Something totally non-political (I think, though I’m sure someone will prove me wrong), but I thought this piece, an essay from someone I’ve never read, was insightful. Here is the final graf.
Despite impossible schedules and emotional fatigue, some friends continue returning. They send memes during meetings. They remember your important dates. They call you out-of-the-blue. Not because it is convenient. But because somewhere, beneath all the exhaustion adulthood imposes, they still consider your inner life important. Sometimes it is simply the stubborn decision to keep returning to people despite the world constantly training you to prioritise everything else.
I think the essay rings true, but it fails to note that as we get older, we don’t have many opportunities to make new friends. We aren’t diving into new hobbies, checking out different places, finding ourselves with people who we don’t know. I’ve come to the realization that the relationships I have, because they are here in Japan, have an extra measure of fragility. Anyway, something non-political for y’all.
This reminds me of some calls I need to make. And my wife may yet take me to live in Japan … how is it?
This article has been on my mind, in a melancholy sort of way. I have long realised that new friends seem (almost by definition) insubstantial compared to old friends, and as the ranks of old friends thin out I think often and with resignation about Christopher Hitchens saying you can’t make old friends. Such is life, I guess.
By the way, reading some of the comments, various people seem to be convinced it is written by AI, with many of the tell-tale signs. I have already gathered in the past that I am not any good at spotting when that is the case – does anybody here with experience of this phenomenon have an opinion on whether this is indeed AI generated?
“Bottom Line
The author is legitimate and previously wrote authentic columns. However, this specific article shows a clear stylistic shift consistent with heavy or full AI generation, corroborated by both detector tools and in-depth textual forensics. The “quiet grief” it describes now includes the quiet grief many readers feel upon realizing the essay itself may be an optimized simulation of human reflection rather than an unoptimized presence.
The debate continues because the piece is well-crafted and the topic universal, but the evidence tilts strongly toward AI origin.”
Is the article AI-generated
Steve, the place is matching my energy. If I were the hard charging person in my 20’s, convinced the world was changing and I could do something, I’d probably find it agonizing, but at this point in time, it suits me fine. My wife is a bit upset at inflation and often points out x is more expensive or do we really need to buy y and it worries me too, but more for my daughters than for me.
I detected an AI generation whiff to it, but it seemed more with the author polishing it up rather than one of those 101% AI generated things, which is what I want my students to do, so I’m not as sensitive to that. Unfortunately, I’m asking my students to do research, but a lot of the things they find are AI generated, but if I were to demand that they only find things related to the subject that are not AI generated, they would probably have analysis paralysis (the good ones, the bad ones would just churn it out).
gftnc – It’s hard to say how much of it is AI generated, but it certainly looks to me like it was, at the very least, punched up by a run through one of the LLMs. There’s a lot of affective language that is being strung together with very little concrete detail to ground any of it in one person’s individual life experience. The details are all vague, generic, and universal, as are the sentiments being expressed. It works, but it works by stringing together a lot of commonly expressed sentiments in ways that sound eloquent. To use a musical metaphor, it’s more blues jam than sonata. It riffs on a basic form rather than complicating or developing a distinctive initial statement.
Doesn’t mean it’s not evocative or relatable. Even if it is AI slop, or a patchwork of human writing and punchier language mixed in by LLM based on its own special mix of plagiarism purée, it’s aiming dead center of the human sentiment bell curve, which gives it a relatable quality even if there are no specific life details to be found anywhere in it.
I predict that in the next five years we will see a writerly backlash against this sort of writing and a push for essay genres that are cantankerously and distinctively personal in both voice and content.
I thought the writer intended to be generic rather than specific. The purpose is to speak to all of us old people so we can fill in the details from our own lives.
A a friend posted on Facebook about an anecdote about how Mickey Mantle was a rookie who stood up for Elston Howard, first African-American player for the Yankees. He pointed out that the problem was that Mantle was a rookie in 1951 and Howard didn’t join the Yankees until 1955, so it was impossible for the rookie Mantle to take a stand for Howard. So while there might have been some truth Mantle standing up for Howard, the idea that Mantle as a rookie had his value system so straight that he didn’t blink is bs.
It’s interesting that LLMs are able to target our desire for a happy ending/stirling anecdote. It’s designed to move us and make us feel better about ourselves. This is why nous’ comment “It’s aiming dead center of the human sentiment bell curve” is so on target.
I should add that LLMs are also trained to agree with the prompter, and this is also part of a strategy for getting people to engage with the LLM more frequently and to rely on it for validation:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352
As far as adult friendships go, I’ve found that hobbies and interests still have strong potential. I’ve met or deepened relationships with several new people through playing table top role-playing games – mostly since the pandemic. I’ve met and interacted personally with many people through heavy metal subculture. I’m meeting more through getting involved in bicycle advocacy and environmental stuff. Several of the friendships have even persisted after one of us has lost interest in the thing that brought us together in the first place.
