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It may take an active, conscious, participatory approach to compensate for. Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkou

It may take an active, conscious, participatory approach to compensate for. Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more?

paganel 3y ago
Not the OP, but I do consider the cashier people from the groceries store nearby as part of the community.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Exactly, and usually after shopping at the same place for a while, I get to know the cashier a little bit. I've actually had some good conversations with some of them, and tellers at the post office as well. (One could say that it might be better for them if they didn't have a job and they got UBI, but to be honest, as young adult, I appreciated my first menial job at least in that it gave me a sense of responsibility and independence. And a lot of these people are young people.) What a lot of technologists seem to think is that AI will make everything wonderful by allowing us unlimited free time to do hobbies, but the desire to spend all of one's free time on hobbies is a very peculiar and minority desire of the very intelligent. (And it may be more of a fantasy than soemthing that would actually make them happy in reality.)
vouaobrasil 3y ago
> Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more? It can be viewed on multiple levels. First, there are many papers on the psychological literature about this, but [1] is an example, which is that even a little social contact with a few real people can make a person feel better. Check out Google scholar or the article I linked below to learn more. But that is also intuitive. But if a person is feeling a bit down and they have the "easy way out" (self checkout, other technologies that diminish casual human interaction), they will not gain the benefit of human contact. Second, on a greater scale, if all these little things add up, people will seek out interactions less often. For example, a few years ago I ran into some strangers that became friends because I needed their help to find a rare bird (I'm a birder). If I had an advanced AI app that listened for bird calls and helped me find birds better than any human, I might never have made friends with them. The point is, when technology is lacking to do something, we are more likely to seek out people to help us. Yes, technology does make some parts of life easier, but there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme. 1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00298-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00298-6
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  > there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme. On one hand though, would self-reliance also imply that people were responsible for actively seeking out social interactions like you're describing? I'm sort of confused when it comes to describing where the locus of control is when we're talking about these things.
troyvit 3y ago
I have a story that happened just last night. I almost always go through the self check-out because I can pack my groceries just how I like. So I scan my groceries while a round glass eye watches my every move and a machine repeatedly tells me to "place the item in the bag." )There are no bags, we're a bagless state, but the machine doesn't know that.) Sometimes I'll palm a Luna Bar or two just because I can. Last night I was running really late and there was a long line at the self check-out so I went to the one open human-powered check-out lanes. They were about 3x as fast as I would've been and I had a pleasant conversation with the checker and the bagger. Yeah my bananas got a little beat up but it was a much better experience. Now I feel like I can say hi to those people.

It may take an active, conscious, participatory approach to compensate for. Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more?

paganel 3y ago

Not the OP, but I do consider the cashier people from the groceries store nearby as part of the community.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
Exactly, and usually after shopping at the same place for a while, I get to know the cashier a little bit. I've actually had some good conversations with some of them, and tellers at the post office as well. (One could say that it might be better for them if they didn't have a job and they got UBI, but to be honest, as young adult, I appreciated my first menial job at least in that it gave me a sense of responsibility and independence. And a lot of these people are young people.) What a lot of technologists seem to think is that AI will make everything wonderful by allowing us unlimited free time to do hobbies, but the desire to spend all of one's free time on hobbies is a very peculiar and minority desire of the very intelligent. (And it may be more of a fantasy than soemthing that would actually make them happy in reality.)

vouaobrasil 3y ago

> Though, can you help me understand the connection between the grocery store checkout process and community a bit more? It can be viewed on multiple levels. First, there are many papers on the psychological literature about this, but [1] is an example, which is that even a little social contact with a few real people can make a person feel better. Check out Google scholar or the article I linked below to learn more. But that is also intuitive. But if a person is feeling a bit down and they have the "easy way out" (self checkout, other technologies that diminish casual human interaction), they will not gain the benefit of human contact. Second, on a greater scale, if all these little things add up, people will seek out interactions less often. For example, a few years ago I ran into some strangers that became friends because I needed their help to find a rare bird (I'm a birder). If I had an advanced AI app that listened for bird calls and helped me find birds better than any human, I might never have made friends with them. The point is, when technology is lacking to do something, we are more likely to seek out people to help us. Yes, technology does make some parts of life easier, but there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme. 1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00298-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00298-6

kelseyfrog 3y ago
> there must be a BALANCE, and not this recent trend of automating EVERYTHING, which takes the self-reliance thing to its logical extreme. On one hand though, would self-reliance also imply that people were responsible for actively seeking out social interactions like you're describing? I'm sort of confused when it comes to describing where the locus of control is when we're talking about these things.

troyvit 3y ago

I have a story that happened just last night. I almost always go through the self check-out because I can pack my groceries just how I like. So I scan my groceries while a round glass eye watches my every move and a machine repeatedly tells me to "place the item in the bag." )There are no bags, we're a bagless state, but the machine doesn't know that.) Sometimes I'll palm a Luna Bar or two just because I can. Last night I was running really late and there was a long line at the self check-out so I went to the one open human-powered check-out lanes. They were about 3x as fast as I would've been and I had a pleasant conversation with the checker and the bagger. Yeah my bananas got a little beat up but it was a much better experience. Now I feel like I can say hi to those people.