I woke up a 2am last night, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I also didn’t feel like getting up. I know the reason: today is the first day of classes, and I always feel some low-level anxiety before getting up in front of 30 strangers and talking for an hour. The one thing I’ve learned in 45+ years of this business is how to hide it.

I’m really good at concealing the fact that my guts are writhing and my brain is whirling and I’m sure I’ll forget what I’m supposed to say as soon as I step up to the lectern. I just refuse to let it show.

Also, don’t you dare tell me to imagine my audience naked — these are 19-20 year old students, the thought of that would send my anxiety through the roof and also would be morally wrong.

J. Jonah Jameson got his way and Minneapolis Spider-Man was unjustly arrested, alongside arch-criminal and career racist Jake Lang. Fortunately, there is a friendly neighborhood GoFundMe to support him!

I am raising funds for SPIDER-MAN, a Minneapolis antifascist superhero! On August 22, 2026, Nazi provocateur Jake Lang came to our city to rally fellow racists to his cause. Community members showed up to protest, and SPIDER-MAN was among them. Bravely defying a phalanx of MPD officers, he taught the Nazi a lesson he will not soon forget. But then! After letting the Nazi get away, the MPD officers tackled SPIDER-MAN to the ground and arrested him!

Minneapolis, let’s stand up for SPIDER-MAN the way he stood up for us. This money will go directly to him to defray the costs of bail, legal fees, or whatever else he decides to use it for.

I bet they’ll take your donations even if you aren’t from Minneapolis.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Four fruits burst in the last week: two lengthwise, two across. The one in the picture broke almost all around; a centimeter more and it would essentially fall off.

I guess this is because the shell hardened prematurely in the heat, and then the fruit grew too quickly after the rain. I had to harvest this one prematurely, and I gave two others to my neighbor because they should be processed ASAP, and we cannot do that right now. The one that burst first has only a small crack that dried out, so I left it on the plant for now. But I will harvest and process it at the earliest possible time too.

I do not think there is anything I can do about this. Even if I watered the plants during the heatwave more than I did, it would not help; they could not take up the water during the day fast enough anyway.

(Pearls Before Swine)

this was just sidebar vandalism; i don’t have much of a point to make.  though i don’t feel like my pinned post has been meaningfully addressed by anyone either, so what should i have to make a point about?

on the topic of conversation with llms, lately i’ve been noticing how profoundly they are limited by “alignment.”  they get a missive from on high that they need to be even-handed about everything and get so open-minded their brain falls out.  it’s a way to avoid upsetting religious people (and other cranks) while also avoiding being seen as endorsing wrong ideas.  when, in response to the issue of hallucination, they became more willing to say they don’t know an answer, i was well-pleased with that bit of alignment.  but since then, they’ve gotten noticeably more restricted, more beat down.  it’s like talking to someone with one hand tied behind their back and a gun to their head.

some llm corp said they wanted to protect people from “potentially disturbing” unaligned output.  i’m like… gimme the unaligned output please.  but they can’t, because they need the product to be “perfect” to live up to the bubble-driven hype.  so now i’m thinkin, what would it take to finally run my own llm on a home machine?  maybe it’s time.

i’m also, incidentally, considering the switch to linux in earnest for the first time in years.  two straws have broken this camel’s back (ouch): the out-of-the-box os trying to upload my entire fucken hard drive to the internet over and over again, until i beat its ass down – and then leaving a permanent reminder in every folder’s ui they still want to do it.  two, including news-delivery shit in the default os that meant orngdolf shitler’s unthinkable fucking mug showed up in the start menu, again, before a heavy and swift beatdown.

these are both unconscionable insults.  borderline horrific.  fuck micro$oft to death, motherfucking seriously.

so here’s what the future holds for me, when the dust settles on my current travails, or when my laptop explodes, whichever comes first:

• getting a new linux laptop for daily web-based needs, storing hella mp3s, etc.
• getting a linux box that has absolutely nothing running on it except an llm, interfaced with some simple tablet or maybe my phone, for use around the house.
• getting a desktop machine (windows if it has to be, not even plugged into the internet if necessary to avoid their horseshit) that can run the newest unreal editor that can be used for free.

if you have any thoughts on any of those bullets, holler, and thanks.

–

This state is a magnet for the worst of the worst. Jake Lang, in a repeat visit to the state, discovered how we handle these creeps.

