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?
2d ago
You might have already read it, but I find Terence Tao's impression of a similar model, o1, illuminating:
https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113132502735585408
The experience seemed roughly on par with trying to advise a mediocre, but not completely incompetent, (static simulation of a) graduate student. However, this was an improvement over previous models, whose capability was closer to an actually incompetent (static simulation of a) graduate student. It may only take one or two further iterations of improved capability (and integration with other tools, such as computer algebra packages and proof assistants) until the level of "(static simulation of a) competent graduate student" is reached, at which point I could see this tool being of significant use in research level tasks
In the context of AI capabilities, going from ~0% success to being, say, 30% correct on a problem set is difficult and hard to predict. Going from 30% to 80%, on the other hand, seems nigh inevitable.
I would absolutely expect that in a mere handful of years we're going to get self-directed Competent Mathematician levels of performance, with "intuition" and a sense of mathematical elegance. We've gone from "high schooler who's heard of advanced mathematical ideas but fumbles when asked to implement them" to "mediocre grad student" (and mediocre in the eyes of Tao!).
But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."?
In this context, the existence of ATPs allows for models to be rigorously evaluated on ground-truth signals through reinforcement learning. We have an objective function that unambiguously tells us whether it has correctly solved a problem, without the now extreme difficulty of having humans usefully grade responses. This allows for the use of synthetic data with much more confidence, and a degree of automation as you can permute and modify questions to develop more difficult ones, and then when a solution is found, use that as training data. This is suspected to be why recent thinking models have shown large improvements in maths and coding while being stagnant on what you'd think are simpler tasks like writing or poetry (because at a certain point the limitations become human graders, without a ground truth to go off when asked if one bit of prose is better than the other).
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
I believe Indefinite Leave to Remain nominally takes 5 years, but with bureaucratic slowness, closer to 6 in practice.
I agree that economic turmoil will probably be a rapid shock. But I'm unsure whether rapid implies months or years of unemployment and uncertainty. Either way all I can do is save enough money to hope to weather.
On the plus side, if NHS workers were fired immediately when they became redundant, the service would be rather smaller haha.
I've never been a particularly patriotic person with my birth country either, the closest to a country I love is the US.
Now I sincerely do think it would be better for the natives of the UK to be absorbed into the US. But that being said, I would like the UK more if it was more likable. Tautologies aside, I have the right to live there because I provide them a service through my labor, and they pay me for it, and I pay for said benefits with taxes to boot. But I want the UK itself to be a richer, free-er country.
Is that disloyal? I don't see how. Right now it's trajectory is uninspiring to say the least! Even most Brits are profoundly unhappy about the state of the economy and the politicians that run it, and aren't delusional in thinking so.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
Neither? I have a residency permit in the UK, but I don't hold citizenship, yet.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
I think the annexations of Canada, Mexico and the UK (please) would be in the best interests of all involved. I'd rather be a secondclass citizen in the States than a citizen in the UK.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2d ago
My younger cousin is a mathematician currently doing an integrated Masters and PhD. About a year back, I'd been trying to demonstrate to him the every increasing capability of SOTA LLMs at maths, and asked him to raise questions that it couldn't trivially answer.
He chose "is the one-point compactification of a Hausdorff space itself Hausdorff?".
At the time, all the models insisted invariably that that's a no. I ran the prompt multiple times on the best models available then. My cousin said it was incorrect, and provided to sketch out a proof (which was quite simple when I finally understood that much of the jargon represented rather simple ideas at their core).
I ran into him again when we're both visiting home, and I decided to run the same question through the latest models to gauge their improvements.
I tried Gemini 1206, Gemini Flash Thinking Experimental, Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New) and GPT-4o.
Other than reinforcing the fact that AI companies have abysmal naming schemes, to my surprise almost all of them gave the correct answer, barring Claude, but it was hampered by Anthropic being cheapskates and turning on the concise responses mode.
I showed him how the extended reasoning worked for Gemini Flash (it doesn't hide its thinking tokens unlike o1) and I could tell that he was shocked/impressed, and couldn't fault the reasoning process it and the other models went through.
To further shake him up, I had him find some recent homework problems he'd been assigned at his course (he's in a top 3 maths program in India) and used the multimodality inherent in Gemini to just take a picture of an extended question and ask it to solve it. It did so, again, flawlessly.
He then demanded we try with another, and this time he expressed doubts that the model could handle a compact, yet vague in the absence of context not presented problem, and no surprises again.
He admitted that this was the first time he took my concerns seriously, though getting a rib in by saying doctors would be off the job market before mathematicians. I conjectured that was unlikely, given that maths and CS performance are more immediately beneficial to AI companies as they are easier to drop-in and automate, while also having direct benefits for ML, with the goal of replacing human programmers and having the models recursively self-improve. Not to mention that performance in those domains is easier to make superhuman with the use of RL and automated theorem providers for ground truth. Oh well, I reassured him, we're probably all screwed and in short order, to the point where there's not much benefit in quibbling about the other's layoffs being a few months later.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
4d ago
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
It would be an entertaining idea to have to argue with customs here about that kind of shipment at the very least.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
This isn't likely to be an actual problem in practise. "Don't you guys have phones?" I'm sure they'll manage, even if porn is technically banned, people have some idea about how to get around it, and if you've seen Indians being horny on the internet, it doesn't have to be visible nudity for someone to jerk it.
Worst case scenario, they can have their wife come in and lend an, uh, hand. No mouths, saliva isn't ideal for semen, but I'm not going to be standing and watching.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
Rest assured we're not that cheap lol, it's just a rather unforseen and ridiculous problem to have to tackle when I just happened to be back home for Christmas. Arranging for jerk-off material isn't what I saw myself doing!
(I'm sure just about every Indian male has figured out how to get around the bans by now, but whatever happened to the power of imagination?)
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
I'm afraid not many people are going to be willing to pay to watch me pole dance. Though they'd probably pay to get me to stop!
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
5d ago
My family is opening a fertility/IVF clinic. Of all the logistical headaches you can run into in India, the question of whether to get a VPN so the gentlemen in the "Collection Room" can avail of some Pornhub™ (necessary because most porn sites are blocked in the country) or leave them to their own devices wasn't one I expected.
The alternative, getting some paper porno mags, is one where I wouldn't even know where to begin acquiring one these days. Not a conversation I have everyday, I tell ya.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
7d ago
I'm not familiar with hypnotherapy at all, and I would wager that's more an indictment of it than my knowledge. I'd recommend going for bog standard CBT first and foremost.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d ago
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!
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
10d 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?
16d 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?
16d 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?
16d 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?
17d 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?
17d 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?
19d 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?
20d 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?
20d 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?
20d ago
Well, modus ponens, modus tollens heh
Is that particularly surprising in a fic that provides an "acknowledgement of country" before the work begins?
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