> However, practice environments for social skills are typically out of reach for most people.
This is exactly what I predicted...AI and technology isolates us from each other by destroying communities, and is slowly replacing real human interaction with computer interaction. The end result is that in the future, people will have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with others and will have to be drip-fed satiations for their basic needs such as socialization, similar to how hospital patients are given IVs.
Before you say this is outrageous, actually take a look at history and how technology has pushed as farther and farther apart. Nowadays there is very little real interaction beyond the nuclear family. Think of self-checkouts, chat-bots, AI partners and therapists, technology making us more self-reliant (which is a bad thing).
If we keep letting technology take away our communities this way in this two step process (first, take away the community then supply an inferior, superficial substitute), then we will compelely lose our humanity.
> Think of self-checkouts, chat-bots, AI partners and therapists, technology making us more self-reliant (which is a bad thing).
When was the last time you used a bank teller rather than an ATM? For me, at least 5 years ago. On the other hand, despite ATMs, I'm told more people than ever work as bank tellers.
> If we keep letting technology take away our communities this way in this two step process (first, take away the community then supply an inferior, superficial substitute), then we will compelely lose our humanity.
I think the process is backwards: the substitutes (superficially better but not really) are usually what cause people to leave local communities. It's video games which take people out of clubs and cause the clubs to close, not a lack of clubs which drive them to video games.
And the disjoint of remote people, of parasocial relationships, isn't new. Let's say you're in St. Paul's Cathedral as a worshiper: it seats 3,500, far more than the Dunbar’s number our brains can cope with. The Bishop of London doesn't know all the people present, for the same fundamental reason that someone with 3500 "friends" on Facebook doesn't really know all of them. All well before radio stars and TV, let alone the internet and AI.
So, whatever of our humanity can be killed off by the mere existence of this change (as opposed to deeper things like malicious propaganda), it was already dead long before any of us were born.
> I think the process is backwards: the substitutes (superficially better but not really) are usually what cause people to leave local communities. It's video games which take people out of clubs and cause the clubs to close, not a lack of clubs which drive them to video games.
Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry, I was not clear. I do mean that we have a process of substitute > leaving community > more substitute. I just isolated two steps from this, but I see how that was confusing.
> All well before radio stars and TV, let alone the internet and AI.
All true, which is why I think we should be cautious of ALL technology, and try and vigorously decide which ones we should use in a process similar to that of the Amish (but without the religion, perhaps). Any discussion would be better than the ZERO discussion that we have today.
I’m not sure I agree with this take that technology is taking away community in general. I think communities are simply changing. I mean HN is a community and it’s all technology. IRC is a ton of fond memories for me in a time where my irl community was failing me as an awkward nerd, and gave me friends that I can irl meet and chat with now.
You seem to have this idealized notion of what community was like outside of technology. But that community always had outsiders and ignored people, that community had communal lynchings and hangings, pogroms, witch trials etc. and strict ways of life where, if you didn’t conform, you were far more isolated than now where you could meet fellow weirdos!
> You seem to have this idealized notion of what community was like outside of technology.
By "idealized notion" you mean "the vast, vast majority of human history"?
"Community" is not typically defined as "the people you talk bullshit with for fun" and that's all. Your community is the people you live with and among. It's the people you're most likely to experience Big Things with, things like natural disasters, weird stuff like power outages, or your building catching fire if you live in an apartment or condo. If you regularly interact with them, you probably also see them during fun things: street cookouts or yard sales (we do both at the same time, you get a lot more customers by when they have 14 sales to peruse and brats for sale!) or just see them grilling out when you go to get your mail, and end up having a few beers with them and talking about goings on. Hell, depending on your locale or culture, maybe your community feeds itself too from bulk kitchens, or does laundry, etc. etc.
I say this as an introvert who opted out of every social thing I could in favor of forums and games when I was growing up: I was wrong. I was deeply, deeply wrong. People are pretty great. They're not perfect, and they can be a lot of work, but ultimately I was not hiding from people because they were bad or annoying or stupid: I was hiding from them because I was emotionally stunted and didn't want to deal with it. That was it. And once I did I found human connection that was so much more sustaining, in a way where I can't believe I once thought ^this^, chatting online, was an adequate replacement.
