self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
I'm a transhumanist doctor. In a better world, I wouldn't need to add that as a qualifier to plain old "doctor". It would be taken as granted for someone in the profession of saving lives.
At any rate, I intend to live forever or die trying. See you at Heat Death!
Friends:
A friend to everyone is a friend to no one.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
It's a UK thing, Imgur got into legal trouble for not following new age restriction laws, and opted to pick up their ball and go home. I don't even blame them.
(I did use a VPN to actually look, in fact, I keep it on almost all the time!)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
Is having it easy every time not an option? Oh well, I did work at it, and I'm reasonably optimistic about the outcome. Thank you!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
Sorry, I don't speak Spanish. (Thank you though!)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
I wish I was smarter so I didn't have to work like a donkey, but thank you!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
I tried to open this without a VPN and got the "content not viewable in your region", which isn't a great omen haha. Thanks nonetheless!
Welp. Exam's in 4 hours. I've studied on and off for 6 months, and very hard (by my standards) for at least 2. I've been a complete shut-in for two weeks.
My performance is at the point where I'll probably pass, but that's not a guarantee. A minor fluctuation in cut-offs (due to the scoring system and thresholds) could still make all the difference. The MRCPsych Paper A can vary from 40% to 60+% percent pass rates from batch to batch. Hopefully they'll be a little more lenient this time, as the last go had the most failures of recent history. I can kinda see through the matrix now, when it comes to awkward questions and terrible phrasing.
I'd have liked to go into it right after a full night's rest, but my sleep cycle wouldn't allow for it. Still, I'm hardly sleep deprived. Wish me luck folks, I could use some right about now.
Edit:
Reassuringly, the actual exam had me go what the fuck at roughly the same rate as the dozen mocks I did. Maybe even better! I could have wrapped up the whole paper in 45 minutes instead of 3 hours, but I opted to take a leisurely two just to triple check, not that that made much of a difference.
I would say that >50% of the questions had answers that I could have answered in my sleep. For the rest, I had far more 50:50 tossups between two plausible seeming options out of the five per question than I did examples of total ignorance. I did spot a few questionable questions, such as 5 different options for a description of schizophrenic mannerism, of which one was perhaps slightly less wrong than the rest. Most of the time, my intuition lead me the right way even where I wasn't completely certain of the correct answer.
Then there are the stupid questions:
Which test is required before prescribing atomoxetine and Ritalin (separate questions)? The correct answer would be none, because there isn't a single test that is strictly required or even strongly suggested according to standard guidance. That wasn't an option, so I opted for blood pressure (almost certainly correctly) because well, they're stimulants, but that's almost totally irrelevant in practice.
Then they asked us about the method of action of vortioexetine, presumably regarding its antidepressant effects. The answer is "nobody fucking knows", but sadly that wasn't a choice either. I went for 5-HT1A agonism because well, it does do that, and it's a common mechanism for many antidepressants. Sigh.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think I achieved the desirable goal of minimizing regret. I didn't make any stupid mistakes, or unforced errors. Where I was wrong, it was usually due to arcane trivia or genuine ignorance. Many claim that the mocks are harder than the real deal, and I'd say that's probably true for this one. The typical passing score is low 60s, I already did better on average on most mocks, and I estimate >=70% on the actual paper. Which is very likely a pass! Still too early to celebrate, but I'm not touching another fucking textbook till the results are out.
Thanks to everyone who wished me well, I appreciate it <3
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
I agree that Bangladesh is a terrible place to fight, but I think that cuts much more against Bangladesh than against India.
India does not need to occupy Bangladesh to win anything that matters to it. There is already a convenient water barrier and rough terrain in the north that makes a defensive line on the Indian side quite workable. If Dhaka tried serious military adventurism, the Indian objective would not be to hold Dhaka, it would be to smash the Bangladeshi military and government C2, then sit behind its own rivers and wait. From that perspective, NE India is not strategically vital enough to justify India throwing itself into the full nightmare of riverine counterinsurgency inside Bangladesh.
