We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness • Hacker News Board

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

#811

Post by HPsquared » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 9:34 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #719

eastbound wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not comparing children with immigrants. I'm pointing out the demographic fact that Japan has a low birth rate, far below replenishment. This implies the number of economically active individuals will only ever decrease over time. Without economically active people, collapse is inevitable. Therefore, they must either promote new families or accept immigration. Attempts to raise birth rates don't seem to be bearing…

Shrinking population only leads to collapse if the economy is built like a Ponzi scheme. This is most Western economies, but it doesn't have to be this way.

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

#812

Post by zwnow » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 9:35 AM UTC

HaZeust wrote: post #574

Nathanba wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real humans are also fake and they are also traps who are waiting to catch you when you say something they don't like. Then they also use every word and piece of information as ammunition against you, ironically sort of similar to the criticism always levied against online platforms who track you and what you say. AI robots are going to easily replace real humans because compared to most real humans the AI is already…

This outlook on life is a perilous endeavor. Eliminate lesser friends, curate your circle to find better ones, talk to a professional about your ill-advised beliefs on humanity at large. It's not an easy process, but it's a necessary one. Write it down, make a plan.

These "ill-advised beliefs" are extremely valid beliefs. Most humans are just ignorant and human history has shown that plenty of times. I admire people blind enough to see the good in humanity

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

#813

Post by achenet » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 9:36 AM UTC

Modified3019 wrote: post #630

fragmede wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if your kid has downs or gets hit by a car or is an addict or a fuck up, they're not going to be able to support you into old age either. And then you're responsible for them as well, until you're too old and senile yourself, and then what? That's not to say don't have kids, but go into it with your eyes open, don't assume they're your lifeline to the future.

Or more likely, their kids are still going to be renting and living paycheck to paycheck at 50, so they aren’t going to have time, space, energy, or money to take care of the parents when they are barely treading water. I encounter a lot of people my age and younger whose own retirement plant is basically: Plan A: Miraculously get rich Plan S: When severe disability or pain hits, find the exit. Maby it’s the lifelong…

> Plan A: Miraculously get rich

To be fair - this first plan is actually very doable if you're a reasonably skilled programmer in the 21st century.

Like you know that Tim Bray article about Bitcoin where he's like "and that's the thing about late stage capitalism, there's so much money floating around that people can't find a use for that we get stuff like cryptocurrency speculation"?

Find one reasonably convincing business idea, bonus points if it uses current hot tech trends, ask rich boomers for money via "seeking venture capital funding/investment", pay yourself an exorbitant salary for 5 years and then close shop because "we ran out of funding but the market didn't materialize".

Go read Adam Neumann's wikipedia page if you need inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neumann

If you're posting on Hacker News, and you want to be rich, I reckon you can reasonably expect to have a seven figure net worth in a decade or so if you consistently make good decisions.

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

#814

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 9:38 AM UTC

burnt-resistor wrote: post #679

dv_dt wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Parks and trails are/were non commercial meeting spaces. City recreational parks in America used to have water fountains and cool stuff like climbable sculptures for kids and decommissioned Korean War era fighter jets in sand pits. That all went away with the helicopter parents.

[deleted]

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

#815

Post by randomNumber7 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 9:53 AM UTC

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #786

Buttons840 wrote: post #442

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The average age of first home owners has risen to 38. In another decade or two the American dream will probably be to buy a house when you're 50 and then settle down, get married, and have a family. I wonder how that's going to work out?

Part of this is simply a function of the average age. There's a much bigger squeeze of life events when everyone dies at 60 instead of 90. We become older, meaning our life events are stretched out further, we leave school later, begin work later, buy a house later, have kids later, retire later, die later. Secondly, within the population the share of old is becoming bigger, meaning the average buyer is older, and al…

> have kids later

This doesn't work for women.

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

#816

Post by anovikov » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 10:00 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #798

anovikov wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't housing exactly the most accessible of all the world save for 2-3 totalitarian countries like Oman, in the United States? According to the Numbeo data exactly. It also has nothing to do with labor vs capital. Billionaires don't invest (much) in housing. Sometimes they do invest in commercial real estate, but never into housing. It's the middle class who buys up everything - now almost exclusively in cash - and…

Yep. It's kind of like with gas prices: Americans, with some of the world's lowest prices complain the loudest. Which appears to point out that the maladies discussed here have less of an economic nature but more of social/psychological/technological.

