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
2hr ago
I've found that this is less than reliable in practice. If you have GPT 5.4 Thinking at hand, it's the ur-example. I can throw just about any essay I've ever written, and munch popcorn with the confident expectation that it'll tell me to trim down something. And if I indulge it and let it do it for me? Regretfully, the results will exhibit both aggressive trimming and unacceptable levels of stylistic drift. It's a very intelligent and capable model, but this is a failure mode that I can't beat out of it. I've tried.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
"She's not a real person..." I say while rocking on the floor of my hospital room. "She's just three cluster B personality disorders in a trench coat, she can't get you."
With great regret, you've made a major mistake here. Admitting yourself into an inpatient psych ward is the opposite of what you should be doing if you want to avoid Cluster B types, they're swarming there like a hive. I am fortunate enough to have been stung just often enough to have developed a tolerance, without progressing into anaphylactic shock.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
My apologies, I think you must have been trying to get me to play classic WOW instead lol.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
2hr ago
If I thought the thoughts she did
I saw someone dig up a xeet of hers that said something along the lines of "You haven't really lived if you haven't puked while giving head". In the interest of fairness, I'll mark this is a redeeming quality, albeit one that is far from putting the ledger in the black.
I did tell someone that she's absolutely not a torta, just pudgy but cute. This probably explains why so many men have put up with her shit, but then again, men put up with more than they should when they're thinking with their dicks. Been there, done that, and might do it again.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
Yes. You can look at the SSC version of this post to find an example in the wild. For what it's worth (and to my immense relief), it's a minority position that is increasingly losing traction by the day. The fat-acceptance movement fizzled out with a sound somewhere between a leaky balloon and a stinky fart the moment it was approved and available at scale.
It's not presented as right-wing, at significant scale, but there are plenty of people who consider it illegitimate on the grounds that it takes away the opportunity to demonstrate grit or "build character", and even more people who are unduly suspicious about it because they implicitly believe that the universe is karmically balanced: if there's a silver bullet for a previously intractable condition, then it must have a lead core. Those people are, as far as I can tell, wrong.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
3hr ago
My front was already well furnished with a rod, and I really needed a back-scratcher.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
I meant the scientologists, I have, through second hand reports, heard that ayahuasca can randomly show up at hippie music festivals in England.
Also now I think you should go take one or two Scientology courses and write an article about your experience.
Mormons first. The missionaries who approached me were two hot blonde chicks, which left a very different impression than a schizophrenic DM did.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
The world really has all kinds, and they always seem to become my problem.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
4hr ago
You seem to be doing just fine, as long as I don't get close enough to smell you, it doesn't count. And neither do you, apparently.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
Yes.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
Too reasonable by far. When I saw the original, it almost gave me a stroke. Do they even have a presence in the UK?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
5hr ago
Chuckles nervously
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6hr ago
Pls spoiler tag your flair, k thx bye
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
6hr ago
Uh.. I'm not a psychologist.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
7hr ago
There's this exercise you can do, progressive relaxation of muscles. You lie in bed, intentionally relax the smaller muscles in your periphery, and work your way up to the big ones outward-in. Never tried it, but it's in my textbooks and exam syllabus so it might work?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
7hr ago
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
7hr ago
After I posted my recent essay on /r/SSC, I was graced by the following DM. I want you to guess, and then put in writing, what you think the spoilered word is. No cheating.
This is gonna sound crazy, but
Scientology can help you. It's the only effective form of mental health treatment I've found, and I've tried a bunch
This did damage to my mental health, which is why I'm sharing it with you.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
8hr ago
LLMs can be extremely succinct, often debilitatingly so. Try out the GPT 5.4 Thinking model, it is trained to hand out tokens in such a miserly manner that you'd think it costs it money. Which, to be fair, is something OAI pays for.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
9hr ago
Met my goal, I remain unbanned another week (I'm not sure I can even ban myself, but it's the thought that counts).
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
10hr ago
Funnily enough, I maintain my own list of Claudisms to avoid, which partially overlaps with yours. The issue is that a lot of "Claude" voice overlaps with mine. Quoting myself from reddit:
I've been quietly using "quietly" for years now, and "load-bearing" is a load-bearing element for many of my sentences. I think it's unfair to expect structural engineers to change their nomenclature.
"Rounding error"? "In real time"? I use those all the time! I have before GPT-3 came out.
Sadly I don't have a direct link handy, I didn't bookmark it. But I think the first exposure I had was through a user I follow called @tomieinlove on X. If you can't find it, I'll take a look. My impression is that there are a few thousand or tens of thousands of people angry at her, which is significant but nowhere near a cancelation squad. I looked for other conversations on Google earlier, and it was just a few small reddit threads, most notably one from /r/longform.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
11hr ago
Bruh. The overwhelming majority of the similes and metaphors are mine. When I used Claude for feedback, its first instinct was to tell me to trim the piece down by about 40%, which I refused to do. It also wanted me to cut down on the purple prose or the unbridled rage, it's too nice to sit by idly when I'm calling someone a tumor or a psychic vampire.
Here, you might want to see what Gwern has to say on the matter:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/VNfN2XZEgE
If I had used Claude as heavily as I used to, this essay would be much shorter, much tidier, significantly less polemic, and in my humble opinion, worse for it. I try to be honest about AI usage, though I proactively disclose it only on places where it's required (like LessWrong), and even when it would be easy to deny or prevaricate. I told @Amadan that this essay is 99% human written, which, given that it's like 4000 words in length, is about 40 words of Claude in there that I either liked or didn't care to remove. Pessimistically, since I didn't sit here and count, it might be 97% human written, at which point that's 120 words.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
11hr ago
Knowing who I am as a person? Probably hide it. I'm not going to say that's the wisest or kindest choice, but it's what I'm inclined to do. I do things my friends and family wish I didn't: if they're reasonable people themselves, I'd tell them and apologize for it. If they're not? Then I prefer that the secret stays with me.
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
11hr ago
Jokes on her, she's not two steps ahead, I was going the other way - try to keep up, bitch.
At least I'm pretty sure I've denied or taken away some of that ad revenue, and that's black on my moral ledger.
I've ticked off something that's been on the bucket list for a while: telling Gwern off for his nicotine essay, which hooked me, and many a stupid rat, on the chemical. It is a frankly terrible nootropic, even if the harms of "pure" nicotine (or even a vape) are minimal, the dependency is remarkably inconvenient and I'm quite confident that his advice is net negative EV. If I had a time machine, I'd give my past self a light smack on the head and told him to never start, alongside inside baseball knowledge on exam questions.
I would have said it to his face if I'd actually managed to meet him at Inkhaven, but hey, sneaking it into a wider debate about LLM prose is a victory nonetheless. I can sleep easier tonight.
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