The article didn't answer my main question, which is how the economics work. How does it add up to have high-touch home delivery of $5 yogurt packages?
Every time I read an article about people trying to solve the 'loneliness epidemic' I can't help but wonder if we're not trying to solve the wrong problem.
Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me.
Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.
On some level I agree, but I don't think most of my fellow humans would agree.
Either way, editing away the need for social connections from humans seems to be quite a long way from our current level of technology, so it's not really worth considering as something that can actually be done. There's a philosophical discussion worth having despite that though.
Haha! I really like your comment though I couldn't disagree more[1]! I think I understand a little of the view and I think it's not all wrong. Here's the part where I think you're right: not all kinds of social contact is useful. One thing I have found very useful for discussion is Opus 4.6. You have to apply the usual tricks ("a somewhat foolish friend of mine said" / "a junior intern who's not doing so well thinks" / etc.) but it's pretty good at engaging with a variety of ideas and disagreeing and so on. It still has the LLM glazing but it is possible to drag ideas out of it.
By contrast, many humans can't even understand the thrust of an argument and so discussion is wasted on them. There's nothing more frustrating than making an argument of some meaning and having someone misunderstand it entirely. Avoiding that requires some degree of rhetorical skill and communication and a sufficiently receptive audience. I have no problem talking to my friends like this, but there is a time-subject-partner matching problem. I want to discuss Analects 13.18 now, and my friend who can give me context is putting his son to sleep[0]. So I talk to Opus 4.6 and DeepSeek about what I think it is and I get quite far in understanding why my (seemingly novel) interpretation is unlikely to be correct.
So machines are very useful in discussion and so on. However, I don't think they serve much of a purpose in assuaging loneliness. The reality of life is that it is most successful when it can organize into larger blocks: the cell, the organ, the body, the community, the state. And so I think our eusocial nature is strongly adaptive[1]. Perhaps with sufficiently advanced AI, a single person could exert sufficient power. Nothing in theory stopping that but I have other opposition to that (monocultures are non-adaptive, etc.). So removing our dependence on social connections will probably weaken us.
So given that that is the case, I think people over-prescribe solutions in a way that is razor-targeted to themselves[2]. As someone who is not lonely and quite socially fulfilled, I find that a lot of these prescriptions turn out to come from some other axioms which I feel are unnecessary. For instance, one trend is "why do they have to get their needs met from delivery man?" and I think that's silly. When I was a child, we kids "had a relationship with" or "had some of our needs met" by the school guard in that he was a civic ally of ours. He was usually opposed to our actions tactically but ultimately aligned. Our final exams in India are very important and one day one of my classmates, who was particularly scatterbrained, was late for one and he took him to the exam hall on his bike.
I don't think there's any reason to proscribe that social interactions should be within one's own immediate sphere. Our apartment building in San Francisco has social interactions that I think are normal in a civil society[3] - for the most part I interact there with strangers. Some I have helped or been helped by without ever having seen their faces. I think there is a joy I get from my direct family, and then my extended family and friends, and my communities, and my society, and as someone whose life is fairly joyful I'd say that looking around, (and with apologies to Tolstoy), "Happy people are all alike; each unhappy person is unhappy in their own way".
0: He did respond in the morning and it was very helpful. Turns out I misread the relationship Shen Zhuliang and Confucius had.
1: In fact, I'm of the opinion that pro-sociality is probably The Adaptive Trait. I recently picked up Darwin's Cathedral and am approximately 3 pages in and I already feel a kindred spirit behind that book.
2: Can we help it? Almost everyone has heard an expert or professor go "I believe that X is the most important thing that everyone should learn" and X always happens to be what they're stud...
The problem is, even if we somehow could do that, it's not possible to predict the consequences. Being social is exactly the one specific trait that gave humans massive advantage over other species, and was the backbone of our evolution.