On the other hand, Bangladesh is almost encircled by India, has very little strategic depth, and is highly vulnerable to both air attack and blockade. The Bangladesh Air Force is small, made up mostly of elderly F-7s and a handful of MiG-29s, and their ground based air defence is basically point defence with a few modern Chinese SHORAD systems around key sites rather than a dense layered network. In a shooting war, IAF squadrons already stationed for China or Pakistan contingencies could be retasked to hit Bangladeshi C2, logistics and fuel pretty quickly, with relatively low risk. "Victory" for India in that scenario is simply degrading Bangladesh to the point where it cannot meaningfully project power across the border.
Which is why, as you say, the more plausible threat is not regular Bangladeshi forces crossing rivers in strength, but Dhaka tolerating or quietly supporting Bengali militants on the Indian side. Even there, I think the constraints are pretty tight. Bangladesh is small, poor, and extremely exposed to Indian economic pressure. Hosting insurgents that blow up Indian bridges or kick off serious ethnic cleansing in Assam would invite air strikes and land/sea blockade that the country is in no position to ride out, especially without explicit Chinese backing. They'd effectively be betting the survival of your regime on Beijing deciding you are worth a confrontation with Delhi. That's a... really poor bet IMO.
There are deep class, regional and religious cleavages, and Hindu Bengali attitudes toward Muslim Bengalis are often quite hostile. West Bengal is still roughly 70 percent Hindu and 27 percent Muslim overall, and even in Assam the picture is a mix of Assamese Hindus, Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims rather than some unified "Bengali front". There are obviously communal tensions and sporadic violence, but the modal pattern in Assam and West Bengal is low level background strife and political jockeying, not large, disciplined sectarian militias just waiting for a shipment of AKs.
And as far as Indian Muslims go, I think people outside the region often underestimate how boringly normal this is in practice. Even in actual Indo-Pak wars, we did not see large scale Hindu–Muslim bloodbaths outside specific flashpoints, and there weren't significant numbers of Indian Muslims defecting to Pakistan. Outside of J&K, the overwhelming revealed preference has been to treat "Indian" as the primary political identity, or at least not to act on any divided loyalties in a militarily relevant way.
Hell, Bengali Muslims hate Pakistan. You know, the whole. Independence war and genocide deal. That's particularly true in Bangladesh, for obvious reasons.
Bangladesh might be cooling previously cordial ties, but they're not suicidal. I can't see a plausible path to them taking direct action, or even enough indirect action to matter. It's in a similar ballpark to Mexico deciding to invade the US during a war over Taiwan.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
Bangladesh's military is rather impotent. Sure, they could supply rebels and insurgents in Assam and the NE, but they're highly unlikely to divert a significant portion of Indian resources from a western front.
Even with recent political changes, I very much doubt that Bangladesh has the appetite for conflict. They're a small country, mostly surrounded by India, with little strategic depth and extremely susceptible to naval blockade.
You'd need them to host a significant Chinese presence to matter, and that isn't particularly on the cards for the foreseeable future. If it was a war with India vs China +- Pakistan, I can see it making a difference.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
The thing is, I believe the standard interpretation would be which specific outcome is most likely in such exams.
For example, a question that offers 5 side-effects for clozapine and asks for most common one will expect a single choice (and usually not have an all of the above option).
The question doesn't directly imply that the choices are mutually exclusive, thought the presence of an "all" option is suggestive (to someone who has picked up the vibe). A more sane option would be simply to ask "which of the following is commonly seen?", where all of them is clearly the correct choice.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
I was the penis at this game
I request more clarification and explanation of terminology. Were you the donkey in question too? I suppose getting sucked off would leave a good impression.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
Going by stated preference, you really want to accommodate her wishes and keep her happy.
While her switching to a different reason for turning down the shift is somewhat concerning, people are allowed to have multiple reasons for not wanting to do something. They even state the biggest one first, and in isolation, when they really ought to tell us everything else that matters. The fact that she disagrees with you on the viability of her career in that particular place? Well, that needs addressing.
You need to sit her down, explain the financial situation, and ask her what she wants, and doesn't want. Where did she imagine things were heading? Is she feeling lukewarm about moving in together?
