About a year into COVID, when we were all at least 40% insane – and I had recently become a dad, so I was at like 65/70% – I became unaccountably

The World Record for Loneliness

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2024-05-06 22:00:06

About a year into COVID, when we were all at least 40% insane – and I had recently become a dad, so I was at like 65/70% – I became unaccountably obsessed with a pointless and, for almost all of history, unanswerable question:

Having not much better to do while my infant napped, I embarked on a long, spreadsheet-fueled journey of the mind to try to answer this question. I wanted to answer it not just for the present day (which, as we’ll see, is relatively easy), but for every point in human history.

Some of what follows is grim, I have to warn you. For most of human existence, if you were significantly far from all other people, you were probably about to die. But nevertheless, you’d have a chance of breaking humanity’s Loneliness Record before your impending death!

Back when there were only 2 humans in the world, every time they got farther from each other, both of them would simultaneously break the Loneliness Record.