9 ms·

We're biological creatures evolved to be outside, to interact with the physical world and real people. It's easily replicable. Go out for some more walks, plan

• cafard 4y ago
  If go out for walks in my neighborhood, I interact with plenty of real people. I am on a first-name basis with persons living five blocks away, and know the names of dogs belonging to families I haven't met. Working from home for a year and some months increased the number of walks considerably. If I go out for walks from work, admittedly I see a greater variety of people. But my interactions with them are limited.
• jrochkind1 4y ago
  I'm with you 100% until the last paragraph. We are definitely social creatures, and living lives of increasingly less social interaction is not going to work out for us personally or as societies. But I see no reason we can't handle society at a scale of millions or billions of people. It, after all, always is experienced as less than that, even people who live in NYC or Mexico City have regular interactions with a smaller group of 100-200 people at most, even if incidental daily interactions with more people than most of us. But those incidental daily interactions with a huge number of people -- I am pretty sure are actually positive. To the extent that I'd predict that even in the present society with social interaction limited by the social forces we're talking about -- someone living in manhattan who, on the average can't help but interact incidentally with a huge number of people daily (on average, there are exceptions, going up with wealth!) -- is likely on average to be happier, due to those interactions, than someone in a suburb working remotely who has one to two incidental interactions... a week? I think those incidental interactions are in fact key to happiness, the more the better, and there is no problem if due to living in some of the densest places on the planet, they are with a huge number of diverse people. Also I think people seriously under-estimate the extent to which humans have lived in "urban" societies for many thousands of years. Granted, the scale of "urban" was smaller than it is now (a city of 20K people was enormous 500 years ago), but we have always been extremely social creatures, always in fact, in general on aggregate, looking to maximize our number of relationships and interactions. (See eg _Dawn of Everything_). (I also think people way over-estimate the universal cultural homogeniety of "ancient" and "pre-historical" civilizations. Things were not as we assume).
  • idiotsecant 4y ago
    Parent post is right, we are inherantly tribal creature capable of really empathizing and aligning ourselves with maybe 7-10 people. We can find a tribal identity with maybe 30 people. We can productively coordinate with groups of as many as 50-75 people. Any more than that, and we simply can't hold those relationships in our monkey brains and default to 'stranger bad'. Fortunately, at some point we gained an abstraction layer on top of our monkey brains, capable of empathizing with abstract characteristics such as nation, race, religion, etc. These abstractions are socketed right into our monkey layer and are a hack that can simulate the 50-75 people type relationship for billions of people. Unfortunately that layer needs to be trained, and it's even more unfortunately very easy and quite profitable to train in the wrong ways.
    • jrochkind1 4y ago
      I suppose we can all keep posting "I'm right", "No, I'm right"! I believe people have in fact been routinely living in groups of far more than 30 people for tens of thousands of years (in some but not all places/times over that span, sure), it's a misconception to think this is new or unusual for humans. We have not only done fine with it, we have thrived with it. (Also having relationships over distance too, for a long long time).
      • idiotsecant 4y ago
        I think if you re-read my post we're saying the same thing.
      • ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
        Have we thrived, though? If we're talking about monkey brains and evolution, we need to keep in mind that all of the stuff we're talking about is even only a tiny fraction of the time that humans have been anatomically modern (300000 to 100000 years ago depending on exactly how modern you mean, with the 100k years ago mark being where an autopsy wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless it were specifically trying to date the corpse based on things like carbon13 or noting the dental care etc). So all things considered, I don't think we can really say that we've proved out that the stuff we've been up to since the dawn of agriculture (10k years ago) is going to stand the test of time. Maybe let's at least see where global warming goes over the next 100-200 years before we start throwing around words like "thrive".
• seaners 4y ago
  Why didn't Noah link to the best work being done on this right now? There's a huge, collaborative Google Doc https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...
  • JPKab 4y ago
    Noah is the man, BUT he has a really nasty habit of talking about subjects without referring to some canonical sources of his ideas that pre-date his own takes by a ton. Haidt was WAY ahead of him on the smartphones causing depression by YEARS. Additionally, with geopolitics, he encapsulates a lot of work by Peter Zeihan without ever referring to him directly.
    • seaners 4y ago
      Yeah, as I was reading it I was like, "This is basically a low-res version of what Jon Haidt has been writing about for years..."