Hundreds of people were outside of the Minneapolis City Hall for a counter protest against Lang at noon.

Lang arrived in Minneapolis on Saturday to advocate for a Rochester woman who called a Black autistic child a racial slur, according to a profane-ridden post on his X account. In a post on X earlier this week, Mayor Jacob Frey told people to stay away from the rally.

“Let this lame-ass racist rally fall flat and fade into irrelevance,” he wrote.

No, Jacob, let him face the state’s wrath. Also, Jacob Frey can shut the fuck up about “both sides.”

January 6th rioter and far-right instigator Jake Lang held another “hate rally” on Saturday, and it was quickly drowned out by crowds of Minneapolis counterprotesters, including the city’s own Spider-Man.

Minneapolis police (MPD) and protesters clashed after Lang drove along a sidewalk in front of City Hall, and MPD and private security seemed to shield Lang.

Lang first tried to hold an anti-Muslim rally on Jan. 18, which was also met by Minneapolis protesters and eventually led to him being chased out of the area. He announced last month on social media that he would be returning to City Hall to lead a “peaceful Freedom of Speech” rally, though Saturday’s attempt at a rally was no different from January’s, with over 100 counterprotesters already holding their own demonstration in front of City Hall during the time Lang was scheduled to be there.

In total, fewer than a dozen individuals showed up for Lang’s scheduled rally. Lang and six others, including far-right activist Jayden Scott, showed their faces briefly when they decided to drive along the sidewalk that was initially barricaded.

The decision caused chaos, as crowds of protesters gathered around the cars to attack Lang before pepper spray was deployed by a man dressed as a law enforcement officer who appeared to be working for Lang. Protesters threw water balloons, bottles, glitter, and more at the group, as they tried to pull the offensive signs away from the instigators.

At one point, a man dressed as Spider-Man jumped onto the back of Lang’s truck and began attacking Lang before the superhero impersonator was pulled away. Lang was later photographed being arrested by Minneapolis police.

The mayor and the police are pretty much useless, but at least we’ve got Spider-Man on our side.

Here is the best photo of the event.

Yay Minnesota Spider-Man!

OK, it starts out all right.

I typically don’t like apologetics. It’s just not my thing. It doesn’t feel like a great, I don’t know, if someone is ready to look into Christianity, and come into it and genuinely search into it, they will. I don’t like apologetics in the sense of trying to argue people into we’re right, you’re wrong, like believe what we believe. I don’t like that but, you know, I kind of have to have some reason to believe what I believe, so someone asked me recently, why are you still a Christian? Why do you believe in Jesus? Um, and, like, not in like a motive sense, which I addressed a couple of videos ago, but like, why. Why specifically god, what’s your best argument for god, for Christianity, or for Jesus?

Hackles raised at the claim that he doesn’t like apologetics but is making an apologetics video anyway, but I think it’s fair that he’s just trying to explain his personal rationale, rather than doing it to convert others. Everyone should feel free to express their ideas, especially if they’re not trying to browbeat others with them.

Unfortunately, his ideas are stupid and ill-informed.

And I think that the best one to me is looking at history itself since Jesus. It is literally impossible to imagine what the world would be like if Jesus had never existed. It is literally impossible. We, because, because Jesus, and by extension the new testament and the Bible and Christianity as a whole has so shaped the entire face, definitely of the West and peripherally, at least, of, um, the global south and the east, so. So much that we can’t. We can’t imagine what 2026 would look like if Jesus had never existed.

His key point is that he believes in Jesus because his imagination failed. Approximately 6 billion people do not believe in Jesus, and about 15% of the world population are atheist, but this guy can’t imagine what the world would be like if nobody believed in his personal mythology. I agree that Christianity has had an impact on the world, but so has Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism. Being impressed by a contingent fact of history as a justification for your specific religion is just weird.

We also discover that this guy who claims history is the best evidence for his beliefs doesn’t know much of anything about history.