As a two for one, we could also chemically excise the need to enjoy food, so we could consume some tasteless nutritive slop while spending 100% of our time in front of a computer, being that mythical 10x programmer.
have you ever been by yourself for more than a few weeks ? you would find out that even you need to see people after having spent enough time alone. and it hurts if you're unable to see people when you feel that urge. it's a real human need
This sadly is the default zeitgeist within Liberalism as a political philosophy - which is why elites across the world treat humans as cannon fodder. They'd sell them a "dream" and destroy them and communities they're part of in order to create cheap labourers and needy consumers.Once that has passed, they'll throw them under the bus.
Once our overlords get AI/Robots to work for them, we'll quickly see mass-eugenics (positive & negative) programs instituted across the world.
As Dugin et.al note, this is infact the central flaw in modernity - which was moderated occasionally by nationalism, fascism and communism - but ultimately all within the same broad loci.
I don't think a maximalist solution exists for something like this. And in fact historic trends are doing exactly what you talk about. And the best example is money. It eliminates social resiprocity in favour of a transaction that completes in the moment. And for many people that satisfies a substantial portion of their basic needs. But everything else is then left with just an emotional side as the primary objective. Relationships are based on fulfilling some barely understood emotional need rather than practical benefit. And we feel more and more need to use hacks to try and satisfy that.
I'm guessing you haven't considered evolutionary psychology? If we didn't yearn for other people, there would be a lot less reproduction, and the human species would die.
But it's a good question. My answer is social contact sharpens our mind. Without it, we would be stupider. And God knows we're stupid enough as it is without degrading our intellectual faculties further.
At a basic level, loners will get hunted down by tribes because they are easy prey and because their behavior can be misconstrued or spun by grifters as nefarious because they are different.
Yakult is a Japanese company? I always assumed from the name it came from mainland Europe somewhere. They did a Häagen-Dazs on me. Especially as the Japanese often come up with Western names like this that aren't even spellable in kana.
I heard about those from parents/grandparents and it was interesting in contrast to MLM meetings I had people trying to con me into participating. I fell for one invite once and they are pure sleaze.
How neat. I'd buy some Actimel too if a sharply dressed lady would show up at my door instead of a suicidal looking grocery delivery guy who carves the local word for "tip" in the elevator every time he doesn't get any.
That trope only applies if the non-Japanese version of the thing exists. Which, if you live in the US, it doesn't. I would be just as interested in an article about Minnesota yogurt delivery women, but they don't exist, so...
Sometimes news like this is upvoted, because it involves Japan, towards each a lot of Western techies have an unhealthy obsession on, but the moment when those techies are advised to not use the self-service thing at the super-market they start going bananas.
Japan is a very interesting country for Western people (US and Canada, Western Europe) because it is by far the most developed country that is not Western. In this regard, it is unique and intriguing.
With the automation of some customer service labor in japan, maybe this shows people value at least a bit of customer service interaction as a customer
I think most feedback I've seen regarding automation of customer service labour has been along the lines of "no! Get it away from me! I want to speak to the human!". With approximately that level of frustration.
I thought it was well established that interacting with an actual human was generally preferred to whatever we have to use now.
The automation exists to save money on labour, not to make our lives more convenient
Another variation on this is La Poste in France have a paid service "Watch over my parents" where you can get the postie to do a short regular visit to them (presumably alongside any deliveries) for distant children who can't.
I grew up on a small village in a small island.
The yogurt lady was an essential part of the community.
Many stay-at-home moms (including my mom) seemed to enjoy her visit.
She and my mom talked a lot, sometimes for hours (I still can't figure out how she completed her job when she spent so much time with one person).
They chatted about recent events, like the daughter of the fisherman gave birth, the great-grandpa of the liquor shop died of cancer, a newly opened restaurant in the nearest town sucked, and sometimes shared even personal struggles or family matters.
It really helped a lot of people combat mental struggles caused by the isolation of being traditional stay-at-home wives in a super rural area.
