Coolguy1337
2mo ago
Confusion sets in when you spend most of your life not doing anything real. Metrics and statistics were supposed to be a tool that would aid in the interpretation of reality, not supercede it. Just because a salesman with some metrics claims that these models are better than butter does not make it true. Even if they manage to convince every single human alive.
I just tried out GPT 4.5, asking some questions about the game Old School Runescape (because every metric like math has been gamed to hell and back). This game has the best wiki every created, effectively documenting everything there is to know about the game in unnecessary detail. Spoiler: The answer is completely incoherent. It makes up item names, locations, misunderstand basic concepts like what type of gear is useful where. Asking it for a gear setup for a specific boss results in horrible results, despite the fact that it could just have copied the literally wiki (which has some faults like overdoing min-maxing, but it's generally coherent). The net utility of this answer was negative given the incorrect answer, the time it took for me to read it, and the cost of generating it (which is quite high, I wonder what happens when these companies want to make money).
Same thing happens when asking questions about programming that are not student-level (student-level question just returns an answer copied from a text-book. Did you know you can solve a leetcode question in 10 seconds by just copying the answer someone else wrote down? Holy shit!). The idea that these models will soon (especially given the plateau the seem to be hitting) replace real work is absurd. They will make programming faster, which means we'll build more shit (that's probably not needed, but that's another argument). They currently make me about 50% faster and make programming more fun since it's a fantastic search tool as long as it's used with care. But it's also destroying the knowledge of students. Test scores are going up, but understanding is dropping like a stone.
I'm sure it will keep getting better, eventually a large enough model with a gigantic dataset will get better at fooling people, but it's still just a poor image of reality. Of course this is how humans also function to some degree, copying other people more competant than us. However most of us combine that with real knowledge (creating a coherent model of something that manages to predict something new accurately). Without that part it's just a race to the bottom.
But a lot of people are like you, so these models will start to get used everywhere, destroying quality like never before. For example, I tried contacting a company regarding a missing order a few weeks ago. Their first line support had been replaced by an AI. Completely useless. It kept responding to the question it thought I made, instead of the one I made. Then asking me to double check things I told it I had checked. The funny thing is that a better automated support could have been created 20 years ago with some basic scripting (looking for order number and responding with details if it was included.). Or having an intern spend 30 second copy-pasting data into an email. But here we are, at the AI revolution, doing thing we have always been able to do, now in a shittier and more costly way. With some added pictures to make it seem useful. Fits right in in the finance world I guess?
I can however imagine a future workflow where these models do basic tasks (answer emails, business operations, programming tickets) overseen by someone that can intervene if it messes up. But this won't end capitalism. If you stopped LARPing on this forum/twitter you would barely even notice it. Though it is a shame that graphic design and similar things will be hurt more than it should.
Coolguy1337
3mo ago
That said, mental illness runs in my family just as much as intelligence does, so I feel like I'm on the experimental dev branch, one of natures instances of "throw a dice and see what happens".
High intelligence means high resource (nutrient) usage by the brain. The chemical fires need to be cleaned up afterwards too.
I'll take your advice and attempt to change my environment, I just tend to think that external solutions are bad (the insight is from psychology in general. Most problems which seem external are actually internal. If you feel that you lack external validation, you might lack confidence, for example. And the feeling that I "need" a cup of coffee to be able to do my work would also be my brain lying to me. So I've been avoiding external solutions as reliance on external things feel like a bad tendency in general)
Figuring out what is (and how much, it's not binary) external and what is internal is very difficult. Hell a problem can have many solutions. Sometimes you find the root cause, sometimes you find something good enough (for now or forever). Just try as many and as varied ones as you can (as long as the risks are low).
Side note: I took a psychology class a long time ago. I asked a lot of why questions and for a lot of definitions of terms. I was not given a lot of answers. But I was given a lot of looks. From my observation it was probably the least rigorous subject I ever took (and that's saying something). But the teachers seemed to be very sure about themselves. And the students liked the fact that they were participating in the process of higher education so the wheel kept spinning. The harder it is to evaluate the truth, the more likely...
