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
1hr ago
You inevitably lose nuance in a setup like this. I think I said agree to
It's less that the authors are trying to gotcha us (I didn't get that impression) and more that such a mass-market product caters to normies and thus becomes simplistic in places. I'm curious to know if someone has a more sophisticated offering.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1hr ago
They acknowledge that there's going to be some degree of subjectivity involved, both in the questions and interpreting the results, but you're better off not overthinking that hard.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1hr ago
Interesting site:
https://www.philosophyexperiments.com/health/Default.aspx
It asks you 30 agree/disagree questions on a variety of "philosophical" topics, and then outputs a score calculating the inherent "tension" or cognitive dissonance in your answers.
The average score is 27% out of 100%, I score a pleasant 7%, but only because:
There are no objective moral standards; moral judgements are merely an expression of the values of particular cultures And also that: Acts of genocide stand as a testament to man's ability to do great evil
I'm using a common-sense or consensus definition of evil, and I don't think this is an actual contradiction. So I'm pleased to say I have zero philosophical dissonance? Who knows.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
19hr ago
@Poug made a valid point. I've wanted to hit my head against a wall for years, when people used to complain about "ChatGPT" being useless, and they were using GPT 3.5 instead of 4. The same pattern has consistently repeated since, though you seem to be a more experienced user and I'm happy to take you at your word. It is still best practice to disclose what model you used, for the same reason it would be bad form to write an article reviewing "automobiles" and pointing out terrible handling, mileage and build quality, without telling us if it was a Ferrari or a Lada.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
21hr ago
I find much to admire in the PRC, and just as much to disdain or decry.
China is one of the few countries around with real state capacity. Holy shit, it is difficult to overestimate how important that is to getting anything done. It's not so much that they started out uniquely capable, it's more that everyone else, especially in the West, entirely fumbled the ball. The America of the Hoover Dam? A distant memory. The West has decentralized so hard that it's ruled by a tyranny of the minority, with so many people with de-facto veto power that something as mundane as a metro station arrives ten years late and ten times over budget. The West intentionally threw away the keys to the kingdom, and embraced stagnation. It is easy to plateau when you start off at a peak, with your basic human necessities taken care of, and a sense of "things are basically fine".
A lot of the things the rest of the world wrings their hands over are simply addressed simply and directly by China. Worried about oil? Build so many solar panels they blot out the sun (if you're very short). The US says you can't have their fancy (Taiwanese) GPUs? Fuck it, we say no after Nvidia and its (Taiwanese) CEO lobby a retarded president into relenting. Turns out, you can have a heavily protectionist, mercantilist economy if you're really fucking good at it, and the rest of the world is entirely addicted to your products.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety,"
Turns out that there is, in fact, a reasonably acceptable exchange rate between the two. Now, I'd very much prefer the kind of freedom the US offers, but living in the Yookay, China doesn't seem so bad. The topics they censor aren't the drums I want to beat, they won't throw me in prison for discussing HBD.
At the moment, China doesn't seem to have grand imperial ambitions. They have little interest in injecting their values and mores into the lives of people who look nothing like them. If you have something that passes as a state, and you're willing to trade with them, they'll take you. There's something refreshing about relying on enlightened self-interest instead of "liberal values", even if I'm generally a fan of said values.
(There is guarantee that this self-absorption will remain indefinitely, if they become the hegemonic power)
Now, if only they'd stop being retarded about Taiwan, and the South China Sea, or Arunachal Pradesh...
Other than the US, they're also the only other country with a realistic shot at AGI, or even a mere human employment crisis. They've got the factories, and no hangups about automating everything that can be automated.
It's far from a given that the century will be Chinese, but I'm willing to nihao at some fine shit and not particularly mind. If they unbanned Reverend Insanity, the CCP has my vote.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
Male sexuality will happily fuck six year olds, is that fundamentally smart and good?
That is rather fundamentally unusual and unacceptable behavior in any remotely modern society I can name. There is a massive difference between ~most men being attracted to 16 year old women, but denying that attraction because of laws and socialization, and attempting to sleep with literal small children.