  • molsongolden 4y ago
    I don't understand why so much of the "social media is harmful" discussion focuses on social isolation and teen judgment. These are obviously important but none of the linked resources discuss the shift in expectations for life outcomes that is caused by social media and internet usage. The cliche saying is that happiness = reality - expectations. The spread of the internet has broken users free of their local bubbles and exposed them to an entire world of possibilities. Everyone is now able to compare their life to the global maximum instead of their local maximum. It's much easier now to be successful (along any axis) and miserable because there will always be people who are more successful. All of this has been moved into the internet user's scope of daily existence. Any links to research or writing in this area will be appreciated. Also, I am not a specialist but would be open to assisting with research in this area.
    • slothtrop 4y ago
      It's not clear to me if these expectations alluded to are new, or harsher, because of social media.
• tayo42 4y ago
  > A common example here on HN would be the excitement regarding working from home. I get it, I love it too. But let's not dismiss that this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. You want it, but it's still really bad for you. work from home and working remote lets me live a way richer life then working in the office allowed for. I have time and energy to dive into hobbies, pick up more hobbies and have the flexibility to travel. There is so much more to life then spending it in an office, making money for someone else, then commuting for 2 hours, wasting another hour getting ready to do that commute.
  • ian-g 4y ago
    I think it's that second piece that's important about wfh. You need to take advantage of it to do more things. I could commute to the suburbs, or I could work from home and leave earlier to hang out with friends. Or I can go on a road trip and work part of that time doing things in the evening and weekends, taking long lunches, etc... Working remotely is great if you take advantage of it
  • mbork_pl 4y ago
    I have a fairly small apartment where I live with my wife and two kids (7 & 13). I read/write a lot while commuting by public transport. Work from home is a nightmare for me, even though I have to commute 10+ km to the office. I mean, to each his own – I don't have any problem with you loving working remotely. But please do not forget that people are in various situations. (I'm not claiming you do, just wanted to mention another perspective.)
    • RangerScience 4y ago
      > public transport. (Not GP) It's not a "to each his own" - I don't have any problem with you working in an office, in a place where public transit is a functional commute. I'd probably want a return to office if I lived somewhere that had that, but I don't. It's not so much that I'm "choosing" remote, it's that non-remote commutes make office jobs that much worse because of the lack of functional public transit for that commute. And, in other cases, because office locations are shit (office parks). (I live in LA: We do actually have great public transit... kind of. It just goes to limited places, so those places are packed. Otherwise it's buses, and those don't work as a read/write commute - at least in LA, both b/c busses also have to deal with traffic, and the US's social safety net... issues).
• dorchadas 4y ago
  Just wanted to say I couldn't agree with you more. So many people have just lost connections to nature and other people, and then wonder why they constantly feel like shit and depressed. We're going down a bad path, and American capitalism and technology "full steam ahead societal consequences be damned" attitudes are only going to make things much, much worse.
• kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > A common example here on HN would be the excitement regarding working from home. I get it, I love it too. But let's not dismiss that this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. You want it, but it's still really bad for you. Speaking for myself, yes I want to work from home, but I don't want a "flat, isolated, touchless society". In fact, regular face to face interactions with others is something I'd like more of, but I'd prefer that the majority of that be outside the workplace. Don't get me wrong, everywhere I've worked I've loved most of my coworkers and got along with them well enough, but the workplace being a context that can't be opted out of by virtue of being one's livelihood can make it restrictive in ways that I'm not sure is healthy when serving as the place for the bulk of socialization. Unfortunately building social groups outside of work is difficult and gets increasingly so with age.
  • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    > In fact, regular face to face interactions with others is something I'd like more of, but I'd prefer that the majority of that be outside the workplace. If you're working 8+ hours a day, I think the raw numbers make it difficult to get substantial face-to-face interaction time outside of work, with people you don't live with. You'd need to be militant about planning an outing every evening. I know someone who wakes up every morning at 4 am (so for her it's mornings rather than evenings) for either her breakfast club, running group, morning dance party (this is a thing, called Daybreaker), dodge ball league, etc. Maybe you're like her. I'm not. If I don't meet people at work, I'm alone most days.
    • kitsunesoba 4y ago
      This is true, and I think it highlights a major structural flaw in our society. Our lives really shouldn't be as dominated by our jobs as they are, particularly with how productivity has skyrocketed in the past several decades.
      • flappyeagle 4y ago
        Do you choose to work less than full time?
• zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I don’t know how to get friends :(. I’m stuck with only virtual relationships.
  • molsongolden 4y ago
    Virtual relationships with NPCs or digital relationships with other humans?