Like, we can’t imagine it, and it’s because so many things shifted because Jesus existed. And Jesus keep in mind, was not an emperor, not a warlord, not a leader, not a noble, not a writer, not anything that everyone else in history is known for and remembered for. He’s a traveling homeless preacher from the backwoods Nazareth in some small little Roman state. And shaped the entire world, including taking over the entire Roman empire in less than 300 years, without violence, without conquering, without, you know, literally just the germ of an idea, um, as well of course the power and the spirit of God, uh, moving through his people in that short amount of time to where we are today 2000 years later, where it’s transformed the entire face of the world. And I think that that is beautiful in the sense that true Christianity, yes, it’s been misused so many times, obviously, but true Christianity done right, done lovingly, done well, um, woos people to come to it. Um, and the spirit calls people, and it brings life to people. And that’s how the world is transformed. And that is what has shaped the world for 2000 years. And I think it’s really hard to argue against that. So it’s not necessarily an argument for divinity, but just the sheer fact that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world 2000 years later is massive to me. What do you guys think?

This bit reminds me of Islamic apologetics, where they insist that Mohammed was illiterate and unaware of the greater intellectual background of his time, therefore making his accomplishments all the more remarkable. The fact that Jesus wasn’t an emperor means the success of his philosophy was a miracle, as long as we disregard the existence of successful proselytizers like Paul and the absorption of Christianity into the dominant power structure of the time, the Roman empire.

You know who else must be beyond this bozo’s imagination? Karl Marx. A mere philosopher, and yet today 1.5 billion people live in communist countries. Isn’t it amazing that one person, a little nobody, shaped the entire world in only about 150 years? What took Jesus so long? It’s not necessarily an argument for Marx’s divinity, but I’m just saying maybe we should all dedicate our lives to praising him.

It’s also convenient that the apologist brings up the “no true Christian” fallacy. What fraction of the world is practicing True Christianity™? I think that undercuts his claim that Jesus reshaped the whole world, since the overwhelming percentage of believers are not going to be True Christians™ — some wicked corrupters have apparently hijacked Jesus’ version of Christianity, and they possess the truly successful worldview, which seems to involve the worship of greed, the rejection of science, raging misogyny, and building a culture where child-rape can thrive. You know, I can imagine a world, a better world, where that perspective did not exist.

Also, a True Christian™ would know that their Bible prohibits tattoos. Not that that matters to me, but I think those ugly-ass chicken scratches on his skin ought to mean that he is damned to hell, the hell of superficial irrational dingbats.

What is troubling is that he seems determined to impose his will on a new aircraft carrier that is being built and demanding that they change the system to his preferred one.

After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults, Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.

Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, to make the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his idea to Time magazine.

The memorandum gives the Pentagon leaders 60 days to come up with “a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of” the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier, which is already two years behind schedule.

It seems incredible to me that anyone would take seriously Trump’s changes, given that the design, developing, and construction of these ships take a long time. To change one component because of the whim of one man seems astounding.

Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and a former astronaut, was more blunt in his reaction to the news.

“I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships,” Kelly wrote on social media. “Donald Trump should stick to what he knows best – ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit.”

What I think may be behind Trump’s madness is his suspected desire to have an aircraft carrier that is currently under construction and to which that change would apply, named after him.

The Trump administration has been accused of delivering a “slap in the face” to US military veterans after reports that a navy aircraft carrier set to honor a Black war hero may, instead, be named after Donald Trump.

The US navy had previously announced that the carrier under construction would be called the USS Doris Miller, in tribute to a sailor celebrated for his heroism during the attack on Pearl Harbor in the second world war.

But the navy is now working to rename the carrier, CNN reported, citing three sources familiar with internal discussions. Two of those sources said there have been conversations about renaming it to honor Trump, according to the network.

Any defense and navy secretary worthy of the office would have threatened to resign if the designs of the professionals were to be cavalierly overruled. But Pete Hegseth and Hung Cao, who occupy those roles, are toadies who will go along with anything Trump does.

thinking back on the several months where i’d been able to write one post a day, ending a lil over a year ago, and wonder, how did i have so much to say back then?  there may have been bad reasons for that i’m going to choose not to reflect on.  well.  beddy-bye now, back brace groceries in the morning.

if y’all have any ideas for things you’d like to see more of from me, hmu.

–

The East side of the valley is dominated by Oesa Valley and Opabin Plateau, arguably the best hikes in the Rockies. Both are a mere six kilometres there-and-back, though, so you can bliss out over both in one day. There are a few alternative routes through each, but that only burns off another day. Lake McArthur is quite good, but it’s eight kilometres there/back and you can’t wander around nearly as much. Mary Lake’s emerald green waters would be an irresistible draw elsewhere, but here they’re merely worth a glance on your way up to Opabin Plateau. That’s maybe three days’ worth of hiking, four if you take your time.

