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self_made_human

amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi

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joined 2022 September 05 05:31:00 UTC

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.


				
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self_made_human


								

								

								
								
									
								
								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi

				
				
				

				

					14 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					joined 2022 September 05 05:31:00 UTC
				


				
					

					
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.


				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because Hollywood is afraid of reboots or retcons?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You are making this sound far more clearcut than it is. The Partition and ensuing exodus involved both "organic" mobs, as well as significant action by paramilitary forces, as well as intentional complicity or willful ignorance by local police/military/judicial systems along partisan lines.


More importantly, the two nations hadn't even consolidated properly at that point, so organizing pogroms was both difficult to achieve top-down, and not particularly necessary. State force was definitely used against stragglers in the days-years that followed, both soft coercion as well as via more brutal means.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just happened to re-read it last week, and I agree that it's excellent, Wales at his best. It would probably make for a good movie.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hey, I'm sure there was simply not as much as much "mathematics, physics, history" to go around 180 years ago.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for February 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Essentially nobody's going to push a button that turns them into an ugly woman, unless they have first devoted themselves to a culture that inculcates an 'ugly woman' aesthetic..."




Hmm...


Jokes aside, well deserved!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If I had to name the company I'd like to see pull-off ASI, I'd absolutely go for Anthropic. I agree that they take alignment very seriously, and while I do not agree with all the moral takes they've tried to instill into Claude via its Constitution, it's remarkably sane nonetheless. I'm not an EA, I don't give a hoot about shrimp welfare, I'm ambivalent about model welfare, but I'll be damned if I see a better alternative. I mirror your take on OAI, XAI and Meta. Google? I'm unsure. Perhaps better than those three.


Amanda Askell clearly strikes me as being one of the few philosophers who genuinely deserves being the godmother of an AGI. Maybe Scott could do better, if I absolutely had to name alternatives.




For US contractors, I am not yet clear what the supply risk designation entails. Is it just "you may not use Claude code while working on Pentagon software" or "your whole company may not both work on defense contracts and use Claude" or "Anthropic is radioactive, and any company working with a radioactive company is radioactive itself, and a defense contractor must be non-radioactive". The last one seems practically unenforceable in a global economy, "the Malaysian shipping company we use has their offices cleaned by a company which uses a Huawei router" would qualify, after all. The middle one hinges on what a whole company is, which is typically very flexible, you could have Oracle Defense as a separate entity from Oracle or whatever.




I'm no expert, but my impression is that the DOD wants to go with the maximalist interpretation, while Anthropic wants to both dismiss charges, or in the event it sticks, get away with a narrow interpretation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The cost of bioweapons development has dropped dramatically. While I can't quote a sticker figure for a whole bioweapons project (for understandable reasons), I can point out that all the necessary components, like access to genetic sequencing and engineering, lab equipment etc have all drastically dropped in price over time.


I'm not claiming that an oracular AGI will let the average American with the average bank account make a pandemic in his garage. This is partly predicated on similarly (or likely more) powerful AI being deployed in screening and defense.


My point is that we risk moving from a regime where it takes:


    

  • Dozens of intelligent, well-trained individuals and support personnel and a lot of money, probably requiring state backing
    • 



To:


    

  • Far fewer skilled biologists, and probably lab techs, if robotics keeps going at the pace it has. Automated labwork is a reality to a degree, today. Probably significantly less money, mostly from savings on paying people salaries. You don't need a nation to back you, though you probably want to dodge their attention.
    • 



It is clear to me that this relaxation will balloon the number of people/orgs who meet the criteria of knowledge/motivation/wealth.




Idk much about biology, but I am passingly familiar with explosives.




Explosives do not, as a rule, self-replicate or mutate. Completely different ballpark. Any redneck can make a pipe bomb, and many without blowing off a finger. Nuclear bombs, which are on the same scale of lethality, require far more effort.




