[Aaargh20318]

Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem.

Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me.

Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.

[kelipso]

This is the kind of detached from humanity viewpoint that I come to hacker news for. Keep it up.

[keiferski]

Lots of startup opportunities here. Instead solving the problem, just make a product that convinces people it’s not actually a problem.

[blitzar]

Ai powered metaverse on the blockchain.

[brailsafe]

So... every popular platform we're already on

[fy20]

So AI girlfriends and Clawdbot?

[Sol-]

I unironically think so, though. I though this was a great though-provoking comment by OP.

I think it's a totally legitimate thing to ponder and on most internet forums you'd just be ridiculed for it. OP even qualified it by saying they don't have anything against human connection per se.

[swed420]

I mean, the first part of their comment got my hopes up:

> Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem.

But then I realized we differed on what the root problem/solution were.

What economic/social forces are making it so that the elderly get their emotional needs met through gig workers instead of their own families?

Another point the article doesn't mention is the emotional toll this likely has on the workers. Having once worked a role where I regularly helped the elderly and got to know the same individuals over some years, it was a constant churn of disappointment when they'd inevitably die.

[fsckboy]

>Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic...

you're reading the title wrong, they aren't "trying to solve the loneliness epidemic," they are trying to sell yogurt at a profit. In so doing, their sales force is ameliorating some of the loneliness their clients feel as a side effect. You could say that they are monetizing loneliness if that's the reason people are buying their products, for the visits and not for the yogurt.

[Aaargh20318]

Exactly. This need to be social is being used against us. Not just to sell yoghurt, it’s weaponized by the social media networks to manipulate entire countries.

[7952]

And building genuine resiprocity beyond money can be good for business and absolutely essential for sole traders.

[jatari]

Yes, how do we optimize social interaction out of our lives, maybe we can all live in VR with simulated girlfriends and never have to interact with another human again.

[the_af]

End goal: Asimov's Solaria, where everything is done by robots and the mere thought of breathing the same air as another human becomes repulsive.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Then, like, what's the point of even being a human instead of a robot?

[Telaneo]

I'd rather be a robot than a human, so from my perspective, the answer is clearly clearly none. I just don't have the option of turning into a robot.

[Imustaskforhelp]

There are already robots, well I suppose LLM's and average person treats them like utter shit because we can (In a similar way to how the rich might treat average person sometimes* [not all and that's not really my point either] but yea)

My point is that even if you were a robot, if you had feelings. you wouldn't be spared. So are you asking the lack of feelings?

And even if that's the case then, there are people who had gone into accidents who lost their feelings/emotional part of the brain. They sucked at making decisions because I remember reading how the person binge watched shows instead of watching his son's football games, how he couldn't decide what is more important, buying a stapler or filing his taxes (I can be wrong about this one but something similar related to pencils) but my point is that he couldn't make good decisions. He couldn't really compare between two decisions.

Now look at robots, look at LLM's. They can't decide if a car is 50m away then should it be drove or should you walk. They are essentially just a corpus of human data congested into a servant while being nothing more than auto correct on steroids in its true form.

Humanity has its flaws. I absolutely agree. But I think that the reason we have good is also because humanity has flaws. Much of my morality stems from the fact that if I die and I am gonna die someday, that's for sure, then what's my footprint on the world no matter how tiny and questions like these. I suppose every human feels that way.

A robot has no purpose other than being spawned in to create something brittle like yet-another-crud-app.

Perhaps one can argue that humanity is the same seeing the horrors we unleash on each other and tbh we humans have just spawned here and we weren't asked by anyone to exist in our form or not.

But at some point, we do have free-will and freedom no matter how tiny might it seem in algorithms the size of mountains and we can exercise it to bring meaningful change maybe.

I'd rather be human and go watch my children's football game in future rather than be robot. Maybe the surrounding and family and the community as say even hackernews around us give some meaning as we bump into each other.

[Telaneo]

> My point is that even if you were a robot, if you had feelings.

This is one of the biggest reasons I'd rather be a robot. The anguish they cause me do not help me.

> He couldn't really compare between two decisions.

