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
4d ago
And shrink when viewed by an external observer? I'm a grower, not a shower.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I'm sorry man, but you've left me dazed and bemused. Why doesn't my mom ever do something this nice for me? Best she's done so far is send along arranged marriage proposals, and not directly to my bedroom.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Einstein was not out of the distribution. He was very smart, but not in a reality-shattering way, and he was very focused on his craft, like all successful smart people.
Einstein. The gentleman responsible for Special Relativity, General Relativity, the photoelectric effect (which actually got him the Nobel), Brownian motion as proof of atoms, mass-energy equivalence, and Bose-Einstein statistics. "Very smart, but not in a reality-shattering way."
I'm going to need a minute to process that. Possibly three. Fortunately my psychiatry experience prepares me well; I can usually recover from being utterly flabbergasted in 5 seconds or bust.
If two complete overhauls of how humanity understands space, time, gravity, and matter doesn't clear your bar for "reality-shattering," I'd genuinely love to know what does. Should he have collapsed the lightcone via propagating false vacuum decay? Manually torn the curvature tensor out of the universe and presented it to Bohr in a jar? What are you on about? What are you smoking?
As for “Einstein was probably about 140”: probably according to what? A preserved Wechsler protocol from 1905? A Stanford-Binet administered by divine revelation? Some conversion table from “invented general relativity” to “moderately gifted but not too spooky”? I am genuinely curious how you got to “Einstein probably had IQ 140”. I presume you've heard of something called a ceiling effect?
"Focused on his craft, like all successful smart people" really makes me wonder which Einstein you mean. The one who played violin semi-seriously, wrote political and philosophical essays by the bushel, corresponded with Freud about the psychology of war, lobbied Roosevelt about the bomb, and turned down the presidency of Israel? Monomaniacal indeed. The phrase "successful smart people" is also wonderfully convenient as a construction, since any polymath counter-example presumably just gets retroactively reclassified as unsuccessful.
I have a PhD in statistics. With all due respect, I know what physicians study, and while many of you are great healthcare practitioners, you do not study the quantitative.
With whatever respect you're due, and without further comment on the magnitude of that debt: British psychiatrists are held to higher standards than that. I'm held to higher standards than that, mostly by myself. I know the difference between Cohen's d and Hedges' g. My interest in entering a d-measuring contest with you is, by consensus values, small. It is roughly equivalent to my interest in arguing with you about the psychometric validity of the other form of g.
Don't believe me? Here's the MRCPsych Paper B critical appraisal syllabus.
I gave it last week. The headache is still bad enough that I'm not going to dig through my own post history to surface the times I've gone several layers deep into statistics arguments on this site. You're welcome to spend your time doing so, I value mine.
Lumping me in with the median doctor who thinks p<0.05 gud? Nice try though.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
It's interesting times when I'm told that my forecasting of a 50% chance of AI becoming human-parity or better in 4 years is described as a tame take. Not complaining, just observing things with grim resignation. I'll know AGI is here when I see it, or a few years later, if unemployed.
I wish I'm wrong, and that I had been wrong so far. It's no fun engaging in arguments where you want your opponents to win.
Sure buddy. The psychiatry resident who reads up on psychometrics for fun and is fully aware of the unreliability of standard IQ testing when we're going several sigmas away from the median of the distribution wouldn't have any idea about what he's talking about. Especially when his actual point is that trying to IQ test someone as far out of distribution as Einstein (famous for being the dimmest bulb in the shed)* is going to give unreliable results?
You wanna try telling me Feynmann had an IQ of 125? I'll believe you, or at least humor you.
Aight. Gotta hand it to you. Never had a chance of winning this argument. I concede.
*He's famous for only emitting a singular photon.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Idk dawg, where do the photos on your phone go when you set it on fire? Dissipated into general entropy and set loose in the wider universe never to be reconstructed again. That's why I make backups, and intend to back up every part of me that can fit in a scanner.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I agree that we must accept the epistemic uncertainty involved with being a computationally bounded entity without perfectly reliable sensory input or internal processing. But the point is that even if you do think that you're sane, from a pretty standard Bayesian perspective you could be wrong. Approximately 1% of people alive are schizophrenic or in acute psychosis at any given moment. That's the base rate, though you need to work through other things to achieve a reasonable posterior.
In other words, that's a pragmatic perspective, my point is that this is not safe to assume as a true axiom.
I have experienced cognitive distortions because of my depression, I knew that they were cognitive distortions, but I was powerless to change my perceptions or feelings. I consider myself perfectly sane, saner than most even. I am clearly not a solipsist, and my usual reaction to questions of metaphysics or philosophy is to read through them, shrug, and go on having a productive life. It's a low yield exercise I only do when I'm bored.
But that doesn't change things if we're going to do "real" philosophy.