Yeah, willpower is dangerous, but a lack of it can be too. Some people are only doing alright in life because their instincts is smarter than the destructive ideologies they have consumed, and other people are only alive because they learned some degree of self-tyranny. The balance here is difficult.
Life is pain on the extreme ends.
By "tiny ones" I assume you mean children? Thanks for telling me about control theory by the way! I immediately fell into a fun rabbit hole about predictive processing. A final insight is that eggs may taste bad for you because your body knows that you shouldn't eat them, but this isn't always reliable so take it with a grain of salt (heh)
Yes. Yeah, it knows more than I do.
Coolguy1337
3mo ago
Thank you for your comment. And i apologize for not responding until now.
Your comments did not turn me off reading the post. They seem very reasonable in general. But I do disagree with the idea that i should not care about why it helps. The body is a biochemical machine. It can (in theory...) be figured out. Of course like you say it is miles different from engineering. Measurements are hard to do and very imprecise. The way variables impact each other is immensly complicated. This is before even acknowledging the fact that each human has a unique set of genes (which also means that large studies will miss a lot of things that could improve certain indivuduals). What occurs if a human has a gene that reduces intake of nutrient X by 80%?
Yes, most alternative medicine is crap. Some of it is crap that works because of psychology, some of it because of biochemistry. Chances are that the people promoting these ideas have no idea. They have just observed that it seems to work sometimes. Trial and error, along with a healthy degree of scamming. The thing that initially put me of this kind of stuff is that a large amount of people talking about it seem to make a lot of logical errors. They have tried a bunch of stuff, noticed that a few things worked. Then they developed semi-incoherent theories as to why. With their personality and knowledge influencing the theory itself.
But this does not mean it's all crap. A person claiming that might have a success rate of 90% (and save a looooot of time), but they will also miss new developments.
It's been some time now since starting the things mentioned above and it has kept working. I'm honestly still pretty suprised. I've started spending more time reading about the biochemistry of energy creation in the body and done some experiments. Another thing that has worked fantasically (in a very similar way) is niacin (with the flush...). My gut has never been good so it must have something to do with poor nutrient absorption (vitamin A improved my night vision to an absurd degree) despite eating nutrient rich foods.
Fifth:
This section is valid but it also worries me somewhat. Of course a lot of patients are confused and follow trends. But it feels dismissive. Yeah, your average young woman will probably not self-diagnose herself correctly, but the fact that she has felt the need to self-diagnose herself in the first place is a pretty strong signal that something is wrong with her. How many people with thyroid problems get ignored (and why is it so common)? My frustration is that there's an immense amount of chronic suffering that could be avoided, and I don't think society does enough about this. Someone has to help them, and if responsible people don't, irresponsible ones will. (sorry, this is somewhat incoherent and mixes several points but I have to get back to work.)
Does ADHD really have a clear treatment? Most meds work on SLC6A3, disabling a feature in the brain that from my (limited) research does not seem to be the root cause. If you have mold growing in the basement you can hide it by painting over it. But it will still be there. Slowly causing damage.
I'll leave you with one final example - one of the common ways to hack research studies for novel psychiatric drugs is to take advantage of improvement in an inpatient setting. Turns out that being checked in on and cared for every day, being surrounded by peers and social opportunities, and getting regular therapy makes people feel a lot better. Do these things and dump a new psych drug on them and they'll get better! But uh, not clear it really is the medicine doing it.
I've experienced this as a patient in a similar setting. I can understand why sick (and/or sad) people develop munchausens. We can never have nice things can we.
Coolguy1337
3mo ago
Chronic sinusitis is just a descriptive diagnosis. Most doctors will not look much further, perhaps give a medicine that treats the symptoms (but completely ignores the cause, just like your allergy spray. Look up how it functions in the body and tell me that's a good solution unless as a last resort).
