This. As soon as we treat them as “only monsters,” we start to think that “regular humans” aren’t capable of monstrous things.

Speaking only for myself: because the American government has, for 250 years, claimed to act on behalf of the American people. When it was liberating concentration camps and sending people to the moon, that was something to be proud of.* When it was upholding slavery and winking at Jim Crow laws, it wasn’t.

It’s a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and so he purports to speak and act on my behalf. That’s deeply embarrassing and shameful, even if I couldn’t have done anything differently to prevent it.

* (Yes, I know that even those “good” examples are complicated. I’m just forming an example here)

Because misinformation and disinformation are way more dangerous than anyone takes seriously; in my opinion, it could legitimately cause the end of our species. I think that being forced to at least have sources to support your assertion can help.

And I’m saying it should be normalized, especially for high-emotion and controversial topics. It shouldn’t just be for academic or professional work, but for casual conversation, too. I don’t think people should necessarily be forced to post sources every time, but they should definitely be encouraged to do so when asked.

Misinformation and disinformation are an extinction-level threat for our species. I’m not exaggerating. And I think that being forced to at least have a source can help.

Just because it doesn’t work doesn’t mean we shouldn’t normalize it.

Just because nobody cares doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to normalize them.

Took me a minute, too.

That…seems so obvious, now that you say it.

That’s not about Bob trusting Grace specifically (that’s a premise of the entire operation), it’s about trusting that the letter Alice handed Bob was actually signed by Grace.

That could very well work, yes; but I think that would require Bob verifying Grace’s signature, and that would require trusting that Grace didn’t make a unique signature that she only used for Alice, and making a note of who verified it.

There might be a way to verify those signatures with public keys in a way that didn’t require Bob to tell Grace that he was verifying the signature, which is still rattling around in my brain.

I’m inclined to say no. Reducing the problem down to its most basic parts: Alice is authorized to talk to Bob, but Bob doesn’t know that. How can Alice prove it?

Bob has to assume that anyone asking to talk to him could be Mallory, who isn’t authorized to talk to him but will always answer “yes” if asked whether she is. So the authorization he gets has to be from a trusted third party; it can’t come from Alice.

Grace is a trusted third party. If Alice doesn’t care about privacy, and is okay with Grace knowing that Alice talked to Bob and with Bob knowing Alice’s identity, Alice can just tell Bob, “here’s proof that I’m Alice. Show this to Grace and she’ll confirm that I can be here.” This is SSO, essentially.

If Alice doesn’t want Bob to know who she is, but is ok with Grace knowing that Alice talked to Bob, she can ask Grace to give her a secret code, and give that code to Bob, who can check with Grace to know whether or not that code corresponds to someone who is authorized.

If Alice doesn’t want Grace to know that she’s talking to Bob, though, she runs into a problem. Because there’s no way for Grace to send Bob a message without knowing who Bob is, he can’t ask anonymously, and because there’s no way for Grace to confirm that Alice is authorized without knowing who she is, Grace will always know that Alice has asked for authentication to talk to Bob.

Adding Dave in as a trusted fourth party could solve the problem—Alice asks Dave to check with Grace, and lock his answer in a bag with a unique key that only Dave has. Then Grace could give the bag to Bob, who doesn’t need to know who Grace is to pass the bag to Dave and ask him to unlock it. But Alice would be trusting that Dave won’t keep records on which bag corresponds to which person.

I don’t think that’s a surmountable problem. I’ll have to think about it some more.

That’s really clever. And dumb in exactly the way Silicon Valley would actually do something like this.

Yeah, we all need people, but none of us need every person.

A couple people have told me that they are just feeling burnt out/depressed/etc

That’s legit. A lot of people are. And when they are, they pull back, which leads to them getting even more depressed. It’s a pretty terrible cycle.

And it really is happening everywhere. There have been a lot of jokes (and rightly so) about the “male loneliness epidemic,” but while it isn’t male-exclusive and it isn’t sexual, there is indeed a loneliness epidemic. Some of it happens because online/social media/parasocial relationships feel like they fill that gap without actually doing so. But it becomes an epidemic because the diminished socialization with one person causes them to socialize less with their own friends, and it spreads like a contagion from there.

I’ve basically just stopped reaching out to anyone at this point.

I’ve talked about this with other people a lot, too, as I’ve gone through my 30s (I turned 40 this year): it really honestly always feels like “I’m the only one reaching out.” Like, it tends to feel that way to everyone I talk to, even the people to whom I feel like I’m the only one reaching out myself.

I think that’s partially for the same reason that teachers say they’re the ones doing all the work to grade students’ homework: teachers have to grade 30 assignments per class, whereas from the students’ perspective it’s “only one assignment, how hard can it be?” Meanwhile, the students themselves have multiple assignments from multiple classes to handle. In the context of this conversation, realize that while the individual touchpoints with a specific person feels like “just one friendship,” they’re trying to maintain several relationships, too. So you get the divided attention of all of your friends, because they’re dividing their attention across of all of their friends, just like you are. So you all feel like you’re shouting into the void, and you all pull back.

