Ugh. I don't think you're trying to understand my side of things any more, you're just trying to be right. All your "/s" bits are just straw man arguments which have nothing to do with what I've said.

> Surely, a much kinder goal would be to help that person deal with their anxiety around being abandoned? /s

Sure, it would be nice, but their anxiety is their responsibility: you're not obligated to.

> Wouldn't those people be better served by seeking help for their inability to emotionally connect to others without visual cues? /s

Well, these people are already emotionally connected, or they wouldn't care that they can't see the person. They'd be best served probably by being colocated with the people they care about, but that's not always possible realistically.

> In a global society where you will almost definitely be required to maintain long-distance relationships at some point, isn't the reliance on touch for emotional connection the actual problem to solve? /s

Perhaps, but good luck rewriting a few million years of evolution. It would be better to focus on solutions that are actually possible.

> With the examples I brought up, I wasn't trying to get your opinion on specific technological solutions; I was trying to point out that many interpersonal needs are not, strictly speaking, rational. Human beings aren't rational, and in many cases we're both fine with building systems to accommodate that.

Sure. But we should build systems that actually try to fix the problem, instead of enabling it.

If you want to fix people's social anxiety, a good solution would be to educate people on social anxiety, create better educational materials, fund research, and make help available to people.

What you're arguing for is essentially like giving a wheelchair for a person who is paralyzed by a curable, reversible disease. Sure, we have the technology and it would improve one small aspect of their life, but why would we not just encourage them to seek treatment?

> > I'm going to reiterate that a lot of the things you're attributing as solutions to social anxiety, would be better addressed by actually seeking help for social anxiety.

> You can say this about literally any irrational human behavior.

No, you can't. That's nonsense. We don't have tools to address every irrational human behavior. We do have tools to address social anxiety for individuals who decide to work on it.

> Some of the behaviors I describe above are weird to me. It is weird to me that people feel like they're abandoned if they haven't spoken to anyone else for 3 days.

I don't think it's weird. I also don't care about things being weird/normal, and I'm really not sure why you're bringing it up.

> I don't see how that person's insecurity is fundamentally different than anyone else's insecurity about overburdening friends.

I don't see how it's fundamentally different either. It seems like both people could benefit from working on their social anxiety.

> And while I admit some anxieties are so severe that they can become a real problem, in general when I meet people with anxieties that are weird to me, I just try to accommodate them. I don't usually refer them to specialists.

Sure, you're not obligated to help people.

> A bias towards normalcy means treating common insecurities as fundamental and essential parts of being human, while simultaneously treating less socially acceptable insecurities as problems to be solved.

No, this is not what I'm saying: if anything I'm biased against normalcy because it's boring.

I AM NOT saying people with social anxiety should seek help for their social anxiety because it's weird: I don't really think it's weird.

I AM saying people with social anxiety should seek help for their social anxiety because it would improve their own enjoyment of their lives.