I might as well claim that "female sexuality" involves peanut butter and particularly attractive German Shepherds, since that has been documented at rates >0.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
I always felt that Dahl was horrendously overrated. Sure, his writing was adequate, but it always screamed "so-called gifted kid still malding about adults not recognizing his talents" well past the point where it was dignified.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
Sin and cos. And I use them a lot.
SOHCAHTOA coming in clutch for an entirely different kind of Indian.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
Shame I missed the halcyon days. I showed up maybe a year or two after the migration to the subreddit.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2d ago
Et tu, Brute? I keep imagining there's some mysterious phase change where repetition makes it stick.
I had a very awkward referral once, for a patient with a TCA overdose. I looked at it, knew what it was, but when the person taking the referral asked me to describe it, I was "uh... Those T waves look tented?"
I did at some point succeed at "building" the world's shittiest ECG; at least it made an appropriately squiggly-looking line (relying on the oscilloscope for 98% of the work, of course). I'm pretty sure that experience has only left me more mystified about what an ECG is supposed to do.
The heart goes through sequential contraction and relaxation phases, with the upper atria and lower ventricle being out of phase. This is governed by electrical waves propagating roughly top down. Since we're talking about a chemical process (ions crossing membranes), there's noticeable conduction delay.
Roughly speaking, it kicks off near the top of the heart, and has a "highway" of rapid conduction down the middle. There's increased latency the further you go.
We place multiple electrodes on the limbs and chest:
*The leads placed on the chest measure changes in voltage propagating perpendicular to the skin (front and lateral).
- The axial leads measure measure the projection of the heart's electrical axis to the vector connecting the leads, going ~left to right and top-bottom.
You draw a chart. Leads V1 and V2 focus on the anterior-right of the heart, 3 and 4 are a bit lower and right above the heart, so you get the anterior picture, 5 and 6 show you what's going on in the sides. The limb leads help figure out the inferior bit.
Once we have established a baseline, then we look at a patient's ECG for deviations from the norm. Too much or too little voltage, or an unusual delay between phases, these can all point to cardiac pathology, and we can localize based on which views are aberrant. For example, in a heart attack, the leads reading anteriorly will, badum-tss, be the ones most out of whack if the damage is on the anterior aspect of the heart (anterior myocardium/muscles), and so on. And those delays in conduction point towards something wrong with the inbuilt cardiac pacemakers or that highway I mentioned.
In effect, an ECG isn't just a single image, it's closer to tomography. The additional leads provide clear advantages over just attaching a potentiometer to someone's toes and fingers.
Of course, it gets much more complicated in practice. Especially when a patient has multiple heart conditions at once, I start sweating when I have to interpret those even when I'm fully up to speed. And it's all the worse in psychiatry, because you can't rely on the patients to be particularly cooperative. And it hurts when you pull off the adhesive on the cups and it takes chest hair with it.
If you're looking for a 'picture' to hold in your head, this 3Blue1Brown is a classic. Surprisingly appropriate for a huge range of mathematical sophistication.
But Pagliacci, I've tried clown therapy :(
3B1B is excellent, and his video on the FT is my go to. It's just that I forget the details beyond "you can decompose arbitrary analog signals into a sum of sine waves".
Reply: "The concept is called XYZ and it works by X, Y, and Z." Entirely a hallucination when you then go to search for XYZ.
Which model? Hallucinations have become quite rare on the SOTA models, especially the ones with internet search enabled. It's not like they never happen, but I'm surprised that they're happening "all the time".
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
Does anyone have their own equivalent of a personal "antimeme", a concept you familiarize yourself with (potentially with difficulty) and then inevitably forget unless you make an intentional effort to look it up?
In no particular order:
- I often have to look up whether I need an x86 or x64 executable when I need to download a program
- ECGs. Fucking ECGs. I get good at understanding them when I absolutely have to (before exams), but guess what, by the time the next one rolls around, it's all out of my head.
- Fourier transforms (how they actually work, and not the conceptual strokes)
- And many more, all of which stubbornly refuse to come to mind, because of course they do.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
If I could pay $20 for an upgrade to business class, you bet I would.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
It's very interesting to see you be even more bloodthirsty and drama-pilled than Count.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
I'm a basic bitch who goes to Starbucks twice a year and thinks the coffee was nice. I feel like a deaf person walking into a concert.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
You are starting to write like a guy who reads LLM output and thinks "Yeah, that's good writing!"