  • JPKab 4y ago
    If you're being serious, as a human being I want you to know I have compassion towards your situation. Even though I'll never meet you, I don't like seeing your message and thinking about the suffering that loneliness causes. Easiest way to make friends quick: Activities activities activities. In-person hobbies are awesome for meeting people. I met a big chunk of my friends by doing a highly social activity that attracts cool, laid back intellectuals: Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. Not your speed? Think of any kind of outdoor hobby that requires multiple people. Ultimate Frisbee/Frisbee golf, for example. Think Frisbee sucks? So do I! But meeting up outside and sucking at throwing a Frisbee is still fun, because of the people there, and your outside in fresh air and sun! Drone racing is another nerdy, fun, social hobby as well. Chess in the park, etc etc.
  • fleddr 4y ago
    Go do volunteer work, it's where you meet people that like to see you coming. Then build from there.
• hoot 4y ago
  Yeah there's nothing better for mental health than spending 2 hours a day in a car to sit in a dark windowless room for 8 hours with headphones. I went back to remote work this past fall and it has been such a massive boost to my mental health. I spend a ton more time with my family and friends. I take a long lunch every day to spend with my daughter. Never going back to an office.
  • WheatMillington 4y ago
    It sucks that this was your office experience, but your experience is not universal. I commute around 14km taking around 25mins, or considerably less when I take my motorcycle. My office is a large, vibrant building filled with interesting people. WFH is challenging for me, with two young kids and not enough space. I feel bored and isolated spending so much time alone.
    • spixy 4y ago
      similar for me, 8km commute (~15 mins), at home I am alone and don't have concentration to work, in the office I am with people and environment makes me to easier to do my job
    • cma 4y ago
      With two young kids a motorcycle commute seems like something to avoid.
      • ako 4y ago
        Don’t talk him out of motorcycling please, motorcyclist are one of the best sources of donor organs we have these days…
      • WheatMillington 4y ago
        The only thing worse than dying is not living.
    • dakiol 4y ago
      Wouldn't it be amazing that each person in the team could decide where to work? I could work from home and you could work from the office. Win-Win.
• Existenceblinks 4y ago
  I'm about 900km+ far from almost ALL of my friends. It's just 1 hour by flying, of course +3 hours for the whole end-to-end transport ceremony. Plus hotel cost if it's more than 1 day. If it's only 1 day it's also not worth the round-trip ticket price.
• an_ko 4y ago
  Beware of the "appeal to nature" fallacy [1]. You are right that exercising and going outside have been experimentally demonstrated to improve mood, but there is no such thing as "your natural state", and even if you arbitrarily pick some definition, there is nothing inherently good about it. Is agriculture "unnatural"? The "we're not designed for the current speed of change" argument has also been made many times 2 centuries ago, for example with claims that the unnatural speed of train travel drives people insane. [2] Such claims are hilarious in retrospect. In 200 years, what will people think of your comment? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature [2]: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/railway-madness-victorian-trains https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/railway-madness-victor...
  • zdragnar 4y ago
    > Is agriculture "unnatural"? Many species modify their environment intentionally, and some go so far as to engage in a form of farming / animal husbandry. Various ants farm fungi, some species herd aphids for their "honeydew" secretions, pocket gophers cultivate tree roots, etc. Humans are physical beings, and it is our nature to experience the world through our physical senses. The psychosomatic relationship between our brain and the rest of our nervous system is also well documented (i.e. effects of exercise, gut health and diet on mood, etc). The digital world is a semi-shared fantasy. The longer you spend there, the more the neglected parts of you will suffer for it.
  • travisjungroth 4y ago
    I don't think you'd find the claims of train madness hilarious after being on BART. In general, I find the "someone made a similar claim in the past and they were wrong then so you're wrong now" argument not persuasive.
    • fleddr 4y ago
      In general I'm annoyed by references to history. Computing, internet, social media, smartphones...each of these jumps are unprecedented.
  • 4y ago
• super_flanker 4y ago
  Agreed on most of the part, except work from home/office argument. Working from home allows me to spend lot more time with people who I want to spend time with. I have more time for Gardening, DIY things, working out, etc.
• psychomugs 4y ago
  I don't disagree at all, but your arguments (and, frankly, all of HN, [and, even more frankly, all of the internet which we seem to love to hate]) would really benefit from sources, quotes, etc. Citations are signposts, acknowledgements, and backups that elevate truisms to arguments [1]. [1] https://www.academia.edu/download/32976112/citations_importance.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/32976112/citations_importa...
• justajot 4y ago
  Thank you. And I completely agree.
• superultra 4y ago
  Everyone reading this needs to go read the book the Dawn of Everything. That book - long as it is - synthesizes a lot of preexisting research to argue, among many things, that the thing that makes humans humans is our wild and wacky adaptability. This idea that there is some kind of pre-idyllic Eden state of nature and man is a myth propagated by wildly unsubstantiated guesses that involved very little or no science or data. I’m not saying your main point, that getting outside does us some good and that we’re social creatures, is wrong. It’s just that it’s one facet of our long history as evolved animals. We’re literally built for change. It’s that very adaptability that has allowed us to survive and change.
