I agree but if your goal is to socialize more, it's not enough to get off social media. You need to be in a place where enough other people do too.
Think of a city as both a spatial and a temporal grouping of people that are in the same place at the same time. Every hour a person spends at home on social media is an hour that they aren't really in the city and are not available for you to socialize with.
The cumulative hours that people spend staring at their phones are effectively a massive loss of population density. That lost density makes it harder to find people even if you yourself are getting off a screen and looking for them.
I thought of this the other day. I was on the train ride back from Chicago, and there was a family of four adults, sitting across from me, all just staring at their phones. I was effectively alone at that point in time. None of them were present. But you explained it in a new way I had not thought of before. They're quite literally not there in that moment, for however long that moment lasts.
I took the train from Seattle to Portland last fall. Half of the people in the observation car were on Nintendo Switches the entire time. In the observation car.
just find a hobby that involves other people. any kind of team sport, r/c airplanes, shooting, bird watching, the options are pretty endless. You'll meet other people, make friends, and not be so lonely.
'Making friends' doesn't occur by just being in proximity to people.
Quite likely at the end of the night they'll return to their lives and you won't be invited to interact with them again until the next meeting. That's if you're not excluded from existing club cliques - I've gone to many different meetings and come away at the end feeling more alone.
You're right, you have to take a risk and go introduce yourself and talk. The thing with joining hobby clubs or groups is that you immediately have something in common to talk about. If you're lucky, some groups will have a person in the group who will see someone sitting alone, and go introduce them and drag them in. But not everybody picks up on that stuff or wants to make the effort on your behalf.
And yes, it's normal that people don't just immediately become best friends and want to hang out with one person they just met for an hour at a meeting. Especially if that person doesn't even say hello. Sometimes it happens though! It helps a lot if you just go back a couple of times.
The thing I love about car meets is that I can just go up to someone, ask them about their car, and tell them that I like it. You can do the same with any hobby, just go to meets where people are doing things, and not just showing up with nothing. Bring things to share, and a lot of times that brings people to you. Another thing you can do is ask for help with something. People love to help!
Ham nerds are the same way. Electronics nerds are the same way. Computer geeks do the same thing too. I'm sure every hobby is the same way. Find something you like doing and it makes it a lot easier. But the point is if you don't put in any effort, nothing will happen.
> just find a hobby that involves other people... shooting,
Ok that one made me chuckle just from the initial reading of the wording.
I don't disagree though, I do competitive bullseye, and it is definitely a communal thing. Many old guys at the range in particular seem to be there for 99% talking at you, and 1% actual shooting related stuff.
If I'm going to the range for a set of three position, a 120-shot session by myself takes like 2.5 hours including setup and teardown. If there's talkative-old-guy at the range, then I'm there for 4 hours, and I don't even make it through 60 shots lol.
Which is fine for someone like me who is a competitive shooter but not like really trying to be the absolute best, I don't mind spending 60 minutes doing bullseye and 180 minutes chatting about whatever. The actual competitive shooters at the range though, they'll either have someone screen talkative-old-guy for them, or just otherwise make it clear that they are Serious and not to be bothered.
"Activity partners" are pretty easy to find. What's harder is getting them to make the transition to deeper friendship where you spend time together outside of the activity.
This problem is not going to be solved by individual action. Sure there is some things you can and should do, but for it to be solved at a population scale it has to involve changing the actual structure of society that caused the problem in the first place.
Tackling phone addiction and lack of public spaces is going to be critical.
A big problem for me personally is that, well, frankly, there really aren't many options around me. I live in a small farming town of 6000 people, and most things are 25-45 min away *by car*.
> 81% of Americans are satisfied or very satisfied with their personal life[0].
No, 81% are "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied". I don't think "satisfied" is synonymous with "somewhat satisfied".
It's worth noting, as the article states, that this is the lowest value in the history of the poll, going back to 2001.
