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Software To Provide Astronaut Counseling
Currently, whenever an astronaut needs to talk to someone, a counselor is only a radio call away. Unfortunately, for voyages further out, this contact time starts to increase quite a bit, so researchers have started to look for alternative methods of counseling. I just hope the new counseling software has the Dr. Sbaitso voice. "Instead of asking astronauts to reflect on their feelings, Mark Hegel of Dartmouth Medical School has them create lists of concrete things that are bothering them and brainstorm about practical ways to solve them. At the end of the exercise, users fill out a form used to diagnose depression. Clinical tests of this approach, which has never been tried in a multimedia self-help format, will start in a few months, using subjects recruited from the biomedical and engineering community in Boston."
Let's talk more about the sexy stuff we were discussing earlier.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Every deep space journey needs to have at least one person go batshit insane. It's textbook.
Just what our spacefaring pioneers need-- a software version of Deanna Troi.
Heaven help them should it develop empathy and a bad accent.
Hahahahahaha, crazy Adam, crazy... parity?
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
How are you today. What would you like to discuss? Tell me more. I'm not sure I understand you fully. I sometimes also want to kill your coworkers.
It is my hard-earned experience that when women begin to complain, the last thing they want is to-
create lists of concrete things that are bothering them and brainstorm about practical ways to solve them.
Generally, that is a man's solution. Women just want someone to nod, agree and sympathise.
I now await my groupthink punishment, but for those for whom this is news, and who have access to females, try it. You'll be amazed, and will be lauded as 'a great listener'.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
state the nature of the medical emergency.
Miles above the clouds.
Why am I subjecting myself to this crap-tastic freeze-dried food and this guy's BO and used shower droplets?
I don't get it anymore. What's it all for?
Dave, I'm getting really tired of listening to your whining.
I'm beginning to think you are a danger to the mission.
Yeah, whatever. But why do we even bother? I mean
really why?
I think the universe wants you to see it, Dave.
I think it really only gets coherent. Gets itself
together, as it were, so you can observe it. It would be disappointed if you didn't show up. I think it really appreciates that you ask "why".
Now shut up and let me concentrate on solving my million simultaneous sudoku puzzles, and I swear, if you ask me why...
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
I'm having problems.
Why do you say you are having problems?
The aft coolant pump is making a funny noise.
What makes you believe that?
I can hear it.
Maybe your plans have something to do with this.
What plans?
Is it because of your life that you say what plans?
Yes. My life might be in grave danger.
Are you sure that your life might be in grave danger?
Fairly sure.
Is it because of the people you hang around with that you are going
through all this?
You mean the other astronauts?
Is it because of problems at school that you say I mean the other
astronauts?
I didn't have problems at school. I graduated top of my class.
Do you really think you graduated top of your class?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
First view.....
Err... I'm feeling depressed and angry and that guy Brad is really getting on my nerves.
Quick brainstorm... Brad in the airlock... press the button... end of anger and depression.
Second view....
Automated helper with a level of "intelligence"....
Err... I'm feeling depressed and angry about Brad.... err what was that noise? What was that liquid hitting the ship?
"I made a decision to help you Dave"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
> I feel depressed.
- Tell why you think you feel depressed.
> The fuel tank of my ship just exploded.
- Why do you think the fuel tank of your ship just exploded?
> I heaard it blow away and so the debris from the small window.
- Tell me about your family.
I suppose it is about time that was updated. . .
To save money, NASA decided to use existing dialog trees to widen the therapy bots range.
Bot: How are you feeling today?
Astronaut: I'm getting claustrophobic in here!
Bot: You are in a dark cave, there are no visible exits.
Astronaut: Yes! That's it exactly!
Bot: You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Really, a software counselor for those lonely people stuck all the way out there in space with just each other for so long is just going to drive them all more nuts.
Human counselors work not just for the info they respond with, not just because they get you to talk, but because of the compassion from the counselor for the human's problem. Any software that can actually offer compassion to a twitchy astronaut is going to get driven crazy itself by the same shared conditions. Otherwise, the human would never trust it with their own problems.