Such is life without a ground truth to decide your priorities. There are hopefully other source of that than emotions.

> A robot has no purpose other than being spawned in to create something brittle like yet-another-crud-app.

Neither do humans.

If being a robot is shit, but being human is also shit, then then I can only really conclude that it's better to not be at all.

[Imustaskforhelp]

> Such is life without a ground truth to decide your priorities. There are hopefully other source of that than emotions.

Sadly, Even if you live a life based on some ground base of morals, those morals come from the inevitability of death personally as I said in previous comment. I am not hopeful about it and science isn't either seeing the experiments of those people that I mentioned.

> Neither do humans.If being a robot is shit, but being human is also shit, then then I can only really conclude that it's better to not be at all.

That is another point I touched (in the next paragraph). We humans are also just like random particles fwiw but I believe that no matter how small action we take , it can have consequences.

At some point tho, I sometimes hate the world too (how could you not) but not enough to not be at all. If anything I maybe hate myself if say I am not being productive or anything more than I hate the world, which has been quite a bit kind to me too and some people are bad too yeah. It's a mix of both.

So although I don't have quite the answer. I believe that at some point, we have to accept our own autonomy and act towards what we want whether in personal life or the changes we want in the world. Even if we don't use that freedom at times and the life cycle of day feels weird.

It's still nice knowing that we can have freedom maybe. But I think that everyone wings it in life at some point or another. Maybe some wing better than others but the only thing is probably keep trying at some point and happiness comes along the way too, I am not that sure if I am the right person to be the person talking about these stuff right now haha :) but these are just some opinions I hold.

[jatari]

Nothing wrong with being a robot.

[Aaargh20318]

To learn, to create, to grow? None of these things necessarily involve other humans.

[TaupeRanger]

Absolutely wrong, of course. At the risk of engaging with apparent rage bait: social interaction is one type of human yearning. So are learning, creating, and growing. Each of them requires other humans. Learning requires studying the knowledge created by other humans. Creating requires materials and methods created by other humans. Growing requires learning, so by extension, other humans.

[charcircuit]

>Learning requires studying the knowledge created by other humans.

You can learn from AI. Just because it comes from another human you doing have to socialize with that human.

>Creating requires materials and methods created by other humans.

You can AI generate these materials. And even if you don't, downloading an image or using a method from someone else does not require socialize with them.

[TaupeRanger]

> You can learn from AI.

Try learning to box from an AI.

> You can AI generate these materials

Um...no...I meant actual material things that you use to create what you want. The supply chains that manufacture the materials necessary for you to "create" all require social interaction at multiple levels throughout the process.

Sorry, your depressing anti-social hermit paradise can't exist.

[Tepix]

But why if no-one is around to see it, admire it, comment on it, use it?

[Towaway69]

If a human lives and no one noticed that human, did that human really live or have a life?

Much like a soundless tree in the forest.

[vuln]

a human can not be brought into this world without being painfully noticed.

[mock-possum]

1. That’s not an option and 2. There is no point.

Life is what you make of it, whether you’re a robot or a human.

[MattGaiser]

You would be free to decide, instead of having it being biologically required that you socialize.

[nobodyandproud]

https://fablesofaesop.com/the-fox-who-lost-his-tail.html

[mock-possum]

Holy shit is this an allegory for circumcision??

[the_af]

I don't think so, no.

The person being circumcized doesn't usually get to decide or even understand what's going on.

[anal_reactor]

The problem is, even if we somehow could do that, it's not possible to predict the consequences. Being social is exactly the one specific trait that gave humans massive advantage over other species, and was the backbone of our evolution.

[vuln]

> we can fix the human condition by removing humanity

wild take.

[7952]

I don't think a maximalist solution exists for something like this. And in fact historic trends are doing exactly what you talk about. And the best example is money. It eliminates social resiprocity in favour of a transaction that completes in the moment. And for many people that satisfies a substantial portion of their basic needs. But everything else is then left with just an emotional side as the primary objective. Relationships are based on fulfilling some barely understood emotional need rather than practical benefit. And we feel more and more need to use hacks to try and satisfy that.