It's very likely you can solve the problem with basic systematic problem-solving. Try to figure out when it's worse / better. Is it impacted by what you eat? Do you feel better outside? Inside? Away from the city? After a nasal rinse? Other allergy symptoms? Are other parts of the body inflamed? GERD? Dairy?
Symptoms are just that, symptoms. They tend denote that there is an underlying problem in your body. Right now your sinuses are launching an inflammatory response (a localized fever, in an attempt to deal with something it considers a problem). It could be that the air you are breathing is bad for you (hepa filters are cheap). It could be that your immune system has gotten confused (if so why? why is it not working properly? that seems dangerous? is it getting all the nutrients it needs to function properly?). It could be that there is another problem in the body that has gone unnoticed.
Coolguy1337
3mo ago
Do you only have congestion when laying down in your bed? If so it might be dust mites or an allergic reaction to your sheets.
Make sure you take this problem seriously. Poor sleep is really bad. And is easy to get used to.
Coolguy1337
3mo ago
You are not just your genes. You are your genes reacting with the (current) environment. Since this environment is miles different from the historical norm there's a massive potential for danger.
Are you weak to modern chemicals? Mold? The food you're eating? Lack of exercise? Lack of physical danger? Lack of responsibility? C-section? Parasites?
I am currently very depressed due to accidently (or rather, in overconfidence, assuming this would not occur, due to having felt oh so great for so long) taking too much glycine last night which screwed up my methylation (but I did sleep like a baby). I have a very similar reaction to choline in eggs. 1 egg is fine, 2-3 makes me melancholy, 4+ and it's a good thing I don't own a gun. I've spent many years unknowingly poisoning myself this way trying to eat healthy earlier in life.
Why do you desire to be a loser? Losers are usually not attacked. Perhaps it knows you cannot defend yourself? Is it because it senses that it's sick? Or because you've never tried before?
Or perhaps your genes just suck. But if I were you I would make sure that was the case (by changing your environment is as many ways as possible) before taking questions like the ones you asked seriously.
Surely it would be more better if nature just gave us all strong willpower?
Willpower was developed later on. It's also very expensive biochemically. Lots of things related to it can break. But ignoring that, high willpower is also quite dangerous. If you don't give in to your desires there's no guarantee of creating tiny ones. You might spend all your days working on (non-)esoteric math. Or sacrifice yourself to a cause. Or eat too many eggs because you are convinced it's good for you despite the horrible taste. Higher intelligence is fantastic. We should convince the fungi to adopt it.
Have you ever looked at the outer layer of the brain? Any interface, no matter how complex, can be exploited given sufficient computation. But that does not mean it's a good thing for anyone involved.
Coolguy1337
4mo ago
I work in software and academia. The idea that the best solutions win was something i believed in until i started to observe things a bit more critically. Now it just seems like a laughable statement. A reason for this is that certain things are extremely complicated, which makes measurements on how well something works, or will work in the future, difficult. Add in the fact that most people are good at following processes, not building coherent models of something that's hard to see, but is none the less real. What you get seems to be a certain kind of system that sort of works if you don't zoom out enough. Why do we have 5 guys solving the problems that are created by another 5 guys? It's just patches upon patches upon patches. And eventually the system gets stuck in a local (hopefully) maximum.
I would assume medicine works similarly, but since everything is even harder to measure there, and the fact that as you said, patients suck. The default should therefore be that nothing works even close to as well as it should. I have IBD along with extreme fatigue. Conventional medicine does not really have a solution to this. To combat this I've changed up my diet in multitude of ways. I saw the most improvements using Carnivore, to the point where it felt unbelievable, but it introduced other problems so it was not sustainable. So if Carnivore, a very "woo" thing with a hint of "bro-science" works well. What other things that are deemed "woo" actually works?
I tried a bunch of things, most did nothing, some had temporary positives, some negatives. Some, like folinic acid has minor but long term positive improvements. But I swear that something about B1 therapy that that Doctor proposed worked, in the sense that it's solving the problem. I've been a lurker on the internet my entire life, simply because it's never been worth the effort to type without a clear reward (money from work), but now writing feels easy and fun. Another, more objective measurement is that my hamstring/hip mobility has gone from -2 to almost normal. I can almost touch my toes now. I've attempted to fix this problem for 5+ years through PT and exercise. Nothing had any impact before.
