@eiledon on Tumblr

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The votes on this post. Oh. A poem in poll form, interactive art, the fact we can see how the other people reading it felt. im. this is really good.

eiledon

Reblogged

iwascouldbewillbebygodstillam

started seeing a line "suicide jokes make your mental health worse and harm other people"

and maybe, maybe, when the one who's joking doesn't have any depression or other disorder or suicidal thoughts/ideation/intrusive thoughts and is perfectly fine (is it even possible) and so on, maybe this saying is true for that specific situation

but i tried it: literally stopped joking about death/suicide/desire to be dead etc. it lasted for like two-three years (still unable to joke the same way)

during the period my mental health worsened. let's say it was 2/10 and i was able to cope, even coped well, now it's -5/10 and the only thing i am really able to do (well, usually, mostly) is work (for the purpose of staying alive)

can't have sex, can't understand myself, can't stay calm, can't control anger/depression, can't write, can't see beauty everwhere, can't have fun, can't love life, can't think about my future, can't stop being scared of the world etc etc etc (it's just the surface)

i even did things i thought i was incapable of. good that i have somewhat a moral compass and didn't start killing kittens, however, i engaged in physical activities which were way beyond the norm. I'm not sure I won't engage in once again, for - as i already stated - i stopped being able to control my anger

i began walking back but it's easy to fall and hard to climb a mountain so I'm as slow as a snail, you know

yes, we're all different and someone would gain the best out of "stopped saying i wanna die". however, it works vice versa as well

main point: let's use our brains before following one's lead and let's not insist that "you must like plums, you will like plums, plums are good for your health, allergies don't exist, eat plums right now"

peace love planet eurpths

#if i dont make suicide jokes then im actually gonna commit suicide #and no thats not a joke

eiledon

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coalashslurry

we're running out of time to fuck it we ball....

fatfemmefreaquency

got the 2026 plan swapped around

eiledon

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defectivegembrain

I'm going to *remembers how many times in my life I didn't tell anyone I was suicidal* you know, I'm not going to, but I honestly think even joking about it is better than never talking about it, and I think people who have dealt with such a difficult thing deserve to be able to joke about our own experiences without getting lectured about some knock-off CBT that's been ground up and shat out of the online pop psychology void, and also you know this format in itself is a suicide joke right it's just euphemistic

eiledon

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gh0sdae

On how they still think curly tried to commit with the crash:

#mouthwashing

eiledon

Reblogged oblivionsdream

mahgck

hes ur “emotional support blorbo”??? girl he cant even emotionally support Himself

cheeseanonioncrisps

Not ‘support’ as in ‘supportive’, ‘support’ as in ‘load-bearing’.

mariacallous

#oh he supports plenty of loads all right

eiledon

Reblogged cthulhu-with-a-fez

goodluckdetective

So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.

goodluckdetective

Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.

goodluckdetective

My read of this came from Hank’s own response to the situation which you can find here. I’ve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:

Obvs, Hank’s situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and that’s a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.

Some other notes:

1. As stated, I don’t bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something I’ve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-

2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didn’t even get into how they’re meant to train off user data but that’s another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, it’s a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.

3. I don’t want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that they’ll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isn’t a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.

4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But that’s another post if folks are interested.

eiledon

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shredsandpatches

Really enjoyed Sweeney Todd and also was pleased to discover the fun fact that the modern barber chair was actually invented in St. Louis. In this production Sweeney had ordered his chair from Koken Barbers' Supply (St. Louis, USA), and that was a specific enough local reference that I figured it had to be a real company, and indeed it was. If you were a 19th-century barber looking for a murder chair and had a lot of cannibalism money to spend, you probably really would order one from St. Louis! I'm so proud of my city.

(However, in the production the very large and clearly labeled box only had a little IOU note in it, because the whole thing clearly had a budget of like $27 and a lot of that was spent on blood. But at least I learned some chair facts)