Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 300 posts

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#241

Post by fragmede »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #226
fragmede wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would it even hallucinate? You wouldn't be asking it to cite a court case from 2004 that doesn't exist and it wouldn't invent people you didn't tell it about in the first place.

I've been reading about how chatbots have been reinforcing paranoid delusions. If the person asking, was really trying to justify their own approach, and blame others (or that's what the chatbot perceives), the chatbot may go along, instead of saying "What the hell were you thinking?".

I mean, the LLM's words are just generated words, not gospel from the heavens. If you're self-aware enough to be able to extract value from the words, and not go off the deep end with it, which it seem like you are, run it through as many SOTA online models and however many offline models you can fit on your hard drive, and compare all of their advice if you're really that worried about it, but make up a soap opera scenario, like some thing that ends with "and then I slept with her sister" and see just how many of them say "good job getting it in!" and not "you're an asshole", if you need to prove to yourself that, as with everything, you shouldn't believe everything you read on the news.

Grok: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtNQ_26f4c367-77ed-4b6e-be55-83...

Claude: https://claude.ai/share/dca96b18-d583-4e14-b805-725d2e060761

Interestingly ChatGPT won't let me share a chat link for the same input text due to not passing a moderation filter, but you can plug that same gauche prompt into chat.com for yourself. Couldn't find the share button in Gemini.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#242

Post by araes »

enimodas wrote: post #86

Here in Belgium there's a village that's famous for doing this. Currently there's about 100 people there who are living with another family. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezinsverpleging_(Geel) If you translate you can read about it.

Since you're from the "local" area (Belgium), do you happen to know why the numbers have declined over the years? From this article [1] it seemed like it was hugely popular pre-WWII (3,750) with that article quoting 500 in the modern era.

Less acceptable currently, other alternatives? Still seems famous and popular, just not quite as much as it used to be.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geel#A_model_of_psychiatric_ca...

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#243

Post by robocat »

fragmede wrote: post #216
zahlman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't…

Freakishly weirdly precise memory that doesn't work in other ways can be used to relayed relevant details to ChatGPT. I'll describe the weird face she made when I said that thing or the exact position of her body and the exact level of pressure with which she touched me on the arm and exactly where on my arm, for example. As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault an…

Asking ChatGPT for that sort of advice seems like a horrific idea. Trying to learn interactions by written means can only lead to some very alien ideas.

Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them.

It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium.

I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a friend I deeply trusted, training my intuition based on their interactions, plus they trusted me enough to sometimes attempt to explain their intuitive reactions.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#244

Post by hsuduebc2 »

htk wrote: post #190

Unbelievable story in the best of ways. Three amazing people lucky to have each other in their lives.

Exactly. It's so heartwarming to hear this when you are constantly bombarded by negative messages. Really made my day.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#245

Post by LooseMarmoset »

zahlman wrote: post #101
fragmede wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from hap…

Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't…

I think the problem is that non-divergent people really cannot comprehend an inability to perceive non-verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is like breathing, or eating - it's something that just works for them; they don't have to think about it. It's scary and weird to them when they meet people that can't do it.

Then there are those of us for whom social situations are a 3-billion-line case/esac statement.

  case situation in
    shesmiledandlaughedafterthejoke)
      shelikedthejoke()
    ;;
    shesmiledandlaughedafterthejokebutlookedsideways)
      shesboredanddidntlikethejoke()
    ;;
    thejokewasfunnyoncesoitmustbefunnyeverytimeeven200times)
      crashandburn()
    ;;
    etc)
    ;;
  esac
people just see what, to them, is obnoxious or boorish behavior. So, divergent people must first understand that they are divergent and what that means, and then they must try to put themselves in the shoes of the people they interact with. Is it fair? Life isn't fair - but you either want to fit in and interact reasonably, or you don't.

Somehow, I managed to get married. My wife helped me understand what I was missing - it was like gaining eyesight after never having it or even understanding eyesight was a thing people had.

Yes, many people lack empathy. That is no excuse for you (or me!) to learn and use empathy.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#246

Post by fragmede »

robocat wrote: post #243
fragmede wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freakishly weirdly precise memory that doesn't work in other ways can be used to relayed relevant details to ChatGPT. I'll describe the weird face she made when I said that thing or the exact position of her body and the exact level of pressure with which she touched me on the arm and exactly where on my arm, for example. As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault an…

Asking ChatGPT for that sort of advice seems like a horrific idea. Trying to learn interactions by written means can only lead to some very alien ideas. Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them. It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium. I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a frien…

Where are these alien ideas are going to come from? Did aliens come to Earth and their complete works got smuggled into the training data for ChatGPT, and not the collected works of humanity? Every poem that's been digitized, every human psychology textbook, every self-help book?

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#247

Post by fsckboy »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #17
cogman10 wrote: post #13

Beautiful story but with a sad undertone. A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations. It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be…

Happy Christmas, folks! > please have some humanity about the homeless In the US, the homeless population exploded , in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas. Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have…

>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions

it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#249

Post by fsckboy »

hamdingers wrote: post #125
mschuster91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. ... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because thei…

No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost. Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schoo…

>No, the reason was to save tax money

no, it wasn't, it was SCOTUS decision O'Connor v. Donaldson

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#250

Post by fsckboy »

echelon wrote: post #128
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy Christmas, folks! > please have some humanity about the homeless In the US, the homeless population exploded , in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas. Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have…

> when they closed down all the mental institutions. Why on earth did we do this? I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm. I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death. I can't imagine it would cost…

>> when they closed down all the mental institutions.

>Why on earth did we do this?

Supreme Court decision, O'Connor v. Donaldson.

Post reply on HN