Here's a study that I found, there are more if one looks around. Indicating it improves things in all kinds of problems https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33210299/. As another anecdote is that it also worked for my girlfriend with her POTS. First it made the symptoms a lot worse, then much better. And it improved her anxiety massively. His book also attempts to explain the science behind it. It would be interesting if those explanations also sound like woo since I don't have enough knowledge to know if they are wrong.
But if you think about it, different nutrients do different things in the body. It makes certain processes work faster / slower depending on what is available. If say fighting a virus needs certain nutrients, unless proof that we have enough, the reasonable assumtion is that more of these nutrients will help in that fight right?
If you have some good arguments that this is the wrong path to go down on I'd be very happy to hear it, since I'm still skeptical despite the fact that it's obviously working for me. I mean if there is something real here, and "real" medicine does not touch it, the "woo's" are the only ones that will.
Thanks for your time!
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
I assume that you're a doctor. Have you heard of the work of Derrick Lonsdale? Some articles. He also wrote some very interesting books.
https://hormonesmatter.com/the-wrong-fork-understanding-the-current-medical-model/
https://hormonesmatter.com/western-medicine-house-built-sand/
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
Check the start of this video. https://youtube.com/watch?v=h5Hyhmxli54
I have not watched it completely so I'm not sure if he mentions gut inflammation later on, but I doubt it. But as said in the video, the main cause of RLS is iron deficiency inside the brain. Getting stuff into the brain is complicated, minerals especially. Gut inflammation can screw with this process. If you have gut problems you should probably try to fix it, since it tends to get worse over time otherwise.
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
The idea of blanket testing is to do a broad nutrition check. "Do I feel better with this?" If so investigate why. Isolating variables is reasonably simple as long as it's a straight deficiency. For potassium, just buy a powder and see how it feels to eat. One can also look up foods very high in certain nutrients and eat them. The body has the not so suprising ability to 'taste' nutrients it needs. So if you buy seeds high in iron, eat those, wait until next day, eat them again. If at this point they suddenly taste fantastic, I'd wager there's something in those seeds your body wants. However anything connected to the B-vitamins, methylation and similar can get very tricky, since it depends on your specific genes and the ratios of the B-vitamins.
Assuming, you do need supplements in addition to the multi, how important is nutrient timing in your opinion? For example if OP is supplementing vitamin D, calcium, and iron. How strong is the synergistic effect of D+calcium and how strong is the antagonistic effect of calcium+iron?
From my experience one reacts to nutrients a lot quicker than what one would assume. But vitamin-D and iron is still in the 'you'll feel it tomorrow' stage, unless you get a iron shot which can be pretty instant if very deficient. Calcium is a lot quicker, a common symptom of low calcium is losing electrolytes like crazy. Sub-communities on reddit are very good for quickly finding out stuff like this, if you have a good filter for people with anxiety disorders. I don't know how antagonistic iron is but I try to take it without any other minerals if I take it. Calcium should be taken with D3 and K2 to prevent health problems.
I was also thinking last night that perhaps the need to supplement magnesium in the first place is already mostly explanatory. OP didn't mention which type of magnesium supplement they was using. Of the zillion options which do you think is best for bio-availability, the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, and sleep, Magnesium L-Threonate? Is it possible the version OP is using is just barely available enough to affect RLS, but not available enough at the brain? On timing, most recommendations are to take magnesium at night for sleep. In my personal experience if I take magnesium right before bed I end up with crazy dreams. With my last big meal of the day, or even at breakfast, tends to work better for me.
That is true. It is possible he's using oxide or something similar which is horrible. I usually take magnesium malate for energy. And a 3x magnesium in an attempt to get it everywhere in the body. I wish I could take glycinate to calm down but the glycine makes makes me depressed (and so calm I'd describe it as catatonic).