It shouldn't be too surprising that the overall value is high and stable over time. Hedonic adaptation[1] is a core property of our emotional wiring. The fact that the value is the lowest it's been in a quarter century should still be ringing alarm bells. We are not OK.
It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant. Also, when the value was at its highest in that time series, Hacker News had articles like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20468767
The comments there are full of people describing this loneliness epidemic when 65% of people were very satisfied and 90% of people were "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied". No matter what surveys of people's satisfaction with their personal lives show, there appears to be an enthusiasm for this subject of the loneliness epidemic. This makes me suspect that this is less an epidemic than an 'endemic' (if you'll forgive the word).
Regardless, I didn't intend to mislead so I'll edit it to say "somewhat satisfied or very satisfied (4 or 5 on a 5 point scale).
> It's a 5 point scale, so landing a 4 or 5 on satisfaction on a 5 point scale seems significant.
No, it is absolutely not. Gallup is not asking "on a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your satisfaction?" They are asking:
"In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in your personal life at this time? Are you very [satisfied/dissatisfied], or just somewhat [satisfied/dissatisfied]?"
When it comes to surveys and social science the specific wording of questions has a huge impact on the results.
Sure, and 81% of people are somewhat satisfied or very satisfied. And the loneliness epidemic thesis was popular around the time that very satisfied was at its peak of 65% (when somewhat or very satisfied summed up to 90%).
People want to feel a meaningful connection to others. One facet of that is wanting to own objects that were made by an actual person who put craft into creating the object and who cares about the owner being happy with it.
Virtually everyone, not just rich hipsters, wants this. People seek it out and are happy to pay a lot extra for it.
However, "made with care" (and not just "by hand possibly in a sweatshop") is a fairly intangible property and hard to distinguish from just looking at the object. Instead, you really need some amount of provenance tracking to tell the "made by someone who gives a shit" from the slop.
Maker fairs, Etsy, farmer's markets, and many other venues exist basically to offer up that claim of trusted provenance. But the very large price difference between what you can sell a made-with-care object for versus the very low price you can make an indistinguishable object using factories, sweatshop labor, or AI makes those venues a honeypot for scammers who want to sell, essentially, fake meaning.
I keep feeling like the ultimate answer to everything going on in the current zeitgiest is some kind of real trust tracking system so you know where a piece of media or object actually came from.
> Or are you also extracting other artist’s work and using it as inspiration for what you do?
Yes, when I make music, I am taking inspiration from all of the other artists I've listened to and using that in my music. If someone listens to my music, they are getting some value from my contribution, but also indirectly from the musicians that inspired me.
The difference between that and AI is that I am a human being who deserves to live a life of dignity and artistic expression in a world that supports that while AI-generated music is the product of a mindless automaton that enriches billionaires who are actively building a world that makes it harder to live a life of stability, comfort, and dignity.
These are not the same thing any more than fucking a fleshlight is the same as being in a romantic relationship. The physical act may appear roughly the same, but the human experience, meaning behind it, and societal externalities are certainly not.
100%. I think there are some clear distinctions between AI training and human learning in practice that compound this. Humans learning requires individual investment and doesn't scale that efficiently.
If someone invests the time to consume all of my published work and learn from it, I feel good about that. That feels like impact, especially if we interact and even more if I help them. They can perhaps reproduce anything I could've done, and that's cool.
If someone trains a machine on my work and it means you can get the benefit of my labor without knowing me, interacting with my work or understanding it, or really any effort beyond some GPUs, that feels bad.
And, it's much more of a risk to me, if that means anything.
> If someone invests the time to consume all of my published work and learn from it, I feel good about that.
Agreed. My goal, my moral compass, is to live in a world populated by thriving happy people. I love teaching people new things and am happy to work hard to that end and sacrifice some amount of financial compensation. (For example, both of my books can be read online for free.)
I couldn't possibly care less about some giant matrix of floats sitting in a GPU somewhere getting tuned to better emulate some desired behavior. I simply have no moral imperative to enrich machines or their billionaire owners.
