domain:savenshine.com
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
Speaking not as a mod, I don't think we should (or realistically could) ban "AI-assisted" writing. (Something that was obviously mostly or entirely generated by AI, OTOH...) That said, I was starting to be impressed by your essays, then I realized that a substantial portion of them are AI written, and now I tend to skim over them.
IMO, using ChatGPT to do light editing and maybe make some suggestions here and there is one thing (just advanced grammar and spellchecking, really), but actually letting it generate text for you is ... not actually writing. We can debate whether GPT can "write well" by itself, but it's definitely not you writing it just because you gave it a prompt, and I would even say that "collaboration" is stretching it.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Imagine you hate your life. Every day you go home from your job, stare off into space, and drink a ton of alcohol. You aren't particularly suicidal, but you have fleeting thoughts at times, you still function...with the drink anyway.
One day the thoughts are a little less fleeting...you think to yourself but shit, I don't live on a busy road and getting hit by a car sounds like a lot. How would I even hang myself? Stabbing myself? Seems hard.
The thoughts pass, as they always do.
But if there was a gun? "Well fuck it." Lights out.
I've seen a shocking number of patients who managed to shoot themselves in the head and think it was an oopsy.
So yes limiting access to lethal means is an important part of standard of care and improves outcomes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
1hr ago
I mean the fact that so many (in fact I’d argue most) urban cores have become anarchic places where the law doesn’t matter is a general argument against liberal democracy. One of the hallmarks of a good system is that life where the system has control is better than places where it doesn’t have control. When the places nearest our form of government are places that people are paying as much as they can afford to either protect themselves from or escape, the system sucks. And on that score I’d urge anyone who suggests that modern liberal democracy is the absolute best system of government to walk through the urban core of your nearest city unarmed and alone. It’s genuinely scary in many places where crime and criminal gangs are common and not pissing off the gangs is more important to survival than obeying the law.
Now if you’d go to the “bad old days” of whichever autocratic government you choose, chances are you could walk down the street at least in daylight, didn’t worry so much about crime because that government would not tolerate the kind of store-looting in broad daylight that happens today, or mugging or rape or home robbery. Try any of that in China or North Korea, you’re going to be caught and imprisoned rather quickly.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I think being depressed is very good reason not to agree to people's pleas to die right away! It is a mental illness which twists your cognition. It should be difficult to kill yourself on the grounds of depression.
I do not think it's an absolute indicator to ignore someone, if used in the literal sense. You have to keep in mind that the BATNA for these patients is jumping in front of a train. That makes absolutist stances less than actionable, in the pragmatic sense. If you want to achieve this in the real world, you need to lock some people up for the rest of their lives on those grounds alone, and I think letting them kill themselves might well kinder in some cases.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
Look, I think it's quite clear that my statement about tigers was hyperbole. You seem like a perfectly nice guy, while I wouldn't jump into the ring to save you, I'd throw rocks (at the tiger) and call for paramedics.
That is the nice thing about being able to compartmentalize one's combative online persona from being an actually nice and easy-going person in reality. There are very few people I would actually watch and let die, and they're closer to Stalin than they are to people I disagree with on a forum for underwater basket weaving.
But when you imagine talking to your own grandmother - a perfect example of a novice user - what do you do?
If this were a perfectly realistic scenario, my conversation would go:
"What the fuck. Is that a ghost? I thought your ashes were somewhere in the Bay of Bengal by now."
Do you understand why I paraphrased what is usually a more nuanced context-dependent conversation IRL? If my granny was actually alive, I would probably teach her how to use the voice mode in her native language and let her chill.
And I have to say, if I told you I'm not biased towards Teslas, Elon doesn't send me cheques, and in fact I just paid money for one, how wide would your eyes go as you attempted to parse that?
Uh? I don't know. If you have a reputation for doing that, I genuinely do not recall. I am very active here, but I do not remember that without actually having to open your profile.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Cannibalism is an extremely common feed cost reduction technique in the pork industry.
Corvos
1hr ago
Broadly that described by @self_made_human. Total autonomy (as least for educated people) over their own life and death in all cases, Roman-style, which in practice means breaking the social/religious and legal taboo over suicide. The 'assisted dying for the terminally ill' case was introduced as the thin end of the wedge where those objections were not very sensible, with advocates knowing that the would be able to push the ball significantly down the slope once the Schelling fence was overcome.