It makes me sad to think how many people out there are just sitting in their little rooms or cubicles because for whatever reason or set of reasons, they don't feel comfortable engaging their fellow man, nursing a hollowness that will follow them around until they do because fundamentally humans are just not meant to exist alone. We just aren't, it's in our DNA to make groups and be among friends.
I get it, OTOH, humans are unfortunately selfish assholes. In any sufficiently large group of people, there are always conflicts - people attempting to assume control, marginalize/exclude/bully other individuals, etc. Which is part of the reason why people seek out these alternatives.
If they ever come out with the sexbot, then I think its all over for modern technological civilization. There will be little reason for alot of men to marry if they can get the equivalent of Ana de Armas for ~$20k or so. And which is always loyal, will never complain, or grow old. Yeah women can and do have children on their own without men, but usually not as many, and much later in life. It won't be enough. Then its a slow death spiral of not having a replacement generation. I can see this happening within ~50 years or so. ChatGPT + voice synthesis + Boston Dynamics + RealDoll. We're done.
> I get it, OTOH, humans are unfortunately selfish assholes. In any sufficiently large group of people, there are always conflicts - people attempting to assume control, marginalize/exclude/bully other individuals, etc. Which is part of the reason why people seek out these alternatives.
The prevalence of this is greatly, greatly exaggerated in my experience. School was absolutely like this, but the further you get from school, the less anyone really gives a shit. Most people (key word: most) just want to chill. And if you're chill with them, they will chill with you.
A good test for what a community is is: "Who will vouch for you?" You can have a machine pretend to talk the talk and parrot it back to you for "training," but you're still an unknown outsider at the end of the day.
I don't think HN is a community in that sense. There's no "knowing" one another. There's no real accountability or shame of getting kicked out. We're all just text-generators.
Thanks for saying this. There is such a badge of honour about being some misanthropic hermetic introvert that bandies about online. Some people are more extroverted than others, sure. But interacting with people is vital to human's health both mentally and physically. It's in our DNA. It's not something you can opt out of. And once you expose yourself and get better at it, your life gets better. It's as simple as that. More interaction, more community is objectively better.
We have run this experiment on a society wide basis. The data are in, and it didn't work.
Mental health diagnoses are skyrocketing across the board, especially for young people. And the evidence tracking these outcomes to access to personal phones and social networks for those young people is very strong.
Virtual communities have some value. But as a replacement for in person interaction the outcomes are terrible.
(Btw, good rhetorical technique there, implying Western society the day before the iPhone was introduced was full of "communal lynchings and hangings, pogroms, witch trials etc.")
Weird take. We know communal lynchings happened; people literally took family photos by them! People happily documented that hangings were the town spectacles when they happened! Let’s not play rose tinted glasses about communities before social media: if you were not “in” that group you were vulnerable to violence or death. We have that now, where a disproportionate number of homeless minors are homeless because their parents kicked them out for being gay or trans and, clearly, no one else in their “community” was willing to take them in.
We need to be comparing how communities are right now vs how social media is right now and not some idealized notion of what in-the-flesh communities might be like. Right now we have a dearth of welcoming in-the-flesh community alternatives for people that have been cast out of traditional social groups and use technology to cope. This doesn’t mean technology bad. It means society needs to change so technology isn’t so tempting.
> I mean HN is a community and it’s all technology. IRC is a ton of fond memories for me in a time where my irl community was failing me as an awkward nerd, and gave me friends that I can irl meet and chat with now.
Well, personally, I would love to know what percentage of people here actually cared about the other people here in terms of actually caring, like having a real friend. I'm assuming it's rather close to zero. Don't get me wrong, I like debating on here but it's nothing like an in-person community.
You can disagree all you like, but I think one thing that is near-universal is that there is something special about in-person communities that cannot be replicated online. Sorry to say, although I like talking to people on here, I have no idea who any of you are, what your faces look like, and for all intents and purposes, you could even be AI.