> I am a human being who deserves to live a life of dignity
Sure, but so does the homeless guy living on the streets right now because computers and the internet automated his job - and yet here you are using the very tools ("mindless automatons") that put him out of work.
That's a good observation, but it doesn't cancel out the GP's point, or its author's dignity. On the contrary, actually, it provides more depth and force to their argument.
A given technology may benefit some while harming others. And it may have harms and benefits that operate on different time scales.
The invention of the shipping container put nearly every stevedore out of a job. But it made it radically cheaper to ship things and that improved the quality of life of nearly everyone on Earth.
I suspect that for most stevedores, it was a job where the wages provided dignity and meaning in their life, but where the work itself wasn't that central to their identity. I hope that most were able to find other work that was equally dignified.
That's certainly less true for musicians, poets, and painters where what they do is central to the value of the work and not just how much they can get paid.
There's no blanket technology-independent answer here. You have to look at a technology and all of its consequences and try to figure out what's worth doing and what isn't.
I think shipping containers are a pretty clear win. I think machine learning for classification is likely a win.
It's not at all clear to me that using generative AI to produce media is a win. I suspect it is a very large loss for society as a whole. Automating bullshit drudgery is fine. Most people don't want to do that shit anyway. But automating away the very acts that people find most profoundly human seems the height of stupidity to me.
Do you really want to live in a world where more people have to be Uber drivers and fewer people get to make art? Do you want to live in that world when it appears that the main people who benefit are already billionaires?
You say that as if creative jobs haven't been obsoleted by technology in the past. How many sign painters or weavers do you see around today?
In fact, the theoretical turn in 20th century art was due in part to the invention of the camera. What's the point in continuing down the path of representational art if the camera can recreate a scene with infinitely more realism than the best painter?
Many of the same criticisms that people have of photography as art are being used against AI today, like that it's too easy, that it's soulless, or that the machine is the real artist.
> You say that as if creative jobs haven't been obsoleted by technology in the past.
You say that as if it's a given that that's a good thing.
> Many of the same criticisms that people have of photography as art are being used against AI today, like that it's too easy, that it's soulless, or that the machine is the real artist.
I think it's pretty insulting to posit that artists are some special "dignified" profession and that, by implication, there is "no dignity" or no meaning to be found in being an Uber Driver. I know plenty of people who love the opportunity to be useful, socialize, and get to know a broad slice of the local populace.
Plenty of people miss taking care of their horses, but we still drive cars.
The vast majority of humans do not, in fact, think making art is "the most profoundly human" thing. They are about socializing, they care about their family, they want to go on fun vacations and have fun experiences. Most people do not spend their free time painting.
Nowhere did I posit that being an Uber driver has no dignity.
I observed, which is entirely likely to be true, that on average people probably find more personal fulfillment in the work of being an artist than the work of hauling crates off a ship.
Yes, we humans are clever creatures and will extract as much upside and value as we can out of any situation. That does not at all mean that all jobs are thus equivalent in all respects.
> they want to go on fun vacations and have fun experiences.
And how many of those vacations are to places with incredible architecture and rewarding art museums? How many of those fun experiences are music, plays, and movies?
Certainly, family and socializing are important avenues of meaning as well. Those aren't mutually exclusive with wanting to live in a world full of art made by others who care about it.
I'm very fond of a quote from Tim Minchin that I'll paraphrase as: "I'm not the best singer or the best comedian, but I'm the best voice of all the comedians and I'm the funniest singer."
Don't max one stat. Be a unique, weird combination of several.
Steve Martin said that after 60 years of playing, he considered himself to be a pretty good banjo player. But then he saw Eric Clapton play guitar and thought “This guy’s not funny at all!”
He absolutely is—but without any disrespect—it feels as though Tim Minchin has already given society all of his overlapping talents in music, comedy, and storytelling. Perhaps he has more to offer, but his recent work seems increasingly self-referential and less genuinely novel. He could retire now with undisputed GOAT honours within his niche, and I wouldn’t feel a sense of loss over what went unrealised. The symphonic tours and Matilda would stand as his magnum opii. For the talents of one man, it is more than enough.
