintained and has a lot of serious problems.
And much of this has to be done now, right after purchasing and before we can even move in, for safety and practical and scheduling reasons, and also because our insurance suddenly dropped us without warning until we prioritize the $13k in electrical work that needs to be done, meaning we have to also maintain rent and utilities at another dwelling while also paying this mortgage and tens of thousands to contractors.
This, in addition to the large up-front deposit for such a large home price, and an insane mortgage rate, means we are paying an exorbitant amount of money, over half a million dollars to own a home in a shithole, run-down state with zero economic opportunities, compared to the local median wage. This kind of money would have bought you a small mansion out here when I was younger.
A few years ago, I moved into a neighborhood in Fort Worth. I couldn't find a house with a reasonable mortgage, almost none for sale at all, and so I rented a home instead through a corporate property management company. The sinking foundation was causing the roof to cave in and there were humongous cracks across every wall and ceiling. The fan was so loud it sounded like you were next to a jet, and there was a huge lack of insulation in the walls. The roof needed replacing. There was water damage. There were a million other issues with the place, and all in all it was a dump which I should have been able to buy for a great price if it was on the market and not being used as an investment vehicle for private equity.
I appraised all of the issues and offered to buy the place from them at a reasonable value. They wouldn't even entertain the conversation, even though I persisted. Resigned, I finally forced them to carry out the repairs anyway after making arguments about it being uninhabitable and not even close to being worth the $1800 a month in rent. They probably spent $30k repairing the foundation alone. They also replaced A/C components, replaced the roof, landscaped, did a bunch of other things. All the while refusing to just sell me the place and let me fix it up and live in it. I'm sure they put it back on the market for even more after I left.
It sure feels like late-stage capitalism is progressively getting harder to prop up. And we're seeing that it only accelerates at the very end, with a far-right, populist sentiment sweeping the globe under the guise of economic redemption, and the accompanying policies having disastrous economic effects on the middle and lower classes.
[0] I got two other people to move into other units, and am long-time friends with another dweller, and have made an effort to meet the other tenants and establish some level of social interaction between us
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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.
Gas costs money. The car costs money. You can only do the same hike that's an hour away so many times, before you're traveling to go to new places, and hotels cost money at that point. Pickleball courts cost money. The pickleball equipment costs money. People do go to the library, and then they go home and don't interact with other people.
Pickleball courts do not cost money, they are freely provided by the state. I go to free pickleball courts every week in SF, and I bike there for free. You can buy 4 paddles for $20 at sports basement and get literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment just on that.
I dunno, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this perspective. Almost everything I do with friends isn’t particularly expensive - if you can’t find cheap things to do you just aren’t even looking.
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Reading this makes me extremely nihilistic about humanity.
My nihilism is exacerbated by the people who are actively making the problem worse and viciously attacking anyone who criticizes the problem or proposes solutions. IMO some activists are exploiting homeless people and drug addicts for power and profit.
What I am saying is that even if "activists" are doing... whatever, I kinda don't give a fuck?
These are people. Human beings. The only shit people seem to give is to get them out of their sight and make them somebody else's problem.
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Drinking outdoors (let alone at a public park) is just not a thing outside Europe.
You might be surprised to learn that many people in public parks are not, in fact, drinking water out of their water bottles or La Croix out of their La Croix cans. Also, drinking in public is not allowed in much of Europe. Don’t go there and assume it is. There are also many US locations and parks where alcohol is allowed.
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This isn't true in the US. Young people in US consume much more of those things you listed than people over 40 did at the same age. Young people have more purchasing power than previous generations. EDIT: Data from the fed and payroll providers show this overwhelmingly to be the case, but just to add some color/anecdote. I found all of the first jobs I had in highschool and just after. 3/3 of my first roles now adver…
Are you taking into account the biggest drain on young people's finances, accommodation? I would be amazed if young people today had as much disposable income as they did 20 or 30 years ago.
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…
Just from the first survey I could find:
> In the Common Sense Media survey, 31% of teens said their conversations with AI companions were “as satisfying or more satisfying” than talking with real friends. Even though half of teens said they distrust AI’s advice, 33% had discussed serious or important issues with AI instead of real people.
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For sure. As others mentioned some locals have gone so far as to make drinking in public illegal. Now in your example, suppose you’re a lonely stranger. Do you just nudge in on a circle with your beer and “Hi I’m Shawa” ? Your answer may be yes, but in other cultures that’s going to get the police called, or maybe end in a stabbing. Which is why society is in the state it’s in
Cultures where people sit on the grass in extremely hostile drinking circles, ready to stab strangers?