Wrong. My college chemistry textbook had a small aside about an important organic chemist in the 1920s who was responsible for many foundational organic chemistry techniques and theories. I forget his name. The blurb ended with his death — he committed suicide after lamenting that his friends always had female partners on the weekends while he, on the other hand, was always alone. The man died of loneliness in the 1920s. Later editions of the textbook removed the blurb entirely… how stupid and foolish.
If you have an amazing personality then you will want to hang out all the time and have lots of sex and everyone will oblige you because you’re fun to be around. It doesn’t matter what the context is. Yeah, if you’re one member of a 25 person Inuit tribe, you won’t be lonely ever. But just because a bunch of people in the USA are narcissistic idiots who are intolerable to be around doesn’t mean anything about the way the world is going.
Seems to me he was not alone, as he had friends and spent time with them.
Is this example conflating 'alone' to the seperate issue of him being unable to find a sexual partner?
Also generally I'm sure there will be outlier examples of 'see he was alone in the past' but I feel we have to approach these from a 'generally' view to understand the bigger picture as examples of one may be good for context, but can tend to be used as a confirmation bias of sorts against a bigger picture.
I think technology is fundamentally opposed to the human experience. What will happen when AGI agents are more empathetic, caring, attentive, funny, supportive, soul-nourishing than any human could ever be? On every level that a human can enjoy and appreciate the company of another human, computers will do it better. It’s like the concept of infinity… you are forced to accept all these strange outcomes that are logically sound but make no sense. That is what AGI will be and AGI is the logical end of technology. There is no humanity at end of that road. And the outcome is very bad overall. But that doesn’t change the fact that people have been lonely a long time and there are more reasons for loneliness than technology. Better to see clearly regardless of the context.
date someone who doesn't speak your language. Then, you're forced to use an AGI translator app to talk to one another. Thankfully, the app also adjusts the tone of what you're saying to come off empathetic and caring whilst translating
That is the future for AGI under capitalism. (See "Her" 2013 movie.)
A different path is for sufficiently advanced technology to help humans connect with each other and strengthen those connections, like organizing playdates for children (of course subtly enough that it doesn't come off as infantilizing). I don't think that can coexist with the attention economy though.
There’s nothing wrong with being alone. Being alone creates stress and stress brings mental and physical illness. Once they find a way to block stress, it won’t matter. ISR. Etc.
If you want to be around people just get a job. If you want more intimate contact, get a job that brings that. Work at a daycare center and you’ll start to crave loneliness.
Loneliness is a liberal thing. Move to the Midwest. People just blurt out whatever they think. They get married at 18 almost as a rule and stay together. They involve themselves in the business of others without asking permission. The idea that loneliness is the new way of the world is just what people in the liberal bubble are seeing.
I say what I see. I don’t make anything to be anything. Liberal thinking vs conservative thinking is very old and has much deeper roots than “people making it about teams.” It’s a way of thinking. I personally believe that it’s largely genetic. Is been like this since the Neolithic. Modern American politics aren’t fundamentally different than roundheads vs cavaliers. And yes, loneliness is definitely a problem that is a liberal problem. After living in both worlds that’s my observation.
Being alone can be bad even if it doesn't cause stress. Being around friends and building relationships is it's own goal and reward.
Switching from a career you've invested years into isn't a great solution. Working in a people facing job won't solve the need for long term relationships and I'd say most coworkers are often not interested (if they are even in remotely the same age/interest group at all).
Is this the first scandal, if you could call it that, that Larry David has gotten caught up in? First time being sued? I was just thinking the other day how amazing it is that Larry David has gone so many years being in the public eye without getting burned. Absolute legend.
It’s an ingenious way to make people take the polls seriously. He’s been talking about making polls world wide and other stuff. Pay a fee to push a poll out to a large number of people? That’s interesting
This is really the death of open source software as a mainstream thing. Here it is, the golden opportunity for decentralization and open source to solve a large societal problem. And it fails miserably. Open source can’t survive in a world where computers and software aren’t esoteric, mysterious, status-signaling to be a part of like they were in the late 90s onward. Computers are just mundane. There’s no more reason for greyhound to go open source and be powered by volunteer labor than social media companies.
The bulk of the software you literally just used to post that comment and get it to my eyeballs was open source. What on earth are you on about? The idea that all software is immediately-visible UX should have died in the 80's. It wasn't even true then, but it was closer to true. Now, it's basically laughable.
Open source will do just fine whether you know it's there or not. It's been a "mainstream thing" for decades. The war you imagine was won, long ago.
