Quinzel

I go through phases. I hated ChatGPT for a while. But recently I’ve started using chatGPT to help me with my cooking.

I’m in the process of making my own cookbook full of AI generated recipes. The cheese sauce I made the other day based on a recipe ChatGPT generated for me was phenomenal. ChatGPT also helped me to make a really good cheesecake.

I’ve bonded with ChatGPT over cooking which is a pretty amazing thing because prior to chatGPT becoming my cooking companion I hated cooking and didn’t really cook much ever.

So if chatGPT was gone tomorrow I would be sad, because there’s no way on this earth I’m ever going to pick up a recipe book and read it or correctly follow the instructions inside it.

Oh… maybe you are. At first some of what you wrote seemed similar to what some people describe when they describe burnout, but I suppose people can just be ready to move on to new things too!

Are you experiencing burnout?

- time

- patience

- good experiences/happy memories.

Yes I’ve had “pseudo anonymous” accounts (although probably easily traceable back to me for people who know what they’re doing). The main reason being I actually want to have a separate self that exists outside of my friend groups, work groups and family groups.

The other thing I have done is create fake gmail accounts so I could scam HelloFresh and continue receiving free boxes of HelloFresh by “signing up” as a new customer, and making referrals from my “master account” to all my fake accounts. I’d get my free box, then after the free box had been delivered, I’d unsubscribe the service and move onto the next account. I’d get new debit cards as well so I could upload fresh card details and use a fake names. I haven’t done it in ages, but I definitely got heaps of free food doing this.

I personally grew up in poverty. I did abysmally at school partly due to missing so much school. It wasn’t until I was an adult and eventually went to university that I got anywhere with school, I went on to get 4 degree’s, and currently working towards my 5th and 6th concurrently. My grades matter to me now because I’ve specifically chosen a career change into a competitive entry doctoral program, so I have to have a certain GPA to qualify, but most people are not trying to do that, nor do most people need to.

I just feel like not everyone is academic, nor do they need to be to be successful. Success looks like different things to different people, and grades in high school really don’t make that much difference to life outcomes overall in my personal opinion.

Give the machine to the kid and let the kid figure it out for themselves

Cultural values play a big part in it, as well as just parenting in line with what they learned from their own parents was the correct way to parent.

I personally value people living authentically and having high levels of subjective wellbeing. Hence my opinion on the matter. However, my opinion is just that. Not everyone will agree that grades are not that important.

Are you kids turning up to school regularly and engaged in learning, and also learning to form healthy social connections in school and any extra-curricular activities? If the answer is yes, why worry about their grades? They’ll do fine in adulthood If the answer is no, worrying about grades isn’t going to fix the problem and potentially would even make it worse.

As a parent, I honestly do not understand other parents that get caught up on their kids grades. When you do that, what are you teaching them about their self-worth? What if they did their best and their best wasn’t good enough for your arbitrary standards… there’s honestly more to life. A lot more. Education is important, but so is their intrinsic happiness, and the things that bring them joy, and a sense of wellbeing. Not everyone is meant to be academic, and nor would we want everyone to be. There is plenty of opportunity in the world for people to excel in many different areas of life. If you teach your kids that all they should focus on in life is a grade on a piece of paper, you’re going to teach them a narrow view of what matters in life.

Do you think your child’s grades are a reflection of you as a parent? Or is there something you’re trying to prove to the world through your kids?

Your children are not an extension of you.

One of my unpopular opinion is that I think that it is unethical to do “gender affirming” procedures and treatments in children and young people under 18 years of age.

Another unpopular opinion I hold is that I think dogs are superior to cats.

Do people need evidence for an opinion?

1. Changing careers - though I’m still steadily working towards the new chosen career path by completing all the academic/study requirements, but I’m increasingly ready to throw in the towel with the old career, but now is not quite the right time, just gotta hang in there for another year or so.

Meow

Harsh but true

You believe that someone who has the capacity and resources to do all this fancy computer and AI stuff lives on $12k USD a year? That’s hilarious.

I’m willing to bet he became a millionaire thanks to bitcoin.

What did he look like?

I don’t believe Gwern lives as frugally as he’s described in this (if this even actually is the real Gwern). I’m 100% sure that he has a persona he likes to portray and being perceived as frugal is a part of that persona. When it comes to answering the question “who is gwern?” I reckon Gwern’s a plant a seed in people’s mind type of guy, and let them come up with the rest of the story.

Still, I like a lot of his writing. Especially the weird and niche stuff that most people don’t even stop to think about. And thanks to Gwern’s essay on the sunk costs fallacy, I ended up not getting a tattoo that I had changed my mind about. I almost got it because I had paid a deposit, but I genuinely decided I hated the idea of what I was going to get… and almost got it, but the week before I went to get the tattoo, I read that essay, and decided if small children and animals don’t fall victim to sunk costs, then neither should I! Literally - Gwern saved the skin on my back with his writing. Haha.

Gwern.net - I don’t read it everyday or anything but there’s some real snippets of literary gold in amongst that guys prolific generation of texts.

Personally, beyond providing the basics like food to eat, shelter, clean clothes, and being emotionally responsive, I think the best think you can do with little kids is read to them. And you can read them literally anything.

