self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
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:
I tried stuffing my friends into this textbox and it really didn't work out.
User ID: 454
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
1d ago
You can't "adapt" in a harmless way to bruising, worst case would be something like cauliflower ear as seen in boxers, where repeated healing of large bruises/haematomas causes fibrosis. You end up being internally scarred, losing whatever tissue was there. I doubt you're getting bruised so badly and regularly it's a real risk, but it can happen.
Get your bloods checked, especially for clotting factors. If you're bruising far more than the norm, even adjusted for intensity and skin color, something's up.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
6d ago
It's definitely worse with cheap furniture that uses plywood, but I've seen some run down pieces that can get you if you're not careful.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
7d ago
Wood removes, from all the forms which it supports, the wounding quality of angles which are too sharp
Someone's never gotten a splinter from wooden furniture eh?
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
7d ago
I'd imagine most people here would consider the "Anglosphere" to be the Commonwealth countries plus the US, I doubt India would come to mind for them. While we have a gazillion English speakers, it's not strictly the language of the majority! I would hope that I qualify for honorary membership nonetheless haha.
I'm uniquely screwed when it comes to practising in the US, I won't elaborate since you seem to recall my moaning before, but even in an ideal world, I'd be looking at the USMLE and 3 years of residency. I haven't heard of anyone actually getting those requirements waived if they're a credentialed specialist elsewhere, but that could be my ignorance as opposed to me denying @Throwaway05 's claims. It's not a formalized route at any rate.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
7d ago
Heh, it's a dream alright. If you're willing to marry me, I'll promise to be the sub ;)
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
8d ago
Doctors from the Anglosphere?
Yes. At least some parts of it.
For example, British doctors are massively disgruntled, and a significant portion of them are trying to leave the country, though as always, the majority of people anywhere don't really want to emigrate. When Brits run, it's usually easier to go to Australia or New Zealand, where wages are markedly higher, work life balance is better, and their credentials are recognized as equivalent with little faffing around. Some opt for Canada.
Aus/NZ doctors are largely content, and only a small number want to move, and when they do the US is their goal most of the time.
If licensing regimes like the USMLE were relaxed for these specific countries, I doubt you wouldn't see a 2-5x efflux, comparable to the boost in salary they'd see, even if the working hours are worse.
Hell, I'd go if I could, I opted for the UK because I didn't have a better choice for long and painful reasons. Depending on how the job market looks in 3-6 years and if the barriers go, I could well be tempted in the future.
I'd say doctors from these countries are competent, especially native ones, I've certainly been nothing but impressed. They make do with shit wages and a QOL that is worse in many ways because of the UK being a stagnant country, but they're sticking around both because of inertia and because the US isn't easy to go to. They're seeing their own wages stagnate, and face stiff competition from international medical graduates (like yours truly, I have to look out for my own interests), training is unnecessarily long and painful, and many don't need more than a nudge to reconsider.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d ago
Dowries are highly variable in commonality across India these days, and at least de jure illegal.
It's quite common to see them not even raised, but just as often, it's things like the family of the bride buying something along the lines of an apartment or a car for the new couple, or offering "gifts".
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d ago
Divorce isn't a social death sentence anymore. It's highly frowned upon, but can be forgiven if justifiable.
A cousin of mine got divorced (after marrying against family advice). She ended up marrying another divorcee and seems happy enough. That's usually the case, with divorcees marrying other divorcees.
Of course, big country, loads of variance, but you can put it behind you in most cases.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d ago
An uncle of mine married a lady while they were both finishing up their engineering PhDs.
She was chronically depressed, and had even been started by my (gyno) parents on SSRIs for postpartum depression. When their kid was about 6 months old, she was alone at home and hanged herself. No note, it was a spur of the moment decision while their daughter slept next door.
I have absolutely no reason to think my uncle or his immediate family had anything to do with it. They were a happy couple, even while grappling with her mental health issues. As you've mentioned, the death of a wife within 7 years of marriage automatically warrants investigation*, and in this case, her side of the family were disgruntled and lodged charges, accusing him of instigating her suicide, while also asking for the custody of his daughter.
The legal system here is automatically, and intentionally, biased against men in such affairs. He was imprisoned while standing trial, a protracted affair, and a ruinous one for someone who had just started their own company and acquired a few sizable contracts. It took about a year for the charges to be dismissed and for him to see the light of day, but by then he was a broken man, and half a decade of work he'd put his blood and sweat into was gone with nothing to show for it.
This was all despite literally no evidence beyond the unfounded claims made by his in-laws, while he was able to show evidence of his wife's struggle with depression and get her doctors (including psychiatrists not in the family she was referred to) to testify.
Last time I saw him, he told me to:
A) Never get married B) Get out of this country while I still could
I'm not inclined to follow the first bit of advice, it was an unfortunate accident but he still had his life ruined because he was a man, and men are never above suspicion. The latter? You know where I am.