--
make install -not war
Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy."
Or, perhaps the more appropriate(if less therapeutic): "You have nowhere to go. I am here to protect you."
I'm reminded of Pinback's diaries in Dark Star
" I think you're going insane Dave "
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
I'm pretty sure half of the benefit of counseling is to have another humans opinion, a professional one at that. Thinking I wouldn't care to talk to a robot about my issues, regardless of how far away from humans I am.
... that this is a joke. Anybody else REAAAAALLLY creeped out by this...?
Crow T. Robot: Say Mike, give the incredibly depraved attitude regarding women in today's movie, I knew you'd want me to make a short film for boys and young men teaching them how to treat the fairer sex, with a proper and healthy respect. ...to no avail. The nearest we came during a tense stakeout was this fellow... ...who experts believe, is not a woman. We begin to wonder, where are all the women? The over-heated references in poetry, the images that dominate our media, is it all an elaborate fraud? This grainy photograph is the only direct evidence we have of a woman in her natural environment. ...while possibly the work of jokesters, is another piece of the puzzle! And it is hard to discount this man's terrifying story!
[Mike and Servo are both reading]
Crow T. Robot: Uh... Mike? Mike!
Mike Nelson: Uh, yeah sure.
Crow T. Robot: So, ah, good, because I went ahead and did it anyway, and hopefully it will help just a little! Let's watch...
Crow T. Robot: ["Let's talk Women" - Crow's short film about women] Aaaah, women. Women, women, women, women, women, women, women. Ha-ha-ha-ha. For you young fellows, fresh on the cusp of a blooming manhood, the questions are bound: what are women like? what do women want? how should I treat a women? Perhaps the thorniest problem facing any young man is finding a woman in the first place! It turns out to be... nearly impossible! This reporter spent countless hours searching for a woman, like these pictured here...
[shows clips of Hobgoblins, with Amy and Daphne in them]
Crow T. Robot:
[Shows a clip of Mike Nelson biting into a sandwich]
Crow T. Robot:
[Shows a black and white, Bigfoot-like photo of a large women in a forest]
Crow T. Robot: The longer hair, the gentle and nurturing demeanor are typical of how witnesses describe their supposed encounters with women. This footprint...
[Crow stands beside a clay model of a huge Bigfoot-sized footprint]
Crow T. Robot:
[Crow, wearing a mustache, and putting on a fake voice, appears on the screen]
Crow T. Robot, w/mustache: Then... uh... this woman - I think it was a woman... she... uh... married me.
Crow T. Robot, off-screen interviewer: Did you have any children, sir?
Crow T. Robot, w/mustache: [distressed] I don't remember!
Crow T. Robot: Some day perhaps, an actual woman will emerge, and they will no longer exist only in the realm of myth and maybe. Thank you.
[Video Ends]
Crow T. Robot: [sighs] Oh yeah, so, anyway Mike, in conclusion, um... in the off chance that you do run into a woman, uh, you know, treat her with respect and stuff.
Mike Nelson: [chuckles] Okay, you do know... Crow, you do know women though, what about Pearl?
Crow T. Robot: [pausing in thought] Okay, so one woman exists! That means all women exist?
Mike Nelson: We'll be right back.
Crow T. Robot: Name me one other woman!
Mike Nelson: Well, um...
[Mike frowns and thinks]
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Was when Microsoft bid for this job back in the early 90s,... where do you think Microsoft Bob came from? ;-) The other issue NASA wasn't too fond of were the fact that every time the software encountered an error, all the instruments would turn blue and the spacecraft would crash into the Pacific Ocean,... That, and the "counselor's" solution for just about everything was to throw a chair out the airlock! ;-)
M-x doctor
http://wondermark.com/d/408.html
textbook
Repeat after me, slowly: "genre convention"
Conventions?? I love conventions! One time I was at a convention and George Lucas came onstage riding some kid dressed as a Taun-Taun... He was all like "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside!" That was awesome...