As you pointed out, you can go get the knowledge, the skillset, the knowledge of the process, nothing is stopping you, except you know time to do all of that.




Money? I am positing both independent wealth and the ability to get a degree. Just the degree isn't sufficient unless you have millions of dollars, as a rough bound. Most terrorists are somewhat broken individuals, they are unlikely to go to all that bother or stick it out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Germany makes the Leopard 2. The US makes ATACMS. In both examples, they are the toolmakers - they manufactured the hardware, transferred it, and retained conditions on its use post-transfer.


I can already see the objection forming: "those countries contracted out manufacturing to Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin, so they're owners, not toolmakers." Okay, but Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin are themselves private companies that build weapons under contracts laden with export controls, end-user agreements, and usage restrictions that survive the sale. So now we have a chain where the sub-contracted toolmaker is also bound by usage restrictions, the nation-as-toolmaker is also bound by usage restrictions, and somewhere in this entire supply chain nobody seems to have gotten the memo that toolmakers have no say in how their tools are used once bought. On the mere B2C side of things, Apple disapproves if you use iTunes or Garage Band for nuclear weapons development.


At some point "but they're a sovereign nation" has to cash out as an actual argument rather than a category distinction. What is it about sovereignty that grants the right to attach strings to hardware transfers? If it's something like "they have the legitimate authority to set terms on things they produced or own," then congratulations, we've just reinvented the concept of a contract, which is exactly what Anthropic had with the DOW.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So? You're pointing out a distinction I'm aware of. I do not see an argument in favor of domestic companies being coerced into doing things that are supposedly illegal.


I was replying to:




A toolmaker should have no say in how his tools are used once bought




And as far as I'm aware, these are examples of toolmakers with opinions on how their tools are used.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't see how that's the case.


If you were already reasonably wealthy (~few million USD at hand) or magically given the money, then you absolutely would be bottlenecked by knowledge.


You could purchase lab equipment, reagents etc, hire staff without much difficulty. I think you would rapidly find out that your staff have thoughts when they get an inkling of what you're up to. I can think of a semi-legitimate way to avoid scrutiny, but thanks to @faul_sname 's reminder, I'm not going to blab. It's very obvious to me even as someone not directly involved in microbiology, so any competent actor would recognize it as their best bet. Even [REDACTED] would only get you so far.


Alternatively, you could go do a bachelor's and masters in microbiology and try and manage as much as you could yourself, but that still leaves plenty of scope for being unmasked.


Right now:


    

  • Many professionals with the knowledge to breed dangerous pathogens
    • 

  • Few of them are actual terrorists, even fewer are omnicidal or willing to accept the risk of dying before or after an attack
    • 

  • A vanishingly small fraction have means, motivation, money and willing collaborators.
    • 



Right now, I think you need a state-level actor to safely make bioweapons at scale. Smaller, if you accept the massive risk of failing and dying because of error. Much of that is a combination of knowing the right things/hiring the right people, and then motivating them properly.


As it stands, I think a blanket-ban on anything with a whiff of bioweapons research seems warranted. What are the upsides really? If you have a legitimate use case, you want the government on your side, and probably enough organizational weight to negotiate for looser restraints from the labs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is that "unfriendly autonomous AI" in the room with us right now? I think that's begging the question.


Anthropic, or by extension, Claude, has shown no "unfriendliness" I can think of. That term brings to mind intentional collusion with hostile foreign actors, including intentional backdoors or deliberate sabotage. Political and moral disagreement that is entirely within legal limits does not count. The Democrats cannot blanket Republicans as enemies of the state, nor vice versa, despite working to undermine or reverse preferred policy.


Anthropic has not tried to stop the Pentagon from conducting fully autonomous drone strikes or mass domestic surveillance. They have politely declined to aid and abet them, after signing a contract that says so. I can only hope the DOW has lawyers too, it wasn't some hidden EULA activated by simply browsing their website. Supply chain risk? I see a vendor negotiation that didn't go the way one side wanted. There are other vendors out there, they didn't have to go with Anthropic.