Note that you said:
There is only one fact that any individual can know for certain, beyond even the tiniest echo of a doubt
As a practicing Bayesian, that gave me a stroke.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Later studies failed to find evidence supporting this thesis and raised numerous methodological flaws with it, noting that Roseto's rate of deaths from heart attacks is comparable to Framingham, Massachusetts, the only other town from the era for which comparable data exists. A study also attributed any difference in heart disease to the town's diet, particularly moderate wine consumption
Apparently that one doesn't hold up, while Glasgow's does.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
My current timelines (stable for the last year or two) are 50% odds of AGI by 2030, 70% by 2033.
My operational definition of AGI is "can do ~everything a human can with a computer as well or better than the the median human", ideally a 130 IQ human. That focuses on real world tasks, and also considers speed and reliability. I consider ASI achieved when the models reliably beat the smartest humans alive at similar or lower figures for $/unit of cognitive output.
In other words, if you attach my version of AGI to a computer with access to the internet it can do anything a human could with the same affordances, about as well. Probably with a video feed and a virtual keyboard or mouse, but that's not a big deal. Current models are too spiky in terms of capabilities to count, particularly when it comes to agentic workflows like simply using vision and direct input to get tasks done. I can't solve an Erdos problem even if you give me 5 years to prepare, but I can do more with my desktop PC than Claude can, at least much faster.
I expect that the temporal delta from that version of AGI to true ASI is going to be rather short. Maybe a year or two, medium confidence guess.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
I have no idea, my best bet was background radiation, but I think I looked it up and the levels were fine. Even talked to a nuclear engineer in the family.
The reason we don't know is because we don't know, and people have tried pretty hard to figure out what's going on.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
Shush. Don't be a nerd.
(I say, with complete self-awareness)
Anyway:
I wrote that after meeting this guy.
"For two years I believed the government had implanted a transmitter in my skull. I was as certain of this as I am now certain it was a delusion. The feeling of knowing was identical in both cases. How am I to trust any of my beliefs ever again?"
Master Dongshan said, "You are asking perhaps the most important question in all of epistemology, and I notice you arrived at it not through philosophy but through suffering."
Master Dongshan said, "No. That's why you paid me to prescribe you meds, not for a lecture on philosophy. But consider: everyone around you walks through life with that same unjustified feeling of certainty. They've just never been given reason to doubt it. You now know something that most people do not. You know that the experience of being right and the fact of being right are completely different things."
I'm not sure if the actual patient made a full recovery, but he wasn't even my patient. Not my circus, I just feel bad for the monkeys as one myself.
There is only one fact that any individual can know for certain, beyond even the tiniest echo of a doubt: I Exist.
Lol. Lmao.
I would have taken this kind of argument more seriously before I started training in psychiatry.
May I present:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard%27s_syndrome
Cotard's syndrome, also known as Cotard's delusion or walking corpse syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that they are deceased, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs.
Just a few months back, I met someone with schizophrenia who had the full blown version. He'd have happily told you that his cogito ergo did not sum up. He said he was a rotting corpse and was refusing his medication, we had to talk him into taking them so that he wouldn't stink even harder and annoy everyone else on the ward. He was an unusually polite nihilist, and I hope he's doing better on the risperidone.
(As I told Corvos last time, this literally, factually happened. It's a named syndrome, and Oliver Sacks isn't the only person who has run into it.)
Pinging @reo mostly because he's already here, also a psychiatrist, also tolerant of being pinged by me for inane reasons, and mostly because I suspect he'll find this amusing.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_effect
The Glasgow effect is a socially constructed theory that describes the unexplained lower life expectancy of residents of Glasgow, specifically when compared to other municipalities across the United Kingdom.[1] Although lower income levels are generally associated with poor health and a shorter lifespan, epidemiologists have argued that poverty alone does not appear to account for the disparity found in Glasgow.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Equally deprived areas of the UK such as Liverpool and Manchester have higher life expectancies, and the wealthiest ten per cent of the Glasgow population have a lower life expectancy than the same group in other cities.[7] One in four men in Glasgow will die before their sixty-fifth birthday.[8]
I blame aliens. We've ruled out everything else.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
After she went back to the hotel, I got drunker and went home with a woman I'd met at the bar.
I wish to imagine that by "home" you mean that you abandoned your poor, elderly mother and replaced her with a newer model. Not a step-mom, but the mom that stepped out of her pants.
Fellas, this is what watching too much porn does to a mf. Take notes. No, you're not supposed to be taking notes about me, I'm a psychiatrist, I got that handled.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4d ago
While doing my unpaid janitorial duties (filtering spam, not cleaning my own toilet), I saw a bot trying to push a tax advice app for entrepreneurial Brits to the front page on this site.
I was sad to see it go. I can almost see it being a targeted and appropriate advertisement for me. Well, not quite, but better than what I get on Twitter anyway. RIP unnamed and unloved ad company that spams our niche forum, you will won't be missed.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Forza fans have been begging for Japan for years now. The new game looks somewhat interesting, but I'm particularly annoyed by how they made Japanese roads to American highway standards. They're way too wide, and I think newer racing games strongly underweight how having at least some narrow track adds to a visceral sense of speed. Last Forza game I genuinely enjoyed was 3, 4 annoyed me because I couldn't run over the sheep, and 5 was just a new coat of paint.