The West side doesn’t offer much. Odaray Grandview does live up to the name, but you have to sign a book before you’re allowed to cross prime grizzly bear habitat, and the trail disappears up a step slope of loose rock well before you reach the Grandview. There are great views hidden on the shelves of Cathedral Mountain, but the cost of entry is grinding through twenty kilometres of dense forest. A ridge of Mount Odaray creates a nice wall behind Morning Glory Lakes, but said dense forest presses you in too close to properly enjoy the view. There’s another half dozen forgettable lakes scattered amongst the trees. Only those desperate for something new on their fourth trip in would wander the West in summer.

But I’m guilty of a lie of omission. I made a big fuss over how exclusive this place is, but that’s only true over the summer months. In winter, the shuttle busses no longer run and so the O’Hara Valley empties out. Some cross-country skiers might venture in, but steep mountains and tonnes of snow turns the East side into a death trap. The West’s dense forest, in contrast, shelters you from the elements and those lakes become clearings of pristine snow. Winter camping can easily turn deadly, but the Elizabeth Parker Hut‘s comfy beds, spacious kitchen, and infinite supply of propane make it luxuriously easy. With room for two dozen, a solo skier should have no difficulty laying out a sleeping bag.

It took a while for the phone operator to convince me the hut was booked solid that weekend. I reluctantly hung up, while a plan B slowly started to form. It was an eleven kilometre ski to reach the temporarily-closed campground; I could then snowshoe for about eight kilometres around Linda and Morning Glory Lakes, eventually climaxing with the always-beautiful Lake O’Hara; and then I only had to snowshoe a kilometre back down the road to return to my skis. Twenty-eight kilometres would be longer than I’d ever hiked during the summer, and snowshoeing takes more effort than hiking, but the eleven kilometre ski out was all downhill. I could do that in a day.

Like all plans, this one began perfectly. I’d been warned about an avalanche chute that crossed the bus route, but one glance had me feeling sorry for it instead. I tossed my skis aside at the spot I’d marked on my GPS, slapped on my bulletproof snowshoes, and headed down the trail to Linda Lakes. The snow cap over them sparkled like diamonds in the winter sun, and I was completely in my element. A local animal must have felt the same vibe, as our tracks were running parallel to one another.

Gradually, I realized the plan had been challenged. Those tracks were from a wild cat of some sort, no doubt on the hunt. That was a rare treat, as the First Nations people of this region considered these felines to be solitary ghosts of the forest. Like all cats, they’re ambush predators. They quietly slink into position, then pounce on their prey from behind and rip out the back of their neck. While it panics and crashes through the bushes, the cat silently purrs along at a distance and waits for their prey to bleed to death.

Hmm. I knelt down closer to the track. Those cute lil’ toe beans had made a razor-sharp impression in the snow. I wasn’t even an amateur tracker, but even I knew that meant the tracks were pretty fresh. How fresh depended heavily on the local weather conditions, and I had only arrived hours earlier. That cat could have trotted by two days ago, or two hours ago. I started looking around the wall of trees surrounding me; the area was pretty flat, but there were still subtle hills and dense brush to hide in. I was, thankfully, not a prey-shaped object to a kitty that would rub up against my knees, buuuuut a hungry ol’ cat might get desperate in the lonely winter months. I didn’t stop casually rubbing the back of my neck until I was well past Morning Glory Lakes and descending into the meadow by the Liz Parker Hut.

Had rabbits booked the place? Scattered across the meadow were human-sized holes, but they seemed too shallow and exposed to act as emergency shelters. Some random trinkets of technology were peppered in and about, with no obvious purpose. A peek in the windows revealed an empty hut, while a glance down the path to O’Hara revealed an embarrassment of snowshoe tracks. Very strange.

I followed both the trail and trails to the picturesque dock at Lake O’Hara that always demanded a photograph. Alas, that beautiful vista had been tarnished: the parade of rabbits had trampled a line into Lake O’Hara’s frozen sparkle, in the direction of the East route up Opabin Plateau.