Another side of it is that they do indeed spend a bigger fraction of their incomes on both housing and gas. Because they have the biggest houses on biggest plots, plus not just the elite owns separate houses, but most of population - which means they also live very sparsely by necessity, in endless suburbs and exurbs - which in turn means they have to drive a lot - which they do in world's biggest cars. And it's no longer an individual choice because you have to do it to still remain a member of society, and in case of driving, it's either unsafe (too much crime in inner cities) or impossible (no public transport, because dwellings are too sparse making it impractical) to do otherwise.

Thing is, they do it because they can. Because their disposable income is by far the biggest in the world, so their needs in everything else are more than satisified: they already overeat, have full two-car garages filled to the brim with "stuff", have enough of everything that people might want in "multiple" quantities. So what's left to spend money on, is either investments (this is their stock market is so insanely huge), or things one don't really need in more than single units - so they don't have many houses, but single BIG houses, same for cars. Which makes a picture of unaffordability, as natually if people's residual free incomes are so large, so much money is going to be pushed into these, they will indeed become very expensive as a portion of entire income, just because everything else (except healthcare) makes a so much smaller proportion. It's simply that it just means huge houses, a lot bigger than anywhere else except Australia (which is also Anglosphere!).

Want to make housing truly afforable? Make people poor, also make them die off to free up space. Japan does both with great "success".

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

#817

Post by randomNumber7 » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 10:07 AM UTC

mcmcmc wrote: post #419

bebeskids wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parks, libraries are cheap and free and they're dead where I live, a metro area of 2+ million The only people I see out are families with grandpa in tow to pay for a mediocre overpriced wood fired pizza. No one has analog skills. Just social analysis skills. Very briefly dated a 39 year old who admitted she had never baked, boiled, or microwaved her own potato. Already got 2 kids. We reach endgame sooner in life. We…

Library funding is being slashed in the US and actively attacked by right wing fundamentalist who view them as “woke socialism”

There is this new fancy thing called "Internet" that makes libraries obsolete.

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

#818

Post by rightbyte » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 10:07 AM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #491

Aurornis wrote: post #277

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Your city sounds depressing. Mine (US) is not like this at all. The libraries near me are not like this at all. One library has some homeless people but anyone being disruptive is quickly removed. We take the kids to the libraries all the time and it’s fine.

The depressing part isn’t that it’s happening, but that it continues to occur despite objections, because the “progressive” activists shame any objects and stop any plans or discourse to rectify the problem.

I think it is quite pointless to blame activists for a deep systematic problem with our culture. It is like an excuse.

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

#819

Post by achenet » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 10:21 AM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #452

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Profit and self interest often at the expense of everything else is what drives progress. Xerox PARC. Bell Labs. Academia. Wikipedia. You must have a rather narrow and useless definition of "progress".

>Xerox PARC. Bell Labs. Academia. Wikipedia. You must have a rather narrow and useless definition of "progress". No i have a realistic definition of progress in capitalism. You must have a rather narrow brain and are unable to comprehend the difference between a realistic and practical application of "progress" versus an ideal that is unrealistic. Bell labs, Xerox PARC are done. These labs existed because capitalist…

> Now take a look at academia. Where does all that money come from? Taxes. Where do Taxes come from? Business and profit. Academic progress comes from business.

Where does the common education system and legal system system underpins the business world come from? Government. Who puts dollar bills into the hands of people and tells them "come next tax season, we're going to ask you for a bunch of dollars at gunpoint, which will make them valuable, so you better have some", which creates the demand for dollars which stimulates the economy? Government.

"Business and profit" are not possible without government, which will do stuff like "fund research into the internet so we don't lose the Cold War if the Russians nuke us", which leads to Google and Meta having great "business and profit", "spend billions on aircraft carriers patrolling the oceans to make sure that shipment of shoes Nike spend 3 dollars per pair to make in Cambodia gets to California where it will be resold for 100 dollars a pair", and "fund a school system and research institutions to ensure a steady stream of educated workers to build the miracle of modern capitalism".

So if you believe all progress comes from business and profit, you believe all progress comes from the government, because business and profit is a side effect of governement.

I encourage you to read Debt and Dawn of Everything by Graeber for more information on this subject :)

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

#820

Post by NoLinkToMe » Sun, Aug 03, 2025, 10:22 AM UTC

randomNumber7 wrote: post #815

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is simply a function of the average age. There's a much bigger squeeze of life events when everyone dies at 60 instead of 90. We become older, meaning our life events are stretched out further, we leave school later, begin work later, buy a house later, have kids later, retire later, die later. Secondly, within the population the share of old is becoming bigger, meaning the average buyer is older, and al…

> have kids later This doesn't work for women.

Yes it does, women have been getting children later and later. There is a natural limit to this of course, but that's true for everything and everyone.