To be fair, so is 6. It's the Place Japan meme incarnate, but the series has clearly settled into a rhythm, and one that's appealing to many. I can tell you the series absolutely murdered NFS, which was my childhood. I would have absolutely loved a simcade alternative at the time, now I don't particularly care.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Yeah buddy, I know. The diagnosis was never in dispute. Luckily (?) you aren't as autistic as TK. He's hella autistic. He needs his own entry in the DSM-6.
Not that it takes a particularly good psychiatrist to figure that out. If I wanted to reliably find autistic nerds on the internet, I'd start here (or on LessWrong). I'm a nerd with ADHD instead, so I suppose I can pass/mask, or at least meet you guys half way.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
I'm glad you noticed the innuendo. I'll update the tally accordingly.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
For the record, while I appreciate the name-drop, I've largely checked out of this debate. I read the article when it crossed HN, which I browse daily. The strongest critique of Mythos is that GPT 5.5 Pro reaches similar benchmarks while being cheaper and generally available. Which is to say: Mythos isn't quite as special as Anthropic would like, because a competing frontier model already demonstrates equivalent capabilities. See the problem there? Or, from my vantage point, the absence of one?
Why so checked out?
Not because I've recanted, and not because I've stopped believing my own forecasts. It's that anyone who hasn't gotten the memo by now is beyond my ability to help. I've been on this beat for years, sounding the alarm for about as long. Litigating whether each fresh data point lands above or below the trendline has stopped feeling like a useful expenditure of my evenings. I still have the arguments cocked and loaded, still bookmark whatever catches my eye, with roughly the clinical curiosity of an ICU physician watching creatinine and urea climb and eGFR slide in a patient with end-stage renal disease. Erdos problems falling like dominos and Terence Tau watching from the sidelines, Tim Gowers writing up breakthroughs from OpenAI's unreleased general-purpose models, METR's task-horizon metrics snapping like a mediocre school psychologist trying to score Einstein on the Stanford-Binet. (At some point the instrument stops measuring the subject and starts measuring its own inadequacy.)*
TL;DR: my supply of fucks is running thin. If you're pinging me hoping to extract an argument about AI capabilities, calibrate accordingly. I've got bigger fish to fry before I get thrown into the fryer myself. Good luck to whoever still has the energy for it.
*Go ask ChatGPT for citations and actual links.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
There’s got to be a clinical term to describe this.
Autism. I have a case study:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3755/friday-fun-thread-for-may-15/443629?context=8#context
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
ToaKraka, you are a wise man. I am less wise, and wish to enquire if it's masturbation when one side of a Siamese twin jerks off the other.
In all honesty, arguing about whether masturbation is "sex" is arguing about semantics. I'm fond of that kind of mental masturbation, but I think trying to use it as a central example is inappropriate. If I ask a patient if they're sexually active, I don't want to know if they had a recent date with Rosie Palm and her five sisters. In a non-clinical context, if my buddy rings me up and tells me about the great sex he had last night, I'd kick him in the butt if it was that banal.
If it doesn't involve physical contact with and penetration of another person, doesn't count for me.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Edinburgh has to be my favorite city in the UK, with Manchester lagging behind in second place.
London? I've warmed to it considerably since my first visit in 2022, but I've also cooled on the prices. There's no way I'm going to spend that much money on rent and general expenses, particularly in a profession with little scope for geographical arbitrage.
Edinburgh strikes a nice balance. It's got good vibes, plenty of places to see or things to do. I mean, I'm not actually going to do any of those things, but it's the thought that counts. I suspect that I'm biased towards Manchester because I have family there, its not that remarkable. It's clearly not in the same league as London, it's just reasonably priced and not a complete snooze-fest.
Glasgow? Bruh. There's something in the air. A faint stink of rot (which might well be literal). The day I was in Glasgow probably increased the average mood when considering the population average, and I'm depressed. It just feels wrong, and I was in the nicer parts, staying in a fancy hotel. I didn't feel physically unsafe (I've been in some shady places for reasons I'd rather not get into, thanks), but it's gloomy and lacks the architectural charm of Edinburgh. I've only felt as utterly disappointed by a city when I visited Aberdeen, and that's so far north you run into polar bears.
In contrast, Edinburgh rents are reasonable, it's got a cultural scene that I could get into, in theory (it hosts ACX meetups!), and it's not super expensive. I could see myself living there, modulo futures where I do settle down in the UK.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
Lending yourself a hand is the best way to get rid of the spawn. Can't comment on the diabolical nature of the process without gross hypocrisy.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5d ago
have sex with your hand
I'm afraid I have bad news for you. Or great news, depending on how you look at things.
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