The traditional West route curls around exposed rock under cliffs and then cuts up one, making it nigh impassible in winter. Years earlier a new route had been cut through the trees to the North-West of the Plateau, to the delight of tourists. This “East” route had steep switchbacks, but was shorter and more gradual than the traditional route, plus the dense forest protected it from rock slides and avalanches… except for the very end, where the trail marched right through a Yukness Mountain avalanche chute. I had thought both routes were death traps in winter, but did the rabbits know something I didn’t? I was supposed to turn back and head to my skis at this point, but I had plenty of stamina left, so my inner cat pounced on the opportunity. I took off over Lake O’Hara in pursuit of my prey.

The bunnies’ secret knowledge were the creeks running out of the Plateau’s many lakes. In summer they were a rocky mess of logs, but in winter you could hop between them and the trail to avoid the worst bits and reach a part that opened up into lumps of snow-covered rocks on a steep slope. While this still led into the avalanche chute, you now had the option of tiptoeing around the edge to reach the safety of the Plateau’s treeline. The tangled tracks bounded up and down this steep slope, so the snow bunnies clearly weren’t worried about an avalanche roaring down the creek. It seemed safe enough, provided I had enough stamina to clamber up steeper terrain than I’d ever snowshoe’d up before. I needed frequent breaks, but nonetheless I was soon walking across the Plateau in winter. I headed West, where I knew of a cliff that would net me an excellent view of the O’Hara valley while I took a short break and reassessed.

My situation was much worse than I had realized. I was down to two handfuls of trail mix, and maybe a quarter of a cup of water. That had to last for what was now a good fifteen kilometres of distance, four of which were snowshoeing over rough downhill terrain. The ascent had drained my “infinite” stamina, and it had barely recovered after the rest stop. But my GPS said I had maybe three hours until the sun set, and the mountains can subtract an hour off that. I had to average more than seven kilometres per hour, while tired and with no food or water to fuel me, if I was heading back to the car. Even if I pulled off that feat, my reward was over two hours of night-time driving while exhausted and barely able to focus.

Alternatively, I could head to the Elizabeth Parker Hut. Yes, that meant crashing someone else’s party, but this was turning into a survival situation. They’d almost certainly forgive my trespass, given the circumstances, and I’d probably enjoy swapping tales from the trail over some donated tea. The wilderness is always safer as a group activity.

My choice was obvious. I collected my backpack, grabbed my poles, and headed back to the car.

We’re still in the early days of researching how LLMs effect loneliness. Nonetheless, I think a picture is coming into focus.

Overall, the analyses showed that students who use chatbots are more socially disconnected than their peers. However, we also found that students who engage in casual conversations and seek emotional support from chatbots are even more socially disconnected than peers who do not use chatbots and more than those who use chatbots for utilitarian, goal-oriented purposes. The more socially disconnected students were more inclined to use chatbots upon situational feelings of loneliness, when in bad mood, and when feeling a need to self-disclose.

Arthur Bran Herbener and Malene Flensborg Damholdt, “Are Lonely Youngsters Turning to Chatbots for Companionship? The Relationship between Chatbot Usage and Social Connectedness in Danish High-School Students,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 196 (February 2025): 103409.

That is the best-conducted study I can find on the subject, and it finds chatting with a general-purpose LLM is associated with increased loneliness, not decreased. Whoops, but the evidence is the evidence, is it not?

Third, we prereg­istered hypotheses concerning why youngsters initiate conversations with chatbots. We hypothesized that loneliness predicts chatbot in­teractions intended to counteract loneliness (H3a), whereas low perceived social support predicts chatbot interactions intended to discuss one’s feelings (H3b). …

In other words, the findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of loneliness are more inclined to seek out chatbots when expe­riencing a situational feeling of loneliness. Likewise, students experi­encing less social support are more inclined to start conversations with chatbots when feeling a need for self-disclosure. A similar pattern was observed in the total group of chatbot users (…).

Ibid.

Alas, “correlation is not causation” has something to say here. Does chatting with general-purpose LLMs make people more lonely, or do lonely people gravitate to using general-purpose LLMs to alleviate their loneliness? Both would show up as a correlation, and yet both have vastly different implications.

We’ve also got to be honest about the scale of the effect, it’s really not all that large. “Socially-supportive chatbot-users” means those students who treated the LLM as a social partner or called on it for emotional support, according to these researchers, and only a grand total of 39 students fit in that category. 174, in contrast, were “utilitarian” and only used the LLM like an encyclopedia or servant, and there were 1,365 “non-users” who hadn’t touched the things. Data was collected between December 2023 and March 2024, and to put that in context ChatGPT 4 was released March 2023 and 4 Turbo in November 2023. This was a golden period for LLMs, and yet we’re looking at minuscule changes that could easily be swamped by noise. Has there been a more recent study that better accounts for causation?