[rexpop]

The framing of human sociality as a flaw to be eliminated invites the dangerous notion that we can—or should—simply re-engineer ourselves. However, the ambitious project of "rewiring" human nature to eliminate our spontaneous connections and dependencies is not a path to liberation, but the ultimate goal of totalitarianism and oppressive social engineering.

Hannah Arendt explicitly notes that the true aim of totalitarian ideologies is not merely to change political structures, but to achieve "the transformation of human nature itself". When regimes seek total domination over a population, human spontaneity and the unpredictable nature of our social relationships become the greatest obstacles.

To achieve total control, these systems attempt to fabricate a new kind of human species. Arendt observes that concentration camps functioned literally as "laboratories" to test these changes in human nature. The objective was to eliminate human spontaneity and transform the human personality into a mere "thing," reducing individuals to a predictable "bundle of reactions". Arendt compares the success of this psychological rewiring to Pavlov’s dog, noting that conditioning a creature to abandon its natural, spontaneous instincts creates a "perverted animal".

James C. Scott traces a similar impulse in "high-modernist" ideology, which champions the "mastery of nature (including human nature)" through the rational, scientific design of social order. This kind of extreme social engineering requires stripping people of their distinctive personalities, histories, and organic community ties, treating them instead as abstract, interchangeable "generic subjects".

When human beings are placed in environments designed to severely restrict their organic social interactions and enforce rigid functional control, they suffer. Such environments foster a kind of "institutional neurosis" characterized by apathy, withdrawal, and a loss of initiative.

Paulo Freire similarly observes that the drive to completely control people—to "in-animate" them and transform them from living beings into inanimate "things"—is the essence of oppression. He argues that attempting to turn men and women into "automatons" directly negates our fundamental "ontological vocation to be more fully human".

If we were to successfully "rewire" ourselves to no longer need others, we would be executing the very project that authoritarian regimes have historically attempted through terror and indoctrination.

Our "flawed" social dependency and spontaneous need for one another are exactly what guarantee our freedom. To engineer that vulnerability out of the human psyche would not solve the problem of loneliness; it would simply reduce us to isolated, predictable mechanisms, destroying our humanity in the process.

[Telaneo]

On some level I agree, but I don't think most of my fellow humans would agree.

Either way, editing away the need for social connections from humans seems to be quite a long way from our current level of technology, so it's not really worth considering as something that can actually be done. There's a philosophical discussion worth having despite that though.

[analog8374]

The part of the brain that needs human contact could be chemically or surgically neutralized.

[the_af]

As a two for one, we could also chemically excise the need to enjoy food, so we could consume some tasteless nutritive slop while spending 100% of our time in front of a computer, being that mythical 10x programmer.

Just think of all the value we could add.

[piekvorst]

> The thinking child is not antisocial (he is, in fact, the only type of child fit for social relationships). When he develops his first values and conscious convictions, particularly as he approaches adolescence, he feels an intense desire to share them with a friend who would understand him; if frustrated, he feels an acute sense of loneliness. (Loneliness is specifically the experience of this type of child—or adult; it is the experience of those who have something to offer. The emotion that drives conformists to "belong," is not loneliness, but fear—the fear of intellectual independence and responsibility. The thinking child seeks equals; the conformist seeks protectors.)

https://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/loneliness.html

[mock-possum]

I do wonder at the loneliness I might have felt if I’d never found friends who would accommodate my intense desire to share values.

[xyzzy9563]

I'm guessing you haven't considered evolutionary psychology? If we didn't yearn for other people, there would be a lot less reproduction, and the human species would die.

[sa-code]

What’s there to live for otherwise? Can you flesh this idea out more?

[Aaargh20318]

There are plenty of things to live for, but that’s not even the point. There is a difference between choosing to be social and having to be social because you will get depressed if you aren’t.

I think this need for social interaction is harmful. We did see this in action during the COVID pandemic. So many people who weren’t able to abide by a short lockdown. Lives were lost due to our pathological need for social interaction.

Imagine how many communicable deceases we could eliminate by simply having a 3 month lockdown every other year.

