@GFaang97609 @andrewmccalip @grok I don’t think you’re up to speed on the nature of “cost” in the post-Opus-4.6 world.
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Geoffrey Mantel
698 posts
Geoffrey Mantel
@GeoffMantel
Mostly uncredentialed thinker of thoughts
Greater Vancouver, British Columbia Katılım Eylül 2017
620 Takip Edilen51 Takipçiler
@teachrobotslove “They don't realize their sympathy is permission to drown.”
Banger!
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People have many fundamental misunderstandings of depression and believe that alleviating the person of responsibilities will be helpful - being "gentle" with them, saying it's okay to use baby wipes instead of taking a shower, or that it's fine to Doordash spaghetti or lay in bed and avoid social engagements. This would make sense if depression was a bodily disease like cancer, and the symptoms could be alleviated with rest. But it's not. Depression is a disease of the mind. It's a disease of fundamental misattribution. It usually worsens under conditions of rest. Everytime you tell yourself that you're too tired or sick to make yourself spaghetti and need to Doordash, the depression grows stronger. The depression wants to survive even if it kills you (in fact, the ultimate goal is to kill you) and will encourage you to give up. That you will find relief in giving up. But you never will. You will only continue to feel worse and worse. Relief can only be found in doing the hard thing, in giving yourself tasks to accomplish that make you proud to be alive, in boiling the water and chopping the tomatoes for the sauce, in turning toward the light even when your mind is screaming for you to hide under the covers. A lot of people won't tell you this, because they've never been to the darkness and had to crawl back. They don't understand it. They don't realize their sympathy is permission to drown.
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@ompsychiatrist @FrontPsychiatry All to say: I don't disagree that the timely application of anti-psychotics has saved lives, but we *must* not stop there. The current models do not predict the clinical realities, and we must do better.
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@ompsychiatrist @FrontPsychiatry My prediction: understanding the immune system and energy (mitochondria) systems will do more for schizophrenia in 2026 than the previous century of pharmacology.
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Psychiatry is being told once again to step back. To prescribe less. To hesitate more. To practice “gentle medicine.” That sounds virtuous until you look closely. Six uncomfortable points.
1. Psychiatry is not reckless. It already works under uncertainty every day. The real danger is not overconfidence. It is paralysis disguised as caution.
2. Severe depression, psychosis, bipolar disorder, catatonia and suicidality do not wait for philosophical clarity. Delay kills. Calling delay “gentle” does not make it ethical.
3. Average effect sizes are waved around to dismiss treatment. Real patients are not averages. Many return to work relationships and life because treatment was started on time.
4. Medication harms are loudly discussed. The harm of non-treatment relapse disability suicide is strangely quieter. That imbalance is not neutral. It shapes fear driven practice.
5. The chemical imbalance story is repeatedly used as a moral indictment. It was a public simplification not a clinical doctrine. Psychiatry never practiced cartoon biology.
6. “Gentle medicine” is a luxury concept. In low-resource settings it often translates to no treatment delayed care and abandoned patients.
Psychiatry does not need moral lectures about restraint. It needs the freedom to act decisively when illness demands it.
Less ideology.
Better judgment.
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@CaptainDznuts There’s something compelling about this, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
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@CJHandmer Perhaps we could simply take income distribution out of the original post and focus on equal access to education and healthcare. I’ll throw in even distribution of healthy, good-quality food. Surely society can generate income incentives for innovation without so much suffering.
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The idea that a Gini coefficient of 0 represents an ideal society is a sickness. Our paleolithic ancestors had a Gini coefficient close to zero, and also died all the time of horrific disease and violence.
The US has a Gini coefficient of about 0.5 and is by far the richest and most economically dynamic society in history.
You may not like the implication but the optimal amount of economic inequality, even for the poor, is not zero.
Europe ran a 50 year experiment on progressive tax and spend. Great social progress was made, at least initially. But almost without exception the society seems to have lost the will to live, having stagnated economically for 20 years while the birth rate entered free fall. Why? Hard to say but I think cutting off the tails of the life outcome distribution penalized positive outliers and that matters a lot in the long term. You have to protect a path for ambitious strivers to take a shot at building the next better future.
Radovan Vávra@BlanikZ
Germany vs. Mississippi Across education, healthcare, longevity—and income distribution—Germany consistently outperforms Mississippi. Germany’s Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality where 0 = perfect equality and 1 = maximum inequality) is about 0.29–0.32 after taxes and transfers, placing it among the more equal advanced economies. Mississippi’s Gini coefficient is roughly 0.47–0.49, indicating far higher income inequality. This difference matters. Lower inequality in Germany is reinforced by progressive taxation, universal healthcare, and broad access to education, which translate into stronger social outcomes: life expectancy of 80–81 years and solid educational performance by OECD standards. Mississippi combines high inequality with weaker public services; it ranks near the bottom of U.S. states in education and health, and its life expectancy is only 74–75 years. The comparison shows that inequality is not just a statistical artifact: it correlates directly with human outcomes. Germany functions as a typical advanced welfare-state society, while Mississippi—despite being part of the world’s richest country—exhibits inequality and life outcomes closer to those of much poorer societies.
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@DaveShapi “Oriented toward something orthogonal to the banana”
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Guys, you realize you can just ask the AIs themselves right?
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@isleofpuffin @NateB_Panic Have you ever actually been on a plane when they start the engines? It really does smell like everyone is being gassed.
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@NateB_Panic Bleed air comes from the compressor stage of the engine. There is no combustion there, fuel, or anything else. It’s been this way for 80+ years. If the air with no source of contaminants was really that bad we’d know by now
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For years airlines asked Boeing and Airbus to install sensors on the bleed air system which provides oxygen direct from the engines but they've never done it because they know how bad the air is and don't want crew/passenger liability. LA Times did great story. Nxt tweet for link
donald@donaldjewkes
jetlag might not be why you feel awful after flying
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SPEED will be the biggest outcome of autonomous cars.
Super-human autonomous cars with negligible reaction time will drive at speeds of 300 km/h on highways where human drivers won't be allowed.
This will essentially make short-distance flight obsolete. [1/3]
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@JMGregorchuk I’m here for the single-sink bedroom and the neighbouring triple-sink “Fuh Bah”
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Architects are cooked. AI is coming for you.
Prepare accordingly.
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@tangiblerobots @chris_j_paxton Marketing is having a quick consult with engineering about how to spin this in an industry-acceptable fashion…
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Hello, Eggie.
The world was built around humans. Eggie doesn't just look human, Eggie interacts like us.
Dexterous. Mobile. Compliant.
We’re building Eggie to be the smartest robot to ever walk on Earth. Join us.
Built from scratch and with love in California. 🫶
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Wife: <problem>
Me: <solution>?
Wife: I don’t want <solution>!
How do you get past this dynamic?
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