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    All animals adapt (or try to). In the first place, it doesn't necessarily work (things go extinct), and if it does, it may require evolutionary changes which take a (really) long time. If you think of examples of short-term adaptability, they don't substantially change the animal (e.g. reward circuits); usually it involves strategies and/or symbiosis. For simpler beings like bacteria maybe it's faster. Some conditions are sure to be either entirely negative, or at least lead to deleterious effects for a very long indeterminate length of time. For instance, chronic calorie restriction (or overconsumption), or having no exposure to bright light or sunlight. Survival is one thing and quality of life is another. Some animals may have evolved to be solitary; how many of those were previously social beings, in the evolutionary chain? That may suggest how likely and viable a strategy that is. Language has evolved as a human power because we are so social - it seems infants learn from direct exposure but don't pick up language well from videos. I don't think emotional needs can be satisfied with cheap substitutes, and as entertainment technology develops, you see the offerings trying to more closely mimic real human interaction (VR, AI, etc). If we surpass the uncanny valley it will be because the synthetic experiences will be indistinguishable, which makes them redundant. It would mean that the way to "adapt" to isolated virtual living is to deceive ourselves with false reality (also see Brave New World and all the consequences entailed as to agency, liberty, the human experience). It becomes a support system for living in isolation - as opposed to devising a support system for living well.
  • tomtheelder 4y ago
• Aperocky 4y ago
  > But let's not dismiss that this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. Does it though? I lived in trees that I can just take a stride in for lunch break. There are no trees next to the office.
• shrimpx 4y ago
  To push back a bit against our being naturally social, ancestral primates were solitary foragers with no natural tendency toward socializing. And even later when we became social hunter gatherers, I venture to imagine it was common to lose your group and become alone, due to the small number of people and dangers abound. Insisting that we’re naturally social is probably more far fetched than admitting it’s fairly normal to become alone.
  • slothtrop 4y ago
    Notwithstanding I'm skeptical of your claim, being "naturally social" is the entire reason language has evolved. A (very) distant ancestor's nature has no claim on your nature.
    • crthpl 4y ago
      Or perhaps the other way around: we are social because we have language.
      • slothtrop 4y ago
        You think language would spontaneously evolve without a disposition to socialize a-priori? That doesn't make any sense.
        • shrimpx 4y ago
          Presumably we needed to “notice” an orange in a tree before we could point to it. Before you could communicate with signs, you could probably realize something equivalent to “that’s food”, despite not having language yet.
    • shrimpx 4y ago
      I agree we’re social, I just don’t entirely agree it’s unnatural to be solitary. That ancestor probably has some tiny amount of bearing, though possibly negligible. Language doesn’t prove the absence of natural solitude. It just shows we’ve been “pretty social” for a while.
• justrightnow657 4y ago
  I mean you can call it what it is. An overstressed society generates more economic output than the opposite. It's definitely not healthy, but it has never been about our health. Ever since Frederick Taylor and the factory optimization movement started. It has never stopped. It probably never will. You can't left the cat out of the bag in a world full of identical bags and expect it to finds it's way back to the same bag.
• skeaker 4y ago
  I wonder how/when we'll fix this. Arbitrary needs built into us because it was advantageous a bajillion years ago that only serve to make us unhappy now seem like the kind of thing that we could do without. My money's on brain chips as a bandaid fix, followed eventually by genetic modification patching out that whole issue.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  > this further tilts things into a flat, isolated, touchless society. You want it, but it's still really bad for you. Working from home does not mean you can't still get out and socialize. It even makes that easier to do.
• Fr0styMatt88 4y ago
  The social thing is really interesting to me; we’re inherently social creatures but why don’t we want to be social? As in, why does social anxiety seem so rampant? Even in non-tech circles I notice it; people get anxious about talking on the phone, people don’t speak to their neighbours. We were taught ‘stranger danger’ as kids. People are nervous about asking others for directions. On the bus nobody wants to talk to anybody else. It seems so counterintuitive. In my experience it pre-dates the smartphone age too. If people didn’t find socialising inherently unpleasant, would they have flocked to avoid it en-masse?
• ravagat 4y ago
  > we also have the built-in tendency to optimize for convenience. Amen, one thing I've noticed just talking and shooting the shit, a lot of people seem to forget their agency. Convenience has not helped at all with that. > Likewise we're not designed for the current speed of change. +1. Some folks are really overwhelmed because of this and have basically retreated/hibernated on aspects of their lives. Worrying especially for those without anyone. Great comment