domain:savenshine.com
Lizzardspawn
4m ago
What is the obsession of Americans (and unfortunately younger Gen Zs in Europe too) with therapy?
Anyway my opinion is - LLM delivered quackery will be as efficient as the human one. But at least will be substantially cheaper.
yunyun333
32m ago
So is he part of said 'transition team' or does he just have the ear of someone on it?
hydroacetylene
55m ago
Why on earth would you talk to either therapists or AI for advice? The ordering of who to go to should be something like elders->good friends->randos->the denizens of your dreams->homeless crack addicts->unfeeling algorithms->anyone who charges for advice.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
57m ago
Are you in the American cultural umbrella? Martin Luther did a number on the concept, but it definitely still comes up, mostly as a strategy for recruiting nonbelievers.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1hr ago
I'm curious how the Motte sees using AI for therapy / life advice? Online I'm seeing a ton of people recommend Claude especially, but others are skeptical.
On the one hand I could see it being useful because of the fact that you have nigh-unfettered access to it, and can really dig into deep problems. Also, it's trained on all the therapy texts of course.
The other, more culture war issue, is that due to the way RLHF works, they will likely be pushing one ideological lens over another. Especially about deep topics like morality, relationships, casual sex, etc.
Overall I think it's a fascinating area of development, and I'm still optimistic that LLMs could help people much more than the average therapist. Mainly because I'm pretty bearish on the help people get from the average therapist.
Anyway, what do people think about therapy becoming AI?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
My girlfriend pitched the latter to me after she finished it. I decided it sounded incredibly stressful.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
Can’t remember where I first heard it. It wasn’t Watchmen. Probably either English class or one of those Egypt-adjacent kid’s books.
Folamh3
1hr ago
Weirdly enough, in the parody series Barry Trotter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gerber_(parodist)), Barry and Ermine get married and have a son who's a Squib. Because their son has grown up around magical people, he experiences a "grass-is-greener" effect in which Muggle culture seems impossibly exciting and exotic to him. His childhood ambition is to become an actuary in an insurance firm.
2rafa
1hr ago
She’s the daughter of dentists and speaks in RP English, it would be the correct assumption.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
Medications and management of medical issues is more complicated than most realize. Medical education emphasizes teaching doctors about our knowledge deficiencies for a reason, and it's very common for people in the field to grossly overestimate their understanding and knowledge. We complain about nurses, midlevels, and even other doctors having no fucking clue what they are doing at times.
It is extremely challenging for a layman, even one who is intelligent and informed, to bridge the training gap.
"Ok but who cares" is a reasonable question, but it is important to understand that errors don't just hurt you. A big example right now is antibiotics. Left to their own devices people will ask for and use antibiotics even when it's dangerous or simply not even a bacterial infection. This has a downstream effect on others, like an increase in antibiotic resistance.
It's also easy to hurt yourself and we find it unacceptable to allow society to not pick up the bill.
Let's say you have some mild chronic pain like arthritis, you read and are smart enough to know that ibuprofen can be good for this. But then you don't know the right dose, or the right frequency and then don't realize it is not a good idea with your diabetes. After a reasonable amount of time your kidneys are dead and you end up on dialysis - and society is paying for that. Even if you have good insurance or a lot of wealth that's a spot that could be given to someone else.
And that's a medication you can already buy over the counter.
2rafa
2hr ago
Every pure blood family is a well known family because the total number of wizards in Britain is in the thousands, almost certainly below 20,000 even with much longer lifespan than normal for humans. There are conceivably older wizards in their nineties or hundreds who know by name the vast majority of the wizard population in the country.
It’s also a largely post-scarcity society in which bad jobs are done by magic or slaves (eg. the dishes do themselves in the Weasley kitchen), so we imagine people working “service jobs” like shopkeepers or cooks do so primarily because they derive enjoyment from that customer interaction rather than because they need the money. There is financial inequality but it’s mostly abstract except when it comes to the purchase of some magical goods and services (like wands or brooms or magic candy) that cannot be conjured out of thin air and thus require the labor of actual other wizards. Textbooks and other things seem to have some semi-inviolable magic copyright attached.
Most people are essentially middle class, working in the few things not outsourced to magic (aforementioned artisanal magic crafts, the justice/courts system and government, some hospitality, and education). Many people appear to do just fine having little or no real employment, perhaps because wizards can conjure space, light, heat, food, warmth and can teleport. In this context, a job in “the civil service” ie Ministry of Magic isn’t the same as a sinecure in a muggle government. It’s likely the ministry creates a job for any wizard who wants one; the destitute are those wizards who choose to be.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2hr ago
Thanks for adding context. It would probably be better without the somewhat blatant culture war bits.