I think that the 'we will euthanise the elderly to save NHS money' people aren't wrong at the edge but this happens to some extent anyway with Do Not Resuscitate; I expect some scandals but not widescale abuse. I am more worried about the elderly pressuring themselves into suicide, and about those with long-standing but irrational suicidal tendencies. I differ from @self_made_human in thinking that suicidal depression is an absolute indicator that a given person cannot be trusted with this particular form of autonomy as their judgement in this area is compromised.
Personally, I would rather have legalised voluntary assisted suicide specifically for dementia patients, requiring two time-spaced diagnoses of clinical dementia from two different doctors and a voluntary statement from the patient taken when compos mentis (to the extent that this is practical). I think this addresses the real, secret fear that is propelling normie support for these political movements and is limited enough to be stable. Alas I don't think that 'culling the mentally-feeble' would make it past the journalists and I don't think it would satisfy the campaigners, but I think it would take the wind out of the issue.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I was going to write that myself if I wasn't so lazy. Thank you/curse you for scooping me, and I obviously agree.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I will note that this is a concern I have intentionally and prominently addressed. I am personally okay with euthanasia as a cost-saving measure, keeping someone on the verge of brain death in the ICU is both expensive and futile. Doubly so if the savings are used to extend more lives on net.
As it stands, I am willing to compromise on my fantasy of euthanasia booths next to children's parks if that's the cost of making it available in more jurisdictions. What I proposed is a version specifically designed to appease the squeamish, while still being something I am content with myself. This involves removing or minimizing financial incentive to individuals or even most parts of the system.
To the extent that this calls for amendments in places with legal euthanasia, well, it does do that. It's just not as pressing as elsewhere.
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Yeah, OP has bit (and I cannot blame him given the amount of poor reporting and understanding out there) on a lot of the popular misconceptions about U.S. healthcare.
Your mention of EMTALA and how the ED works is super instructive. Supposedly during the recent strikes in South Korea hospitals would just post up guards outside the ED and not let people in and they would wander off to another hospital, get better on their own, or just die on the street. Not an option here and EMTALA violations are one of the few ways a physician can get truly screwed.
But yes the U.S. isn't really a private system, it's not really for-profit (or non-profit - it's a mix of both in surprising ways). It is super complicated but is part of where the confusion comes from a lot of time.
Things in the U.S. are more expensive than the rest of the world but part of that is cost of living part of that is poor health of the population part of that is the fact that the U.S. can actually afford it and subsidizes everyone else...
Usually expensive cancer treatments in the U.S. end up discounted, or insurance will cover them (but not fast enough), and they might not be available at all in other countries or it takes too long to get an appointment to get delivered them.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
I'm pretty sure I haven't done that. My frustration isn't with your average user. It's with people who really should know better using the term as a thought-terminating cliche to dismiss the whole enterprise.
I'm pretty sure you said people like me are less intelligent than a parrot and that you hope we get mauled by a tiger. You did not specify that it was only directed at those using it to dismiss using AI, it was anyone using the term unironically. If I felt shame like normal people I would have simply stopped doing it instead of defending it - and I would no longer be helping people stop anthropomorphising a tool.
You lay out your complex 'fallible intern' model as the superior model. It can debug code and synthesise academic papers, it has a mind, though unlike any we know. You say we need to teach people to give clear instructions, provide background documents, and verify all work. But when you imagine talking to your own grandmother - a perfect example of a novice user - what do you do? You drop the intern model completely in favour of a genius with the world's worst memory. Why?
Because you know the intern model is too complicated. You know it doesn't work for a normal person. You'd never actually saddle your grandmother with the mental load of dealing with an intern who is an amnesiac - and is also a compulsive liar who has mood swings, no common sense, and can't do math. You give her a simple tool for the problem. But your tool deals with the symptom, mine deals with the cause.
I believe that you are trying to help people too, but you really are prioritising defending your model first. It might work great with techbros or the techbro adjacent, but even you drop it when you imagine a real world situation with a novice.
And I have to say, if I told you I'm not biased towards Teslas, Elon doesn't send me cheques, and in fact I just paid money for one, how wide would your eyes go as you attempted to parse that?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
At the end of the day, most moral systems reduce to normality, outside of edge cases which are, well, edge cases. If you're not cooking my dog, and I'm not feeding yours poison, we'd get along regardless of the underlying reasons.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
The courts aren't part of the government?
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1hr ago
What do you think the intended use case was?
