> Anything that increases your exposure to strangers and builds trust will be a boon to society.
It takes a few bad exposures to ruin your mental model of strangers. And I am not convinced it is entirely a bad thing.
The concept of being surrounded by strangers is a 20-21st century urban phenomenon. In an environment where people are not strangers to each other 2 things happen; 1) they can build a more accurate model of each other and most of the time this leads to deeper reciprocal trust 2) they know their behavior is kept track by others and that changes individual behavior (I know, not always for the better. I am not trying to romanticize small town conformity). To expect the same dynamics in a city is a romanticism of different sort. Not trusting strangers because you don’t know them is rational. At least not to over-extrapolate your trust to every stranger you see.
All you can stream crap is there because there is demand, because we are going crazy in our loneliness created with truncated interpersonal reciprocity of the urban life. If you removed Netflix today, it wouldn’t automatically improve our social lives, because the structure and organization of it heavily depends on the economic demands that shaped the living arrangements in the first place.
See how even tech is capriciously resisting remote work and thus an alternative, less lonely arrangement for the workers.
Remote work is often more isolating and lonely for workers, I don't see how it's a "less lonely arrangement". If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace. Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people. Remote workers will still find themselves surrounded by strangers when they arrive at the cheap city they were incentivized to move into, but this time they'll have one less place to socialize.
You're exclusively focusing on the first generation of remote workers, which had already responded to an existing non-remote setup. A second or third generation of reliable remote work would play an entirely different strategy which would create a much different ecosystem.
Either way, it is irrelevant. The gravity of "work here"ism is much higher than the agency of the workers.
> If anything, tech's resistance of remote work is the struggle to preserve America's last community: the workplace.
That's overly charitable on several accounts. Tech, or any mega corp, can't have such an intention while being a machine that merely responds to a single ultimate parameter that is profit, in some shape or form. The fact that people could have a simulation of a community in the workplace is an externality they will tolerate, as long as HR is happy.
> Friendships born in the workplace are a staple of urban life, it's one of the few places left where you can regularly and guaranteedly meet with people.
How many of your workplace friends do you think would let you stay over for months should you find yourself homeless? Lend you $20K if need hits? Take care of you while sick? Be at your funeral? And vice versa?
Most of those folks we can make at a workplace are affiliates, acquaintances, not friends.
Does a second generation remote work ecosystem/strategy suddenly restore a social community of people you consistently spend 8 hours a day collaborating with? The only difference between first and second gen workers is that second/third gen might be more likely to be born in some random place because first gen wanted low CoL. Is hanging out with highschool buddies forever because in remote world you never leave your hometown supposed to be the replacement for second/third gen remote workers?
> Tech, or any mega corp, can't have such an intention
I don't care what corporations' intentions are, I think the reality is that this is America's last community that remote work will destroy and the tech industry is struggling against it.
> Most of those folks we can make at a workplace are affiliates, acquaintances, not friends.
Most of everyone I meet won't be such close friends. The workplace is one of the few guaranteed places left for adults to consistently meet people who they didn't just grow up with. If the worst indictment of workplace friends is that most of them won't lend me $20k, well, I'll just have to live with that. I'll have to remove our social interactions from the record because they don't meet the required level of friendship.
> Is hanging out with highschool buddies forever because in remote world you never leave your hometown supposed to be the replacement for second/third gen remote workers?
That would be an example of not being surrounded by strangers. Mind you a good chunk of tech is made of immigrants from countries where a neighborhood wouldn’t be reduced to high school buddies; would include (extended) family, neighborhood with its other constituents. The default choice of not leaving the locale one is raised up in, especially if one could make the same salary remotely, wouldn’t be a stretch.
> I don't care what corporations' intentions are, I think the reality is that this is America's last community that remote work will destroy and the tech industry is struggling against it.
I do because it is an ersatz community born out of luck constrained by its makers. It is almost an in-flesh version of all-you-can-watch crap, in the sense of giving false satisfaction to real needs.
> Most of everyone I meet won't be such close friends.
It would be absurd if you did. You’d only need a few, but unlikely to make any in a city of strangers.
> If the worst indictment of workplace friends is that most of them won't lend me $20k, well, I'll just have to live with that.
Worst indictment is to make you think the sense of social interaction with those people can make up for a complete absence of real friends, an absence brought upon by the necessity of being near that workplace.
> I'll have to remove our social interactions from the record because they don't meet the required level of friendship
Again this is an absurd strawman. No one is telling you to only interact with friends. I am merely saying if you think your workplace acquaintances make real friends, you’re more likely to be deceiving yourself than not.
> The default choice of not leaving the locale one is raised up in, especially if one could make the same salary remotely, wouldn’t be a stretch.
Wonderful, instead of having to go to a city where people of all kinds mix together with ambition and purpose, it's so much better for people to just stay where they grew up and stick to people who just happen to be born near them. That's a great slogan for lonely people: don't reach out of your comfort zone for people you'll love, just never move and you won't have to deal with unfamiliar people. I apologize for being so sarcastic, I thought it'd be slightly funnier than drily expressing how ridiculously dystopian I think that is.
