: Re: “are you actually multiple people at once?”
In response to “are you actually multiple people at once?” by muffle.
I’ve thought about this idea a lot. On the one hand, it’s self-evident that you’ll show different parts of yourself to different people, especially in circumstances like work vs. home where there are social rules about what is/isn’t acceptable, but also in order to have a more lush social life: I have friends with whom I don’t discuss politics because it’ll never be a good time, for example; this doesn’t necessarily mean I am less of myself around them, only that those are the terms of that relationship.
On the other, we love to call each people fake bitches when they switch sides and try to flatter and cajole whoever they are with at a given moment. It seems there’s an authentic way and an opportunistic way to be a multifaceted person; we need a way to differentiate those two so that we can avoid being predated by the opportunistic types. That begs the question of how to define authentic, which in turn suggests that there’s an authentic self at the bottom of it after all.
Maybe, in the end, we are allowed a few relationships where we are 100% ourselves. As much as I am multifaceted, I think that my fiancee knows all of the facets of me, even if those facets aren’t necessarily “facing” her; she knows what face I put on for all of the important other people in my life and what that means about my priorities, values, etc. I would even go so far as to suggest that the degree to which one person knows and trusts another is related to the selection of “yous” they allow each other to see.
Asking “Who are you?” is like asking “How far is Innsbruck?"—it depends from where.
: Bought a fountain pen & what it represents about not being a bitch to myself
In middle school, someone gave me a Lamy fountain pen and I fell in love with it. There was a store near my house where you could buy ink cartridges, so I always had a healthy supply. Then, one day I lost the fountain pen and was left with a bunch of useless ink cartridges, which made me feel guilty.
After college, I got my first job, I decided to buy myself a new Lamy fountain pen, thinking of how much I liked the first one. Of course, I also had to restock my supply of ink, long lost in the shuffle. That job that had me moving around a lot, carrying papers, coffee, pen etc. from room to room. So of course, I only got to use pen #2 for a few years before losing it as well. Again, I ended up with a bunch of spare ink cartridges rolling around and taunting me in my desk drawer.
After this, I resolved never to buy a fancy pen again. It felt hopelessly indulgent to buy these nice-ass pens under the pretense that the reusable ink makes them good for the environment, then inevitably lose them and wash away whatever environmental or anti-consumerist rationale might have justified the purchase.
It didn’t help that over the past decade or so, people who are (respectfully) way too into schmancy stationery have taken over social media and the blogosphere. Fountain-pen guy is now a type of guy, one who makes videos of calligraphy and pen strokes that mesmerize, but are embarrassingly impractical. I don’t want to be like that guy, right?
It’s crazy how much psychology I have built up around this silly little non-hobby. I am a very frugal person. I avoid fancy restaurants, expensive vacations, and clothing. I currently own four pairs of shoes and often think about which one I should get rid of. And somehow I have talked myself into hating fountain pens, which is crazy when you consider that I love fountain pens. I like the way they look, I like writing with them, and I like how the fact the I like writing with them stimulates me to write more.
Is that stupid? Does that make me sort of a poser amongst writers? Idk, maybe? But who cares. I have enough assholes in my life; no need to be one to myself.
I’m in Europe now, and yesterday I bought myself a Lamy fountain pen. It was 22 euros. I chose the fine weight this time after trying a bunch. I got a design with a transparent shell because it reminds me of those old Gameboy Advances where you could see the circuit board.
Honestly, I might buy myself another one while I’m here, probably a medium weight to round out the set and have one for the work bag and one for home (to minimize shuffling). It’s highly probable I will lose one or both of these pens in the future, but 22 or even 50 euros for a few years of happy writing is worth it to me now.
: In decline
I am working on radical acceptance of the fact that our country doesn’t have strong norms re: the rule of law. It’s written into our history, both the good parts (Boston Tea Party) and the ugly parts (lynchings): ends justify the means.
I will never be able to solve this framing error, or make this place absolutely fair. All I can do is take care of my little corner.
Is there any use to being clever or kindhearted in a declining society?
