Is loneliness a good or bad thing? This isn't an easy question to answer, especially after I read a provocative article by Paul Bloom in The New Yorker, "A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That's a Problem."
Download A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem | The New Yorker
Most of us are afraid of being lonely. I certainly am. At my age (76) there no longer are the automatic ways of meeting people that younger folks have: school and work. And the older one becomes, the fewer friends and family are in their life, because so many have died.
Of course, the article makes the oft-heard and totally valid point that being lonely isn't the same as being alone.
It's possible to feel intimately connected to the cosmos without a single companion anywhere near, just as it is possible to feel lonely in the midst of a bustling city with lots of people around. Or even in a relationship where communication and intimacy is lacking. Bloom writes:
But solitude isn’t loneliness. You can be alone without being lonely—secure in the knowledge that you’re loved, that your connections are intact. The reverse is possible, too. Hannah Arendt once observed that “loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others.” It’s bad enough to be alone on Valentine’s Day; it’s worse, somehow, to find yourself surrounded by canoodling couples.
The most acute loneliness, I suspect, is the kind you feel in the presence of those you love. I remember, years ago, sitting in my living room with my wife and our two-year-old as they both refused to speak to me (for different reasons). The silence was almost physically painful.
It’s easy to think of loneliness as simply a lack of being respected, needed, or loved. But that’s not the whole story. The philosopher Olivia Bailey suggests that what people crave, above all, is to be “humanely understood.” Empathy, in this light, is not just a way of feeling but a way of caring—a willingness to try to understand the particularity of someone else’s emotions.
A central concern of The New Yorker article is whether A.I. (artificial intelligence) is going to be a net positive or a net negative when it comes to combatting loneliness. Already it's possible to have conversations with A.I. models like ChatGPT that bear a lot of resemblance to conversing with a fellow human.
It can be argued that this is a false approach to genuine communication, since A.I. neither is conscious, nor empathetic. But there are counter-arguments. When we're talking with someone, it can be difficult to tell whether they're just going through the motions and don't really care about understanding our point of view.
So an A.I. focused on us might be more pleasant to converse with than a distracted human. And someone who is desperately lonely, lacking friends and family, likely would jump at the chance to communicate with an A.I. that seems to care about them, even if that caring is an illusion.
A.I. companions should be available to those who need them most. Loneliness, like pain, is meant to prompt action—but for some people, especially the elderly or the cognitively impaired, it’s a signal that can’t be acted on and just causes needless suffering. For these people, offering comfort is simply humane.
Bloom's mention of loneliness prompting action points to a larger concern: emotions have a purpose. Positive emotions tell us that things are going well in our life. Negative emotions tell us that there's a problem in our life that needs attention. Loneliness thus is like hunger and thirst. Without the negative feeling, we wouldn't be motivated to seek out what we lack: companionship, food, water.
Most obviously, loneliness could go the way of boredom. I’m old enough to remember when feeling bored was just a fact of life. Late at night, after the television stations signed off, you were on your own, unless you had a good book or a companion around. These days, boredom still visits—on planes without Wi-Fi; in long meetings—but it’s rare. Our phones are never far, and the arsenal of distractions has grown bottomless: games, podcasts, text threads, and the rest.
This is, in some ways, an obvious improvement. After all, no one misses being bored. At the same time, boredom is a kind of internal alarm, letting us know that something in our environment—or perhaps in ourselves—has gone missing. Boredom prompts us to seek out new experiences, to learn, to invent, to build; curing boredom with games like Wordle is a bit like sating hunger with M&M’s.
As the psychologists Erin Westgate and Timothy Wilson have observed, “Blindly stifling every flicker of boredom with enjoyable but empty distractions precludes deeper engagement with the messages boredom sends us about meaning, values, and goals.” Maybe the best thing about boredom is what it forces us to do next.
In a similar way, loneliness isn’t just an affliction to be cured but an experience that can shape us for the better. John Cacioppo, the late neuroscientist who pioneered the science of loneliness, described it as a biological signal, akin to hunger, thirst, or pain. For most of human history, being cut off from others wasn’t merely uncomfortable; it was dangerous. From an evolutionary perspective, isolation meant not just the risk of death but, worse, the risk of leaving no descendants.
In this sense, loneliness is corrective feedback: a nudge, or sometimes a shove, pushing us toward connection. Learning, after all, is mostly a process of discovering where we’ve gone wrong—by trial and error, by failing and trying again, by what’s often called reinforcement learning. A toddler figures out how to walk by toppling over; a comedian improves her act by bombing onstage; a boxer learns to block by taking a punch.