The only downside was anything you shared with her would be spread in the entire village before dawn.
If I remember right in many of the outlying areas of England the post people would serve the same purpose, though recently there have been cutbacks so they can't spend time. I also saw an estimate that people are giving $7 Trillion in unpaid caregiving services to family and friends. I'm sure the capitalists would love to be able to tap into that, but they have always been anti-civilization that way.
> a network of women delivering probiotic milk drinks has become a vital source of routine, connection and care.
So, yoghurt deliveries will fix the loneliness problem in
Japan? Seriously? Are the people at BBC drunk?
You only need to watch some youtube videos to realise that what
BBC writes, is narrating things very oddly. Yoghurt deliveries
will NOT fix the issue of isolated people. Japan's culture is
also very unique, but this is still a somewhat more global
issue; South Korea is in a somewhat comparable situation, for
instance. A lot of this ties into work culture, too; in Japan
even more than in South Korea.
This story and many of the comments illustrate the need for and value of human connection. The Yakult Lady is akin to Men's Sheds and long table events (The Longest Table, Longer Tables). Also on the continuum of connection building is the Friendship Bench.
These are all interesting to me. But of late, I've honed in on the challenge faced by those who are transitioning from one stage of life or circumstance to another. While working and raising a family, work-related activities such as Toastmasters and family-related ones like church or scouts or athletics, may drive participation in groups. But moving from that through a divorce or RIF or retirement may end previous activities and leave a person with no idea what to do next.
48 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] threadEdit: yep, appears Yakult has just kicked off an ad campaign putting Yakult Ladies front and center [0]
[0] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8HNY7Ta4dA
They don't eat yogurt or dairy in general.
Maybe the solution should not be sought in trying to increase social connections but in eliminating our need for social contact. This dependence on other humans has always felt like a flaw to me.
Note that I'm not saying that human contact is bad, just that our pathological dependency on it is.
wild take.
Either way, editing away the need for social connections from humans seems to be quite a long way from our current level of technology, so it's not really worth considering as something that can actually be done. There's a philosophical discussion worth having despite that though.
By contrast, many humans can't even understand the thrust of an argument and so discussion is wasted on them. There's nothing more frustrating than making an argument of some meaning and having someone misunderstand it entirely. Avoiding that requires some degree of rhetorical skill and communication and a sufficiently receptive audience. I have no problem talking to my friends like this, but there is a time-subject-partner matching problem. I want to discuss Analects 13.18 now, and my friend who can give me context is putting his son to sleep[0]. So I talk to Opus 4.6 and DeepSeek about what I think it is and I get quite far in understanding why my (seemingly novel) interpretation is unlikely to be correct.
So machines are very useful in discussion and so on. However, I don't think they serve much of a purpose in assuaging loneliness. The reality of life is that it is most successful when it can organize into larger blocks: the cell, the organ, the body, the community, the state. And so I think our eusocial nature is strongly adaptive[1]. Perhaps with sufficiently advanced AI, a single person could exert sufficient power. Nothing in theory stopping that but I have other opposition to that (monocultures are non-adaptive, etc.). So removing our dependence on social connections will probably weaken us.
So given that that is the case, I think people over-prescribe solutions in a way that is razor-targeted to themselves[2]. As someone who is not lonely and quite socially fulfilled, I find that a lot of these prescriptions turn out to come from some other axioms which I feel are unnecessary. For instance, one trend is "why do they have to get their needs met from delivery man?" and I think that's silly. When I was a child, we kids "had a relationship with" or "had some of our needs met" by the school guard in that he was a civic ally of ours. He was usually opposed to our actions tactically but ultimately aligned. Our final exams in India are very important and one day one of my classmates, who was particularly scatterbrained, was late for one and he took him to the exam hall on his bike.
