Connection

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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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.

Friends without friction

Companion chatbots may weaken our ability to navigate conflict and difference—unless we make key design choices, says a new report

Maybe AI doesn’t raise the bar. Maybe it reveals how low we’ve let the bar drop. In a world where ghosting is normal and attentiveness is rare, a chatbot that listens is radical.

“People think that intimacy is about sex. Intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you can stand in front of them bare and their response is ‘you’re safe with me’- that’s intimacy” Adi Shakti

Oscar Wilde, on bad reply game:

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