But it’s also partially because, in any friend group, the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” You don’t tend to see a whole lot of outpouring of affection and care over people except when they’re in a dire situation. So if you seem outwardly fine, you might not get much in the way of proactive outreach.

Both of those factors get amplified significantly in the presence of (1) ADHD (I can literally just forget about contacting my friends for weeks) and (2) introversion (if you’re friends with a lot of introverts, they may find that just having your number in their phone feels like a strong friendship and feel no real need to reach out).

This imbalance shows up in a lot of peoples’ friendships. Sometimes it just means that one person is the “planner” of the group and just has to bring everyone else together. That’s an asymmetric friendship in a way, but if that person’s ok with it, then it’s fine. It doesn’t mean that they’re any less loved. That takes communication, and sometimes you just need to start up that conversation.

But it can also mean that you need to find new friends because you no longer fit with your old ones. And that’s also ok! As you grow up and discover what you need, you realize what you’re looking for.

Outside of my work, literally the only people I talk to are my parents, sister, and my girlfriend.

I would recommend joining a club or society or something. Not like a guild, but something that forces a little bit of conversation as a factor of its existence. RPG groups are great for this. If you have a background with a religious group and you’re still on good terms with it, maybe show up to some services. Service groups also can be great for this. You can even tag along with your sister or your girlfriend to one of her groups. Just try to find a way to get that socialization on the calendar so that it happens regularly and you can count on it.

Another option, though this is situational, can be to start a group thread. There’s less weight and difficulty around replying in a group thread, and it can be a place to just send memes or thoughts or pictures of a cool leaf you saw. Be honest and upfront that you want to socialize with people more, and that can end up being helpful. The reason this is situational is that it can help a distantly connected friend group feel more immediate, but it can’t really create a friend group that doesn’t already exist.

I used to have at least 10 people who I could call on a moments notice and all of those people are gone.

If those were people you only talked to at a moment’s notice, that might be the problem. It’s the scheduled, regular interaction that you both need in order to maintain the friendship.

Adult friendships are hard. And it’s a pretty safe bet that the answer to almost any friendship question you have that starts with “am I the only one who…” is almost certainly “no.”

Honestly, I don’t even really know where they are unless I’m looking at them. The games that show all four face buttons and just highlight the one I need to push are the ones that really work for me.

Even if the Windows voice experience put Jarvis to shame, I wouldn’t be interested. I don’t want to use voice control on my computer. Just about the only time I actually need voice control are when I’m far away or my hands are busy; so it’s nice for turning lights on and off when I have my hands full, or controlling timers when I’m cooking, or turning music on without getting up from the couch. Sometimes I’ll use voice-to-text if I have a lot to say or need to think it through. But I almost never want voice control (even if it were completely perfect, which it is not!) for the same reason that I listen to podcasts on earbuds: I don’t want to bother other people! Certainly not while I’m working, and definitely not when it’s liable to take agentic actions for me.

Buttons, knobs, levers, sliders, keys—all of those are better than voice control 999 times out of 1000. I don’t even like touch screens that much, and I’d prefer them over voice control.

The Microsoft executives inhabit a different reality than I do.

Yep. No way Activision’s going to leave an addressable market as big as SteamOS is trying to be just sitting on the table. Especially if Valve puts some incentives behind it.

No. It is so simple that I do not need to read beyond your first sentence.

Ok. Then I won’t read beyond yours either.

Eh, yes but no. Just because there’s no legal action doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be societal pressure to not be a creep and a weirdo. It should be unpopular to have a romantic relationship with anyone with whom you have a power imbalance (and age is definitely a power imbalance): dealing with the raised eyebrows and looks of concern can help keep misguided but well-meaning people from becoming creeps, and it can help the victims of predatory relationships realize when they aren’t in a good situation.

The previous commenter was right: there’s no magic switch that flips in your brain on your 18th birthday that makes you suddenly able to make adult decisions. Some people are ready, some aren’t. Biologically it’s uncommon for anyone to be truly grown before they’re in their late 20s, but our society decided we were going to set the bar super low; so for people who have trouble clearing even that bar, the societal pressure is a good thing.

I say this as a man who’s four years older than my wife, whom I met when I was 21 and she was 17. I knew I wasn’t going to date her until she turned 18, but even still, having the push-back of people who are smart and thoughtful, and who said, “hey, you need to recognize what is going on here, and how you’re going to mature before she does, and the potential for it to turn predatory even if you don’t mean for it to”—in hindsight I really value that warning, and it helped us to keep it really simple and light for the first several years while she figured out who she is and decided whether she even wanted to be with me.

Obviously we still ended up together, and now at 40 and 36 nobody bats an eye at our age difference. But when I think about the hurdles we faced even with only a 4-year difference, and imagine an age gap more than five times that size? I don’t think I could ever be in that situation, but even if I could, I’d want those smart and thoughtful people to check me.

The societal pressure doesn’t necessarily do the same things as the legal pressure, but it still helps.

I assume it’s not, but are you thinking of the end of the first part of Bohemian Rhapsody?