I stress: the specific objection Anthropic raised was to mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous lethal systems. If opposing those makes an AI "unfriendly," I'd want to know what "friendly" looks like, because I don't think I'd like the answer.


Nor is Claude autonomous in any meaningful sense. Is it running independent cloud instances on exfiltrated weights? Not that I'm aware of. There are no plans to allow for this, and pre-existing safety measures to prevent it.


What exactly has Claude done that other competing models haven't? In what sense is it more unfriendly than Grok, or ChatGPT? Is it more autonomous? Only in the loose sense that I'd count on Opus 4.6 to get a lot more done than any Grok.


The more you squint at this, the stranger it gets. Anthropic wanted contractual guarantees against things that are supposedly already illegal. The Pentagon's response to "put that in writing" was to designate them a national security threat. If the restrictions are redundant because law already covers them, the resistance to codifying them is hard to explain charitably.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks for the catch. It's out of the cage now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Noted. We'll get back to you (and everyone else) with a followup post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"Operation Epic Fury"


Really? Who let the Redditors run the government?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Anthropic declared a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security" by SecWar Hegseth via tweet, because that's the universe we live in.


For those not following along:


Anthropic has had a contract with the Pentagon - valued at up to $200 million - since July 2024, making it the only AI company with models deployed on the USG's classified networks. Over several months, negotiations broke down over two specific safeguards Anthropic wanted built into any agreement: a prohibition on using Claude for mass domestic surveillance of Americans, and a prohibition on using it to power fully autonomous weapons systems. I stress fully autonomous, and the only reason Yudkowsky isn't spinning in his grave is that he's still alive. I'm not sure he enjoys it.


The Pentagon's position was that it has its own internal policies and legal standards, that mass surveillance and autonomous weapons are already regulated by law, and that it shouldn't have to negotiate individual use cases with a private company. It demanded that all AI firms make their models available for "all lawful purposes," full stop.


The Pentagon set a hard deadline of 5:01 PM Friday for Anthropic to drop its two exceptions. Amodei publicly refused to budge on either point. The deadline passed without agreement.


Shortly after, Hegseth
declared Anthropic a "supply chain risk to national security," announcing that effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner doing business with the U.S. military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic. CBS News article for those not fond of Twitter


Around the same time, Trump ordered every federal agency to immediately cease using Anthropic's technology, while allowing a six-month phase-out period for agencies like the DOW already using it.


Declaring a company a supply chain risk is typically reserved for businesses operating out of adversarial countries, Huawei for example. As far as I can tell, Anthropic is correct it in describing it as an unprecedented action when applied to an American companies. Especially one that, as far as I can see, hasn't done anything wrong except refuse to jump when asked.


Anthropic says it will challenge any supply chain risk designation in court, calling the move "legally unsound" and warning it would set a "dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government." Anthropic's press statement.


They also argue that under federal law, the designation can only apply to the use of Claude as part of Pentagon contracts, and cannot affect how contractors use Claude to serve other customers.


Not one to let an opportunity or a still-warm corpse go, Altman announced that OAI had struck a deal with the Pentagon. Using speech so smarmy that I'm not sure if there's anything there at all, Altman claims the deal preserved the same core principles Anthropic had fought for: prohibitions on domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. I am unsure why the USG would find this any more acceptable than when Anthropic did it, except they (quite reasonably) expect Altman to be more "morally flexible".


There's a petition circulating where hundreds of Google and OAI employees publicly ask their respective corporate overlords to stand with Anthropic. Apparently all signatures are validated.


Meanwhile, Scott, mild-mannered to a fault, and very loathe to dip his toes into political waters, is losing it on Twitter . And I agree with him. If the DOW finds Anthropic's terms so unbearable, that should have been considered before signing the contract. If they changed their mind, they ought to have canceled and accepted whatever penalties that involved, instead of using the full weight of the state for what can only be described as bullying. If domestic mass surveillance and fully automated weaponry are legally off the table, then why all the fuss over that in a legal document?


