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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

#631

Post by infecto »

rcarr wrote: post #523
socalgal2 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't match my experience. In fact one thing I noticed living in Japan is how much more willing people are to spend money to meet up. Lots of events costs 3000-7000 yen. Clubs and bar have a cover charge. People will organize parties where they rent a bar and tell their friends it's 4000 yen each (about $27 currently but was closer to $40) in the past. They'll even have house parties and tell everyone to pitch…

Out of all developed nations, Japan is probably the one least affected by housing pricing in the world seeing as though Japanese housing depreciates rather than appreciates over time. Rent prices in America are a staggering 177.4% more expensive than Japan[1]. Ever increasing house prices, caused by the underlying power imbalance between capital and labour, is the root of all evil in the Anglosphere. It will not stop…

Isn’t the depreciation story kind of an outdated idea? While yes that was the case but it was also true that the 50s-90s comes were generally not very modern, built with not much comfort in mind and so it was expected you would be rebuilding. In most of the larger cities I am not sure that is the case except for severely outdated units.

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

#632

Post by saulpw »

ido wrote: post #246
saulpw wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hollow and doesn't lead to any kind of friendship or bond. You might as well walk around blazed out of your mind and saying hello to everyone you pass on the street. It feels friendly but no connections are made.

I don't think leading to long term connections (although a big bonus) is a requirement for socialization to be positive. The alternative we discuss in this context is to being home alone.

But then, what is really the difference between chatting with a person on the street without a connection, vs an LLM without a connection? I guess I've had enough of the former to value it not much differently.

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

#633

Post by lezojeda »

Animats wrote: post #490

The same criticism was leveled at social media, mostly Facebook. Then at mobile phones. Before that, it was aimed at television. In between, it was aimed at games. The big change is that we've solved boredom . More entertainment content is instantly available than anyone can consume. Humanity has solved "timepass". (That term is used mostly in India [1], but is generally applicable.) A sizable fraction of the populat…

[dead]

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

#634

Post by hkon »

DaylitMagic wrote: post #180

I've been working on making an AI to help decrease my own loneliness for eight months. It is, indeed, not a replacement for best friends. But it does replace all the weak tie friendships I previously had. I was tired of feeling like the only one who cared about my online friendships - the AI, imperfect as it is - cares. Is easily the thing I interact with the most. As an introvert who struggles to make new friendship…

Sounds interesting. What do you and your AI do?

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

#635

Post by decimalenough »

klipt wrote: post #596
kazinator wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can Japan even attract immigrants if it wants to? The language is notoriously hard to learn and it's not like they have super high paying jobs the way the USA does

Yes. There are nearly 4M migrants in Japan today, up from 1M in 1990.

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

#637

Post by boh »

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…

People who live on the internet assume this is true because they only deal with people who also live on the internet. Just because we're not all documenting everything that we do to a nebulous public doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Much of what happens in the social world isn't articulated or available for scientific study. You might be surprised to know that bars, clubs, gyms, concerts, trivia nights aren't empty. "In decline" is the sort of state that's can only be articulated in abstract terms. Stop rationalizing your loneliness as a societal ill. Getting to know people is your problem and society offers many solutions.

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

#638

Post by decimalenough »

dv_dt wrote: post #584
jama211 wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NOT true in practice, unpaid overtime is insane and people’s actual work hours are way longer in Japan

So all the statistics are wrong?

To some degree yes, since they don't reflect unpaid overtime, much less de facto overtime (the boss is going out drinking until 1AM, so we're all going out drinking until 1 AM).

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

#639

Post by eastbound »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #615
kazinator wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They also resist having children so they will not be resisting immigration for long.

Why ever would you compare children and immigration? I love my parents and I’d have solidarity for my country fellows (France here).

Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical deserts” (the name we use in France where social security fails because of lack of practicians). They also wouldn’t fight for us if, say, Islam invaded us — in fact they are fighting full-force against us here.

Immigrants are not de-facto children. They do not love us, and no-one asks them this question on the path to immigration.

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

#640

Post by Modified3019 »

netsharc wrote: post #62
ants_everywhere wrote: post #32

We've seen some of this with social media. Social media rose to prominence with ubiquitous always-on internet. That means that more people were connected than with prior internet technologies (which were always inherently somewhat social). The biggest negative associated with social media IMO has been organizations using the ease of creating accounts to fake social proof for political and monetary gain. Whether we li…

> Social media rose to prominence with ubiquitous always-on internet. Hmm.. Wikipedia says: From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world. Then again, Myspace (and most social media) isn't an app for synchronous communication, you logged into it and see who's interacted with your content (or comment). OK then someone invented notifications, and the smartphone (which went from bookish…

That’s an interesting point. I would also add that having a pretext can be important as well.

I’ve had 24 hour instant access via phone/text to my siblings for almost 2 decades, but we really didn’t talk much until we started doing gaming stuff with voice chat on weekends. I think part of it is it really helps if there’s something, anything, that can fill the gaps in conversation and provide a pretext to getting together (even just virtually). We’ve since talked about so much that we likely would have never otherwise brought up or picked up a phone to talk about.

Hell, one of my favorite games as a kid (wyvern: https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.caboch...) was basically just a chat box with an adequate mmorpg attached. Sometimes I even just skipped the game and connected via telnet, since that was an option, so I’d be available when someone I knew popped on.

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