*A perennial headache when I was an intern at a government hospital. You had women dying shortly after childbirth, or because they got run over by a car, and yet it was automatically a case with medicolegal implications and a dozen times the paperwork for my sorry ass to handle.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d ago
Well, modus ponens, modus tollens heh
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
11d ago
There's good reason that they'd say so only when they're drunk, because it's a ludicrously over-expansive claim!
What makes going under the knife qualitatively different when it comes to nigh universal desires to change or improve one's body? Getting rid of burn scars? Removing a mole? Does wanting to get a haircut or go to the gym count as body dysmorphia?
There are no neat edges here, but at the very least I'd expect a degree of delusion about the current condition of one's body, as well as obvious negative harm before I'd consider medicalizing the situation to be warranted.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
11d ago
It's alright. I feel a warning that goes on your permanent record was too harsh, so it won't stick.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
11d ago
Overheard at my hospital:
Senior psychiatrist, about 15 years older than me- "I need to get a breast reduction done, look at me, I'm tiny, and I swear a third of my weight is up here."
Then she went on about how it wouldn't be covered by the NHS, and it would ludicrously expensive to get done privately here, hence her plan to fly in to Turkey and get cut down to size there.
The shame! The squandering of God-given gifts! An imminent call for a diagnosis of severe body dysmorphia with threat of self-mutilation requiring involuntary commitment! A man can only sigh and pour one out.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
14d ago
If enforcing our rules has a negative opportunity cost, then it's one we must pay.
A warning is just that, a warning, and in the absence of further transgressions, won't have longterm ramifications. I didn't think a ban was warranted myself, but that note was for any other admins who'd wish to act, letting them know I have no strong feelings either way.
If you strongly suspect, as he made clear himself, that something about your post is objectionable (he chose to highlight the lack of formatting), then that's all the more reason to take proactive action and fix the issue. As is, he's getting off with a slap on the wrist.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
15d ago
What on Earth is this post supposed to be?
Firstly, we expect a decent amount of effort in top level comments in the CWR thread.
Second, if there's a CW element here, I can't for the life of me see it, unless you're trying to stretch our tolerance for LLM-posting, which is low as is.
Then on top of that, it's a raw, unformatted conversation dump, you haven't even made it clear what it is we're supposed to be engaging with.
I'm removing this and warning you, but I'm leaving it in the hands of the other mods if they'd like to hit you with a ban. Don't do this.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
18d ago
I would suspect that these gentlemen are more likely to end up sipping Mai Thais on the beach in the seedier parts of southeast Asia than end up on Mars haha.
Could you cobble up a few thousand disaffected but reasonably wealthy men if you tried hard enough? Eh, probably, but you'd have to be quite lax in terms of screening. I'm not sure Musk wants his colonies to have that particular make, but I suppose he's going to have to compromise somewhere.
My contention is that the number of people who are driven enough to want to settle Mars at a quality of life reasonable in the next few decades of colonial tech are very few, at least if they're paying for the privilege. Larger if you pay them, but then the question arises, what are you paying them for? They're unlikely to be financial positive, but of course, we must account for the fact that the biggest backer here is distinctly uninterested in an ROI (my Twitter has been bombarded with people arguing that point, but it seems clear to me money is far from Musk's primary motivator for Mars).
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
18d ago
I think there might be maybe a few thousand people who meet the definition of WHIM who would be willing to pay for the privilege of moving to Mars (let's say in the first two decades since the first colonists land with permanent intent). I think to get significantly more people there, especially talented or motivated people, you'll have to subsidize them or outright pay them to be there.
I personally doubt that the intersection of people willing to go to Mars and those who can do something useful there isn't very large!
I'm all for Mars colonization, but even I acknowledge that it's a rather miserable place to be. For most intents and purposes, it's an actually worse lifestyle than permanent Antarctic habitation (you won't die from asphyxiation if something goes wrong, and you get decent ping on the internet). If someone is inclined to argue that antarctic colonization is restricted by treaty, how many people are running off to Siberia or northern Canada and Greenland?
What sells Mars is the romance. And it's not a novel. By the time technology advances enough that living on Mars is as comfortable as living here, there will be little intrinsic reason to. Not x-risk, not the pay, little but because you want to be on the human frontier. I might pay to visit Mars once, but you'll have to pay me a pretty good premium to live and work there longterm. And I suspect the economic incentive to employ people there isn't going to be very large, but might be brute-forceable. And I personally expect that human presence won't be economically compelling by the time we have regular Starship fleets.
It doesn't seem like we're in a space opera future where humans spread through the cosmos because we have no alternative. It seems that if we're going to have large numbers of people off world anytime soon, it's by paying them to be there or them paying for it, all off the backs of taxing far more economical machines. Robots will take over from humans as the most useful entities to have on Mars, and it remains to be seen if we even get there in time.