[aliher1911]

So is food. If we switch to IV feeding you can also avoid many harms food and drink brings. We can do a soylent green as a stopgap.

[Telaneo]

I'm not a big fan of eating, so yes please? Even if I then want to indulge in something tasty every now and then, the option to just 'top up' without actually eating is hugely attractive.

[JimmyBiscuit]

> having to be social because you will get depressed if you aren’t

Tbh often I see going out and being social as a kind of pre-payment so I can be a shut-in nerd for the other day of the weekend without feeling bad.

[charlie0]

You don't go far enough, every flu season should be lockdown and social distancing protocol should be followed on pain of death.

[kakacik]

You live for others? As in remove those others and you lose whole purpose of life? I am not trying to be rude, seems like retirement homes house plenty of such people but it doesn't make sense for younger folks... although this is hardly a choice, is it. But - I believe one can work on this and move themselves quite a bit if wanted.

My 2 cents - mountains and nature and activities in them are always beautiful, as in it doesn't get boring or mundane, not for anybody I know. Working out on oneself, experiencing various adventures, backpacking around the world, sports, adrenaline/risky activities that make you feel alive, seeing cultures and history and food... those are done for oneself and they are absolutely 100% fulfilling that no career could ever deliver.

Saying above as one such person, and also father of 2 amazing kids (and a pretty decent wife to complement) whom I love more than anything. But I don't live for them despite doing various hard sacrifices for them, I live for me and do those things for me, to be happy, content, recharged, better father and husband and when looking back at my life being fine with various choices made.

[sa-code]

> backpacking around the world

> sports

> seeing cultures and history and food

All of these things still require interaction with other people? If you remove all the others you also don't get to enjoy the things that you claim to enjoy by yourself

Being able to hike the mountains without the equipment that others have tried/tested/packaged/sold is not possible either.

Imagine that you're traveling space and you get stuck on an empty planet, that's the logical conclusion of "removing the need for human connection"

[pstuart]

So if your wife and kids vanished the next day would the solo adventures be enough?

Having gone through divorce/empty nest and working remotely it's been quite challenging to avoid depression.

[mock-possum]

I feel like this just further reinforces the point - that need for social connection is a weakness.

I love my husband dearly, and I’d morn him if he vanished, but it wouldn’t make my life hard to live by any means - I lived just fine before him, and I’ll live just fine after him. I didn’t marry him because I needed somebody, I married him because I wanted him. I love him and I’m lucky to have him, but I also love myself and am lucky to be me - and as I said, that was true before I met him, and it’ll be true after he’s gone.

I don’t need someone else to make my worthwhile, or to make my life worth living - I am sufficient. He’s a (much welcomed and deeply appreciated) bonus.

What you’re describing sounds like romanticizing mental illness to me.

[MattGaiser]

It would be up to you. These people who are lonely otherwise have lives.

[cgh]

Username checks out stares into abyss

[neilv]

Techbros are thinking: "Don't eliminate their need! They need a subscription AI app!"

[qingcharles]

Daily AI conversations for seniors: (there are a few of these products...)

https://intouch.family/en

[gozucito]

At first, I laughed.

But it's a good question. My answer is social contact sharpens our mind. Without it, we would be stupider. And God knows we're stupid enough as it is without degrading our intellectual faculties further.

At a basic level, loners will get hunted down by tribes because they are easy prey and because their behavior can be misconstrued or spun by grifters as nefarious because they are different.

[slim]

have you ever been by yourself for more than a few weeks ? you would find out that even you need to see people after having spent enough time alone. and it hurts if you're unable to see people when you feel that urge. it's a real human need

[mock-possum]

You’re projecting, not everyone is so desperate for human connection. Spending a few weeks completely alone sounds like heaven to me.

[slim]

It sounded like heaven to me too before experiencing it

[mock-possum]

Well I’m sorry to hear that, but at least you’ve learned something about yourself - do you think you might be able to manage it better next time, being more prepared for the experience?

[kakacik]

Not everybody is wired in same way. Some have 'pathological' need, some see it as beneficial but optional item. Same folks definitely don't enjoy loud parties or bars full of strangers yelling on each other, and find a bit of lonely time healing/recharging.

