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

Even if that was true (no data offered), that's a choice, not some kind of economic inevitability...

And again even if it was true, no it's not because of roommates, the number of people per household has gone down over time, not up, for decades.

And no it's also not because we live in smaller homes, the average size of homes has gone up also, for decades. We now have about 2.5x more square footage per-person in our homes than 50 years ago.

And we all know that are homes are way more equipped with entertainment than ever before (internet with the world's content at our fingertips, home cinema, home libraries, home music sets etc).

As for the 600k FAANG, I've never earned more than 100k, never worked in tech, and grew up on welfare. I've been a bottom 10% of the economic ladder for about 80% of my life, and a top 10% (not top 0.1%) for about 20% of my life. Regardless of background, I think we can speak about facts borne out by the data.

In terms of solving their population collapse, I think white Westerners aren’t really an important demographic for them to attract though, with our very foreign culture and values on top of our very different language. If Japan can bring itself to stomach the idea of bringing lots of foreigners in to prevent the country from collapsing, they ought to import people from some of their closer neighbors, with which they have more similar language and more collectivist culture.

Even though the headline caught my attention and agrees with my own intuitions, I was committing the all-too-common HN sin of going through the comments without even having clicked on the article—I am too lazy by default for a full New Yorker article, however much I appreciate their quality.

However, as soon as I saw you mentioned it was written by Paul Bloom, I made a point of reading through it. Thanks!

> mismanaged immigration-who, not how many

Until I got here I was going to post to suggest that you were allowing yourself to believe that because some of the immigrants were of the successful type that there wasn’t a vast number of immigrants who are very poor and of the type GP was talking about.

But I, you and GP agree on the “mismanagement of who.”

I believe Western countries, especially the Left in Europe, UK, and US, are in a very awkward state right now because it’s obvious that we are losing the very things that make our countries attractive to these economic immigrants if we keep the de facto open borders policies (meaning most professionals can’t immigrate to the UK without years of paperwork and just the right job offer, but if someone with no marketable skills and a long criminal record and no ID shows up on a dinghy he gets free hotel for several years while they prepare to adjudicate his claim that he faces danger at home).

Anyway anyone not in utter denial knows the above is unsustainable but they also are uncomfortable knowing that the people of hundreds of completely failed countries are suffering, and in theory if we could let one of them come to France, Australia, USA, UK, he/she would be better off. But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”

These are all relative valuations with your pears and expectations. No one cares we are all vastly more wealthy than people living a 100 years ago.

People know how much Jamie Dimon is worth. No one cares they basically have more abundance today than JP Morgan himself.

It is also the difference that when I was in my 20s I had no illusions that I was going to become Michael Jackson or a popular TV sitcom actor since I never danced, sang or acted. Now though you do have that anxiety since people your own age are famous and wealthy from nothing more than network effects.

When I was in my 20s the only people that seemed to have disposable income were drug dealers lol. It was easy to not feel anxiety that I wasn't as well off as a drug dealer.