That said, I do wonder what you're doing about the PTSD. The best evidence when it comes to therapy relates to the forms that involve desensitization. If you don't want to cough up the money, I might recommend simply booking a weekend at an Airbnb, practicing packing or figuring out transportation at a new location. Start nearby, same neighborhood even, and then slowly keep pushing yourself till you can begin to contemplate a move. Perhaps consider heavily staggering the actual move, should it happen. I would presume you'd have to sell your house to move into the new one, but if there's a period of extended occupation of both locations, move things over slowly, with friends and family around.
Then there are the more experimental treatment options, psychedelic therapy involving MDMA, ketamine therapy etc. Often both effective from the outset, and particularly so for treatment resistant cases of PTSD. They might be worth exploring if the standard drugs and talk therapies didn't help.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Yes. The exams run by the Royal College of Psychiatry, to be specific. Why Civics for People Who Failed Civics 101 is included is beyond my comprehension.
The official breakdown of marks is useless. The ratio, as far as I can tell is:
50% clinically relevant information (generous)
25% Why do they feel like I need to know this?
25% An ungodly assortment of antimemes and cognitohazards masquerading as multiple choice questions. Questions that have me questioning myself, or at least my life decisions.
I paid £500 for an exam with a 44% pass rate, I deserve better :(
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Often enough people who have no idea about item-response theory, test analysis, teat validity, or test reliability are involved in test creation and they end up making extremely bad tests.
"But Doctor, instrumental validity and test analysis/reliability are explicit parts of the exam syllabus!"
Not kidding. It's there. You'd hope the people making the exam would understand that better; the Royal College claims that every question in the exam goes through careful vetting, but I suspect they're the kind of vets that hang around kennels.
Questions being difficult or relying on arcane knowledge is one thing. Being malformed is a step too far.
Since I'm already talking about bad questions:
"Which of the following ideologies place the needs of the group over the individual?"
Socialism/Communism/Collectivism/Individualism/Capitalism
I've steeped myself in exam-speak enough to know that collectivism is the right answer. But really?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
William and Diane Corndale are seeking help for infertility. They have been trying to conceive for 5 years, but have so far been unsuccessful. Which of the following is the most likely consequence of this stressor?
Select one:
Feelings of guilt
Negative impact on self-esteem
Decrease in frequency of sexual intercourse
Increase in number of disagreements
All of the listed options
Your answer is correct.
Difficulty in conceiving may place significant stress on a couple, and there's the potential for a wide spectrum of psychological struggles to ensue.
The correct answer is: All of the listed options
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't want to be right at the cost of my sanity.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Minds.
Specifically, the minds of the awkward creatures who write the MRCPsych questions, filtered through third party study materials and question banks (who go off the recollections of the depressed students leaving the exam hall, not primary sources).
Why? I find that ~half of my nominal error rate arises from a game of "what did the examiner fucking mean by that?" Multiple potentially correct answers is the least of it, I just ran into the conjunction fallacy in the wild.
For any events A and B, P(A and B) ≤ P(A).
A child presents with {symptoms}, which can be caused by diseases A, B or A+B (as presented by options for answers).
Which of these is the most likely diagnosis?
Well, A+B can't be more likely than A or B by themselves right? Feminist librarians are rarer than librarians.
Or so the sane would think. Alas.
As Szasz said "insanity is a sane response to an insane world". He's listed in my notes as a notable antipsychiatry advocate, and I'm beginning to believe he has a point.
(You can rescue the question by saying it's violating the rules of English instead of probability, but it's the kind of intervention pediatricians would counsel against)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I have quite recently taken up the use of ellipses mid sentence, though I've always been fond of using them for trailing sentences. I don't think I'm a Boomer, though it is an association I make, for American Boomers at least.
Haven't seen it much in the UK or India, though I must admit I don't text near-pensioners much.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Thank you for the very lucid explainer. Out of curiosity, will the poor bastards working without pay get backdated pay once a budget is passed?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Bond existed well before the 90s.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
I doubt there are hard facts or numbers to back this up, but as someone rather bio-adjacent, and with plenty of friends and family in pure "biology", I sincerely doubt that being around women is the primary motivating factor for the men who enter the stream. And if there's a short man epidemic in bio, never heard of it. A quick search turns up zilch.
