The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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You need a psychiatrist. I am only two-thirds of one, but fortunately for you, I've got exams and that means actually reading some of the papers.
(Please see an actual psychiatrist)
The choice of initial antidepressant is often a tossup between adherence to official guidelines, clinical judgements based on activity profile and potential side effects, and a dialogue with the patient.
In short? It is usually not very helpful to worry too hard about the first drug. They're roughly equally effective (and where one is superior, it's by a very slim margin) But in certain situations:
(But before the meds, a physical checkup is mandatory, as are investigations to rule out medical causes. You're going to feel depressed if your thyroid isn't working, or if you've got Cushing's.)
Unfortunately, you haven't given me enough information to make an informed choice. I'd need to know about the severity of your depression, graded based on symptoms, lifestyle, overall health and a bunch of other things. Hopefully your actual doctor will do their due diligence.
Man you are either an irredeemable slopmonger or spending so much time immersed in slop that your own writing is becoming indistinguishable.
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.
Dude, I've been on here... I don't remember actually, but a long time before I saw you show up. Taking your word that you aren't just feeding questions into the machine for whatever reasons -- your writing has become super ugly over the past six months or so. Your bluster only confirms that you've lost the plot as to what good writing even looks like.
(and you might want to read better if you think it's the bullet points)
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.
Not @jkf, and don't particularly want to get caught in this shit-storm. 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.
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. I don't know what pangram looks for, they probably don't disclose to prevent people from gaming their system. And I'm not going to scrape the (already brittle) motte to do a textual analysis. But jfk is not the only one who has noticed that your writing has picked up somthing from ChatGTP.
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?
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?
Edit: I wanted to add. I'm not saying you shouldn't adopt LLM style if that's what you want. I'm saying if that's not what you want, look out for it. It's possible other people can see it in your writing before you do, and it would be sad to loose a unique and interesting voice because someone accidentally let theirs get co-opted by a machine.
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!
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.
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 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
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.
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.
I do think that particular bit of criticism was poorly formed, and I would have been very annoyed as well. I didn't understand of all posts to try to call out like that you would choose that one. Somehow I thought it would be unhelpful to leave it as if it was just one user trolling you though.
Ironically, maybe that is what I've been noticing. I think, I'm probably unreasonably annoyed by that cloying droll persona that they give the average chatbot. I suppose, liking a slightly facetious and combative tone is slightly pathological on my part.
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.
(Oh, wait.)
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.
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