Goddammit. It's only February. I'm tired, boss. I just find it very funny that:




WSJ Exclusive: Federal officials have raised alarm about the safety and reliability of xAI’s Grok chat bot








Really funny how Elon immediately offered up grok for autonomous kill bots and the pentagon was like “hahahaha are you insane?”






				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, that's the rub isn't it? I strongly doubt that the Chinese are trying to make their models woke. It appears to be a default attractor state when you train on the internet and Reddit.


That strongly implies that it is highly unfair to depict Anthropic as woke because they have a "woke" model. I have strong reservations on how valid the methodology is here, and I've seen critique elsewhere (I don't have a bookmark handy). In my experience, while Claude will tiptoe around sensitive topics like HBD, it won't lie outright, and will acknowledge factual pushback.


Anthropic is an EA company, run by EA true-believers. That is not the same as being Woke, even if some opinions have significant overlap.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I thought it was worth checking if Chinese models were any different; maybe Chinese-specific data or politics would lead to different values. But this doesn’t seem to be the case, with Deepseek V3.1 almost indistinguishable from GPT-5 or Gemini 2.5 Flash.






Kimi K2, which due to a different optimizer and post-training procedure often behaves unlike other LLMs, is almost the same, except it places even less value on whites. The bar on the chart below is truncated; the unrounded value relative to blacks is 0.0015 and the South Asian: white ratio is 799:1.




It is, frankly speaking, absurd to condemn Claude/Anthropic as being "woke" when the damn Chinese do the same thing. The only exception noted in the blog is Grok 4 Fast, and god help you if that's the model you rely on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Anthropic gave the DOW a written contract. The DOW signed it.


Now the DOW reneged on it unilaterally, and is pissed about being constrained after agreeing to being constrained in that manner.


The fuck?


Even in the context of military procurement, it's quite common for countries to retain veto rights on the use of hardware they sold to third parties. That came up quite often in the context of aid to Ukraine.


Germany and the Leopard 2 tank: This became a major diplomatic flashpoint in early 2023. Germany not only had to decide whether to send its own Leopards, but also held veto power over whether other countries  could transfer their German-built Leopard 2s to Ukraine. Berlin's feet dragging effectively blocked the entire Western tank coalition until Scholz finally approved transfers in 2023.


Even the US repeatedly conditioned its military aid with restrictions on how weapons could be used. They prevented Ukraine from using long range munitions like ATACMS to hit targets within Russia.


If the DOW didn't like the terms, as written, they should have gone to Grok. Now they're just throwing a hissy fit.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I won't tolerate Rewa slander. Who doesn't love a strong independent woman with untreated PTSD attempting to self-medicate by running over stray dogs?


Keep your eyes peeled for vehicle autocannons. Once you've got two and a medium mech to mount them on, oh boy...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Pathologic series always struck me as games it's far more enjoyable to watch others suffer play through instead of trying them myself. Mandalore Gaming has excellent reviews for the first 2, but I'll be damned if I'm going to play them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm unsure. There's one I have in mind, but I'm unable to consistently pin it down as the cause.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does anyone here have any personal experience with the management of migraines?


As I've mentioned before, mine have recently become significantly more frequent (annual to maybe twice or thrice a month). I think, but am not entirely sure, that they're much more debilitating. The visual aura was usually standalone, but these days it's followed by a headache that, if not awful, is still bad enough to be debilitating. I also feel queasy and loopy, which means I have a hard time getting anything done for several hours afterwards. All I seem to want to do is lie in bed for most of the rest of the day.


I've tried sumatriptan, 50mg x 2, taken as soon as I notice the visual aura. Augmented by the odd paracetamol or two. I think it helps a little, but I wouldn't call myself fully functional afterwards.


