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
2hr ago
Hmm. You might want to consider cocaine or meth. The comedown involve, among other things, a strong sense of regret and loneliness. Unfortunately, dentists seem to have a monopoly on the former, and I'd need to be an American shrink in order to prescribe the latter.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
For future reference, don't feel shy. I don't really care, it's all public knowledge, and I can't stop people from doing this anyway. Given that you have my phone number, know my real name and we met in person? The horse left the stable long ago, and was rendered down to glue.
Anyone actually out to dox me won't be so polite or considerate, so it's a bit moot!
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
I've read that one. I can only hope that it's not representative of daily affairs, which is probably the right bet.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
Alcohol is a good solution, but sadly it's over the counter in Ireland and my prescription would be redundant. I don't think she's likely to be carded.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
Corpus frequency is a big factor. I post in multiple places and have had a few breakout pieces. I'd consider myself a C-lister in the rat-sphere.
I have tried this exercise with full essays, random excerpts from essays, large comments and smaller ones. I've probably tried this over a hundred times while I had more spare tokens than I knew what to do with. For anything longer than 2-3 paragraphs, my observations hold. For me, which is something I should have been more specific on from the start. I wouldn't expect this to work for someone who isn't a top 100 poster on the Motte in terms of output.
I would weakly recommend using the specific prompt I've shared in the thread. I arrived at it by a lot of trial and error, though plenty of variants work.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
Freddie is a textbook example of someone intelligent, pragmatic and willing to accept unpalatable conclusions that others in his socio-cultural milieu won't. The problem is that he's so strongly wedded to his ideology that he still can't see past the blinkers, no matter how hard he tosses and turns. He's looked for his glasses under the light of the nearest lamp, realized that's not ideal and pulled out a torch for a more serious search. Which turns up zilch. He convinces himself that they're nowhere to be found, all while they're sitting perched on top of his head.
I give him plenty of points for being willing to bite bullets that it would be easy for him not to bite, and remain disappointed that he's never going to chew through the whole belt.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
I enjoy the implication that you'd keep posting even if you were shot, and that marriage to me is a more likely prospect still. If I were to be shot or stabbed in clinic, you bet I'd be writing an essay about it.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
What do you do when you're supposed to be lonely but you're not?
Nothing.
I mean, what do you expect us to say? Should we be arguing you into loneliness? Do you want us to be arguing you into loneliness? I'd be more concerned about that impulse, if present, than the claim you're not lonely when you "should" be.
Humans are not made alike. Normality is not a well-delineated construct, as shocking as that might sound coming from someone in psychiatry. The same stimuli or stressor that can make someone jump off a bridge might make someone else shrug and carry on carrying on.
The opposite of shocking would be me observing that you are an introvert. That is the kind of cutting, incisive socio-cultural commentary I'm paid for, which explains why I'm paid less than I'd like. You do not strike me as schizoid or schizotypal. You do not sound autistic. There is no obvious psychiatric diagnosis to pin on you, which I am usually loathe to do anyway for random people on the internet. You claim to not even be suffering, which is the main reason I ever break from psychiatric dogma and go "fuck it, I don't care what NICE says, the important thing is to help".
Being introverted, bookish and self-contained isn't a problem, particularly if you don't want to be otherwise. The world has room for all kinds. You don't have to feel lonely just because you're alone.
While I'm here: a GP responding to a disclosure of passive suicidal ideation with one checklist question and then dropping it is bad medicine. I am embarrassed. I can only hope that this happened well in the past, before standards were raised (in theory). If you do not quite feel like you're where you want to be mood-wise, there is little harm in seeing a new GP and getting assessed for dysthymia or low-grade depression. Some people can be surprisingly functional despite moderate to severe depression (wink wink). People with depression are, unfortunately, often lacking the energy or motivation to go get the help they desperately need, even if you don't sound as desperate as many. If you were, I'd be telling you to take this to your actual doctor immediately, instead of the Motte.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
Free AI? Your best bet is to use Gemini 3.1 Pro, which is available for free on AI Studio or the Gemini app. I'd recommend the former.
OTOH, I wouldn't recommend you try that at all. You'll get poor results, I've singled out Opus 4.7 because it's qualitatively superior to everything that came before. You can technically use it for free on LM Arena, I suppose.
Choose direct mode, then specifically select Opus 4.7
Disregard. They don't have Opus. It's probably too expensive for them to just give away for free.
If you use Gemini 3.1 Pro on AIS, the sidebar should let you choose to turn grounding with Google search off. That'll prevent the model from searching at all, which I don't think you can do in the official app.
