Potentially stunted ape here ... I read the whole discussion and barring the social justice offtopic stuff, there were thoughtful points on both sides.

I'm a pretty nuts and bolts person in favour of fundamental research, and it's clear to me that you can't pick winning ideas ahead of time ... but ... I have soured on the moonshot research that soaks up all the money.

Could we not spread it around a bit to hedge our bets, and perhaps get better value from science? Also, should we not apply some success criteria to our spending? Also, there are strong arguments that the money could be better spent on other things, like social programs. The value of some really expensive equipment is always in the future. Many people have reasonable criticism about the value.

Show of hands, chump.

No? You have no idea what you're talking about.
But then again this is Slashdot, so, not a surprise.

Seriously, go get some dope and do it. That will shut you up.
but also, will make you realize, this isn't something you can just read about and claim to know about.

There is nothing I have said that is dishonest. Yeah, he did lose 5 years of his life from a 3 day psylocybin trip. He didn't come out of his room for 1 year. Then he carried a bible around with him and whipped it open to read scriptures, when his anxiety flared up, for another year. That's 2 full years out of a man's life. Several more years coping, before he more or less returned to society. This is serious.

Here's my issue: Know nothings like yourself pushing opinions about using significantly difficult to control, and therefore dangerous drugs, as if the risks are minimal. People's lives are at stake. The target market are desperate and vulnerable people. I have seen several, even many, people's lives go down the drain due to various drug usage and addiction. I've counseled many people on how to break their addictions and survive to live a better live. You've only read about it.

It's very very difficult, it's heartbreaking to see your friends and loved ones destroy their lives. This is not specifically about hallucinogens, which in general are not addictive. But they often come in a package deal with addicts, who have lost any sense of self preservation.

I'm surprised to not see silvergun, another high profile know nothing, pushing his opinions on this topic, whom I have regularly had to slap down for the same reasons. You should get a room with him, and while you're at it, go buy some LSD or Mushrooms and go to town boys! Find out what the fuck you are talking about before you push your uninformed opinions around. Other know nothings, pay attention.

Honestly you deserve that, and don't bother replying til you can raise your hand as someone who's gone down the road.

<chuckles> Sorry about that Chief
Absolutely. Word and Office, but speaking of trigger points, PowerPoint, are so ridiculously bug riddled and pointlessly complex, it boggles the mind to understand why people use them in the first place.

I am embarrassed to say this out loud, but I've made a sub career out of helping lawyers format and re-format documents. It has been surprisingly lucrative, but really and truly such a misuse of my years of technology knowledge and experience, I'm practically ashamed. I'm not a$hamed, but perhaps I $hould be. Please don't tell anybody :-)

Oh, yeah, for the most part I just take their crap and their clients' crap and just cut and paste into fresh new blank document using minimal formatting. It's less work, by far, than trying to work with the docs I get. Around here, it's considered that I walk on water. Yep, that's me, the glorified typist. Again, shhhhh...
Fuck, when I worked at Nortel, and my buddy who worked at ... umm... General Dynamics.... they had small specialist departments specifically to format documents. What a drain to pour money down.

I do my sad but lucrative office work in Libre Office, then export to .docx. In a stroke of irony however, I have found that Libre Office is "bug compatible" with Word... So the bullet-unbullet, indent-unindent, thing you speak of, it's the same in LO from what I've seen.

Take a few deep breaths, it will be alright :-)

Sooo... 30 hours of Claude time.
Could a decent programmer stitch that together in the same time?
How many tokens would you need to hold all the input data?

Making mega bucks, is the point.

The formula is pretty simple. MS Word is the poster child. Word grew out of "desktop publishing" and typewriters, and contains various features and terminology from the archaic printing industry, fonts, kerning, tabs, indents, frames, etc. Joe in Accounting wants to write a memo, but ends up spending 40 minutes trying to get a tab in the right place or his indented list to line up properly. Since Susan ( also in Accounting) wants to read Joe's memo, she requires MS Word too. Long story short, Microsoft thru incompetence and luck has convinced layers of management that all people require industrial strength desktop publishing software to produce and read a memo. Now that everyone is deeply invested in the MS Office ecosystem, and cannot see that a memo does not require industrial strength software. It could have been written in plain text.

So shoving AI into all your software creates the illusion of productivity, and a dependency on the software. Everyone goes down the rabbithole together in the delusion that this is a great idea to use software not fit for your use case. Bam!
Dependency, just like cocaine!! Wuhoo, Who doesn't love Coke?
But it's gonna cost you.
And you're NEVER going to leave your dealer.

Addiction as a business model. It's really really effective at retaining customers, and your customers will literally pay any price for the next fix.

