>I often wonder how people who are sentenced to prison manage to deal with social relationships. In a situation like that, I would imagine people try to create social relationships with whoever is around. Even if the people they have a chance to speak to are, let's say, unsavory.

When you are forced, its not so bad. You do the same at work, and did at school, lots of friends of convenience, some work people (might be) pretty unsavory.

>I think polarization of ideas has become a problem for everyone since covid. Or maybe since Trump. I'm not really sure. It seems like everyone wants to fight for a team, and I guess that is part of what comprises a human being. I get it, I like to play fighting games, which is by nature, zero sum.

I liked the idea of ideas being like viruses, like ideas going viral, they act the same way, and most people don't want to learn, they want an echo chamber or to win the internet argument. This has long been the case, I really hate identity politics, so I am a fan of apps that do not have user history or dismissal or acknowledgement by who said it rather than what was said.

>I think the question is how does one stay sane given the nature of society with covid. Given the climate, it's hard to say anyone behaves in a sane manner anymore. I feel like playing into the zero sum game has become some sort of addiction, one that isn't quite fully understood yet.

Covid's problem's (and global warming) is not really how it affects the world as much as how we react to it. Some people have had no differences, they were always homebodies, and sanity isn't well defined, but I think that online echo chambers really do infect people's minds. Stress creates growth, you grow muscles by damaging them, and you get stronger from growing or learning, if everything was easy we would be stagnant. I found happiness in covid times, I stopped caring about online hookups and it showed me I would rather do other things.

>I've always thought that the internet was some sort of new addiction that hasn't had any research into it. I remember AOL and I would be online for long periods of time, preventing my parents from using the phone since it was a 56k modem. And later in life when I had my issues with alcohol and marijuana, I saw strong parallels with my behavior with the internet.

There is a lot of research actually, there are clinics dealing with it in China for instance, and we know it keeps us awake artificially. Information gathering is addiction, as are the beautiful UIs we use.

>In my opinion, I think to maintain mental health, one must practice brutal honesty, give others the benefit of the doubt, or at least a chance to correct their thinking which could be influenced by various gods that the machine creates. All of us are only human, myself included.

Brutal honesty is nice but it can feel hopeless, as long as you can use that information its good, but I rarely see it working out that way. You shouldn't lie to yourself but its easy to burn out on too much honesty and overwhelming yourself with "I need to change all this".

>It doesn't hurt to be optimistic about the future either. Pessimism is bad for the soul in my personal opinion, though it seems to be quite the addiction these days.

Yes, echo chambers (mostly negative) are a big problem, negative information travels faster so its more efficient at traveling through your brain. I feel sorry for the polarization and feeling of hopelessness that I see so commonly, I think that incels are a good example where they berate each other for trying to change, and embed this hopeless mentality to give up, the most common phrase being "Its over/It was over before it began" to imply that the situation is hopeless "cope" for anyone trying to change their mentality, "suicide fuel" for what is implied as inevitable. In tech I see that as well in unfulfilled promises, and the unreasonable expectation that whatever tech will change the world.