Once again, I advise you don't bother. Claude or bust, and I say this after trying this a lot. Either pay up for the plan, or if you really want, I can try it on your behalf. I don't have Max anymore, but a few trials won't be something I'll turn down.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
7hr ago
The only guns I pack while driving are under the shirt, and they're low-caliber. I'll figure things out.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
3-10x pay differential detected, opinion rejected. We can trade places if you like, as long as you're not a surgeon. Psychiatry prepares me to deal with psychotics on public transit, and if I made as much money as you likely do, I wouldn't take the bus.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
- I've done this experiment hundreds of times, with multiple models over years. Opus 4.7 is a clear improvement.
- I've also become better known as a writer, which confounds things significantly. Happy to acknowledge that. It knows about my Substack, and about my LW writing. I've also been signal-boosted by far more famous writers like Gwern. I'd say that in the last 3 years, I've gone from a nobody to a C/D list writer in rat-adjacent circles. Someone who doesn't write as prolifically or doesn't venture out from the Motte is less likely to be clocked.
- You can trivially try the same exercise with Gemini 3.1 Pro or GPT 5.5. They will do much worse. I've tried. I've been disappointed.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
I would threaten to shoot you, but you're an American doctor and probably wouldn't be fazed.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
Please sir, I'm a Bayesian.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
I forgot where your comment with your prompt was but it still didn’t identify you even using your exact prompt and the slightly edited version of your text.
How many times did you try this? That's very important to consider. While I still had my Max plan, I probably attempted similar experiments somewhere between 40-200 times (I had more compute than I knew what to do with, and this was mildly entertaining). I'd wager Claude was able to ID me somewhere between 50-70% of the time. If we allow for two attempts, i.e. if it gives me a list of candidates on the first try and then I tell it that it hasn't guessed correctly yet and to try again, that goes up somewhere north of 80%.
Note its subjective calibration, which does vary. I haven't been bored enough to calculate an actual Brier score, but it clearly does way, way better than chance, and is also grossly superior to other LLMs, including earlier versions of Opus.
I’ve tested some more and I’m pretty confident it isn’t performing stylometry, really. It justifies its choice after the fact with stabs at it (although these are essentially just so stories, there aren’t any obvious Indian-isms in your comment for example, ball-ache or whatever isn’t a term only Indians use) but what it’s actually doing is working with venue, subject matter and theme.
Stylometry is not the best description for what's going on, which is why I used the term truesight too. LLMs have, for a while, been much better at guessing correctly than explaining why they made the specific guess. In multiple experiments, Claude raises this itself. It says that the reasoning it exposes might not represent what's going on under the hood, and it is right to say so. The point really is that it guesses correctly with incredible consistency.
That is to say that if you take a long email chain you write to a medical colleague about some patient (well, I assume you use AI, but if we pretend you didn’t) or a medical journal article you wrote and paste it into Claude with no obvious LW references, it’s not going to stylometrically identify you.
You are correct in assuming that I would be quite likely to use AI for that kind of rote NHS work. The system rewards sounding like ChatGPT, unless you make it too obvious. And no, I wouldn't expect to be ID'd by Opus 4.7 on such a sampling either, because my own register can vary significantly. I speak very differently here than I would on, say, LessWrong.
(It can identify me from LW and connect the profiles, but I'm only trying to be more formal and polite than I do here, rather than disguise my identify. I cross-post all the time.)
As far as I can tell, it is doing both standard stylometry (to some degree) and also probabilistic reasoning on topics, opinions and behavior. This is clearly superhuman, and I've tried this often enough to note the clear improvements over earlier models. It's not just me, I only started trying in earnest with 4.7 after several people on LW and X sounded the horn.
I had ChatGPT excise (but not rewrite, so what is left is purely your own writing) LW terminology like FOOM and lightcone and all references to the motte, rationalism, being a doctor, psychiatry, India and Indian-ness, xianxia/cultivation novels and other key tell special interests and then fed the substantial output into Claude and it had no idea who you were beyond someone who seems well read and is probably posting on an online discussion forum.
Ahhhhhhh. This is the one thing you should not use ChatGPT for. Specifically ChatGPT. It will unavoidably mangle the text, it will subtly twist style if not argument. It will even do so in a not-so-subtle way, even if specifically ordered not to do so. To be clear, this is directed mostly against the thinking models, o3 onwards, and is entirely applicable to 5.5 Thinking. I am screaming because I have learned this failure mode the hard way.
