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Comment by practicemaths | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it isn't entirely a hardware issue. Maybe it is a software issue.

Where do persons get their software from? The environment. Observing how their parents/family/etc interact.

I think it's fair to say that communication matters and that communication & experiences will have an affect on peoples perceptions.

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Depression is clearly a hardware issue. So also ADHD.

So riddle me this.

Hypothetical situation.

Take two dogs from the same litter.

Raise one with love and kindness. Play with it. Socialize with it.

Then take the other one and neglect and abuse the hell out of it.

Which dog do you think will show signs of depression?

Still think it's clearly just a hardware issue?

If you give all the love in the world to a schizophrenic, will he stop hallucinating?

If you put an LLM on better hardware, will it stop hallucinating?

Anthropomorphization of LLMs is bad, but the reverse is worse. This is not psychology.

Although... has anyone tried quantizing schizophrenia?

https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude

depends on if you consider message passing (neuro-transmitters) in a graph NN as a hardware or software.

I'm not sure the distinction is meaningful at a high level. That which can be implemented in hardware can be emulated in software.

It may be significant with respect to a specific implementation. Do you mean to imply that the current crop of LLMs hallucinate only due to some flaw in the hardware they run on?

There is no software at all, it is all hardware. These are mere abstractions because the reality offers some guarantees which allows one to transfer one system onto another as if the underlying system didn't matter. Those guarantees allows one to speak of commonalities between one stuff and another.

ref : The Universe is Hostile to Computers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8

In that vein, there is no hardware either. It too is just an abstraction. However, that is not particularly meaningful. We draw lines around those abstractions and are able to compartmentalize them when discussing them.

I think we agree. If hardware was perfect, we wouldn't need ECC in RAMs. The reason to do this is we are poking the walls of compartments here.

We're looking at cause here not 'cure' or treatment.

Regardless schizophrenic individuals probably would do better with being treated with kindness, respect, compassion, and love than with derision and rejection. At least observational that has been my experience.

Once someone's lost touch with reality, maybe not. In the earliest stages? Maybe, yeah:

> McFarlane believes that psychosis can be prevented with a range of surprisingly low-tech interventions, almost all of which are designed to reduce stress in the family of the young person who is starting to show symptoms.

> McFarlane cites research done at UCLA suggesting that certain kinds of family dynamics — families that don't communicate well, or are overly critical — can make things worse for a young person at risk of schizophrenia.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/10/20/3566400...

I can believe it. Not smoking is a great way to prevent certain types of lung cancer. However, if you have lung cancer, quitting smoking won't cure it.

This argument is genuinely horrible. Many times we have two “dogs”, same litter, same love and care, and one will be depressed and the other won’t be. Still think it’s just a software issue now hmmm?

Seriously, can you not just comprehend that it’s a complex issue and there is no singular source you can blame? If your kid committed suicide should I levy child abuse charges against you? And where does someone “learn” depression or schizophrenia anyway, especially if their parents are not acting the same way?

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Depression very clearly is both a hardware issue and a software issue.

rolled 0.6 on hardware + 0.4 on software = 1.0

rolled 0.4 on hw + 0.6 on sw = 1.0

rolled 0 on both = 0.0 = maximum depression

rolled 1 on both = 2.0 = golden retriever with good owner

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