I disagree! I do not think that the majority of LLM output is worth reading. That is not the same as LLMs being incapable of good writing. Getting something decent out of them takes effort. Not some kind of overcomplicated prompt engineering nonsense, but more effort than bad actors take.
To illustrate, I can truthfully claim that Xianxia as a genre is sloppy trash (most of it is) while simultaneously arguing that Reverend Insanity is peak fiction. The selection process is what allows for a recommendation.
are absolute crap in terms of writing style (* cough * Reverend Insanity * cough * )
As you can see, we have irreconcilable differences. Pistols at dawn?
Note that I am not saying you're doing the same thing, just... I think you know you're outsourcing too much to AI, and now you're getting pissy when people point it out.
I really can't win. If I stay quiet and ignore things: avoidant behavior. If I just say that, yeah, I've used AI, that is a no-contest. If I actually take a stand, then suddenly the lady doth protest too much. Nah, this lady has principles, and is willing to argue them.
AI detectors are themselves not that reliable, since the ability to detect AI writing is a moving target, so posting "An AI detector said my writing is 100% human" is probably not that convincing to most people. (Just as many people have had the displeasure of seeing something they know they wrote themselves tagged as "almost certainly AI" by an AI detector.)
I have heard claims that Pangram is better than most. For example, it's batting 100% here, admittedly, for a single sample. To the extent that people have used AI detectors on me in an attempt to shore up their argument that I'm using AI (in a post where I allude to the fact I'm using it), then I feel entitled to use them myself. If it works, then you believe in my probable innocence, if you believe it doesn't work, then you had no reason to consider me guilty beyond what I've already confessed.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
I'm not even against using a LLM to refine your writing. I wish I had so I wouldn't have made that annoying set of typos.
Funny story. Do you know why I made that effort?
A guilty pleasure of mine is to copy and paste entire pages of my profile into an LLM and ask for a summary/user profile (without telling them I'm the user in question). When I first started, maybe a year or so back, I noticed that the models would regularly call me acerbic and prone to cutting humor, even when they happily acknowledged the positives.
I thought about it, and decided, huh, it might be worth an effort to intentionally tone it down myself. If it's not obvious, I adore Scott, and he is probably so mild-mannered that his toddlers walk all over him.
So I decided, hey, it's worth trying to be nicer, even though I do not suffer fools gladly. Or perhaps I'm getting old, and realizing that yelling at people on the internet is of little utility and only raises my blood pressure.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
For your pleasure:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-h7BOxN-qRc
(The longer version was sadly hit by a guided copyright strike)
But no, it's a totally legit songbook work from an Adirondacks campfire song to a broadway show in 1927 to a Fred Astaire film. But the joy of discovering that was ruined, because I was too busy worrying if I was a dope falling for AI slop.
Sigh. I suppose this strengthens my usual point:
Stop worrying about "AI slop". You often won't be able to tell if it's AI, and it will, inevitably, become less sloppish. Dare I say, even good. Sure, you want to be able to tell if your Tinder date is catfishing you, or if the email or invoice you've received is real. It's of utmost importance to know if there's an epidemic of obese, suicidal women are throwing boulders on bridges in China.
But for everything else? A drawing is a drawing dawg, a song either sounds good or it doesn't. A work of fiction is no better or worse if meat machines or silicon wrote it (for the same assortment of letters in the same order).
This way lies zen, and the ability to happily partake in the post-scarcity supply side of the attention economy.
Of course, if you do genuinely value human authorship for reasons such as "soul" or the inability of machines to feel emotion, then good luck. You're going to need it.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3d ago
I also acknowledge I like your writing, I think it's some of the most consistent and interesting posting here. I also think you are a much better writer than me, so if that's your standard for receiving feedback feel free to just ignore the rest.
My apologies. I was very annoyed, for what I hope were understandable reasons. I'm happy to accept feedback when it's not framed as a personal attack alongside, IMO, very poor justification. I'm happy to hear what you have to say!