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1hr ago
I've cried myself hoarse trying to reason with people who reflexively think LLM=bad. They're tools, tools that have serious flaws, but which are so useful it makes you wonder how you managed before. It's like trying to navigate the internet before Google.
I suspect that if Scott, Gwern, or any of the other big names were obscure today, and broke containment, they'd go nuts trying to fend off accusations of being AI. There is good reason why the LLMs were taught, intentionally or inadvertently, to mimic such a style. Nearly formatted essays with proper markdown are not the sole domain of AI. They make things more pleasant, at the cost of a very small amount of individuality. I promise you that every one of my essays screams self_made_human regardless of how many models I ask for advice. You should take it as a compliment, in this particular scenario.
SnapDragon
1hr ago
Eventually, most of the "real" challenges that humanity faces will be, at least in my opinion, rendered obsolete. That leaves just about only games to pass the time. They can be complicated games, they might be of relevance to the real world (status games, proof of work or competence), but they're still games we play because we've run out of options. I think this isn't a thing to complain about, once we get there. Our ancestors struggled to survive so that we wouldn't have to.
Forget "eventually"; I think we often fail to appreciate that we're already there, in the first world. Almost none of the "challenges" that our primitive ancestors faced are in any way familiar to us. They worried about whether they would starve next winter; I wonder whether I can justify being lazy and ordering Door Dash today. They might have been permanently crippled from an uncleaned surface cut; I would slap a band-aid on it and take a Tylenol. They banded together and learned to fight so the next tribe over wouldn't kill them all and take their stuff; I put my money into a stock brokerage.
Aging is IMO the one major challenge that hasn't been conquered yet (although we're still living twice as long as evolution intended). In almost every other way we're living the lives of Gods.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
So MAID is the "poster child for assisted suicide abuse" because the government, who lost a court case forcing their hand, is doing what they can do delay expanding eligibility to it?
Seems very abusive lol
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Yeah the environment couldn't be more different - stress is going to be the same (not even long hours depending on the country) but the way US physicians have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, can be compensated very well (depending on speciality), have to deal with the nonsense of the U.S. health system, wearing of multiple hats and so make them functionally a different class of job.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
Yeah I've heard Pilots and Flight Attendants are basically fuck city. In truth I've never heard an IRL doctor make any kinds of claims about rampant sleeping around or cheating in the departments. I've heard patients who work in aviation tell me about their and their coworkers exploits totally unprompted.
Corvos
2hr ago
I thought the same FWIW.
It was sold as ‘if you have a terminal illness, you are going to die in a few weeks, you are in terrible agony and there is no way of alleviating your pain or saving you’ which I would expect to be 0.1% max. Hence calling it ‘assisted dying’.
I think that this was never the intended use case and that those politicians who advocated for it on these terms were being dishonest.
wraelk
2hr ago
About 70% of our effort-posts, if posted on Reddit, would immediately face accusations of being AI. Even things written in, say, 2020.
I actually had this happen to me!
I made a detailed comment about a particular video game strategy in the game's subreddit, probably around 2020, long before writing it with AI would have been plausible.
This year someone responded with "if this wasn't written when it was I would think it was AI"
I guess given the context that's a compliment?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
I don't think they are the same things.
Trump got arrested, but they didn't have the balls to stop him from running. They didn't literally cancel an election. The penaltues for speech aren't legal, as far as I can tell. I suppose they have their own panopticons, but I don't think they compare to what the UK is doing, or what the EU is working on right now.
This correlates with being anti-anti-gun-regulation and therefore with gun presence but is not caused by it.
Has anyone tried verifying that? I say we need a Universal Basic Guns program, in order to make sure.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
Who am I to tell you what's massive or not? When you see how the elderly, who make up a very large chunk of all deaths these days, actually go out, it really doesn't surprise me. I would start raising eyebrows past 20%, and be alarmed past 30. This is implying business as usual, not something like the Culture's post-scarcity, where people almost never die natural deaths, and euthanize themselves when they're bored. We'll figure that out if/when we get there.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2hr ago
This is akin to going to a waterslide at a theme park and complaining the slope is slippery. You do not know how bad mental illness can get if you think "mental illness" is some privileged form of disease. I'd take many forms of cancer over schizophrenia.
The person using the number as part of an argument that there's no cause for concern?
That's pretty wild numbers, imo, and reduces my ability to take your general judgement of risk, safety, acceptibility, etc on this topic as particularly calibrated toward anything persuasive. I think burying your own calibration in a p.s. is kind of dishonest when you are trying to lay out a defense of something.
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