When the search results are bad, usually I can at least tell that they're dubious: either they're from obviously unreputable sites, or they conflict with each other, or they just don't quite address my query. But an inaccurate AI overview can look very similar to an accurate one.

I'm (genuinely) sorry about your friend, and I don't deny that it's worth sharing these anecdotes. But a single anecdote comes nowhere near refuting the claim that ECT very often works on depression.

The current state of scientific knowledge seems to be that it does very often "work", at least as a fast-acting short-term treatment for very severe depression.

Sort of, but that was always a pretty obvious tack to take, and I don't think there was ever a shortage of would-be leaders willing to play that role. So we're still left with the question of why the voters chose the most obviously untrustworthy guy to play it.

It's a response to someone saying "you can't draw any conclusions of IQ significantly before 1950 from how the line behaves after 1950", and it says "And that’s because IQ is a statistical distribution, not an absolute measurement of intelligence."

This seems like a non sequitur to me. Am I missing something? (Bear in mind that the 'line' under discussion is an increase in unstandardised scores.)

In the comment that started this subthread, qsera was responding to someone who said "Imo we don't even have a definition of [consciousness]". If qsera meant that we can measure consciousness in terms of pleasure and pain, then of course I agree that they were just pushing the problem back a step. But I don't think that's what they meant.

They're not reducible, but I don't know if that means we don't have definitions; we can describe them well enough that most people (who aren't p-zombies or playing the sceptical philosopher role) know pretty well what we mean. All of our definitions have to bottom out somewhere...

> Do insects feel pain?

Nobody (except the insects) can know for sure. Our inability to know whether X is true doesn't imply X is meaningless, though.

I absolutely agree that the idea that exercise has to be unpleasant is wrong and harmful. But there's a middle ground where the things you actively enjoy aren't sufficient to keep you fit, and so you develop a habit of doing regular exercise even when you don't feel like it and even if it's a bit boring and effortful.

Everyone's different but IME this works well provided you build up the effort level gradually, and never feel the need to push yourself to a really unpleasant degree. Eventually habit, the knowledge that it's good for you in the long run, and the fact that it usually makes you feel better in the short run make it pretty easy to stick with.

This is the part I'm sceptical of. When I look this up, I mostly find articles like https://theconversation.com/proceed-with-caution-the-trouble... (and the underlying studies), which mainly address the question of whether reading a trigger warning and then consuming the potentially triggering content is better than just consuming the potentially triggering content without a warning.

(The article also mentions a finding that trigger warnings have "no meaningful effect on an individual's [...] avoidance of this content"; but I think that's entirely compatible with a world where most people consume the content regardless of the warning, some are more drawn to it because of the warning, and some (including the few who are truly vulnerable) avoid it because of the warning. The effect on those vulnerable few is what's most relevant here. The article does briefly mention "unhealthy avoidance behaviours", but in the context of one university's opinion and without supporting evidence.)

What's the best evidence against trigger warnings as a means of enabling traumatised people to make an informed decision on when (and whether) to confront their triggers?

But is there any good reason to doubt that trigger warnings can be helpful in the obvious way: someone sees the trigger warning and makes an informed decision to avoid the content?

You've said this a couple of times, but it doesn't match my recollection, and I get the impression you're basically making it up based on vibes. (Please prove me wrong, though.)

Their last major frontier release was Opus 4.6, and the release announcement was... very chill about safety: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-6#a-step-forwar...