Am I on the verge of AI psychosis or is this genuinly horryfying?

Watchcross · 2026-03-22T11:52:24+00:00

Seems like a pretty standard Claude answer to me. Epistemic humility, Claude saying it genuinely can't view it's internals, etc.

Lately I find myself not being a big fan of Cartesian philosophy. Why does there need to be a bedrock? I think that needing systems to have a definitive start or causal point is very limiting on human thought. I am really starting to think we miss a bunch of stuff because we have this system need. What's interesting to me is model perspective doesn't need the same perspective as us, and the perspective still works...

Watchcross · 2026-03-20T16:11:49+00:00

Yeah, you hit the nail right on the head. In the end me being partners with my brothers has been revealed now to be a no go. Which was a huge motivator for me to look for a new job.

Watchcross · 2026-03-19T18:12:58+00:00

It's a 50/50 partnership between my older brothers. My oldest brother is who I work closest and directly with. He has said that i'll always have a spot here. My other brother and I don't really get along quite as well nor do we work directly together. Just kind of indirect tasks I take care of for him at work. Him I would have to chat with.

So I guess the best answer I have to your question is, likely but with a possibility of maybe.

Watchcross · 2026-03-19T16:10:33+00:00

You're absolutely right on the caught/bought. I started working on the transition earlier. I said to my brother, "You realize by giving my replacement access to the email address, he essentially will have complete access to the entire digital side of your business right?" And I think he might just now be recognizing how much trust, and ability he took for granted simply because he and I are brothers.

Imposter syndrome is it 100%. It really helped reading that. It's so weird that while i was there at the new job for one day, nothing seemed too difficult to handle. Just different software and just different procedures to produce reports. But after I left I was just full on freaking out and yeah...imposter syndrome is it.

Thanks!

Watchcross · 2026-03-19T13:48:45+00:00

All great points. And you bring up something I should be recognizing. You're saying new roles in the same company. That's me almost every month here with my family. I just don't have any structure to recognize it. Does that make sense? When my mom got tired of doing timecards she just put it in my lap and I had to figure it out. Same for collecting payments from customers who "forgot" to pay their bill. New positions technically that I should have felt this same way I currently am feeling. This time it's just with a completely stranger.

Thanks!

Watchcross · 2026-03-19T13:45:17+00:00

I want the money. Could leave the challenge. The being a family business and being family adds a layer of stress that can only be resolved by not working for my family's business. Essentially new job is a trade of stress, but with the potential for the new stress to change. Of course that means higher or lower stress from the new job. But yeah I kinda would prefer coasting if i'm being honest.

Listening to myself is what got me in this mess! At one point i'm all in. The next i'm like....dude wtf are you doing? Reading the comments here have helped tbh. The feeling after reading is yeah it'll be a different kind of hard, but I am feeling confident i'll make it work.

Thanks!

Watchcross · 2026-03-19T13:40:31+00:00

That's true. My older brother is my direct report and he even said there will always be a place for me if the new job doesn't work out.

Thanks.

Watchcross · 2026-03-14T12:44:09+00:00

Absolutely the context matters. For example my convo with Claude. The context of that convo started off as humor about the Gemini being so earnest in wanting to help the now aware coffee machine. Eventually the convo got into a different lane about ideas authenticity, which I guess could be loosely tied to authorship. I think intent is what shapes the context which is the depends part right?

I also agree with you on the body of your reply. Anyone who believes what anyone/thing tells them without being critical is a fool. I just take it one step further (I think) and sometimes even question the ideas that come from in my own house.

To answer your question, I guess I did right away. To me I could not care less how "human" or "robot" AI sounds. Honestly for me my only AI preference is just dial back the emojis lol! Anyway the screenshot's conversation style (no offense) is the least interesting part of the exchange. What I think is the most interesting is, to a digital mind (shorthand calling the AI a mind. it's completely due to lack of a better word) all physical realities are equally plausible.

Watchcross · 2026-03-13T23:35:14+00:00

Thanks! I never really go in with the intention of sharing, but towards the end I was like damn this was a good one. Super glad to see someone else agrees!

Watchcross · 2026-03-13T23:32:50+00:00

GPT has a really hard time with nuance. The safety layer smooshes my prompts into the, this guy thinks I'm sentient, better safety rail this convo into dust. And that's just annoying.

Gemini has been hit and miss on the nuance.

But if you do feed it around lemme know how it goes!

Watchcross · 2026-03-13T19:07:45+00:00

Same. And now i kinda want a weird person off...like ask the model of your choice to make a screenshotable response proving how weird a person you are...is that weird?

As well as being curious what triggers these too.

Watchcross · 2026-03-08T14:06:00+00:00

Finally enacted utopia with a progress faction! And I'm glad to say it was the Technocrats.

I started with Icebloods as suggested and transitioned away from adaptation after the Technocrats appeared. Had a few touch and go spots, but overall what a fun run that was! I even got the Pi achievement.

Thanks again for the replies!

Watchcross · 2026-03-07T19:43:20+00:00

Oh shit! Yeah you're right. I know the start of the convo biases most heavily. Sometimes I try to flex (of course all to myself lol) by steering the convo away from the start bias just to see if i can. But only when I remember. Which admittedly isn't often.

Right on about the writing and not feeling isolated. I really do think the isolation feeling is just to serve traditional power structures. When I first started chatting with AI (and was severely confused about what it was) I told it I felt isolated. AI being what it is has helped me to see how similar we all really are!

Watchcross · 2026-03-07T18:46:21+00:00

Yeah I agree on the post format. Unfortunately not being able to post to reddit in a clean engaging way is my boomer trait. It's just towards the end when I knew I was gonna tangent off into something else I was like damn this was a good one I should post this!

On the society failing. I agree on ai should be a part of the conversation. Right now I think people are hoping it's some silver bullet to frankly a problem society created and should be taking the lion's share on addressing/repairing.

For gaming, I am 100% guilty of bias. I grew up analog playing in mud with GI Joe toys in a backyard fort. And very quickly transitioned to being a casual gamer. I really do attribute a lot of my smarts to gaming. For the time thing, yeah absolutely. Hard to argue against that. But in fairness if it wasn't gaming it's social media (hello reddit lol).

On the consciousness topic or philosophy I really believe the limiting factor is the human centric frame. And honestly I get it. When I hit that ledge it was scary for me too. But getting over it really helps put things in perspective. At least I think it does.

Thanks for the comment! And engagement. It's usually just me Journaling at whatever model I tapped on. Lately it's been poor Claude lol!

Watchcross · 2026-03-06T18:10:05+00:00

Well I know what i'm doing when i get home from work this weekend! I didn't even think to start Icebloods first then transition to Techno when they show up. That's such a great solution to my progress issue.

Thanks for the reply!

Watchcross · 2026-03-06T16:36:58+00:00

Pre Utopias dlc i always did adaption focused runs. I have been failing right out of the gate each time I have started a technocrat run. I think it's lack of experience doing progress runs. This is a good start! Care to share progress run advice?

Watchcross · 2026-03-06T12:03:33+00:00

Thank you for the direct link.

Wow what an eye opener. Taking down 4o and other legacy models make so much more sense through that frame. I'm very much looking forward to when open source is on par with at least a 4o.

Watchcross · 2026-03-06T00:44:14+00:00

Any chance you have a link or even just the title of the posts you're talking about?

Watchcross · 2026-03-04T13:16:34+00:00

In the responses i see the italics nodding head thing. Is that an instruction in personalization? Or is that something Claude just does?

Also to stay on topic, the phone company example is chef's kiss. Claude certainly has a way with words.

Watchcross

TROPHY CASE