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AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

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Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#71

Post by mvdtnz »

alephnerd wrote: post #5

How much of this is moral panic? Like, objectively, how much overlap is there between a NEET who is addicted to waifus and dating sims in Persona and AI Friend or NSFW Apps? My hunch is the overlap is significant, and at that point the problem is WHY you have those kinds of NEETs and how to resolve it, not the technology or medium itself. Western Civil libertarian fundamentalists like much of HN would not appreciate…

There really seems to be a subset of HNers who believe that if a problem existed before then it doesn't matter if a new technology increases the scale of the problem. It's such a strange point of view.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#72

Post by Diti »

altruios wrote: post #60
Diti wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Fascism killed about a thousand people per year in recent years [1]. Loneliness killed about a million per year (870 k) [2]. [1]: https://deathtofascism.com/files/2021-THE_YEAR_IN_FASCIST&FA... [2]: https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-l...

*recent years... hm... what happens if we map history to now (rhymes likes chimes)... what should we expect to see then? And to be frank. Only fascists fraternize with fascists. It probably also contributes to the loneliness epidemic when no one will be their friend because of their racist/nationalist/sexist beliefs except other such degenerates (who aren't really their friends at all). You aren't friends with fascis…

We didn’t have loneliness epidemics at the same time as fascism before, so there’s no data to compare. That’s why I added “in recent years”.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#73

Post by JohnFen »

msgodel wrote: post #54
euroderf wrote: post #52

Get rid of cars in town and city centers. Then you're halfway to the solution.

Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other, certainly not strangers, and the perceived (likely even real) consequences of it are an expected net loss.

> Fundamentally people don't want to be around each other

It's the opposite of that. Fundamentally, people do want to be around each other and need to be or they go insane.

There are exceptions, of course, but they don't represent the norm.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#74

Post by mvdtnz »

altruios wrote: post #60
Diti wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Fascism killed about a thousand people per year in recent years [1]. Loneliness killed about a million per year (870 k) [2]. [1]: https://deathtofascism.com/files/2021-THE_YEAR_IN_FASCIST&FA... [2]: https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-l...

*recent years... hm... what happens if we map history to now (rhymes likes chimes)... what should we expect to see then? And to be frank. Only fascists fraternize with fascists. It probably also contributes to the loneliness epidemic when no one will be their friend because of their racist/nationalist/sexist beliefs except other such degenerates (who aren't really their friends at all). You aren't friends with fascis…

Even if we take your (unhinged) post at face value, the problem is how people define "fascist". We're seeing some pretty darn loose definitions being thrown around.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#75

Post by JoshTriplett »

DangitBobby wrote: post #65
JoshTriplett wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not necessarily only a value judgement if it turns out being less social is actually less healthy for everyone. It would still be a value judgement in that case. There's the value of people having the choice to do less healthy things (as long as they're not hurting other people in doing so), versus preventing people from doing less healthy things.

Emphasis on _only_.

Fair, thank you for calling attention to that.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#76

Post by AnimalMuppet »

altruios wrote: post #60
Diti wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Fascism killed about a thousand people per year in recent years [1]. Loneliness killed about a million per year (870 k) [2]. [1]: https://deathtofascism.com/files/2021-THE_YEAR_IN_FASCIST&FA... [2]: https://www.who.int/news/item/30-06-2025-social-connection-l...

*recent years... hm... what happens if we map history to now (rhymes likes chimes)... what should we expect to see then? And to be frank. Only fascists fraternize with fascists. It probably also contributes to the loneliness epidemic when no one will be their friend because of their racist/nationalist/sexist beliefs except other such degenerates (who aren't really their friends at all). You aren't friends with fascis…

But maybe loneliness causes fascism. (Or at least it creates fertile ground for it.) Lonely men, in particular, looking for somewhere to belong, that nobody else accepts, seem to me to be ripe for fascists to recruit.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#77

Post by wjnc »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #8
wjnc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I see no arguments, only propositions. (I will bring little arguments myself below. Not flaming.) Technological advancement is in my opinion unrelated to the way current “social” technologies impact “social relations”. Things are not going well, I’d agree. But I can imagine one hundred beautiful features (or historical technological advances) that have improved social relations, trust and general well-being. Cur…

1. Even early computers of the 90s and 00s tended to reduce face-to-face contact. At least a lot of children started to spend more time on the computer than hanging out in real life. (The latter wasn't obliterated, but reduced.) 2. Airline and rapid travel encourages people to move away from friends and family because they can be visited or reuinted on occasion more often. 3. Not sure how you were enthusiastic about…

Thanks for your replies. I understand the worldview. We differ on a few points of view.

Large scale farming releases hands for more specialization. Specialization leads to interdependence and (in my naïveté) peace. ‘We’ did get a very large part of the world out of poverty. That was part of my optimism. And I thought we would reach peak oil faster and go for sustainable faster (batteries are still the major future potential upside for me).

Perhaps in a ‘might have been’-scenario 9/11 and the end of the end of history (Fukuyama), plus the antisocial tech are the turning points. Haven’t thought that shift from techno optimism to political, social and cultural negativity (in me, but it seems a trend as well) through enough. The whole bitcoin shebang, the return of the 80s American Psycho capitalism and consumerism, the wars just rub me the wrong way. I might be turning hippie in my second half of life.

As a child of the 80s I’ve never felt technology reducing social interaction. But that might have been a temporal sweet spot. Massive amounts of screen time, massive amounts of outside time (friends, sports).

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#78

Post by arevno »

humblebeekeeper wrote: post #70
rickydroll wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will argue that work should be just about a paycheck. The CEO/founder's vision is not your vision. It helps you be mindful of differences between your vision and your ethics versus the company's. You'll be able to see more clearly when the gap is too big and it's time to leave. For me, when work became all about the paycheck, I took my ego out of my work. I remained engaged and performed the job as expected. Whenev…

I think you are part way down the thread. You are assuming there's a company, that there's a CEO. These things are not axiomatic. If you work somewhere where you have control over the outputs of the your labor, you can both get a paycheck and not be exploited.

Yes, it's odd that Developer Hegemony has been out for eight years, and tech workers still act as if they are destined to be serfs.

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#79

Post by munificent »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #63
munificent wrote: post #47

The top two comments here both suggest that the people using chatbots in place of social interaction were already a priori socially isolated and AI has no effect on it. It's merely a "symptom" or after the fact consequence. I deeply, fundamentally disagree with that. Humans are one step mathematical operations that take in an input, transform to an output, and are done. Human life is an endless continuous cascade of…

Some practical advice I gave a good friend yesterday, who is frustrated by the constant bailing from people to go touch grass with him: 1. Increase frequency of informal communication. For example if your hangout is a monthly coding club, you might casually message participants once or twice a week. “Holy smokes Jenny, this HN thread reminded me of you.” 2. Create convenient little group DMs (call it “Bob’s Coding Cl…

Abner!

It's no surprise that you have excellent advice on how to socialize more. :)

Re: AI Friend Apps Are Destroying What's Left of Society

#80

Post by munificent »

munificent wrote: post #47

The top two comments here both suggest that the people using chatbots in place of social interaction were already a priori socially isolated and AI has no effect on it. It's merely a "symptom" or after the fact consequence. I deeply, fundamentally disagree with that. Humans are one step mathematical operations that take in an input, transform to an output, and are done. Human life is an endless continuous cascade of…

Edit: By "Humans are one step", I meant "Humans are not one step".
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