The main reason why mentally ill people can’t ever improve is because the world still insists on seeing them as someone who should be working first and foremost. All the psychological issues get ignored bc society normally doesn’t give a rats ass about psychological issues. You have to do your job, and if it’s a low-level job, you have to feel bad about not being able to do more ‘important’ shit. And if you’re too mentally ill to work at all, then you have to spend all your time feeling bad about how useless and pathetic you are. The economy makes it impossible for the human psyche to ever recover once it’s damaged, and it also does damage the psyche all on its own even if the person has had a blessed life otherwise.

I mean Star Trek is an illusion, a fantasy. The only reason you know about Star Trek is bc people were willing to embrace illusion. The moment humanity rejects illusions is the moment we are thrown back into a cold uncaring reality

What’s the alternative? Insist that we don’t use AI, and that humans keep doing a much shittier version of what AI could do for us? That sounds much worse to me. Insisting on a primitive lifestyle is downright evil in my view. I understand your concerns bc I shared them for years but in recent years I’ve gotten over it, bc it’s inevitable AND there’s a lot of good things about it

If you just sit around doing nothing with your life, then yes you’ll feel very depressed. That’s why we will develop lots of awesome video games and other hobbies that will enable us to feel like we’re productive while having a lot of fun which is generally not the case in traditional jobs. Our lifestyle will be organized so that the “work” aspect of our psychology gets expressed very well and efficiently, making us feel like a million bucks, but it’ll all be an illusion, but we won’t care bc it’ll feel real. Meanwhile AI will handle the important stuff. It’s hard to wrap your head around if you haven’t thought about it for a long time. I was once like you, but now I’m totally past that and I can’t wait for AI to take over. Remember, most jobs today are shitty, boring, pointless and stressful. It’s not good. And in human history most jobs were wretched. We’re moving into a better future and you’d be a fool to be depressed about that! Not to mention, it’s inevitable, and resisting the inevitable is the definition of insanity!

It’s not hard to fake anymore, have you looked up the chat bots recently? They’re damn near human like. A few more updates and you won’t know the difference. A few minutes of talking to them and you’ll be pouring out your soul and crying about your daddy, more so than you would with a real therapist

What saved me was realizing that if AI does take away peoples’ sense of purpose and makes us feel useless and shitty, then we’ll invent a way to simulate purpose. Even if it means working a “job” in a VR program that doesn’t actually serve any purpose except our own mental health. So we won’t actually lose anything bc anything we lose we can get back through simulation which we can design to be more fun than it ever was in ‘reality’

I already went through all the sadness over the years, I finally came out the other side and I can now see AI as a blessing not a curse. Others will get there too but they may have to go thru some feels first