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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Friends without friction

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

Compassion, as well as the way it metabolizes pain, is decidedly analog.

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

“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

starting to suspect having a good conversation and feeling connected is not primarily eye contact or asking a lot of questions or not talking about yourself or whatever, or even curiosity, but some yet more fundamental thing that drives all of it like ... joie de vivre??

i get the sense the core thing is actually quite simple, and all the indicators... See more

In other words, rather than trying to please humans, Scientist AI could be designed to prioritize honesty.