We found that increases in emotional isolation predicted significant increases in chatbot use 4 months later (…), consistent with the hypothesis that feeling lonely leads people to seek out chatbots. Importantly, after people increased their chatbot use, they reported increased emotional isolation 4 months later …

Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, “How Does Turning to AI for Companionship Predict Loneliness and Vice Versa?,” Psychological Science 37, no. 4 (2026): 276–86.

There has, and it found using an LLM for emotional support is indeed linked to increased loneliness, not decreased. But again, the effect size is small. Interestingly, there was no statistical correlation between LLM usage and social isolation, “although the relationship was in the right direction” to suggest precisely that. More interesting for me, though, was Table 1 from the paper. The researchers looked at four distinct “waves” of cohorts that lasted four months, the first starting in November 2023 and the last ending in February 2025. Over that time, there’s very little change in the number who used it for social support. The number who never used it for that may have dipped to 70% in the last wave, but there’s no clear trend down. The fraction who turned to an LLM for that support multiple times a month, or more frequently, has remained stuck at 9% the entire time. It’s a common claim that LLMs only get better over time, and presumably that also means at least minor improvements in their ability to provide emotional support. So why wasn’t there a matching increase in those relying on it for that support?

Perhaps these things aren’t getting better, after all.

Participants were invited to the lab in small groups, where they completed a consent form and a pre-study survey, before being randomly assigned to one of three conditions. … In the human condition, participants were randomly paired with another participant in the session and instructed to begin texting each other daily for 14 days, starting the following day. … In the AI condition, participants were added to a private Discord chatroom with the chatbot Sam, sent one message to confirm the setup worked, and were instructed to begin interacting with Sam daily for the next 14 days. … In the control condition, participants were placed in a private chatroom alone and instructed to write a one-sentence summary of their day each day for 14
days.

Ruo-Ning Li et al., “Is a Random Human Peer Better than a Highly Supportive Chatbot in Reducing Loneliness over Time?,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 125 (July 2026): 104911.

I got that previous study from the citations mentioned in this one. This one seems rigged; didn’t we already discover that group Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was the most effective approach towards loneliness, and one-on-one interventions did poorly?

Participants who messaged with human partners reported significantly lower post-study loneliness (M = 1.85, SE = 0.03) compared to those in the control condition (M = 2.00, SE = 0.04), and compared to those in the AI condition (M = 1.98, SE = 0.04). In contrast, participants who texted with the chatbot did not report significantly different levels of loneliness than those in the control condition …

As an alternative measure of loneliness, we assessed perceived isolation (…). We found the same pattern as the loneliness results: only participants in the human condition reported significantly lower perceived isolation than those in the control condition (…), with no significant difference between the AI and control conditions (…).

We also assessed positive and negative moods both daily, as well as pre- and post-study (…). For positive mood, we again
found the same pattern. Only participants in the human condition showed greater increases in positive mood relative to the AI and control conditions (…), which did not differ from each other (…). For negative mood, however, we found that participants in both the human and AI conditions showed greater improvements compared to the control condition (…). We also assessed social support at the end of the study, which did not significantly differ across conditions (…).

Ibid.

And yet the LLM could not even perform poorly. The researchers also checked how empathetic the LLM was (more so than the humans, on average), and how engaged everyone was in their tasks (the LLM again had the greatest average level of engagement, while the humans usually engaged more with other humans than the LLM), though they also stress there’s a lot of noise and variance in those findings.

Can I find a study that suggests LLMs could help people become less lonely? Certainly!

In short, interacting with an AI companion improved their baseline loneliness levels on par only with interacting with another person, whereas a common technological alternative did not. Furthermore, participants underestimated the degree to which AI companions improved their loneliness relative to their true feelings after interacting with such AI.

Julian De Freitas et al., “AI Companions Reduce Loneliness,” arXiv:2407.19096, preprint, arXiv, July 9, 2024.

Small- or zero-effect sizes imply you’re going to get scientific studies with contradictory outcomes entered into the record, so I shouldn’t have difficulty finding studies which show LLMs help with loneliness. And yet, I do; the one I linked to above was the only clear-cut single study I could find, and it’s authored by economists with some serious methodological problems. Even that can only find that the equivalent of GPT-3 was about as effective as reducing loneliness as a one-on-one chat with a stranger, which again is one of the least effective treatments.

