Active listening is typically what people want and need. Most days, everything else reads as either an interruption or as bullshit, when a person wants to be heard.

The other element in those conversations is empathy. No bot can accomplish that piece. It’s a case of black and white, there or not, and it is a bot.

I think when people fill the silence with crap like “everything happens for a reason” they’re trying to push the idea of empathy in a way that comes off about as well as a bot trying to emulate a human.