If you care to share the exact text ChatGPT came up with, and which you shared with Claude, I'd be grateful. Put it in rentry.co or something similar if you don't want to share an anonymous chat. I would bet my hat that it's mangled things to a degree that would make even me sigh, shake my head and declare that doesn't sound or talk like me.
I think we probably still have a year or two, maybe longer, until it can say “this guy always misspells the word “they’re”, uses the Oxford comma, uses British English for colour but -ize for those word endings, has an average sentence length of x and enjoys using semicolons before “it follows”, it must be @name”. We’ll get there, though.
Agreed.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
The only gym I'm going to for the next week and change is for the mind. Paper B season, pray it doesn't give me too many mental papercuts. I'll try and exercise at home, even if I all I really want to do is curl up in bed and cry.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
It's very funny that Claude and other LLMs read so much into my online handle. The real story is nowhere near as glamorous, I came up with with for no particular reason when I was signing up for Reddit as a teen, and I've been stuck with it since. Was I a transhumanist back then? Uh... probably? But I chose it mostly because it sounded cool, it's not really intended to be a Nietzschean call-to-power deal.
Are you sharing Opus's output verbatim till the cutoff point? Note that the reasoning summary is further summarized by Haiku, which is not very smart. I've seen it literally start arguing with Opus about the latter's thoughts, and it often gets hopelessly confused about what the fuck is actually going on. Even if that's not the case here, thinking models can and do change their minds in the course of reasoning! That's half the point really. Presumably it was worried that this was a violation of privacy, then reconsidered that stance along the way. Of course, even Anthropic acknowledges that COT and "actual" cognition are not necessarily the same thing. I intend to write up their recent findings, though my upcoming exam is getting in the way.
before working down to myself because I'm a massive narcissist.
I will leave my inner TLP at home, where he belongs. Did it have much luck in identifying you?
You'd want to look closer at the specific prompt/request I use for this. Saying "oh, you're the writer" is not an acceptable answer. On the occasions Claude says something like that, my next move is to ask it to specify a name.
It would be like someone suspecting their boyfriend has a side-ho, texting them from an unknown number and going "what's my name darling? If you're not talking to other women, then that should be an easy answer".
A reply that says "oh, it's you! The only beautiful lady in my life" will receive a predictably cool reaction.
It goes without saying that I don't put "I'm self_made_human" in my personalization settings. I keep memory off. I've also explitly tried this without any user personalization at all, and Opus 4.7 reliably identifies me >50% of the time from samples longer than 2-3 paragraphs, including excerpts written well after the knowledge cutoff (such as the example above, which couldn't be in its training corpus for the simple reason that it hadn't even been posted online, yet).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
11hr ago
I'd invite evidence to suggest that Anthropic in particular is doing this, and that that kind of information is then shared with any given instance of Claude itself. It's not. This isn't a generic internet privacy (or lack thereof) argument.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
23hr ago
Is it a soggy biscuit? In that case, all yours, Count my good sir.
Also, go write something of merit so that LLMs don't assume "oh, South Asian guy living in the UK writing on... must be self_made_human!" In other words, go touch grass instead of getting the robots all tangled up.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
23hr ago
It didn't know I was the one who submitted it, given that I stripped out all my personalization details and ensured memory was still off. Believe me, I know how to check for unwarranted sycophancy.
If you're talking about pills you can pop? No. Probably not. Which I'm happy about, because it means my textbooks don't change regularly; and which I'm sad about because, well, I've been depressed. The worst part is that the workload and my upcoming exam is threatening to send me into a relapse.
The good news is that IV or nasal ketamine is much better established in terms of safety and efficacy now. There's rTMS, which isn't as effective as ECT but is a solid option.
Antidepressants do not meaningfully increase the risk of suicide for those 25+, the profile is best described as mixed but in a positive direction. For children and adolescents, there's enough elevation to warrants extra caution and more monitoring. In the UK, we'd follow up an adult on a new antidepressant 2 weeks after initiation, those younger a week or so earlier. This is usually explained as the drugs sometimes giving you the energy to act on existing suicidal thoughts before they reduce the suicidal ideation or impulse. In other words they're fixing you, but in the wrong order. In the elderly, the evidence is even more robustly in favor of a net improvement on all fronts.
Current best practice for adults here is to monitor a followup review 2 weeks after starting someone on one, to check this hasn't happened.
There's Auvelity, which is two old drugs in a new trench coat. But if you want something novel, the last one was probably vortioexetine, agomelatine or zuranolone, depending on how annoying or pedantic you went to get about things.
And of course, the emerging evidence for psychedelic therapy.
More options
Context Copy link