[skiing_crawling]

Is this LLM psychosis? So much tending and conversing with the matmuls but what was the outcome? Are people who get this into it more successful somehow? It reminds me of people who take drugs and get "revelations" but then are not particularly over represented in the group of successful people for all of their deep insights.

[AgentMatt]

> It reminds me of people who take drugs and get "revelations" but then are not particularly over represented in the group of successful people for all of their deep insights.

This depends on where you're looking for "successful" people.

I generally agree with you - of those people who might report "revelations" through hallucinogenic drugs, the majority may misinterpret their drug-induced experience and hence be more confused / lost than before.

On the other hand, it can still be true that among those who eventually do have genuine spiritual insight, having used hallucinogenic substances is overrepresented compared to the general population.

Quoting from [1], where the author tried to find spiritually advanced individuals:

> Approximately 52% of participants had used hallucinogenic drugs at some point; none reported these as the trigger that led to PNSE.

PNSE = Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience.

My point is: while there are certainly people who go way overboard with the LLM stuff, that is not at odds with skillful use of LLMs being overrepresented in successful people.

I see now that you didn't make that point, but I already typed this all out and I'm gonna leave it.

[1] https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[bonesss]

LLMs vs psychedelics are an interesting comparison: psychedelics lower the threshold for the epiphany sensation, arguably LLMs do the same through agreement (‘sycophancy’).

With psychedelics you see the upsides in engineers who come to work the next day with designs informed by massive insights, and the downsides in people whose ‘massive insights’ result in socially abnormal behaviours.

LLMs seemingly provide validation and support, something very lacking in most lives. The distance between thinking loosely about, say, an app and getting positive feedback and absurd market predictions triggers similar ‘revelations’ in people with no meaningful context, and plays on the hopes of those who do. Much like with psychedelics, though, there is a self-supported self-validated cycle going on, prone to flights of excess.

[wafflemaker]

Coming out publicly about doing drugs is just not something that smart people usually do.

There's a lot of stigma about it and a lot of opinionated people who don't know anything about them and still have a lot of judgements.

Then there are these people calling psychedelics hallucinogens. The former can give spiritual revelations and the latter gives vividly realistic, usually nightmarish, hallucinations.

There are also people putting an equal sign between crack cocaine and psylocibine mushrooms. But I don't think an addict will rob a petrol station with a screwdriver just to get another dose of magic mushrooms.

In such surroundings, it's just not a good idea to publicly say anything about drugs, unless you're so rich or known for your expertise, that you can shoulder some negative judgement and it's implications.

[jillesvangurp]

Psychosis would be a mental illness with symptoms like losing track of reality. I think there might actually be a bit of an anti-AI psychosis where individuals are projecting their fear and paranoia onto others and seeking confirmation bias. The need to dismiss the success others are having with AI could be triggered by personal insecurities. And of course deep paranoia is one of the classical symptoms of an actual psychosis. Just holding up a mirror here.

BTW. I have friends and relatives that have dealt with an actual psychosis. Not fun to experience up close. So, I don't want to take this metaphor too far. But if we're using big words like psychosis here, you might want to examine your motives, insecurities and reasoning a bit.

I've played with agentic AIs for coding and other use cases and have had some successes and failures. I'm fairly impressed with some stuff that is possible now and I use technology pragmatically. As I always have throughout my 30 year career.

For any new thing, there are always early adopters and those who really don't get it. And most other people let the early adopters figure things out and then end up copying what works some months/years later. And you always have some stragglers that can't or won't adapt that can't be helped.

Most of what this person describes in the article is very reasonable. Codex might not be the best model. But in terms of UX, OpenAI is getting a few things right that starting to make a difference. It's only a few months ago that their desktop app launched. It has gone through a pretty rapid evolution. As of a few weeks ago (it's that recent) you can install skills to connect your gmail, canva, google drive, work with ppt files, etc. In other words, it's now suitable for things other than programming. Before that, Claude CoWork was a few weeks earlier. So, this is all very new and fresh. I've tried some of this stuff and it mostly works as advertised.

The big picture here is that last year was about programmers discovering agentic AIs. This year, the business world is following. And there will be a lot of drama of people over doing it, making mistakes, etc. And lots of people whining about how they need to change and insisting that they shouldn't have to. Etc. But this stuff is clearly happening if you look through the noise a bit.

[dyauspitr]

Calling something emergent a matmul is like calling a human an axon discharge.

[galsapir]

axon discharge is brilliant. adopting.

[andai]

That last part is also true without the drugs. Forbidden knowledge does not make one popular at parties.

[Amekedl]

You are absolutely right! Kidding, but the analogy sits comfortably with me. I wonder though if this kind of behavior is potentially harmful, most likely less than drugs but nonetheless...

[skiing_crawling]

triggered me with that first sentence

[jmull]

More like money psychosis. If enough people buy into this vision, he gets to be a billionaire.