All that being said. It is uncanny, I have more than once in the last week been interacting with ChatGTP and thought "This could just as well be a Mechanical Turk and @self_made_human is on the other side." It's not just the use of bullet points, it's your tone, word choice, argument structure. It's not just the use of markdown, it's extremely machine like choice of formatting.
Hmm.
The thing is, markdown is cool and incredibly powerful. LLM chatbots like ChatGPT (that aren't base models), are under heavy selection pressure to conform to human preferences. That means a convergence to certain norms, because the average user or RLHF monkey prefers! Headlines, emphasis, bullet points, em-dashes — they're all useful. They make text more legible and help it flow better.
In other words, I've come to appreciate the benefits to writing in a certain structure. I personally prefer it, and I think the majority do (by revealed preference) and it strikes some people as AI-like. The last bit is an unfortunate side effect.
(I would say a bigger influence is Scott. I'm a fanboy, and his advice is solid)
I'm not sure what you mean by a change in tone or word choice, though I make an intentional effort to be less acerbic these days.
However:
I do use AI, sometimes! I've never tried to hide it, or deny its influence when anyone asks. That does not mean that any of my posts are writtrn by AI. I use LLMs for research, fact checking, proof-reading and editorial purposes.
That usually entails writing a draft, then submitting it into an LLM for advice or critique, which I may or may not use.
I think this is entirely above board, and I champion its use. It is categorically not the same as throwing a prompt into a box and then getting the AI to do the heavy lifting. The AI is an editor, not a ghostwriter.
Do you honestly not think your writing style has not changed at all over the course of three years? I think it's would be extraordinarily unlikely that someones writing style does not change at all over the course of years in their 20s. If you acknowledge your style has changed, is your claim it's directionality away from LLM style?
Precisely the opposite. My style has changed, for what I think is the better. I'd hope so, given that I must have written like 1-5 million words in between, including a novel. It has also become more LLM-like, but that is because I like some of the things LLMs do, and not because I'm replaced by an LLM. Case in point, I've never had anyone accuse me of including unsourced or inaccurate information, even when they're criticizing my style, because it's a point of pride that I always review anything an LLM tells me.
When I said:
I've always written like this. You're welcome to trawl my profile back to the days when LLMs were largely useless, and you'll find the same results.
I mean that that specific comment had zero AI in it, and is of a style that strikes me as self_made_human from a few years back, as raw as it gets. It was quickly jotted off, with none of the usual edits, revisions or edit passes I make a point of doing manually. It is as me as it gets, and wouldn't be out of place three years back. It lacks the effort and polish I aspire to today.
Hell, I was doubly mad because I made an intentional effort not to succumb to just asking him to check ChatGPT (which would have given him excellent advice on a topic as done to death as this one) since he clearly wanted a more personal touch. I didn't even ask ChatGPT to write boilerplate that I could have theoretically co-opted as my own. I saw the comment, noticed, hey, I'm actually studying NICE guidance on initiating and managing antidepressant usage, and decided to just scribble down my understanding of best practice. I am, after all, mostly a shrink, even if I'm got more shrinking to do.
So, here I am, providing what I hope is accurate and helpful advice, the old-fashioned way, and someone comes along and starts shit. I might be a moderator, but I have my limits. Anyone calling me a "slopmonger" can fuck right off. As this current example of discourse demonstrates, I am more than happy to be civil and take pains to explain myself if the other person extends me the same courtesy. I appreciate that you have.
https://www.themotte.org/post/2368/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/354239?context=8#context
Here is a thread outlining my stance towards prior accusations of AI usage, where I am perfectly happy to acknowledge that I have used it (when I've actually used it). You'll notice that I've spent a great deal of time explaining the same thing to jkf in good faith, in an attempt to convince him of the merits of my stance. That hasn't worked, and I am offended by new accusations when the evidence on display is very clearly not AI. It's like someone going around with a loudspeaker telling people I'm a sex offender, when the rap was for public urination while drunk. Even if it was technically correct (it wasn't here), I have little energy to spare to have this argument again.
Alternatively, this:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2368/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/354252?context=8#context
This strikes me a quite distasteful. It strikes me as someone being upset they got some criticism, then decided to use their mod powers to make an ad hominem attack rather than ignoring or addressing the criticism. If you really don't care what the lesser writers here think of your style, why bother to dig through the mod log?