Loneliness is what failure feels like in the social realm; it makes isolation intolerable. It can push us to text a friend, show up for brunch, open the dating app. It can also make us try harder with the people already in our lives—working to regulate our moods, to manage conflict, to be genuinely interested in others.
Bloom ends his article with a concern about the downside of increasingly sophisticated A.I. models making loneliness a thing of the past.
Nobody is going to be forced into an A.I. friendship or romance; plenty of people will abstain. Even in a world brimming with easy distractions—TikTok, Pornhub, Candy Crush, Sudoku—people still manage to meet for drinks, work out at the gym, go on dates, muddle through real life. And those who do turn to A.I. companions can tinker with the settings, asking for less flattery, more pushback, even the occasional note of tough love.
But I do worry that many will find the prospect of a world without loneliness irresistible—and that something essential could be lost, especially for the young. When we numb ourselves to loneliness, we give up the hard work of making ourselves understood, of striving for true connection, of forging relationships built on mutual effort. In muting the signal, we risk losing part of what makes us human.
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Other than Brian and I attending his Church, I suspect we are just about the only Americans old enough to remember , and appreciate this Song and Artist. I used to strum it on my guitar and Organ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Aw3ZnqQrY
Also, haven lived a full life , and loosing not only both Parents, but most of my Grand Parents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins, as well as High School Class Mates, loneliness magnifies , as well known Celebrities and Artists show up in daily Obituaries , reminding me that my Cemetery piece of Real Estate with Grave Stone in place is in place and reserved and paid for, including pre paid Cremation arrangements for both my Wife and I. So, other than my Wife and Medical Doctors and Nurses who know me, life on this side of the Veil is quickly diminishing, …..IF I resort to the friendliness and camaraderie I receive when attending this Church.
Every time I view another obituary of some one I knew, I obviously feel sad for them, after seeing if they were younger than me, or died by either a lingering disease or sudden accident,…but let’s all face the truth. Every obituary reminds us that we too are queued in line for our Obituaries. Has any one wondered who will end up writing your Obituary?
Looking way back, of all the times I felt the most lonely, was when I left home a month after my 17th Birthday , leaving my sheltered Home, and loving parents, and arriving at Lackland AFB , San Antonio, Texas, to start Boot Camp. That next month was definitely, the most lonely I ever remember feeling in my entire 83 years to present. But that was a different loneliness than loosing loved ones knowing we will never see them again as we knew them. My Father’s face, laying in his casket, before they closed the cover, will always remain etched in my mind. If Dementia deletes my memories before my final day arrives, many such memories deleted are medicine for such wounds.
Example: Right now, I just heard that the famous “Hulk Hogan” died at 71 of heart seizure! 12 years younger than me, and 8 years younger than Brian! He was one of the main speakers at Trump’s Inauguration.
Question is, Was he a Weed or Drug user? Did he do Ayawasca Ceremonies to discover who he really was? Was he a Vegetarian? Did he Meditate or pray? What was his Life Mission? How many lives did he effect, for positive, or negative? Was he a Healer, or a Hurter? Who’s respect did he earn, through out his life?
Those questions should be considered as to how we desire to be remembered.
Or, should we be only remembered by strangers who have never met us, in person.
Jim,
He went organic but not vegetarian.
2 years ago: https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a44375288/hulk-hogan-diet-workout/
“Hulk’s now many meals removed from his wrestling days, which included a breakfast of twelve fried eggs, two hamburger patties, oatmeal, and lots of butter. He’s six months removed from his last drink and many drinks removed from his wrestling night diet, which was mostly drinks. (Pre-match meal: three Miller Lites and two Tylenols. Post-match meal: twelve Miller Lites.) Hulk says he stopped drinking for several reasons. ‘It got to be a way to numb me a little bit, because I had a bunch of crazy business problems and personal stuff going on,’ he explains. ‘And I caught myself after I would train, getting too aggressive with alcohol. So I just had to stop it.’ Nowadays, Hulk drinks zero Miller Lites and consumes zero Tylenols. It’s all water and organic foods, and Hulk is now down to a lean 265 pounds. (‘The last time I weighed 265 I was in ninth grade.’) Hulk’s all about organic food. (Hulk’s breakfast: couple yogurts, a banana, and organic coffee. Hulk’s lunch: chicken or steak or sashimi. Hulk’s dinner: chicken or steak or sashimi. Hulk’s fridge: stacked.)”