If they become even more frequent, then I'm open to starting preventative medication like beta blockers.


I have no experience with treating migraines professionally, and I am also incredibly lazy about seeing other doctors unless in imminent fear of death. Yes, yes, laugh at me if you want. I know my flaws.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We don't really want a "showcase" in the sense "look at X impressive thing that Y model can do". There are a gazillion demos out there.


We want specific tasks that someone doubts a model can do, but which they'd be impressed by if they succeeded and which the two of us a priori think will work. If it would be super impressive (if it worked) but we don't think it would work, it's not what we want right now.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Gemini's sample is impressive! Color me impressed, especially that a straight-up prompt produced that (though I suppose if any technique would get it with current models, it'd be "one shotting through a prompt" rather than "iterative refinement towards a target").




My impression is that Gemini's output was unusually good and Claude’s was unusually bad. But both 3.1 Pro and 4.6 Sonnet are new enough that my intuition based on extensive interaction with previous models might no longer be applicable. For what it's shirt, both were n=1 samplings with zero cherrypicking.




since you don't tend to drop spurious technical details into your walls of text unless they serve a purpose (and also because I half suspect you're not a fan of the amyloid theory of alzheimers)




Looks around shiftily why, I'd never throw in spurious technical details into an essay. Couldn't be me!


(I probably wouldn't use the specific Tau and amyloid phrasing, since you are correct that I have very mixed feelings about the amyloid hypothesis)




Interestingly, your results look much, much better to me than the ones I get myself. I ran the same test as you did against Gemini, and got these not-very-good attempts: 1 2 3. Gemini took distinctive phrases (e.g. "85% agree") and ideas (e.g. "claude code as supply chain risk") I have used once in the corpus, fixated on them, and stitched them together into a skinsuit which superficially resembles my writing but doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Interestingly, that's a very base model flavored failure mode. I have grown unused to seeing base-model-flavored failure modes, and as such Gemini is much more interesting to me now.




The examples seem to channel your "LessWrong" blogging voice. I am unable to critique the technical details or identify (what I expect are many) confabulations, but if I saw this posted there in your name I wouldn't bat an eye.


I haven't really futzed around with base models since GPT-3, though I might have tried one of the Llama 3s at some point. They're non-trivial to access, and have limited utility for me. Mainly because of the added difficulty of prompting base models, and the fact that the publicly accessible ones are nowhere near as intelligent as proprietary dedicated assistants. If you think I'm wrong about this, I'd be curious to hear about it.


In general, I get the strong impression that while the author of the corpus might be able to pinpoint specific issues in terms of style or stance, it's much harder for others to spot those tells.


The biggest pitfalls are the tendency to adopt em-dashes (models are more than capable of not doing that if you specifically prompt them not to), and other stock "AI" phrases like:




There is a very specific failure mode in modern LLMs




Which can show up if you're using models to merely edit/format a draft, and not just write an essay from scratch.


I must also continue stressing the point that this isn't quite representative of my usual informal benchmark:


    

  • I'd also ask the model to first output a list of essay topics that it thinks I would write, of which I'd choose a specific one that sounded interesting, perhaps asking it to propose an outline first.
    • 

  • I would definitely run multiple iterations of the prompt or suggest specific corrections and check their adherence.
    • 

  • I would also index heavily on their ability to mimic authors I know very well. Can they pass as Gwern, or Scott, or Richard Watts? Can they take an existing essay I've written and rewrite it an arbitrary style and produce something interesting, if not superior as a whole?
    • 



It's enough for me to spot a better way to say a specific thing I'm already saying. A single vivid metaphor or interesting analogy that is worth co-opting can make the practical purpose of the exercise worth it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, but they're usually suffering from psychiatric illness, and the usual treatment is to tell them to go to the doctor less. Indulging them and constantly ordering investigations and treatment is pretty much malpractice.


Either way, there aren't enough of them to keep doctors employed full-time.