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sheepolog

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Midjourney Medical 1 month ago

What possible use could there be for doing this?

Umm...the same use we get out of an annual physical or dental checkup.

I agree with everything you just said.

I believe these are very difficult but not impossible problems. There are technical limitations to our measuring tools, but I am optimistic that future medical advancements (maybe far in the future) will provide ways of measuring and diagnosing that may seem like science fiction today.

I am not attempting to trivialize the work that medical professionals do, or fault doctors for being fallible. I am attempting to encourage the development of medical technology to cut down on what I perceive to be a high rate of misdiagnosis (10-15%).

Eventually, diagnostic systems (whether AI or human+AI) will significantly outperform current human doctors.

If humans have different normal ranges, then the tests will be specific to the individual, based on their health history, DNA, tissue simulation in digital environment, etc. If adrenal nodules of similar diameter behave differently, then the tests will inspect more than just diameter.

The data to make the correct diagnosis is out there, we just don't have the tools or processing power to use it yet.

It's been super eye-opening to me as an adult how frequent misdiagnoses are. I understand it's good for a doctor to sound confident, but "confidently wrong" is imo much worse than "cautiously wrong". We really need better imaging/diagnostic tools that cut down on human bias; hoping for a star trek tricorder someday.

Size of Life 7 months ago

Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being only 2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe when sitting they're under 3 feet? From wikipedia:

"females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37 kg (82 lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh 75 kg (165 lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71 in)."

As a Steam-based game developer, I am starting to use AI more and more in new projects for asset generation (images and text) as well as some help with code. Here are some of my ideas for why we haven't yet seen a huge increase in steam game releases due to AI:

1: Even with AI, it's a lot of work to make a full game. When most people think "I have a cool game idea", they're usually imagining something polished and non-trivial, possibly 3d. You could make a short text adventure in a few days with AI, or a very simplistic 2d game, but anything more ambitious (like 3d) is going to take a lot more effort.

2: Releasing on steam requires you to pay $100. I imagine this is a substantial deterrent for "3-day projects", unless you think it'll sell $100 worth.

3: There's more to game development than creating assets and writing code. The author of the article recreated an existing game, which sidesteps one of the most difficult parts of gamedev: design. Creating a compelling game is surprisingly difficult. Granted, you don't need a compelling game in order to release on steam, but I myself have made many prototypes over the years which I've abandoned because the idea just wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be.

4: I've made a few prototypes with AI assets, and one issue I frequently run into with image generation is: it still takes a fair amount of work to generate the same character in different poses, facial expressions, outfits, etc.

5: There is still considerable prejudice against using AI to make game assets. I think some people (myself included) are hesitant to release a game with lots of AI generated assets at the current moment, for fear of public backlash. Eventually that will calm down and it will become more socially acceptable to use AI to generate game assets.

I am bullish about AI improvement over the next decade, and I think we'll gradually see all of these issues resolve themselves as AI improves. But at the present moment, it's not quite as easy as the article makes it seem.

What term would you prefer he use? "Offspring"? "Biological children"? I agree that he is in no way a father in the same sense as others who have actually helped raise children, but I also don't think he's claiming to be, and his phrasing makes sense to me. He is literally their father (in the most uninvolved way possible), and they are literally his children.

I was surprised at how closely your experience (and a commenter's experience) mirror my own. During my life, I've had a few periods of a few months where I focus intensely and work nonstop, and the work does not feel like effort at all. For me, it also comes with a sense of complete confidence, a feeling like I am fulfilling my purpose in life and that everything is exactly as it should be. It is the best sustained feeling I've ever experienced.

Unfortunately I've only experienced this three times in my life; typically around major life events (once when starting a new job in a new industry, once when quitting that job to make my own stuff, and once in grade school: the summer between 10th and 11th grade, for some reason). I look forward to seeing more research, and hopefully one day can apply these learnings to manually trigger this intense focus and motivation.

This is spot on. As a baby, you typically have two affectionate caretakers who dedicate a significant amount of their time to teaching you language/words, and also shower you with love/praise/attention for every little bit of incremental progress. Also, you're in an immersion program: you often can't communicate your wants/needs until you've learned the language, which adds another layer of incentive.

As an adult, if you were sent to an immersion program in a foreign country with two full-time foreign tutors/caretakers who loved you, like legitimately loved you with all their hearts, you would pick up that new language pretty darn quick.

The #1 thing that has helped me stick to habits over the long term is starting out as easy as I possibly can. I've been exercising consistently for years now, and what finally got me to stick with it was doing 1 pushup per day. That's it. I did one pushup per day for 5 days, then I moved to 2 per day, and started ramping up faster as time went on.

I've applied the same "make it as easy as humanly possible" to other habits (working on something for 5 minutes, for example) and it seems to work really well.

I believe the reason this works for me is because 1) it's laughably easy at the start, and I can knock it out in practically no time, and 2) I ramp up slowly enough that by the time it actually starts feeling difficult, I already have the habit established. The surest way for me to abandon a habit is by trying to do too much early on.

Another thing that is death to my habits is feeling guilt/shame about missing a day. If you miss a day, don't beat yourself up. It happens. Just remind yourself why you picked the habit, and try again. Maybe lower the difficulty a bit next time.