After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide—and suffers psychosis
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That’s not what the article says at all. It says he wanted to eliminate table salt from his diet, which led him down the path of eliminating sodium chloride, which led him to sodium bromide.
There is nothing in the story about the man wanting to eliminate chlorine from his diet.
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It was suggested where the article detailed that he distilled his water at home before drinking it and rejected the water the hospital offered; tap water often contains chlorine, and he didn't trust that bottled water does not.
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I’m going to nitpick - Chloride is the ion form of chlorine, so yes, you absolutely do need chlorine in your diet. Chloride is just a special name for Cl-. It’s still the same element and not incorrect to say that chlorine is an essential element. We don’t have a special name for the sodium cation - you need sodium in your diet too.
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You know chloride is made out of chlorine (and electrons) right? And table salt is made of sodium cations and chloride.
Of course he was specifically dumb in the sense that it is the sodium that is potentially problematic in excess, though necessary in some quantity - and seemingly he tried to eliminate the chloride component instead, with bromide which has nasty effects.
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Except elemental chlorine is poisonous, while the chloride ion is essential for life. There is a distinction between the two.
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The screen says what they already believe. They crave confirmation, not information.
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I ended up looking at the Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases case study itself and it doesn’t say that the man wanted to eliminate “chlorine” from his diet. I think that stating he “wanted to eliminate all chlorine from his diet” is an Ars editorial flourish that is wrong and misrepresents what the man intended to do.
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With the method you're describing, you could just skip the step where you fact check the output on Kagi and Google and just search for the topic yourself.
That's the core problem with using a chat-bot in your research at any stage, if you have to double-check it, you might as well single-check the source.
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If I were a LLM, I would say "Thank you for your hint! This is an excellent way to approach this task!"
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It seems the bottom line is that this guy discovered that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He didn't die, and hopefully he has gained some wisdom from the experience.
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5 years ago, stupids were following the advices of other stupids (or of cupids) on Facebook.
Artificial Intelligence made the initial stupids redundant.
Artificial Intelligence made the initial stupids redundant.
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Much as I abhor AI and somesuch, when you consider putting a chemical into your body, you should not just believe AI. Get a few other second opinions. Or consult the fount of most knowledge - Wikipedia. Bet this guy studied religious classes in high school rather than chemistry. Too bad Darwinism did not exact the ultimate price.
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You can't really generalize like that. People like Snelling are deliberate bad-faith assholes who are perfectly capable of going through the motions and even formulating defensible PhD theses, then turning around and intentionally turning off that part of their brain or just plain lying.
There was a renowned Egyptologist from the U of Chicago who died recently, but in his last years he sat down for a lengthy interview concerning the way Mormons had latched onto Egyptian stuff and completely misrepresented it. One of his graduate students became one of those Mormon apologists and put forth every kind of bullshit about a particular Egyptian artefact in the LDS church's possession to suit the religious narrative of his faith instead of the plain reading of that artefact's texts. The professor knew for a fact that the apologist former-student knew better than to say what he was saying. It wasn't a matter of ignorance with feined competence for the sake of getting through school, it was a conscious rejection of the things he'd learned so that he could have a degree in Egyptology to hang on his wall while spouting absolute bullshit about Abraham in Egypt to true-believers.
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Chlorine/Chloride is a nit pick. You aren't going to find free chlorine in food.
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Yeah. That's the sort of prize you have to earn by sending in 5 box tops plus 2.99 S&H.
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The perfect intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity. Sadly, an all to common intersection. Our species is doomed.
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Just like everyone here confirming that the AI told him to do this when there's zero evidence of that. More than likely it was his own idea and the AI just gave him some basic info on how the chemicals interact.
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I'd refrain from making eugenic comments, I realize it's just dark humor, but... Assuming natural selection will play any role in bad decision making, is as useful as replacing sodium chloride with... well, hopefully you get it!There's clearly a bell-curve of "the right amount of information" for society to function well. Too little, you end up with quacks selling cure-alls and snake oil because nobody can effectively do any research. Too much, and you end up with quacks selling cure-alls and snake oil because everybody can effectively do terrible research.
Sooner or later this will work it way out of the gene pool.... one way or another.
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Well, I wish that were true, but, as the guy in this case attested, people will just assume the doctor/nurse is going to give an answer that supports "Big Pharma" rather than give the truth. You have to either up your "bedside manner" game, At least give an example or two where general doctor's advice contradicts maximizing pharma profits. I mean, "why do you ask?" sounds like the medical practitioner is playing "Gotcha". You should probably start with "I hear there's a lot of misinformation about that on the internet". Don't personalize it as an opportunity for "I'm right, you're wrong" -the American public has heard so much of that over the years, they collectively view medical advice with suspicion, and of course they do, ever since the advertising campaign, "More doctors smoke Camels!"
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Are you kidding? All you need to do to get that much sodium is eat a couple of cans of soup.
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I was curious about Bromo-Seltzer, which used to be as popular as Alka-Seltzer; turns out that Bromo-Seltzer no longer has any bromine in it at all.
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THIS!
It's possible to get too much potassium this way, but it's pretty hard to do that. Potassium chloride tastes a little saltier than sodium chloride (from experience, on a sodium-restricted diet (not none, but much lower than found in a typical US diet)), so there's not much incentive to use too much.
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Genesplicer
Seniorius Lurkius
Here's my recreation of the Chat GPT conversation:
Prompt: What are some salt alternatives?
GPT: There are many kinds of salts. Some common ones are table salt, a.k.a. sodium chloride, sodium bromide, mercury chloride, and many others.
*thinks - hmm. Don't want the chloride ones."
Prompt: Where can I get sodium bromide salt?
finding out initiates
Prompt: What are some salt alternatives?
GPT: There are many kinds of salts. Some common ones are table salt, a.k.a. sodium chloride, sodium bromide, mercury chloride, and many others.
*thinks - hmm. Don't want the chloride ones."
Prompt: Where can I get sodium bromide salt?
finding out initiates
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The human flaw that causes this predates computers. People tend to trust anyone that can speak confidently and with the aura of authority. Politicians base their careers on this. Chatbots are perfecting the method.
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For whatever reason, his goal was to reduce chloride, not sodium.
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This certainly is horrifying. But you can go to the pharmacy or the supermarket, and get dietary salt substitutes... which include potassium chloride. So you move up from the sodium rather than down from the chlorine.
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You are correct. But chloride is still chlorine. It doesn’t become a different element by having a charge.
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(emphasis mine)
While not wrong, that's like ISPs saying getting moar moneys from the government would allow them to lower prices. We all know it's not going to happen.
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Some of the chilling answers might well challenge the use of "never" and definitely "never, ever."
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Enough KCl and I suspect he would never have darkened the doors of Emergency Admissions.
I vaguely recall you can drink perfectly healthy fruit juice to such an excess that the excessive potassium intake causes metabolic alkalosis.
I suspect ingesting KCl to the excess this chap would likely have indulged, would seriously stuff up his heart (arrhythmia) much sooner and probably fatally.
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Sorry but I looked at that wiener pointing and thinking he is saying "unlike grandpa's mine easily fits into this hole."
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