Connection

Nowadays everybody is so scared of life and of risk and of anything that comes from it, that we've developed brittle shells around ourselves which make us rather lonely beings.

— Iain McGilchrist

Oscar Wilde, on bad reply game:

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

This line from David Foster Wallace still haunts me:

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?”

And he’ll

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Every conversation has multiple layers. Some people hide behind masks. Others lie to others (and themselves). And others say one thing with their mouth and another with their body. It only takes seeing through one of these layers for somebody to call you a genius.

Not only are we failing to consider other species, we are flailing in our connection with one another.

Humans aren’t meant to excavate their inner feelings until they find their “true self.” We become ourselves in relation, not through introspection.

The dead internet theory is not really claiming that most of your personal interactions on the internet are fake.

It is, however, an interesting lens through which to view the internet. That it is no longer for humans, by humans – this is the sense in which the internet we knew and loved is “dead”.

Quanta interviewed 19 current and former NLP researchers to tell that story. From experts to students, tenured academics to startup founders, they describe a series of moments — dawning realizations, elated encounters and at least one “existential crisis” — that changed their world. And ours.