[FRIAM] chatbot friends and parasociality

[steve smith]

glen wrote:
> \ (That doesn't mean Nick's attraction to ChatGPT isn't based in 
> loneliness. It's prolly *epistemic* loneliness.) I'd guess SteveS' use 
> is more like chatting, given his posts wander around so much.

Think you are not-wrong in the sense that my conversations with LLMs can 
be tangential and discursive.  LLM's require very little help in 
recognizing  a context shift which makes it easier on me NOT to have to 
try to explain the tangent I've taken with a convo.  Virtually *all* of 
my GPT threads are A) directed in the way you recognize in Nick 
(somewhat obsessed about a specific ideation I want to explore with an 
informed/motivated correspondant); B) discursive and tangential to 
anyone but me (and I'd claim GPT).   In the latter case, I do sometimes 
have to explain to GPT that I'm either still talking about the same 
thing, only in a different metaphor or idiom or that I have, in fact, 
caught a warp thread when GPT was still working the weft.

IRL, I've almost entirely lost my ability to small-talk or gossip or 
"chat"...   It used to be something I knew to be a useful lubricant, a 
space-filler, a bridge from one topic (or no-topic) to another of 
(presumed) mutual interest.   This (kind of) forum (FriAM) allows me the 
asynchronicity to not need to trust that *any given person* is following 
my bobs and weaves, but (perhaps) trust that some are tracking and a 
very few are even appreciating...   and the rest are using their 
convenient <delete> key (or button or ...).



>
> Behind my hypothesis is the idea that many people don't trust outlets 
> like mainstream media, university lecture[s|ers], civil and monitored 
> political debates, etc. is because they have a very deep desire for 
> the chat. I think that sentiment was pre-adapted to some extent by 
> reality TV, which we all know isn't real. But at least it's better 
> than some cabal of writers, directors, and producers crafting a 
> narrative to infect you with a mind virus.
>
> Of course, I'm nearly incapable of chatting. So my image of what it is 
> and how it works is prolly biased ... but that's also why I can't 
> stand Joe Rogan's show ... or The View ... or Morning Joe, etc. What a 
> waste of time.
>
> On 5/8/25 8:34 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I chat with George because there are some topics I want answers about 
>> but would avoid doing so if it meant I had to sit in a room with 
>> "experts" for an hour.    Sometimes I have sat in a room with them 
>> for hours (or even days) and then sought the consolation of sharp 
>> objects!   LLMs are the perfect tool to extract relevant information 
>> from a dry topic like this:  
>> https://registry.khronos.org/OpenCL/specs/opencl-2.1.pdf
>>
>> Sadly, a lot of engineer/technical culture is just consciousness 
>> lowering.   How many thousands of coffees have I consumed to put my 
>> impatience away?  Finally, a machine that by design can put its 
>> consciousness away when not in use.   The perfect engineer 
>> personality.   A miracle.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
>> Sent: Thursday, May 8, 2025 7:06 AM
>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> Subject: [FRIAM] chatbot friends and parasociality
>>
>>
>> I have a friend who doth protest too much about being a joiner. He's 
>> pathologically allergic to any hint of an accusation of being a 
>> fanboi. I've accused him of being such in the contexts of both music 
>> and soccer. In his reactions to my accusations, he cites the fact 
>> that I do often join things like parasocial Discord groups, often 
>> watch twitch streams, etc. The implication being that I'm a joiner 
>> and he's not. My counter is that I'm always a tourist in these 
>> parasocial spaces. Even when I do engage, the reaction of the 
>> community is mostly an immune response like "Who is this rando who 
>> suddenly started talking?" I lurk, pretending I'm something like an 
>> anthropologist. This is antithetic to joining, a perverted voyeurism.
>>
>> That's a set up for this hypothesis. Those of us who really get 
>> engaged *chatting* [⛧] with a bot like ChatGPT are solving the same 
>> loneliness (3rd place absence) problem that's solved with long-form 
>> podcasts like Joe Rogan, twitch streams, etc. The primary difference 
>> is (as Marcus points out) the parameter space for the LLM is huge 
>> enough to allow some of them to be meta-parameters, effectively 
>> selecting between different parasocial personalities. With podcasts 
>> and streamers, including group streamers, the lonely person has to 
>> *choose* the destination, choose the podcaster, choose the 
>> personality. And they have to organize their schedule or manage the 
>> downloads, etc. *And* they have to make some modifications to their 
>> own behavior in order to be a member of the group, if they want to 
>> engage in the chat or whatever.
>>
>> With the LLM, very little of that choosing and self-management is 
>> needed. E.g. it's easy to get banned from a twitch stream for saying 
>> something mildly political ... or using the wrong pronouns or even 
>> fat-fingering your typing ALL THE TIME. It's also easy to end up in a 
>> Discord dumpster fire where everyone's secretly an anti-Semite. But 
>> with ChatGPT, it's really easy to tune the meta-parameters simply by 
>> engaging it in the right way.
>>
>> Testability: If I'm right, we should be able to test this. I'm 
>> ignorant. But maybe there are a handful of tests for loneliness out 
>> there. I'd want at least 3 tests. Null would be no association 
>> between loneliness scores from those tested and their engagement with 
>> podcasts/streams/LLMs. Ideally, we might have 3 arms: a control, 
>> podcasts/streams, & LLMs. Incidental findings might get at the modes 
>> (audio, video, text).
>>
>>
>> [⛧] I can't emphasize enough that I'm talking about chatting, 
>> "conversation", not other usage patterns like trying to engineer a 
>> codebase or using it as a writing assistant.
>>
>
>
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