Show of hands of who's got experience is still zero.
You and your study is bla bla bla in theory, paving the road to $$$.

Go do some, and get back to me.
Just wait until you get yourself in a tight spot, psychedelically, and then you'll stop ass talking.

This comment is not limited to znrt, but everyone who thinks this can be understood without ever having experience in the field.

This topic about using ibogaine or psylocybin or other hallucinogens as "medicine" shows up here regularly, and the arguments always end up right here. Everyone handwaving away the risks prove they prove they have no experience about what they opine about.

Yes, I've done hallucinogens. I have no need to elaborate the details, but it was either quite a bit, or say, enough to know the risks. I also have observed friends, acquaintances, family members, go thru the ecstasy of a good trip and agony and aftermath of a bad trip.

Also it says in the article THEY want to fast track this... study, research, approval, what the fuck ever, fast tracking means cutting corners to make money. So learn to read, and stop willfully misinterpreting the article and what I'm saying.

Here is the risk. Let me give you an example from recent times, from the legalization of cannabis. 100% of people who "experiment" or try edibles, relate the same story: I ate half a cookie, I didn't feel anything, so I ate the other half, then a while later I was so fucking high I was disoriented and very uncomfortable and ... some of those people end up in the emergency room because they don't know what else to do. Was that such a great experience? That's a fucking picnic compared to a bad acid or mushroom trip.

Now put that in perspective of medical profiteers. You are telling damaged people desperate for any improvement that drop this acid, and you'll be fixed. First of all this is morally reprehensible to be taking advantage of desperate people for money. Second, this isn't antibiotics. This is psycho active substances. There is no authoritative way to know what a proper dose is, like with the cannabis edibles. It's highly mood dependent. One day you do a gram and feel hardly anything, Another day you do half a gram and you go to the moon. This is not fucking SCIENCE. It's psychological and highly unpredictable. Anyone who says it's a straight line from do this dose to you'll feel better is ... just wrong. This is profiteering on the lives of vulnerable people.

I've seen friends lose 5 years out of their lives due to bad trips. For fucks sake this is serious.

I encourage all you straight fuckers arguing with me, to go out to your local mushroom shack, we have them in Ontario now even though they are illegal, buy a couple grams of mushrooms or acid, drop it, then come back and tell me if still think the same.

I don't wish you to have a bad trip, but if you do, you completely deserve it for thinking this has no risks.

Spot on comment.

Also though, the idea of infinite growth seems to have run out of runway. Needs are artificially created, yesterday's ideas have to be crushed to allow the economy to grow. I don't much actual value, it seems we are chasing our tail, in the name of growth.

Governments want to fast track use of hallucinogens? People who would never take one, are going to be prescribing hallucinogens for you? Reach for hallucinogens after you bash your head?

All I hear is how good hallucinogens are, like they are candy. No mention of the risks and downsides, just enthusiastic cheering. Bad trips happen, and can be more life changing than a good trip. Fast tracking means cutting corners.

Show of hands here, how many of you promoting these notions have actually done any hallucinogens?

Am I the only one that smells that it's just money driving this?

People are busy, can't be informed about everything, and take convenient options without thinking. So as our digital overlords desperately overload "AI" into everything to recoup their massive investments, the majority of people and businesses with take it.

Legislation will never catch it, nor will it be enacted, as legislators seem to like it, or simply don't understand it.

Only market forces can stop it. Decreased productivity and a rejection by business or the inability of Big Brains to pay their debts could burst the bubble, but otherwise we're just going to have to accept the race to the bottom

ha ha, obviously I'm just pulling your leg, but that's just it...
prior art? I think I drew a tree with a crayon in the first grade!!
Yeah, these guys have to be just bullshitting the system to see what they can get away with.
Hopefully, the system works well enough.

Excuuuuse me.

ShatGPT missed my second year Pascal program that used recursion to traverse a tree of arbitrary depth, circa 1982.

Who doesn't need to go 300 mph? 495 km/h?

Fuck yeah, I'm going to the beer store, honey. I'll be back in ...umm.. 12 seconds.

So true. I forgot. It's been a while... but I recall sales guys at Mitel back in the days when Mitel was doing well, saying that exact thing.
I was green, and told them "you can't quote them that! you're missing the main processor card and other required kit. You're quoting bare bones racks"... and they said 'we have do that because Nortel does it, and then their bid looks a lot cheaper than ours" .. "so we leave out required hardware, the costliest hardware, so we can have a competitive bid". Then after we win the bid, we nickel and dime the client until the rack is outfitted to what they actually need.... humanity is always the problem.

touche