Can science find ways to ease loneliness?

From someone who had been lonely for a better part of his life, there is a solution that works.

Build a bit of confidence (gym being the simplest way) and get out there, because whoever you are, there is someone else out there who looks precisely for you. But you aren't gonna meet them if you sit tight, so get out.

Internalize this: you are attractive and you have worth, right now. You are good enough. And someone is waiting for you out there.

The question is "why don't lonely people interact with each other".

The answer is that being in need of emotional comfort does not imply the ability to provide it, so after some time they are bad fit even for each other. The same goes with "why don't unattractive people date each other".

I think loneliness, like many of the world's solvable problems, is in fact an information problem. Solvable somehow by an information system. There are more humans now than at any time, we are more densely packed, and have more means of communication or establishing contact than ever before, with the ability to communicate over great distance without (technical or economic) difficulty or significant cost. Yet loneliness is all around us and is a plague of our times.

I'm not sure what "the answer"is, but I think those who work in and with information systems in the broadest sense, might contribute to its cure.

I know a thing or two about loneliness, and overcoming it. It would be a long post to take you through, but if anyone is interested or experiencing it, I can post it in the hopes it can help or be interesting, I already wrote it, but seemed a bit long.

Difference between "oneliness" and "loneliness" is crucial. I was little astonished when Lex Fridman told us that he does not have "Inner Voice" commenting all his doings.

I have sometimes spent 6 months alone in wilderness and eventually the Inner Voice kicks in. It seems to be a mechanism to maintain sanity. Upon returning to civilization the Voice soon disappears.

In my case the Voice is a film director, mostly Werner Herzog, who might say, "now the subject has finally lost his marbles and does not make bear-proof stash for his food".

I can tell you how without science.

Pay people more, work them less.

Dependent of the cause yes. Loneliness caused by rejection based on miscalculated perceptions of others is an unfortunate reality. Loss of family and friends due to death is not solved by science, however, coping mechanisms for management may help.

Interesting that of all places Phil McAuliffe was in Korea. Korean culture is very welcoming. Once a connection is made, one becomes part of the family.

At times loneliness can spur one to push past fears such as travelling alone or attending an event solo.

I'm skeptical; present me/my situation to anyone and they'd say I'm lonely. I'd tell you I enjoy the energy

Who knows? I've internalized "hell is other people" innovative ways my entire life

a part of everyone knows both a major cause and way of improving loneliness yet we lie to ourselves and look to science to give us an excuse continue to ignore what we know to be true. We have built a world that revolves around money and almont everything that gets built that wants to grow no matter how pure in intentions succumbs and instead of using peoples desire for connection to actually make connections with people perverts it in a way to make more money. And we let this happen to us because its easy, it feels good in the moment they are careful to give us just enough of a taste of a real connection to keep us coming back but not letting us develop real connections that would "graduate" us to real human connections that would reduce our reliance on them thus reducing their profits.

If Television stayed live, local, honest, people you seen around your local town, it would encourage engagement. youtube could have focused on sharing videos with friends, could have ignored likes/dislikes and didnt focus on popularity and parasocial relationships. Facebook could have encouraged not on finding, adding, expanding, friends and engaging on the platform, but instead encourage real connections by encouraging prodding for real world meetups suggestions on games to play in person, finding people who like to do the similar things and suggesting times and places they can do it together with a focus on existing friends and connections. And not showing as much on what people have done but what they can do together.

Its not that these things aren't possible on the networks now but its not how these sites use their influence and primary resources, and really it would be stupid for them to do, because they are businesses and their goal is to make money, they will only improve peoples lives as long as it doesn't get in the way of making money. Part of use realize what they are doing we know they put profits above us, but they deliver what we expect a little bit of happiness a little bit of connection, we know it wont satisfy us but its easy, real easy with no risk, why put effort in for maybe a solid human connection when you can have that quick and easy hit right now.

If you read this far, why is scientific studies, or science in general not going to fix this? Because even if there is perfect research that spells out exactly the issue and lays out exactly how to not be lonely 2 things are going to happen.

1. Companies will exploit it in a way to make money if not right away then over time putting us right back to where we were. 2. We wont do it because we prefer the easy/fast way even if its worse.

this isnt going to change, its not that we cant have real connections, its just we have never had so many easy alternatives before, for a lot of people being alone has become the default we grew up with instead of the exception.

Betteridge's law not withstanding, for the first time in human history, things like loneliness have become the subject of scientific inquiry. This has happened over the last ~50ish years, if that.

As Feynman says, figuring out which of our theories are true, and which of our ideas are subject to the illusion of explanatory depth is important. Especially when it comes to things we think we know, like interpersonal relationships and our own psychology.

True, the social sciences are quite young compared to other scientific fields. But already we have estimates for distinguishing what impacts between and within person variation in loneliness. At the moment, most of this work is done at a very general level; the work tries to characterize various populations of people.

However, one of the newer / more cutting-edge methods of studying things like loneliness involves pinging them multiple times a day to see how their emotional state is changing over time. (So called Ecological Momentary Assessments if you are curious.) Some researchers are using such designs to try and figure out / model what makes an individual tick.

Clinical psychology, anecdotal folk wisdom, research psychology, and potentially even Neuroscience will eventually converge. In my opinion, one semi-unique challenge is that the set of skills that makes one a good researcher and one a good people person are not highly correlated. This doesn't matter for Chemistry (etc.), but I think it matters more for the social sciences.

Maybe they should hang out with other scientists?

I hope not, that’ll mean a quick end of humanity

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I thought AI girlfriends are a thing. /s

Yeah, by pointing out society demands too much socialization, juicing our biochemistry into addiction, and making us feel depressed when we’re alone.

All hands on deck meant more when it actually required all hands to build a church or barn.

We can’t use history to understand how to relate to the world anymore. People were often wrong more than right and far less civil. All those people socializing in the past were forced to under threat of violent burning at the stake or being sold into slavery.

Just LARPing historical patterns without contextualization is insane

First sentence of article: "One Wednesday in May 2023, a small group gathered at an outdoor café in Barcelona, Spain, sipping coffee in the late morning sunshine and talking about their lives."

Can we please stop starting articles with fucking anecdote leads, Jesus Christ it's been like twenty years of this, get a new thing my God.

1) Smoke weed, drink alcohol

2) Pick up a religion and just put in the minimum effort (i observe shabbat)

3) Consume psilocybin when weed doesn't work or you need a tolerance break

4) Pick up a hobby with community online/offline

5) Argue with people on X

6) Play games with strangers

7) Join a club with common interests

8) HN

9) Volunteer

10) Absolutely avoid social media like DM'ing with ppl

11) Travel