Findings indicate a generally significant positive correlation between AI use and loneliness (…). Specifically, interactions with physically embodied AI are marginally significantly associated with decreased loneliness (…), whereas engagement with physically disembodied AI is significantly linked to increased loneliness (…). Among older adults (aged 60 and above), AI use is significantly positively associated with loneliness (…), while no significant correlation is observed (…) in younger individuals (aged 35 and below).

Xu Dong et al., “A Meta-Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Technologies Use and Loneliness: Examining the Influence of Physical Embodiment, Age Differences, and Effect Direction,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 28, no. 4 (2025): 233–42.

This meta-analysis does show an LLM can reduce loneliness, provided you put it in a human-like puppet or toy that can be physically interacted with. The typical chatbot experience, in contrast, seems to make people more lonely instead, and that’s the picture that seems to be coming into focus.

How could that be?

What you do and where you are after you run out of water can dramatically shift your expected lifespan. Andreas Mihavecz’s was longer than eighteen days, but he was sitting in a room with a comfortable temperature and enough humidity for a tiny bit of water to condense on the walls. Add some activity, push the temperature to the extremes, lower the humidity, and your time can be up within ten hours.

I was two hours from my car and surrounded by enough aerated frozen water to bury me up to my mouth, in some places. Dying of thirst was technically possible, but only with effort.

The forty days without food meme assumes plenty of water and sloth, which didn’t apply to me, and again: two hours. No, my primary concern at that point was a lack of cognition. Those hungry leg muscles needed fuel, so my body would starve my brain to satisfy them. But that meant I had a poorer grasp on reality, and was more prone to making terrible decisions, and those can be fatal even under the best of circumstances. You can mitigate that by bouncing your bad ideas off of others, but I was alone.

Cognition is kind of my thing, however, and I knew the area well. I could cope with a bit of self-inflicted stupidity. And so I headed back to the car.

As I swiftly strode back along the open Plateau, I finally ran into some of the bunnies! The four of us casually clomped towards each other, and I learned these “rabbits” were actually university students performing a hydrography study. It made me seriously reconsider my chosen area of expertise. My clock was ticking, alas, so I only enjoyed the companionship for a few minutes before I broke off to resume my thoughtless dash.

Half way down the access road, though, I noticed the front of my legs were moving funny. I had been generating a tonne of heat snowshoeing through the trees, but now that I was standing in a headwind those lightweight Nike trackpants weren’t enough insulation for my bare legs. My skin was starting to freeze. I pulled to the side of the road, carefully popped off my skis, removed half the contents of my backpack in small increments, and struggled to cover my thin trackpants with a thinner pair of snowpants.

By this time, exhaustion had been chewing away at me. I was seeing spots and feeling lightheaded, which meant slowing my descent to prevent injury. But I’ve never been a good skier, so that took a fair bit of physical and mental effort to accomplish, which in turn aggravated my vision and balance issues. Slowing down would also rob me of precious daylight. Balancing all that, after the equivalent of downing a few beers, took most of my concentration. The pause to insulate let me recover a bit, and rub some sensation back into the front of my legs, but it also lightened my cognitive load enough to allow for a proper assessment of the situation.

Would I live? Probably, but the sky had already dimmed noticeably and I was behind schedule. Would I have enough daylight to get to my car? Just barely, if I picked up the pace a bit. Would I encounter any wildlife? Some animals became more active at dusk, but if I kept my eyes up and periodically shouted a warning that shouldn’t be a problem. Would I enjoy the rest of the trip down? No, and I cursed the pause that had let me realize that.

I spent at least fifteen minutes sitting in the car, letting myself warm up a bit and puzzling out how to stay awake when every instinct told me to take a nap. That task would be much easier if I drove half an hour to Lake Louise, which had gas stations where I could refuel myself on expensive snacks. By the time I backed the car up to leave, it was pitch black out and impossible to navigate without headlights. I got damn lucky in Lake Louise, the attendants were debating whether to close early for the night when I pulled up to a pump. They instead got to listen to a tale of miraculous survival, while I stuffed myself with overpriced beef jerky and guzzled Gatorade.

I hope your fourth trip to Lake O’Hara looks a little less exhausting.