Just returned yesterday from a weekend back on Long Island (land of my birth) where I got together with a bunch of my cousins and went to a high school friend’s 70th birthday party.
Over the last year or so, I’ve gotten back in touch with people who I haven’t really been in contact with for decades. People who were a big part of my formative years. I’ve been moved to find that I was part of theirs as well, and to find that I have been missed, and that my renewed presence in their lives is welcome.
A simple life blessing.
So, this post was timely, for me.
Also – don’t forget, boys and girls – AI is not your friend. AI doesn’t have friends, doesn’t know what a friend is, other than a word to match on.
It’s a slippery time we’re heading into.
I think it’s time for me to do that as well, russel. I’m a bit apprehensive, though.
You might be (likely will be) pleasantly surprised.
by coincidence, i’ve started msging with a high school friend who i haven’t seen or really talked to in more than 37 years. turns out our wives are going through very similar health issues right now – which sucks for everyone involved. but it’s also a little comforting for me to find someone i know trying to get through the same patch of hell that i am.
he’s on the other side of the country, so msging will have to do.
I might have mentioned at the time that a college roommate I had lost touch with about 30 years ago re-entered my life back in the fall. Unfortunately, it was because he was dying from what started as bladder cancer and that had metastasized in various parts of his body.
I got to see him three times over a month or so before he passed. Our little circle of close friends locked back in immediately.
My wife had spent significant time with everyone but him. But she felt like she had known him for years after a short time. It might have helped that the rest of us had told her stories about him over the years – and that he was extremely charismatic.
I think about him a lot and am kind of mad at the world over his death. You can’t make old friends, indeed.
I visit my ex-husband. I left him 25 years ago because I couldn’t handle the frustration of living with him. That doesn’t mean I don’t like him. We just couldn’t make decisions together.
Leaving was like getting out of jail. I swear I had PTS about making decisions for a while. However, years went by. We got in touch again through Facebook.
He has Parkinson’s and lives in assisted living and is dying very slowly.
I drove out to SPokane to visit last October. It was a painful exercise in not allowing myself to remember too much–nostalgia makes me want to cry and the drive out through the golden wheat fields has good memories for me and was triggering. I used to escape from David and go to Montana on vacations on my own by driving that highway. Each Montana day is like a jewel in my mind: blue sky, wildflowers, roaming around feeling delight. I can remember the days with joy, but for some reason driving out on the same highway just made me feel almost frantic with sorrow.
Anyway, I visited and the only reason I survived is TV. We watched some shows together–his choice because every choice has to be his. I could not engage in a conversation about our shared past, not even when he talked about how much he liked my parents. As I was leaving, he said something about being grateful that we were friends, and I told him that I still loved him. I said that because I thought it might make him a little happier. He doesn’t get any visitors.
Then I fled and ran back home. Now I call him about once a month and I am planning to drive out again. I don’t want him to die alone. All of his siblings, his parents, etc are dead and he was always too introverted to make friends. I’m it.
My circle is narrowing too, and I can imagine that at some point, when other key people are gone, I will have a hard time staying alive on my own because why? I think relationships are key to me for my life being meaningful.
Oh, wonkie. That is beautiful as well as sad. Thank you for your honesty and your pure soul.
I cut almost all contact with the GLOML many decades ago – he had made me unbelievably unhappy for years. After that, and after a Iull of a few years, I spoke to him about once a year – he always tried to get me to come and see him but I knew he was dangerous to me, so I always said no. When he was dying in hospital in the early 2000s (one of his friends let me know) I spent three days sitting with him (he was only compos mentis enough to recognise me the first day) and was with him when he died. Just before, I told him I loved him. I was and am glad to have been there.
Life is a very strange business.
The GLOML, whom I talk about on here occasionally, died of cancer fourteen years ago. A part of me has been missing ever since: subsequent relationships have failed because no one can compete with a ghost, and nor should they have to.
Meanwhile I play bridge, which I recommend to anyone with an aptitude, as a social game which makes new friends, who, given enough years, become old friends. This evening I had the pleasure of getting a somewhat fortunate win against the #1 seeds in a national knock-out competition, playing with a friend I first met forty years ago. We will have a minor row at some point about one hand we got wrong, as old friends may.
GftNC, my soul is anything but pure, not compared to someone who spent three days sitting with a person who endangered their happiness for years! I could only manage four hours.
Regards, Laura
wonkie, let’s not make comparisons! I did what I thought was right, and so do you. I stand by what I said.
Once, there were my friends and my wife-to-be’s friends. Over time, those were slowly displaced by our friends. With my wife in memory care, doing things with our friends is more difficult. Finding a new set of my friends takes more energy than I can come up with sometimes. I understand the attraction of senior active-living communities more than I used to; some of the high price is effectively paying for a cruise ship social director.
Oh, jeez. I think about this a lot, because so many friendships that seemed eternal and enduring in my youth have faded away over the years, due to divergent lives or idiocy (mostly on my part).
The friends I have now I cherish. And once in a while I do manage to make a new one, which I also cherish.