The truth is, and I think most average people would agree, there's nothing like a genuine, real community with real people having face-to-face interaction.
And an idealized notion?! Come on, seriously! I'm just talking about some basic stuff like interacting with neighbours, talking to employees at the grocery, helping other community members out with basic stuff, etc. In fact, it would be nice if community bonds were even stronger at times...
> I'm just talking about some basic stuff like interacting with neighbours, talking to employees at the grocery, helping other community members out with basic stuff, etc.
Yeah, these communities can be hostile to people who don’t fit in, especially visible minorities.
> Yeah, these communities can be hostile to people who don’t fit in, especially visible minorities.
Okay, so your solution to ending discrimination is technological. Right. How simplistic. How about we solve our social problems without resorting to technology. And many are not like that as well. So we should destroy those too? What a black and white approach!
a lot of people have truly deficient social skills. technology didn't make them this way they're just bad at it, so bad that they can't even have enough social interactions to improve and practice. can't even hold a conversation with a cashier. they simply lack the skills to be part of a community.
ideally such people could build remedial social skills by practicing with a real therapist. but that's costly and difficult to make accessible, because "bad at conversation and annoying" is not a mental illness.
an LLM here could help. just to give someone a sense of how to hold simple, normal conversations and practice very basic theory of mind, to the point where they could start building real social skills.
the problem is whoever builds that system may choose to exploit the users and build dependence. but that's a choice, it doesn't have to happen.
> Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more?
It can be viewed on multiple levels.
First, there are many papers on the psychological literature about this, but [1] is an example, which is that even a little social contact with a few real people can make a person feel better. Check out Google scholar or the article I linked below to learn more. But that is also intuitive. But if a person is feeling a bit down and they have the "easy way out" (self checkout, other technologies that diminish casual human interaction), they will not gain the benefit of human contact.
Second, on a greater scale, if all these little things add up, people will seek out interactions less often. For example, a few years ago I ran into some strangers that became friends because I needed their help to find a rare bird (I'm a birder). If I had an advanced AI app that listened for bird calls and helped me find birds better than any human, I might never have made friends with them.
The point is, when technology is lacking to do something, we are more likely to seek out people to help us. Yes, technology does make some parts of life easier, but there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme.
> there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme.
On one hand though, would self-reliance also imply that people were responsible for actively seeking out social interactions like you're describing? I'm sort of confused when it comes to describing where the locus of control is when we're talking about these things.
I have a story that happened just last night. I almost always go through the self check-out because I can pack my groceries just how I like. So I scan my groceries while a round glass eye watches my every move and a machine repeatedly tells me to "place the item in the bag." )There are no bags, we're a bagless state, but the machine doesn't know that.) Sometimes I'll palm a Luna Bar or two just because I can.
Last night I was running really late and there was a long line at the self check-out so I went to the one open human-powered check-out lanes. They were about 3x as fast as I would've been and I had a pleasant conversation with the checker and the bagger. Yeah my bananas got a little beat up but it was a much better experience. Now I feel like I can say hi to those people.
Exactly, and usually after shopping at the same place for a while, I get to know the cashier a little bit. I've actually had some good conversations with some of them, and tellers at the post office as well. (One could say that it might be better for them if they didn't have a job and they got UBI, but to be honest, as young adult, I appreciated my first menial job at least in that it gave me a sense of responsibility and independence. And a lot of these people are young people.)
What a lot of technologists seem to think is that AI will make everything wonderful by allowing us unlimited free time to do hobbies, but the desire to spend all of one's free time on hobbies is a very peculiar and minority desire of the very intelligent. (And it may be more of a fantasy than soemthing that would actually make them happy in reality.)
Technology is a tool, it can be used to increase your social interactions (e.g. finding like-minded groups online to meet up with in-person) or to decrease your social interactions.
You say technology is "destroying communities", but don't acknowledge all of the communities technology has helped build.
The big picture is that social media and smartphones reduce social interactions, and lower their quality. Just look at all the kids and teenagers that are glued to their smartphones all the time.
Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, like people living in middle of nowhere, or who have otherwise trouble finding like-minded friends offline.
> Technology is a tool, it can be used to increase your social interactions (e.g. finding like-minded groups online to meet up with in-person) or to decrease your social interactions.
The number one myth about technology is that it is just a tool. It is a society-shaping force. For example, WhatsApp in Brazil: even if you HATE whatsapp and Meta and don't want to use it, you might be forced to use it if you want to get a job, book a hotel, etc, because it's so entrenched.
Sorry to say, but technology works through first being optional, then being adopted because it gives a person marginal advantages in the short-term, and then being mandatory because the majority adopts it.
Many people are forced to use technology even if they would rather not because if this process. That technology is a tool is the greatest misprepresentation of any concept in the history of humanity.
Edit: let me ask you one question, how did you get the idea that technology is just a tool? How many times to people repeat this mantra? Try thinking about it more deeply and over many decades of time and understand the root cause of this thinking.
My point was that you can (and many people do) use technology to increase their social interaction. You seem to suggest it can only possibly decrease it.
>The number one myth about technology is that it is just a tool.
I didn't say it was _just_ a tool.
It is _a_ tool, which can be used to help increase social interaction.
>Edit: let me ask you one question, how did you get the idea that technology is just a tool?
> You seem to suggest it can only possibly decrease it.
Well, I think it can increase it, but that the increases in time form a sequence of local maxima that themselves are strictly decreasing. (Edit: I meant in terms of overall societal health, like adding up the social happiness of everyone).
My comment wasn't really about whether it is a net negative or a net positive. I could definitely be convinced it is a net negative.
But my comment was about how the future of having to be drip-fed social interactions to meet our basic needs, otherwise no one will ever interact with anyone ever, is a silly exaggeration.
In any case, I'd love to see what data you're referring to. I'm familiar with studies that look at specific technologies (e.g. social media). But I'm unfamiliar with data/studies that looks at all technologies across all levels of society and measures the net benefit/harm. I'm not even sure how you would go about quantifying, say, the benefit of being able to contact a long-distance relative with significantly more ease and less expense vs. the harm of having to use Facebook to organize the video call.
I meant specifically availability of a personal smart phone and social networks to young people leading to an increase in mental health issues, as thoroughly documented by Jonathan Haidt. I should have been more specific.
Look beyond your bubble. The child participating in 'School over the Air' in Australia likely appreciates having such a resource to develop their social skills. Sometimes, you need a private space, especially if the community around you isn't on the same wavelength as you are or it's your family and some farm hands.
So your rebuttal is that isolated examples of this technology being beneficial outweight the mass societal cost of people becoming more isolated in general? And I simply do not see how the need for "private space" and "practising social skills" go hand in hand.
Yes, everyone needs their alone time. And everyone needs social contact (except maybe some exceptions, maybe...). Both can be accomplished WITHOUT technology, and much more easily.
Don't you think if someone needs private space and isn't getting, that's something that should be dealt with away from technology?
You mean social skills or the AI part... because Social Skills make sense the AI part doesn't. You need to stop looking in the mirror for every assumption you make there is a whole world out there.
OP argument is that it is bad for societal as a whole. Coming back with an example for a very small sub group doens't refute OPs position. Your position that it can help with edge cases is valid however if OPs position was taken then there would be a large swath of damage for a small gain in a small population. That doesn't have much logic to it.
This is exactly what I predicted...AI and technology isolates us from each other by destroying communities, and is slowly replacing real human interaction with computer interaction. The end result is that in the future, people will have fewer and fewer opportunities to interact with others and will have to be drip-fed satiations for their basic needs such as socialization, similar to how hospital patients are given IVs.
Before you say this is outrageous, actually take a look at history and how technology has pushed as farther and farther apart. Nowadays there is very little real interaction beyond the nuclear family. Think of self-checkouts, chat-bots, AI partners and therapists, technology making us more self-reliant (which is a bad thing).
If we keep letting technology take away our communities this way in this two step process (first, take away the community then supply an inferior, superficial substitute), then we will compelely lose our humanity.