Which is fine by me, if I'm chilling in an O'Neill cylinder, I'm not fussed about the fact that I'm not employed there. I want to be in space because it's cool! With creature comforts not found on rusty iceballs!
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
18d ago
I'm not particularly anti-LLM, but my opinion is that if I can tell, you've largely wasted my time, and probably used a bad model or prompted poorly. (This is not Official Motte Policy, I have my mod hat off, and some people use LLMs solely to be obnoxious).
At the very least, proofread and exercise some editorial discretion! Their summary adds absolutely nothing to the original essay, which I've read halfway, and sells it short. It certainly makes the mistakes I mention, but at least it mentions that the author has a "we'll wait and see" approach to AI, as opposed to skipping it outright and just regurgitating things uncritically.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
18d ago
My LLM-sense is tingling, but let's leave that aside.
As a work of futurism, this sucks. Bold statement, yes, but it seems to belong to the category of prediction that goes:
"1 (ONE) major thing changes in the course of technological advancement, nothing else is allowed to significantly advance, nope, not even when we've got clear evidence of it happening or you should at least muster good evidence of why you don't think it's relevant"
It's the equivalent of writing The Martian exactly as-is after SpaceX announces and test flies Starship.
What are the cardinal sins? Well, it seems to assume that over the course of several decades or millennia (long enough for sub-speciation!):
-
No significant advancements in AI or robotics, which would obviate the need for a very skilled, astronaut-tier colonist pool. Assuming there's demand for meat and bones humans at all.
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No genetic or cybernetic enhancement that would directly address many of the consequences of Martian existence, or that would simply allow useful traits to rapidly flow through the gene pool.
-
You can already deal with some of the downsides of low gravity by embedding centrifuges on the Martian surface so everyone can get in some single g time.
Further ink spilled on the new Martian Ubermensch is a complete waste of time, and that's coming from someone who advocates for space colonization, and Mars as low hanging fruit, even if we really ought to be aiming at asteroids as well (it'll happen anyway, if launch costs keep dropping).
Even leaving aside my previous concerns and my own interest in space colonization, the odds of Mars brain-draining Earth are... low. It is rather unlikely that we have millions of people clamoring to move there, or that losing them makes any damn difference. Mars is not a very attractive place to live, we'll go there despite that inconvenient fact, not because of the excellent sea-side views in the Hellas Basin.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
20d ago
Rimworld: Mr. Samuel Streamer. He does excellent flavorful playthroughs with modded Rimworld. Honorable mention goes to Hazzor, who uploads far less frequently but does use Combat Extended, a mod I can't live without.
Arma and milsim games: RimmyDownUnder, Operator Drewski, Rubix Raptor.
Total War games, primarily Warhammer: Milk and cookies Total War is the GOAT for commentary and casting multi-player battles, but due to his infrequent uploads I settle for Turin at times.
From the Depths (a game that I love to watch but can't for the life of me spare the time and focus needed to play): Lathland
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
22d ago
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta875/documents/final-appraisal-determination-document
Here's the original analysis that NICE put out, and more recently, it's been approved for morbid obesity with a bunch of strict criteria and not a first-line treatment as far as I'm aware. More of a backstop where all else failed. That's just for obesity though, it's somewhat easier to get for diabetes if memory serves. I believe it's all injectable, or at least that's what I saw in the analysis.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
22d ago
https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.14313
It was a target trial emulation, using over a hundred million patient EHRs to find 1.1 million eligible ones.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
23d ago
I did my first solo post-grad teaching session! I was anxious as hell, to the point where I woke up at 5 am with palpitations and couldn't go back to sleep, but it worked out and my talk was well received. More than a fear of public speaking, I've always been on edge about more senior doctors deciding today's the day to pimp me with keen/absurd questions, but thankfully I knew enough not to make a fool of myself.
If you're curious, the study I dissected was on novel evidence suggesting semaglutide decreased incidence of Alzheimer's. I happened to discuss other related studies that found it effective in many, apparently unrelated conditions ranging from Parkinson's to gambling addictions, though you can always read Scott's post on semaglutide instead. And a cheap and cheerful cost-benefit analysis from the perspective of the NHS, because I need to pad out the runtime somehow.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
23d ago
I pointed out that the benefits weakly outweighed the drawbacks, in terms of effect on diseases and side effects. After that, the relevant question is whether it's cost-effective.
South Asian? Does your extended family not partake of the Aunty Network that attempts to pair everyone up? It's worth a shot. All else failing, on a matchmaking site you'd be a magnet for women in the homeland looking for a green card and happy with an arranged marriage, though you might not be looking for one of those.
Before you go for anything as drastic as limb lengthening, which is frankly nightmarish, you could always go for other, less painful, forms of plastic surgery. You seem to be able to afford it!
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