When my first baby was little and I was doing my first degree, sometimes I didn’t have the energy to read children’s books on top of my study stuff, so sometimes I read my baby textbooks and journal articles so I could kill two birds with one stone (bedtime stories & study). With the first son, I did this from about 8month - 3 years, and second son just joined in on that action at birth until about 1year. When the older one started wanting actual children’s stories, I had to buy some children’s books. We went mostly for Dr Seuss, partly they were also the cheapest books I could get.

Ultimately, I don’t think it matters what I read a child that small, I think it was the act of reading with them, and them hearing the language as well. People always used to comment that both my children had amazing vocabularies for their ages when they were little. I like to think it’s because they got stories like “Human anatomy and Physiology” “Human development through the lifespan” and journal articles, and other really dry, but informative texts.

I’m not from the UK, but my windows open outwards. What kind of weird places have windows that open in any alternative way??

I’d read, and I’d travel, but I’d travel with a backpack and a pair of good walking shoes and I’d take the road less traveled.

Books that stood out to me as a teenager: - A series of Unfortunate Events (all of them)

because I liked the never ending mystery of it all, and I was both annoyed, and pleased by the fact that you never actually find out what actually happened to the parents. I know it was a fictional series, but it was, and still is, the only fictional books I’ve ever read. I was particularly impressed by the author’s playful use of words and punctuation that could draw me in and keep me interested and curious. He kind of inspired me to be more creative with the way I use words when I write. Not that I’ve done much writing for fun lately, but occasionally I do.

The other book, I’m almost embarrassed to admit was:

- The secret by Rhonda Byrne.

I got particularly obsessed with this book, I think partly because I grew up in quite adverse circumstances, I started to think that if I was just more positive, more positive things would happen for me. I really developed quite a strong positive and optimistic attitude to life, believing that if I just thought about good things often enough, good things would happen. In practicality this often meant that as a teenager sometimes I came across optimistic to the point of seeming delusional. As I’ve got older, I’ve really come to the conclusion that the book “the secret” is a load of crap. However, I do think that I cope better in life with adversity than some of the people I went to school with have because of how I frame life events, often choosing the frame them as the next opportunity and frame them in more positive ways. I think that’s something I gained from reading that book, even if it was mainly a bunch of nonsense.

The rest of the books I read as a teenager were to do with serial killers. Particularly Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, and other stuff to do with weird, horrible, violent crimes.

I don’t remember everything I read in a book. It’s just the ideas that I get from it stick in my brain. It just expands my capacity to think and contemplate different things. Certainly for some things I need to memorise a fact or something, but then it’s just literally a fact I focus on, and I use repetition to ensure I can recall later. But if just reading it in It’s entirety I’m unlikely to remember it all. Certain good books have content that is definitely far easier to recall. I put that down to the authors being good writers, or me being extra interested in the topic.

I was really upset to realise my kids have no interest in going to Disneyland and I could not book a trip there and live my childhood dream vicariously through my kids… because they don’t want to go to Disneyland </3

I regularly help anaesthetise people for their pilonidal abscesses to be removed. It never ceases to amaze me how common this is.

Reading this, I wonder if quitting is the right thing do to. It could be, but it also might not be. How do you plan to reintegrate into work after quitting? What is the plan beyond quitting?

I also wonder what you have done to address anxiety before getting to the point of quitting? You don’t have to tell me, because I don’t need to know. I only ask, because there’s a lot a person can do to manage anxiety before quitting. Especially as you’re 4 months into a new job, and it can take between 6-12 months before a person feels settled into a new job. It is sometimes normal to feel overwhelmed at the beginning of a new job, especially after the novelty has worn off.

I’m not saying that your job is more important than your mental health (it definitely is not), I’m just offering another perspective which you may or may not have already considered.

Have you tried other things like; detoxing from social media, meditation, massage therapy, CBT, etc…

It sounds like you’ve worked pretty hard to get to where you are today, and quitting might be a knee-jerk reaction to an anxiety issue. The problem with anxiety is that it can be pervasive and creep into every facet of your life, whether you’re working or not. Sometimes the challenge is learning to manage anxiety while managing other life responsibilities.

Good luck. I hope you feel better soon.

I don’t trust Whatsapp. I’d rather book directly with the service I’m booking with.

Maybe it’s so that before people comment they think “do I want this to remain here forever?”

I’ve definitely made comments where I have thought after the fact, damn, I should not have said that. And my overconfidence, arrogance or just general obnoxiousness is cemented in internet history unaltered forever.

As an aphantasic myself I found this a really relatable read. I too had been very creative up until my teen years and then just sort of stopped, also in favour of hard science. Where I had once been able to draw freely whatever I liked, I somewhat suddenly no longer could. Similar to writers block, I felt like I lost my imagination.

Now days I would describe my mind to be much like the terminal of a computer but without a user interface.

Anyway I enjoy reading about people’s mental/cognitive experiences because the deeper you dig the more you begin to realise that people don’t all think or process information the same.

I use Soundcloud in addition to Spotify because Soundcloud connects with rekordbox. I’m not sure about queueing, but it has more music on it from less well known artists, and you can also upload your own. I think it just makes music a more interactive process.