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
Look up the blood test values yourself if possible. Doctors often skip pointing out values on the verge of terrible, because unless they have studied nutrition on their own, they will basically know nothing about it. Except "Value X below Y is very terrible because of Z. But value X = Y + epsilon is fineeeeee". Very few have a coherent model about the body.
I don’t think I’m currently depressed, but let’s see whether any of the advice I got here changes my mind on this!
I'm sorry. I misread your post. Your reaction seems perfectly normal in that regard then!
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
The simplest explanation is that exercise is depleting nutrients that you are currently borderline low in.
Have you tested your Iron and Ferritin levels recently? RLS is caused by not enough dopamine being processed by certain receptors. One of the co-factors for this process is iron. So low iron will by definition cause RLS. It could be something else causing low dopamine but since magnesium helps you temporarily, it seems worth trying.
Do not trust the doctors if they try to pin your problems on something psychological. They just default to that when they don't have a clue. I would also wager that your depression is a symptom of a underlying physical problem.
Solving nutrition / chronic illness problems is very complicated and very few people know what they are doing. Experimentation and sceptical but open-minded reading is sadly the best approach that I have found.
If I were you I'd try a basic multi-vitamin before and/or after exercise (just one with reasonalbe RDA, like 50-100%) and a high-quality (but low potency, iron poisoning is a thing and is very bad) iron supplement. Try it for maybe a week (or until you feel something), then re-evaluate. If something gets better try to figure out what. Since just spamming supplements without understanding them is bad long-term, but fine short-term, usually. So ordering some blood tests and researching the results is also recommended. Doctors will only react when the values are profoundly bad, especially if you are young.
Coolguy1337
5mo ago
o3 is approximately equivalent to the #175 best human in competitive programming on CodeForces.
That tweet you linked does not mean what you say it means.
My brother in Christ, the 174th best coder on Earth is literally an LLM.
Competitive programming is something that fits LLM's much better than regular programming. The problems are well defined, short and the internet is filled with examples to learn from. So to say that it equals regular programming is not accurate at all.
Are LLM's decent (and getting better) at regular programming? Yes, especially combined with an experienced programmer dealing with something novel (to the programmer, but not the programming community at large), in roughly the same way (but better) that stackoverflow helps one get up to speed with a topic. In the hands of a novice programmer chaos occurs, which might not be bad if it leads to the programmer learning. But humans are lazy.
Will LLM's replace programmers? Who knows, but given my experience working with them, they struggle with anything that is not well documented on the internet very quickly. Which is sad, because I enjoy programming with them a lot.
Another thing to add is that I think the low hanging fruit is currently being picked dry. First it was increasing training for as long as it scaled (gpt4), then it was run time improvements on the model (have it re-read it's own output and sanity check it, increasing the cost of a query by a lot). I'm sure that there are more improvements on the way but like most 'AI' stuff, the early improvements are usually the easiest. So saying that programming is dead in X amount of years because "lllllook at all this progress!!!" is way too reactive.
I've tried the reasoning models. They fail just as much (just tried Gemini 2.5 too and it did even worse). The purpose was to illustrate an example of how they fail. To showcase their poor reliability. I did not say they won't get better. They will, just not as much as you think. You can't just take 2 datapoints and extrapolate forever.
And I don't get your example, wouldn't the NICE CKS be in the dataset many times over? Maybe my point wasn't clear. These tools are amazing as search engines as long as the user using them is responsible and able to validate the responses. It does not mean they are thinking very well. Which means they will have a hard time doing things not in the dataset. These models are not a pathway to AGI. They might be a part of it, but it's gonna need something else. And that/those parts might be discovered tomorrow, or in 50 years.
And I don't see why reality will smack me in the face. I'm already using these as much as possible since they are great tools. But I don't expect my work to look very different in 2030 compared to now. Since programming does not feel very different today compared to 2015. The main problem has always been to make the program not collapse under its own weight, by simplifying it as much as possible. Typing the code has never been relevant. Thanks for the comment btw, it made me try out programming with gemini 2.5 and it's pretty good.
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