This is the same tired response I get every time I point this out. The Linux kernel exists, and with this single fact your entire argument is dismantled. It isn’t. Linux is the last example of open source software that is good enough to compete in the market. As soon as Linux dies or retires, Linux will decline and eventually be replaced by a commercial product. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because computers were too new to be seen as viable by capital and businesspeople.
It's the same with Linux desktop. You need a 800lb Canonical gorilla to make things move in OSS. And then, they'll insert Amazon ads in your desktop search bar. So we're back to square one — no different than Microsoft Windows shoving telemetary on users.
I, for one, would love a sexy Linux desktop experience. Elementary OS is getting better but it is no match to macOS.
Tangential but literally moments ago I evaded a prostitution sting. I met someone on Grindr who was really cute and she asked for payment upfront. Then I said that makes me nervous and I’d like to get to know you first, just a regular date. She agreed and then when I arrived to pick her up she changed her tack and demanded payment to do anything at all. I said ok, meet me in the lobby so we can discuss further. Refusal. Ok video chat with me to discuss further. Refusal. All with bullshit excuses. I played every angle I could and the shape of her was that she accepted nothing except what could incriminate me. I understood it was a sting very quickly. It’s so disturbing that the cops would saddle me with a class D felony even though I never wanted to pay her. They tried to pressure me in the moment to create criminal behavior where there was none. And then I would go to prison and probably be killed, certainly changed and damaged mentally for the rest of my life. Years of my life gone, my career ruined and my dreams destroyed all for those bastard cops to have the thrill of making a bust. It fucking sickens me. Our society is deeply sick where this violence is not only tolerated but endorsed and lawful. The cops are bastards and we need to put them in their fucking place. Thank god for first amendment auditors…
While those actions are indicative of a possible sting, they are also equally indicative of a scam artist. "She" might have been some guy (male) in a boiler room somewhere just trying to scam people out of their money. The avoidance of any form of contact where you could see that the person you were conversing with electronically was not the person from the photo, while requesting payment up front, fits the scam artist method as well.
> I met someone on Grindr who was really cute and she asked for payment upfront. Then I said that makes me nervous and I’d like to get to know you first, just a regular date.
So even after a woman asked you to pay her (for what?), you decided would still like to date this woman? And you expected to convince her to stop being a prostitute during the date?
With gay spaces one big issue is often critical mass.
I would suspect that for MTF individuals that Grindr would be one of the few places with a critical mass of both people they are looking for and people looking for them, even if that's not really the intended or main target audience. From what I understand, trans individuals have a hard time on other dating apps because their profiles get reported a lot for being "misleading" (which is a whole debate that I'm not getting into)
So someone asked you for money in exchange for sex, you agreed to meet up with them, and now feel outraged that the police may have tried to arrest you for engaging in illegal activity. Do I have that right?
Possible it was a sting but much more likely you were just being scammed. I guess depends on the country but in the US it is not illegal to pay someone to hang out with you. Idk how they would try and prosecute you after you said "sure I'll pay you but I'm not paying for sex I'm paying for you to have dinner with me"
* And then I would go to prison and probably be killed, certainly changed and damaged mentally for the rest of my life.*
My very limited understanding is that the vast majority of these sting cases are dismissed as entrapment and are largely about dissuading others from attempting to solicit in the future. Are there any lawyers on that could speak to this?
Not a lawyer (sorry), but just from following the news it does seem pretty clearly about putting a chilling effect on the marketplace (buyers and sellers, but especially sellers) through fear.
Aka ‘making an example’ of someone. The buyers in particular only seem to get named in specific high profile cases or when the authorities feel it’s really out of hand and they need to do something drastic.
Similar to drugs frankly.
Unlike drugs, it seems extremely rare for anyone involved to actually get more than token jail time unless they are a very large scale madame/pimp (and jail is not, generally, prison).
Dr Sean baker has eaten literally nothing but red meat, cooked rare to boot, for more than five years. He has perfect health. He hasn’t developed any of the pathologies that are caused by red meat or saturated animal fat according to the medical establishment. CAC score zero. Zero plaques in a survey of blood vessels in the eye balls. Nothing. The current model is wrong. Why is it so hard for people to wrap their mind around it?
His labs are pretty hard data if you ask me. And there are many people who do it. And the evidence is overwhelming. Look at the cholesterol drugs that enzymatically transform LDL to HDL. They improved peoples cholesterol massively and it had zero impact on cardiac events. Zero.
If you have an amazing personality then you will want to hang out all the time and have lots of sex and everyone will oblige you because you’re fun to be around. It doesn’t matter what the context is. Yeah, if you’re one member of a 25 person Inuit tribe, you won’t be lonely ever. But just because a bunch of people in the USA are narcissistic idiots who are intolerable to be around doesn’t mean anything about the way the world is going.