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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

#681

Post by kovek »

Nathanba wrote: post #423
AlecSchueler wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only suggest you ask your AI friends about the benefits of socialising and its importance to human development, they can explain it to you in a way that might not make you defensive. Yes, accepting things you have no control over is a sign of maturity. Hiding in your room talking to your phone won't make the scary people outside disappear, you're going to have to deal with them someday.

This is a great example of what I'm talking about in regards to humans vs AI. First you misunderstand my comment, barely even responding to it, then you paint me as defensive even though I've been very open and the absolute opposite of defensive. It's actually you who is being defensive now, starting on a clear attack and painting me into some kind of scared recluse corner, somebody who supposedly can't even understa…

Why are you socializing with humans on Hacker News right now?

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

#682

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

_qbxi wrote: post #649
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…

> In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out. What's their healthcare like? If something bad happens, do they need to rely on savings to pull through, or does their society have stronger social safety nets that allow them to spend their money with less concern?

You know people who regularly say on a weekend evening "Sorry, I can't come, I need to put the $34 I'd have spent into my HSA" ?

It's not really about safety nets since most people don't discount (or account) for them (they're in the future). It's about disposable income, and for huge numbers of Americans, that's in short supply due to the exorbitant cost of housing, college education and health insurance & care.

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

#683

Post by _qbxi »

lttlrck wrote: post #665
_qbxi wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, immigrants often do pay taxes, and use up fewer benefits[1]. Moreover, our social security relies on perpetual growth to sustain itself. So if we can't grow our population via children, we must grow it via immigrants, to remain solvent. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-used-less-welfare-nativ...

Hence "natalist" popping up in some corners of the political spectrum.

I certainly support efforts to shape US society into one where people might want children. Universal healthcare, strong social safety nets, free education, etc. Not to mention one where land is used in a conscientious way to build community, with walkable spaces, public third spaces, and strong public transit.

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

#684

Post by daniel-grigg »

I don’t know about curing loneliness but when I wrote our bot for doing code reviews I was quite thrown back by how positive and sympathetic the feedback was compared to my peers. It felt like my bot human than us humans!

Was it fake? Sure. I mean I instructed it to praise good changes after all. But it still felt good.

And now I’m noticing another effect, my human peers have started mimicking some its behaviours.

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

#685

Post by khalic »

daniel-grigg wrote: post #684

I don’t know about curing loneliness but when I wrote our bot for doing code reviews I was quite thrown back by how positive and sympathetic the feedback was compared to my peers. It felt like my bot human than us humans! Was it fake? Sure. I mean I instructed it to praise good changes after all. But it still felt good. And now I’m noticing another effect, my human peers have started mimicking some its behaviours.

I think that annoying positivity is rubbing off on me too, aggravating but welcome

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

#686

Post by skissane »

kiba wrote: post #673
rcarr wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's the land and other non-reproducible privileges, not all form of wealth. The imbalance is not between capital and labor, but land. Land can be in the form of copyright, patents, even domain names, the orbitals in the sky, the electromagnetic spectrum. Capital can be used to produce more capital, but you cannot produce more land, more electromagnetic spectrum, more orbitals, etc. The housing crisis is a restrictio…

I’m sympathetic to your overall point - I’m not a convinced Georgist but I’m open-minded about the idea - but I’d question some of your specific examples

> even domain names,

With an alternative DNS root, you can have any domain name you like, except for legal constraints such as trademarks, defamation, obscenity, etc. The problem is none of the alternative roots ever took off, in part because the browser vendors didn’t want to get on-board (they saw it as a high risk low reward feature)-and alternative browsers offering that feature failed in the market. This really isn’t comparable to land, in that the scarcity isn’t imposed by the laws of nature or laws written by government, it is scarcity entailed by a (predominantly) private social arrangement where competing arrangements are permitted, but have thus far failed in the market.

> the orbitals in the sky

Orbit is huge and while it is getting more congested, I don’t think that congestion is (as yet) a significant barrier to new entrants. The primary barrier remains the launch costs. The governments of major spacefaring powers don’t see orbital slots as a revenue source, their regulation of them is purely about avoiding conflict, and the fees they charge are about recovering the cost of that regulation, not contributing to general revenue. Some equatorial states tried to claim geostationary orbit slots over their territory as part of their territory, in order to charge for access to them - but the claim failed because the major spacefaring states refused to accept it, and these states lacked the geopolitical power to compel anyone else to take this claim seriously-and, anyway, with the growth of LEO constellations, geostationary orbit arguably isn’t as economically important as it was when those claims were first asserted

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

#687

Post by _qbxi »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #682
_qbxi wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact Japanese generally make less money. IT salaries are in the $50k range. Minimum wage is $7.5 Yet they still go out. What's their healthcare like? If something bad happens, do they need to rely on savings to pull through, or does their society have stronger social safety nets that allow them to spend their money with less concern?

You know people who regularly say on a weekend evening "Sorry, I can't come, I need to put the $34 I'd have spent into my HSA" ? It's not really about safety nets since most people don't discount (or account) for them (they're in the future). It's about disposable income, and for huge numbers of Americans, that's in short supply due to the exorbitant cost of housing, college education and health insurance & care.

I know people who don't want to spend $30 on dinner because they already drained their accounts for minor medical problems, yes.

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

#688

Post by kubb »

pessimizer wrote: post #677
idiotsecant wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because immigrants ... Raise the rent? The US was built by immigrants. Before our slow slide toward christofascism it was on our money. Out of many, one. The reason we work as a society is that we take strength from the many varied cultures and experiences throughout the world. The most bold, the most focused, the most daring have always come to America with a dream of making it big. We destroy that at our own p…

Of course immigrants raise the rent, just like anyone else who enters an auction, and the US was built by slaves.

What you’re saying is that population increase raises the rent, whether the new people are immigrants is not relevant.

But wealth accumulation means that on the auction for housing you are competing with someone who has 1000x more resources than you.

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

#689

Post by skissane »

eastbound wrote: post #639
matheusmoreira wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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).

My mother is a doctor and her father was a doctor before, and both are immigrants (from Scotland to Australia) - my grandfather was already a doctor when he immigrated, my mother was only 3 or 4 at the time but she ended up doing medicine too. Our children’s paediatrician did medicine in Sri Lanka and then immigrated to Australia post-graduation; my psychiatrist likewise graduated from medicine in India. My psychologist was born in Czechia, grew up there, moved to Australia as an adult and did his psychology degrees here. My closest personal friend is a lawyer who was born in Peru, grew up in Australia - but he isn’t Peruvian, his ancestry is Argentine-Uruguayan. One of my coworkers I work closely with immigrated to Australia only 2-3 years ago, from Argentina-he already worked for our employer in Argentina, but got an intra-company transfer to here.

I don’t know any poor immigrants-I’m sure they exist, but I just don’t know any of them personally-I know lots of immigrants but they are all university-educated professionals

Of course, I am talking about Australia, you are talking about France - but France has a great many middle class or better immigrants (and their descendants) too. The big difference is France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants, while Australia has significantly less (proportionally speaking). But the problem then isn’t immigration, it is mismanaged immigration-who, not how many

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

#690

Post by giantg2 »

dv_dt wrote: post #257
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…

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

It's probably a role that varies by location or group. There are cheaper ways to hangout and be social. A 30pk and garage/basement/woods can usually be had for pretty cheap. College students are notorious for being cheap and also social.
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