I don't think opening the moderation log is an abuse of mod power in any meaningful sense. Moderation actions are public, anyone can see them on the sidebar. The panel only shows me the ones linked to a specific user. I didn't slap him with a ban, or start a fight. Moderators are only human, mea culpa.
If he's going to call me a slopmonger, when I think I've got more than enough evidence of engagement (presumably high quality, though everyone is at liberty to form their own opinions, I'm not your dad, I think), then I feel within my rights to point out that he has almost nothing to his name, and what he does is negative. It's genuinely impressive to have been here so long and still achieve so little. Both lurking moar or engaging less are valid options.
And I hope that I have demonstrated, to your satisfaction, that I am usually open to criticism, and have, in fact, had this same conversation with him in the past.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Bruh. Let me summon @Throwaway05 :
-
Do you think it's possible to make recommendations or suggestions about antidepressant usage without heavily stressing the importance of a full physical to rule out medical causes for low mood?
-
Do you think the information given by OP was sufficient to make a clinical recommendation beyond the most universally applicable points?
I strongly suspect he's going to back me up there. Since the facts aren't really in dispute, all that's left is finding a certain string of letters to convey the message. I see nothing "AI" about my choice of phrasing, that's just... normal writing. It's oodles less formal than what I might for in an actual effortpost, because it was smashed out in 5 minutes in the middle of a study session.
To the extent that the 'best' "AI detectors" don't think it's AI at all, I'm very curious to know what stylistic tells you imagine you see, and then an effort to compare it with my earliest writing. I'm not going to bother, I've already put in more than sufficient effort, and I am generally honest about using LLMs. If and when I do use them.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Dude, I've been on here... I don't remember actually, but a long time before I saw you show up.
I'll save you the bother. We've both been on themotte.org since September 2022. I've been a user of /r/TheMotte since just after it split off from the CWR thread on /r/SSC.
And in the span of 3 years, the only notable events in your mod log are two warnings. Not a single AAQC, and people stumble into those by accident. I'll welcome your criticism about my writing style when you write something to impress me first. Or even impress anyone, I don't select the nominees, those are largely on the basis of popular opinion. It takes as little as one person hitting report.
When someone like @Amadan or @2rafa or @phailyoor or.... criticizes my writing style or my very limited use of AI (in this case, exactly zero), I listen. When I didn't even use the damn thing, I'm not going to care very much about your unfounded concerns. If you don't like the self_made_human house style, you're entirely at liberty to not read it.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
If Bryan isn't a drooling senile mess at 120, then he's probably benefited from some kind of drug that rejuvenates the brain and restores neuroplasticity too. Taking LSD or shrooms helps with that today, even if it's not going to cure dementia.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Wow.
I guess we have to expand the taxonomy of LLM psychosis, to account for people so paranoid/blind that they see AI the moment someone bothers to use markdown formatting. If bullet points are all it takes to set you off, then one to the brain is probably the best possible cure.
I've always written like this. You're welcome to trawl my profile back to the days when LLMs were largely useless, and you'll find the same results.
And, for what it's worth, that comment was hastily typed out while in the midst of studying actual notes on antidepressant prescription according to UK guidance. You just can't win.
Guess what? The LLMs have read the same literature. There isn't much room to put some kind of unique human spin on the basics of choosing and switching between antidepressants. If ChatGPT had written it for me, it would have been thrice as long, and probably more comprehensive. In which case, I am flattered to be mistaken for it.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
How do AI artists deal with preserving character details from image to image? It seems to me this is even more important for furry art (various fur patterns must be harder to reproduce correctly than "black hair, pixie cut").
Nano Banana or GPT Image are perfectly capable of ingesting reference images of entirely novel characters, and then just placing them idomatically in an entirely new context. It's as simple as uploading the image(s) and asking it to transfer the character over. In the old days of 2023, you'd have to futz around fine-tuning Stable Diffusion to get far worse results.
I'm a simple creature. I think that the the conversion of Mercury into a Dyson swarm countsnecessary damage to the environment . No issues there.
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