I'm a little ambivalent as to the extent to which this arguably constitutes "recruiting for a cause," but I will, tentatively, allow it.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
if god forbid we go under some invisible sum of $spending per minute, then they actually slam the bill on the table and just kick me out as if I am some hobo. So much for friendliness.
The hell? I have literally never had this happen in my entire life in the US. Either there's some other layer to why you're having that experience, or you are the unluckiest person to ever visit a restaurant here.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
I would agree Parisians are crazy behind the wheel of a car, but I think that's orthogonal to friendliness.
jeroboam
2hr ago
Yes, U.S. waiters are awful.
"Hi, I'm Stacy, and I'm going to be taking care of you today".
10 minutes after your food arrives: "You still working on that?"
French service is much better, generally.
Bartender_Venator
2hr ago
The cultures are in some ways more compatible with the US, but there's also an element of those countries being poor and needing tourist $$$ more, so their tourist-facing norms ended up being shaped differently.
somedude
3hr ago
No. There are either aliens (or whatever) or there's a very deliberate and massive psyop to that effect underway, involving high ranking members of both parties, lying officers, fake footage, etc etc etc.
We're past the point of "nothing to see here." That's now just the uncomfortable noise people make when they figure there are no aliens but can't think of a reason for the psyop they feel like really getting behind.
Lazuli
3hr ago
Week 12 thread now live: https://www.themotte.org/post/1258/weekly-nfl-thread-week-12
jericho
3hr ago
I believe the answer to this is basically anywhere other than Tokyo, Kyoto and Okinawa.
If you can deal with cold, I had friends recently visit Hokkaido (Sapporo for sure, think other places as well) and they reported it was comparatively bereft of tourists.
For warmer climes, I've generally heard that Kyushu isn't as flooded with foreign tourists as Honshu while still having plenty of impressive natural and historical sites.
07mk
3hr ago
I recall reading it in a high school English class. I wouldn't say it became more memorable, but it was reinforced by 2 TV shows many years apart: 1st with Lost when an episode featured a vast stone foot that appeared to be the remains of a larger statue, which seemed like a clear reference to the poem; 2nd with Breaking Bad when an episode was titled Ozymandias in an explicit reference to the poem and likely meant to point out Walt's growing pride and hubris and hint at his inevitable downfall.
There are certain word choices that differ between classes. Using the words “toilet” or “posh” is a very clear indicator that you aren’t upper or upper middle class.
Washing your hands before eating and being generally obsessive over hygiene standards is middle class, while the upper class generally prefer shabby chic and pick up half-finished meat bones with their hands.
Steretypically, the middle classes are afflicted with status anxiety, and therefore obsess over getting things right. Witness the Dursleys scripting out dinner etiquette before Mr. Dursley’s boss arrives for dinner. Whereas etiquette for the upper classes is just ‘whatever the upper classes do’ so they don’t fuss about it too much.
A classic example is the very PMC Nick Clegg and his wife going to dinner with the the Camerons (the Prime Minister and his wife, as upper class as they get) and being shocked when Mrs. Cameron used cheap mayonnaise from a bottle instead of using something fancy or making it herself. Not needing status symbols is the status symbol.
I'd assume most therapists would hold to similar ideological lenses unless you sought out a speciality therapist directly and explicitly sponsored by a church.
I think if the AI could hold a memory of previous discussions it would probably be as good as any therapist in most aspects, possibly better because it's available 24/7 at a low price, but possibly worse in minor aspects in that it can't read the unspoken cues of body language, vocal tenor, implicit context etc and it can't sympathetically offer a box of tissues and a cup of tea. This is assuming the patient is actively engaged and moderately literate and intelligent enough to be able to guide their own sessions. I expect less able patients would need the kind of prompting and closer attention that is more suited to an IRL interaction.
I also expect there are big blind spots I'm missing like how to transfer "notes" from online sessions to an IRL therapist, or how to alleviate a crisis that goes beyond an initial need to talk things over.
Of course there's also the risk of someone who is already mentally unstable talking to a fake person that's been programmed to be agreeable, but if AI therapy was properly established in its own right I assume it would be operating under a custom prompt to better tune it to the task.
More options
Context Copy link