(That being said, to be proven wrong would be the greatest delight.)
I was late to learning about him, and got to see him on tour a year or two ago, which was awesome.
Yes, it was quite rich in self-reference and I can see how he could be considered complete. I'd still see him again just because I crave live events that I feel connected to.
Lehrer exited at the top of his game and deserves solid respect for that, perhaps Minchin could take note of that?
I know nothing about tennis, but I think the general point still stands.
Any time you have a system with feedback loops and economies of scale / network effects, the natural iterated behavior over time is an increasingly steep power law distribution.
With the digital world where zero marginal costs mean huge economies of scale and social interaction means huge network effects, we are clearly seeing a world dominated by a small number of insanely powerful elites. Seven of the ten richest people in 2025 got there from tech.
Our society wasn't meant to be this connected with this much automated popularity aggregation. It leads to huge inequality until we figure out damping or counterbalancing systems to deal with it.
I guess I was really looking for concrete examples and examples prior to the invention of or not related to the use of electronic technology.
For your non-technological items in your list, I don't see how public school, rock and roll, and desegregation are or were remotely related to experiments being ran on children by society.
Public school -- new concept that caused massive changes to social behaviors and patterns of association. Nobody knew ahead of time what the results of this would be, so it was as much an experiment as letting kids access Instagram.
Rock & roll -- millions of people thought that letting children listen to this African American music would corrupt their children and prove ruinous to children. Some parents demanded controls on access to this music, much as some parents are doing with Instagram today.
Desegregation -- it's well worth an hour of reading if you haven't spent the time so far. Here I will just say that it was obviously a profound change in social patterns, changes to the US's legal caste system, and had to be enforced at gunpoint. Nobody knew how it would play out, like nobody really knows how using Instagram at age 15 will impact people in midlife. This led to (white) parental outcry over the prospective changes, as many (white) parents did not want to participate in this social experiment.
Big changes, no real control groups, unpredictable outcomes. Experiments in a very real sense.
I think it's a stretch to call those experiments of the same kind as those being ran by modern corporations with access to enormous amounts of data and direct connections to people and the ability to later influence based upon the experiments.
Who ran the rock and roll experiment? That example makes no sense.
Public schools and desegregation were constructed to better society, not as some nefarious way for some corporation to improve their profit lines.
I think you've really highlighted the extent to which irrational prejudice plays a role here, as two and a half of those examples involve racism. The US is one of a small number of societies which were ever racially segregated like that. It was in its own way a (failed) experiment.
(the UK has no shortage of racism, but it was never legally enforced!)
> I would always describe Overwatch (to take a gaming example) and Zootopia as "simple" graphics.
I think an art director would describe them as "readable". When there's a lot of detail and quick motion, it's important that the audience can very quickly recognize what they're looking at and what's happen. Otherwise, it just turns into a big jumble of chaos that the viewer can't follow, like in Michael Bay's Transformer movies.
A big part of the art of movie making is telegraphic a sense of rich realism and complexity while still having everything clearly visually parsable. Doing that when cuts and action are fast is quite difficult.
Doing it well affects every level of the production: the colors assigned to characters so they are separated from the background, wardrobe choices to also keep characters distinct, lighting, set design, texture, animation, focus, the way the camera moves. It all works together to produce one coherent readable scene.
A nice example of this is shown in Figure 2 of the paper "Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2" [1] from Valve. It shows how they tried to make the silhouettes of each character class distinct and readable. (And the paper also discusses the choices that went into the color palette.)
In case of games, that's pretty much optional. Many games (e.g. Battlefield) take the opposite approach where spotting the enemy in the chaos is intentionally hard and a skill to master. I'm sure there are also intentionally less readable movies or at least scenes, although no immediate example comes to mind.
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