[kianN]

A good heuristic test of correlation vs causation in headlines: flip the dependent and independent variable and see which explanation sounds more reasonable.

Heavy llm chat usage leads to loneliness | or | Loneliness leads to heavy chat usage.

To my eye the second seems far more likely than the first.

[lukev]

Many (if not most) human dynamics do not have a single direction of causality.

The whole premise of cognitive behavioral therapy is that human psychology can be described as nested feedback loops between behavior, emotion, and cognition.

[kianN]

The lack of a single direction is a really good point. In my mind I was thinking more from the perspective of tempering evocative headlines. But my rule also lacks quite a bit of nuance

[unclad5968]

The headline is hardly evocative. It states a fact found by the researchers that there is a correlation. That one causes the other is a conclusion drawn by the reader.

[whyenot]

Correlation vs. causation is addressed in the article:

Note that these studies aren’t suggesting that heavy ChatGPT usage directly causes loneliness. Rather, it suggests that lonely people are more likely to seek emotional bonds with bots — just as an earlier generation of research suggested that lonelier people spend more time on social media.

My heuristic for HN is that when commenters focus on the headline, they almost never have actually read the article they are commenting on ;)

[kianN]

Reasonable perspective. I went back through the article and the content is more balanced than I initially would have guessed from the initial visualizations.

However, the much more assertive initial visualizations and the opening caption— “A chart illustrates that the longer people spend with ChatGPT, the likelier they are to report feelings of loneliness and other mental health risks” — convinced me not to continue reading.

[Aeolun]

I started reading the article, but I didn’t get far enough into it before bouncing due to this disclaimer being too far down.

It also seems like the disclaimer directly contradicts the title, so I don’t think we should blame readers for that.

[diffxx]

I don't think correlation vs causation is the right question. Loneliness was clearly rampant long before chatgpt showed up. The question is whether chatbots are capable of reducing people's loneliness. To me it feels self-evident that in the long run, they are far more likely to increase feelings of loneliness than reduce them.

For me, the only thing that can reduce loneliness is conversation with another conscious entity. Many, if not most, people are barely conscious so this is hard to find in the physical world. But I don't believe llms are conscious, so for me they are a complete dead end for reducing loneliness whatever other virtues the may have.