> it is an ersatz community born out of luck
No more luck-based than randomly being born in a geographical area. At least there's a non-zero amount of choice and purpose involved in travelling to a city.
> a complete absence of real friends, an absence brought upon by the necessity of being near that workplace.
It's been necessary to be near your workplace for a very long time, even before the industrial revolution. Such a causal link doesn't match up with any history I'm aware of.
> I am merely saying if you think your workplace acquaintances make real friends, you’re more likely to be deceiving yourself than not.
I didn't say that workplace acquaintances make real friends. I did say that workplaces are reliable communities that you can discover new people and make real friends in. Also, workplace acquaintances are good sources of socialization on their own when it comes to loneliness. I don't have to deceive myself to find great social value in such a professional and ambitious melting pot of people from all over the world. Should I be happy to be relieved of that opportunity? For what, the opportunity to never leave my birthplace (assuming I'm "second gen")?
> especially if one could make the same salary remotely
Okay you were the one telling me that corporations are solely focused on profits.
> Wonderful, instead of having to go to a city where people of all kinds mix together with ambition and purpose, it's so much better for people to just stay where they grew up and stick to people who just happen to be born near them. That's a great slogan for lonely people: don't reach out of your comfort zone for people you'll love, just never move and you won't have to deal with unfamiliar people. I apologize for being so sarcastic, I thought it'd be slightly funnier than drily expressing how ridiculously dystopian I think that is.
I think it is more dystopic, nay, tragic, when people are made to believe where mixture of ambitious strangers will somehow lead to love too. I don't blame you for such beliefs in an era of romantic comedies or other romanticizations of "single strong individual" where they feel entitled to such outcomes and it magically happens. But this combined with your other remark about "socializing needs" makes me believe you don't discern between different types of love.
Seems like you're focused on consummatory (eros in its wider philosophical sense) love if you formulate people as fulfilling your needs, or love as something you can stumble upon. Philia (brotherly) and agapic love are completely different than eros, and among other things arise from either reciprocal investment on each other's growth or selfless giving. They are built out of investment, not happenstance. That is the love of parents that make most of us into human beings out of nothing. Or the nice people in our non-stranger neighborhood that interacted with us and thought us manners etc. Think of many Mr. Rogers' in real life. I am not saying such neighborhoods is the norm anymore, and therefore don't blame you for your relational nihilism, but I am lucky enough to come from a place where traces of such love was still immanent.
> No more luck-based than randomly being born in a geographical area.
Randomness is irrelevant, that place is what grows you into a human being and once you're at the age to move on, it is no longer random. This again implicitly contains the notion that the universe owes us the optimal configuration of a birthplace, because we are special.
> I did say that workplaces are reliable communities that you can discover new people and make real friends in.
You've admitted that people you meet in such places hardly make into friends that can fulfill the criteria I laid out. Also again notice the "eros" language, you think you "discover" such people, no investment or transformation is required from you, you just stumble upon them like mushrooms in a forest.
> workplace acquaintances are good sources of socialization on their own when it comes to loneliness.
Just like internet can be a "good" outlet for sexual frustration, but also a hindrance to actual needs of intimacy. That is precisely what I am talking about when I say eros. You don't just have "socialization needs", you don't even just have needs for "having friends", you also have deep needs for being a real friend for people.
> Okay you were the one telling me that corporations are solely focused on profits.
Yes, and that is different than flesh-and-bone people being focused on making a living, especially with depressed wages since 70s. I am not saying there aren't people who are entirely driven by money, but that is not the majority. All the while profit is a definitional property of a for-profit-corporation.
The bottom line of our dialogue is that, we are internet strangers that are somewhat talking through each other because we don't have reciprocal models of each other (other than a minimal, "HN denizen" one), we don't have an established reciprocity on helping each other grow. I think you're not arguing in best faith because you're lonely and the secondary benefits of someone responding back to you might be alleviating some of your admitted loneliness, and "fulfilling your social needs".
It takes a few bad exposures to ruin your mental model of strangers. And I am not convinced it is entirely a bad thing.
The concept of being surrounded by strangers is a 20-21st century urban phenomenon. In an environment where people are not strangers to each other 2 things happen; 1) they can build a more accurate model of each other and most of the time this leads to deeper reciprocal trust 2) they know their behavior is kept track by others and that changes individual behavior (I know, not always for the better. I am not trying to romanticize small town conformity). To expect the same dynamics in a city is a romanticism of different sort. Not trusting strangers because you don’t know them is rational. At least not to over-extrapolate your trust to every stranger you see.
All you can stream crap is there because there is demand, because we are going crazy in our loneliness created with truncated interpersonal reciprocity of the urban life. If you removed Netflix today, it wouldn’t automatically improve our social lives, because the structure and organization of it heavily depends on the economic demands that shaped the living arrangements in the first place.
See how even tech is capriciously resisting remote work and thus an alternative, less lonely arrangement for the workers.
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