Just within medicine, there are stereotypically male vs female specialties. I've never heard of a guy become a pediatrician because they wanted to get laid more often, or not want to be a orthopedic surgeon because there are too many dudes.
The more parsimonious explanation is that a combination of innate proclivities, earning potential and skill filtering determine things.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Because fat people are stupid. If they were smart, they would not be fat. It is easy not to be fat, so if you are fat, it is because you are too stupid, lazy and greedy not to be fat. Everyone knows this!
Leaving sarcasm aside, I agree that fat = stupid is a stupidly reductive frame (with caveats for the smallish correlations with conscientiousness, IQ, SES etc).
That being said, it's 2025, for most people, relief from obesity is a prescription away. Free passes handed out if, after trial, GLP drugs don't work for them, but anyone wanting to lose weight and in possession of even modest means owes it themselves to try.
(This wasn't true back when the quote was presumably made, different times, less cooking under the warm sun of man-made wonders within my comprehension)
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
I'm touched you think your work was trolling. If only Count shared that definition!
Don't worry about it. While we raise an eyebrow at armchair psychoanalysis of the average Mottizen (or people someone has a grudge with), I doubt any of us would object here when it's Count in question.
I think it only takes a very quick glance at this forum and past moderation activities to realize that us mods have very little in common with the good Cardinal. We warn sparingly, and hand out bans even more so.
As is regrettably necessary, mod decisions usually revolve around matters of opinion, not the kind of objective fact that can be analyzed under a microscope. Yet, the average Mottizen attracts little such censure.
The last time I had to ban you, I even went to the trouble of rewriting your post to demonstrate a version that used inflammatory language to only the minimum extent necessary:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348561?context=8#context
So I am confident that it isn't the content, but the user presenting it and the way it's presented that's an issue.
At this point, you have the following options:
-
Keep doing whatever it is you are doing, till someone less amused by your antics permabans you.
-
Write something of actual quality to counterbalance things (you are in fact capable of doing this, look at your Alawite writeup, it won an AAQC). Or, if you're going to keep actual intellectual effort at what it is, phrase things in a more neutral manner.
As it is, my stance is that your current post isn't quite bad enough to warrant another ban, but has supersensitized my receptors such that a second offense will definitely result in a ban.
Honestly, I'm not sure any expression of sincerity will make up for past actions. Finding Christ or Allah right at the noose might do good things for your immortal soul, but it'll take a great deal more to make us not consider you a bad actor.
I'm not interested in debating your character with you, though I might with other people who genuinely don't understand our stance. What is within your control is your behavior, such that you may delay or deny the looming banhammer.
If you can't? Well, you'll certainly break out of the loop of samsara, for better or worse.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
I'm glad that someone remembers the time and effort I spent in analyzing Count. Almost seems worth it, though I'm never getting that lunch break back.
That's the rub. High effort trolls like Count demand similarly high effort in specifically litigating their many sins of omission or commission. I would be entirely fine with "haha, very funny, but we know what you're up to" as a ban message, but as I've mentioned here, those who aren't closely following his trajectory tend to be alarmed and request clarification.
I suppose one can draw parallels to reality. Are the police in SF worried about the reaction of fent users, or are they worried about the concerns raised by otherwise perfectly law abiding citizens?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to do this.
As I noted in my last ban for Count (and elaborated upon in subsequent discussion), he's very good at what he does (trolling). In a forum where people are largely acting in good faith, and where assumptions of good faith are both recommended (it's in the rules) and generally believed, he's the best at mimicking the surface traits of fact-based discussion.
Now, we could just warn and ban him with the bare minimum of effort, but that's generally a last resort. So any formal action usually requires a lot of explanation. That can get very tiresome, even burdensome.
And note that this effort isn't for the sake of Count. We know he's a troll, and the only reason he's around is because he contributes just enough to not be clearly net negative. We don't bother with the lengthy explainers for his sake, but we consider them necessary for everyone else, particularly newcomers to our forums, or those who aren't quite as jaded and get confused as to why seemingly innocuous or borderline posts get hit so hard. In a way, Count benefits from the existence of the people he seeks to rile up.
I'll bookmark this, just in case I need a proper analysis of his nonsense that isn't written solely by myself. Thanks again.
Thank you!
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