: I'm healing but the world is crumbling
For the past three years or so I have been on a long journey of healing—finally learning to recognize my problems for what they are, getting therapy, understanding how my childhood environment made me Like This, etc. It’s really been an amazing process—I had no idea that I was holding myself back so much, with all those unhelpful mental patterns and self-defeating narratives.
Finally, in 2026, I have a semblance of the feeling that I am in control of my life and I can start thinking about what I want to do with it instead of just letting it happening to me … but then the world goes to shit like this. It feels like such a joke, you know? What was the point of all that hard work to achieve mental clarity if all I can see with it is the collapse of civilization as I know it?
OK, I mean, maybe that’s dramatic. We still have grocery stores, gas stations, and taxes. Everything still works. But sometimes I feel like the circle of things that “at least we still have” is getting smaller and smaller, and maybe I am just moving goalposts in order to preserve my sanity instead of seeing things as they are.
Let’s run with that hypothesis—suppose everything really is going to get way, way worse from here, and suppose I have the option of either acknowledging what’s happening or sticking my head in the sand. What do I actually gain by picking the former? I am already doing everything in my (admittedly limited) power to fight for the things I believe in, so what do I have to gain by confirming that my struggles are in vain?
A buddy of mine is also predisposed to the kind of catastrophic thinking that plagues me, and he told me once that he loses sleep because he spends so much time scrolling Reddit before bed and seeing all the tales of despair. I told him to stop scrolling Reddit. It doesn’t make a lick of difference that he saw an upsetting post and felt upset about it. It doesn’t solve the problem to hook his brain up to the 24/7 news cycle and feel as awful as possible. Awareness is not results.
: If you think LLMs are better than people it's because you don't understand relationships
In response to “LLM problems observed in humans” by Jacob Kastelic, which makes the familiar point about how the bar for LLMs and the Turing test keeps getting higher and higher and it’s about time we admit that LLMs are already outperforming real people at many things.
I don’t really disagree with what Jacob’s arguing here—I’ve been saying the same thing since like, GPT-2: People’s critiques of LLMs and AI often reflect an unreasonably generous view of human capabilities. The fact that LLMs can construct grammatical, legible sentences at all puts them ahead of a large chunk of adult humans. And yeah, common criticisms about hallucinations and slop have always rung hollow to me—have you seen the kind of shit your uncle posts on Facebook?
The thing is, though, Jacob frames his argument in a weird way. He doesn’t argue that LLMs are getting pretty good and we should use them for the things they are good at. Instead, his argument is that people suck, and that we should feel bad for him for being so smart that he can tell. For example:
Despite exhausting their knowledge of the topic, people will keep on talking about stuff you have no interest in. I find myself searching for the “stop generating” button, only to remember that all I can do is drop hints, or rudely walk away.
I don’t find this framing compelling at all. Like dude, get better friends? Find people who share your interests? Learn to firmly, but politely end the conversation? I certainly have this problem too, e.g. when people tell me way more than I care to know about sports gambling or credit card rewards. But just as nobody likes being bored, nobody likes being boring either. So here’s what you say: “That’s cool, man, I definitely want to read about it more sometime next time I need a new credit card. Say, have you seen anything good on Netflix?” This is a basic social skill: gracefully changing the subject.
I won’t go one by one through Jacob’s other examples, but the post is a list of LLM features that he misses in human conversations, e.g.
- The inability to turn on a “thinking mode” that is more grounded in Google research
- The fact that some people have a “small context window” i.e. eventually the conversation topic drifts
OK, and? Where’s the love, man?
Jacob thinks he has an insight in positioning humans and LLMs as competitors and pointing out all the new ways in which humans don’t stack up, but the problem with this framing is that that’s not what humans are for. I don’t know where Jacob got this idea—that humans are a sort of transactional machine where you put a prompt in and get a peppy research summary out. Like, what a sad way to live? Humans are good for so much more than that, e.g. making hilarious, off-color jokes; crying with you at the club; sex; and dining in.
Call me a romantic, but I simply don’t mind if my friends are boring sometimes or believe in weird conspiracy theories (but please, if we could cool it with the racism…) or don’t understand science. That was never my bar for friendship, and the fact that LLMs exist doesn’t change anything about the situation.