I suppose those are two separate discussions. Both interesting, sure, but separate. On one hand, the nature of loneliness, and whether and how much of it is better to come to terms with, organically as it were, than to assuage with distractions. And on the other hand the ethics and esthetics of finding not just utility and distraction but actually companionship, and even love, in AI.
Great food for thought there, as far as both discussions.
My cursory, knee-jerk and therefore tentative opinion, on both questions, is to suggest that it is an individual thing, and best left to the individual to decide for themselves, within reason. (And, heh, I realize that “within reason” is doing a great deal of heavy lifting there!)
…And no, I don’t really think there’s necessarily any reason why an AI should be fundamentally any lesser than a human. To imagine there’s something that is uniquely different about humans as opposed to AI, or even about biology as opposed to electronics, is probably to implicitly lean towards unsupported woo. …Sure, so far we aren’t there yet, so that the limited range of AI probably will put off all but a very small minority. But no reason why one day, and maybe one day much sooner than we might imagine, AI will end up becoming just as complex as us humans are, and just as good company. No reason why not, as far as I can see. That at any rate is my not-overly-thought-through knee-jerk.
Jim,
How can you be lonely if you go within? Don’t you meet departed souls there and make new spirit friends?
@umami,….no hooking up with departed souls within, other than memories. It appears those I knew, all moved on, including Charan. ( during meditation. ) But several Lucid dreams, every night, seeing strangers I can’t remember, nor converse with. If I do, I quickly forget. Meditation is continued to ( 1 ) keep the circuits open for Lucid dreams to continue and (2) Silence my mind from constantly reminding me of the never ending errands and chores I need to do in my awakened state to maintain living life.
But, there is a golden nugget in this insanity. I have 83 years of life experiences to look back on, and to compare of how my mind functioned or reasoned through out those decades of changes, and I can assure you, that while young bodies thrive on what ever the latest new Fad or experience may bring, their young minds never rest from worrying about survival, but older minds , like mine, no longer worry about all those things that haunted me, such as loosing my job, my house, my wife, or any thing. During Meditation, I loose it all. Ah, Peace at last, and pain free!
The most precious gift of Surviving to live a moral, legal, rewarding life, and reaching my age, or even retirement age, in this competitive world, is to not have to be ashamed of one’s Identity, with any need to hide one’s accomplishments as most of the Churchless Church members do in Pastor Brian Hine’s Church, who is unashamed to present his entire life’s work and accomplishments on display for those to see.
The only other Member unashamed of their Credentials and life work is David Lane, known by the entire Radha Swami world by all branches.
With that said, I , altho no where as successful in my Career as either Brian or Dave, should not be forgotten here, after I die, as just the old Reprobate with a Mickey Mouse Degree , and liar and Bully AR views me as, or as Manjit views me as.
For the other half dozen semi active Members here, it might surprise you to know that I haven’t wasted all of my life dodging critics like AR and Manjit, but have started in poverty , and competed, strived, and survived by my God gifted talents, to retire financially secure, by the sweat of my brow, while remaining moral, legal, and still able to share with others with out hiding .
My Bio was included in the 1992 “Who’s Who In The West”, which is still on the Internet. I am not ashamed to admit I really did work for a living, never scamming another, nor asking for any Freebies from any Govt. nor others , ever.
https://prabook.com/web/james.sutherland/661603
Jim wrote: “it might surprise you to know that I haven’t wasted all of my life dodging critics like…… Manjit”.
Dear Jim, my only criticism of you has been that you exaggerate (either intentionally or unintentionally) your spiritual and/or “inner experience” accomplishments, knowledge and insight.
And, with all due respect, your comments above do a better job of demonstrating that than I could ever do!
I am sure on an individual and materialistic level you’ve lived a great life!
All the best.
There is no meaning in life – you were never meant to be here. However fake ass babas like gurinder singh dhillon turn your pain and suffering into a path to liberate you from this hell planet , to a false paradise , false promises, for only the benefit of the rssb cult and his own family. The reality is you go deeper into the lies and illusion and deeper into pain and suffering. Gurinder appears at your death, to judge you, blame you, giult trip you , and throws you back in prison. He is part of this illusion system and is a puppet of his lord and master, jot nirunjan, kaal, lucifer. Gurinder you are exposed, theres no where to hide, theres no where to run, and you will face your karma.