I don't think there's any reason to proscribe that social interactions should be within one's own immediate sphere. Our apartment building in San Francisco has social interactions that I think are normal in a civil society[3] - for the most part I interact there with strangers. Some I have helped or been helped by without ever having seen their faces. I think there is a joy I get from my direct family, and then my extended family and friends, and my communities, and my society, and as someone whose life is fairly joyful I'd say that looking around, (and with apologies to Tolstoy), "Happy people are all alike; each unhappy person is unhappy in their own way".
0: He did respond in the morning and it was very helpful. Turns out I misread the relationship Shen Zhuliang and Confucius had.
1: In fact, I'm of the opinion that pro-sociality is probably The Adaptive Trait. I recently picked up Darwin's Cathedral and am approximately 3 pages in and I already feel a kindred spirit behind that book.
2: Can we help it? Almost everyone has heard an expert or professor go "I believe that X is the most important thing that everyone should learn" and X always happens to be what they're stud...
Just think of all the value we could add.
This sadly is the default zeitgeist within Liberalism as a political philosophy - which is why elites across the world treat humans as cannon fodder. They'd sell them a "dream" and destroy them and communities they're part of in order to create cheap labourers and needy consumers.Once that has passed, they'll throw them under the bus.
Once our overlords get AI/Robots to work for them, we'll quickly see mass-eugenics (positive & negative) programs instituted across the world.
As Dugin et.al note, this is infact the central flaw in modernity - which was moderated occasionally by nationalism, fascism and communism - but ultimately all within the same broad loci.
But it's a good question. My answer is social contact sharpens our mind. Without it, we would be stupider. And God knows we're stupid enough as it is without degrading our intellectual faculties further.
At a basic level, loners will get hunted down by tribes because they are easy prey and because their behavior can be misconstrued or spun by grifters as nefarious because they are different.
Surprisingly enough, I just looked the scheme up for this comment, and it's still active:
- https://yakult.com.sg/yakult-lady-agent/
- https://sg.news.yahoo.com/memory-makers-singapores-first-yak...
The Yahoo article could help explain some of the economics behind it.
But reading through all the great comments on HN - why should I care?
HN’s interest in this article is so “thing vs Japanese thing”
I thought it was well established that interacting with an actual human was generally preferred to whatever we have to use now.
The automation exists to save money on labour, not to make our lives more convenient
https://www.laposte.fr/services-seniors/visites-du-facteur
Many stay-at-home moms (including my mom) seemed to enjoy her visit. She and my mom talked a lot, sometimes for hours (I still can't figure out how she completed her job when she spent so much time with one person). They chatted about recent events, like the daughter of the fisherman gave birth, the great-grandpa of the liquor shop died of cancer, a newly opened restaurant in the nearest town sucked, and sometimes shared even personal struggles or family matters. It really helped a lot of people combat mental struggles caused by the isolation of being traditional stay-at-home wives in a super rural area. The only downside was anything you shared with her would be spread in the entire village before dawn.
https://youtu.be/IiU3Nk16BLQ?t=664
I know my neck of the woods has a not-for-profit called Meals on Wheels that does something similar.
If you want healthy bacteria, eat some yoghurt.
> a network of women delivering probiotic milk drinks has become a vital source of routine, connection and care.
So, yoghurt deliveries will fix the loneliness problem in Japan? Seriously? Are the people at BBC drunk?
You only need to watch some youtube videos to realise that what BBC writes, is narrating things very oddly. Yoghurt deliveries will NOT fix the issue of isolated people. Japan's culture is also very unique, but this is still a somewhat more global issue; South Korea is in a somewhat comparable situation, for instance. A lot of this ties into work culture, too; in Japan even more than in South Korea.
These are all interesting to me. But of late, I've honed in on the challenge faced by those who are transitioning from one stage of life or circumstance to another. While working and raising a family, work-related activities such as Toastmasters and family-related ones like church or scouts or athletics, may drive participation in groups. But moving from that through a divorce or RIF or retirement may end previous activities and leave a person with no idea what to do next.