I am one such person, and there are others. I consider it a personality strength, although of course it comes with side effects. Minority but not tiny.

[hto209423432]

Thanks for the comment.

This sadly is the default zeitgeist within Liberalism as a political philosophy - which is why elites across the world treat humans as cannon fodder. They'd sell them a "dream" and destroy them and communities they're part of in order to create cheap labourers and needy consumers.Once that has passed, they'll throw them under the bus.

Once our overlords get AI/Robots to work for them, we'll quickly see mass-eugenics (positive & negative) programs instituted across the world.

As Dugin et.al note, this is infact the central flaw in modernity - which was moderated occasionally by nationalism, fascism and communism - but ultimately all within the same broad loci.

[tdeck]

For folks who don't know, Duginism is just Russian-supremacist fascism.

[arjie]

Haha! I really like your comment though I couldn't disagree more[1]! I think I understand a little of the view and I think it's not all wrong. Here's the part where I think you're right: not all kinds of social contact is useful. One thing I have found very useful for discussion is Opus 4.6. You have to apply the usual tricks ("a somewhat foolish friend of mine said" / "a junior intern who's not doing so well thinks" / etc.) but it's pretty good at engaging with a variety of ideas and disagreeing and so on. It still has the LLM glazing but it is possible to drag ideas out of it.

By contrast, many humans can't even understand the thrust of an argument and so discussion is wasted on them. There's nothing more frustrating than making an argument of some meaning and having someone misunderstand it entirely. Avoiding that requires some degree of rhetorical skill and communication and a sufficiently receptive audience. I have no problem talking to my friends like this, but there is a time-subject-partner matching problem. I want to discuss Analects 13.18 now, and my friend who can give me context is putting his son to sleep[0]. So I talk to Opus 4.6 and DeepSeek about what I think it is and I get quite far in understanding why my (seemingly novel) interpretation is unlikely to be correct.

So machines are very useful in discussion and so on. However, I don't think they serve much of a purpose in assuaging loneliness. The reality of life is that it is most successful when it can organize into larger blocks: the cell, the organ, the body, the community, the state. And so I think our eusocial nature is strongly adaptive[1]. Perhaps with sufficiently advanced AI, a single person could exert sufficient power. Nothing in theory stopping that but I have other opposition to that (monocultures are non-adaptive, etc.). So removing our dependence on social connections will probably weaken us.

So given that that is the case, I think people over-prescribe solutions in a way that is razor-targeted to themselves[2]. As someone who is not lonely and quite socially fulfilled, I find that a lot of these prescriptions turn out to come from some other axioms which I feel are unnecessary. For instance, one trend is "why do they have to get their needs met from delivery man?" and I think that's silly. When I was a child, we kids "had a relationship with" or "had some of our needs met" by the school guard in that he was a civic ally of ours. He was usually opposed to our actions tactically but ultimately aligned. Our final exams in India are very important and one day one of my classmates, who was particularly scatterbrained, was late for one and he took him to the exam hall on his bike.

I don't think there's any reason to proscribe that social interactions should be within one's own immediate sphere. Our apartment building in San Francisco has social interactions that I think are normal in a civil society[3] - for the most part I interact there with strangers. Some I have helped or been helped by without ever having seen their faces. I think there is a joy I get from my direct family, and then my extended family and friends, and my communities, and my society, and as someone whose life is fairly joyful I'd say that looking around, (and with apologies to Tolstoy), "Happy people are all alike; each unhappy person is unhappy in their own way".

0: He did respond in the morning and it was very helpful. Turns out I misread the relationship Shen Zhuliang and Confucius had.

1: In fact, I'm of the opinion that pro-sociality is probably The Adaptive Trait. I recently picked up Darwin's Cathedral and am approximately 3 pages in and I already feel a kindred spirit behind that book.

2: Can we help it? Almost everyone has heard an expert or professor go "I believe that X is the most important thing that everyone should learn" and X always happens to be what they're studying - well obviously they believe that, otherwise they wouldn't be studying it.

3: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community