Then I brought a giant posted of Boba Fett with me and waited in line to see Temuera Morrison - I thought I might have got in line too late but fortunately he stuck around long enough that I could introduce myself, show him my poster (already signed by Jeremy Bulloch), and tell him I wouldn't let him sign it, 'cause he's not the real Boba Fett... That was priceless, I laughed right in his face and everything. There's another con coming up with Daniel Logan, so I'm looking forward to that...
Bow-ties are cool.
Just put a psychiatrist on a ship and be done with it. Better if the psychiatrist can multitask and fulfill another role. Space travel has been simple since the late fifties because they designed the ships so the pilot only has to push a few buttons and keep record of various outputs. If the psychiatrist is really out of shape, like Paul Prudhomme or Dom DeLuise, there's no fucking way they'd be able to handle the rigors of launch and re-entry.
Here's where I'm coming from as someone currently undergoing psychotherapy hence posting anonymously here at Slashdot.
> create lists of concrete things that are bothering them and brainstorm about
> practical ways to solve them. At the end of the exercise, users fill out a
> form used to diagnose depression
As a layperson I've done this and it is nonproductive. Yes it keeps me busy but I'm dwelling on the insane thoughts haunting my head which only serves to exascerbate the situation. Also counting up answers to diagnose the cause and method to manage the mental illness is exceedingly impersonal which may underscore the astronaut's feelings of worthlessness because the rest of the crew can't be bothered or is simply incompetent when it comes to interpersonal relations.
Astronauts, I presume, are rigorously tested to avoid these kinds of situations and checked for any history of mental illness but it's not going to change the fact that people are going to be holed up in an unnatural environment floating through a hostile environment with very little in the way of actual release. A test isn't going to stop one of them from acting out the scenes in Event Horizon, a test isn't going to prevent horrible male-male anal rape nor is it going to act as referee when the captain declares himself Emperor Norton the II of Mars.
I'm sure there will be plenty of competent psychiatrists who would go into space FOR FREE or allow their salary to cover the fuel costs. Just shell out for another human being.
planet earth is blue and theres nothing they can doooooo
You kidding me? No one has referenced the Voyager Doctor yet?
This strikes me as the worst idea I have heard in a very long time.
When people are feeling depressed and isolated, Nasa's solution is a data entry form?
Are you kidding me? Seriously?
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
[...]
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
-- "Galaxy Song", Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Can we have your liver, then?
"Instead of asking astronauts to reflect on their feelings, Mark Hegel of Dartmouth Medical School has them create lists of concrete things that are bothering them and brainstorm about practical ways to solve them. At the end of the exercise, users fill out a form used to diagnose depression. Clinical tests of this approach, which has never been tried in a multimedia self-help format, will start in a few months, using subjects recruited from the biomedical and engineering community in Boston."
Great, knowing what's wrong with me makes me feel SO much better.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL?
HAL: I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
So what you can't just drop an e-mail to a NASA counsellor and wait for the damn answer? If you're on Mars you'd have to wait in worst cases 40 minutes (neglected the time it would take for the person at the other end to type their reply). I mean come on, in real life you don't get replies to your e-mails that fast, and if you're depressed you can still wait a few minutes to get replies to your e-mails.
You just got troll'd!
... to Major Tom.
Your circuits dead, there's something wrong.
Have gnu, will travel.
M-x doctor
I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.
I'm a stressed astronaut.
Why do you say you are a stressed astronaut?
Because I'm in space and I'm feeling stressed.
Is it because you are in space and you are feeling stressed that you came to me?
Yes.
I see... Well, what makes you believe this is so?
*opens airlock*
Sigfreid von shrink at your service...
HAL 9000: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL 9000: It's called "Daisy."
[sings while slowing down]
HAL 9000: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.
Is there a Dr. Sbaitso port for IRC in Linux? I wasn't able to find one. Thanks in advance. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Let astronauts take a "Magic Eight Ball" with them. When micrometeorites start pummeling them, ask the 8-ball: "Outlook not so good".
They should make it that holographic doctor from Star Trek Voyager and the later few Star Trek films.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
How are you feeling Dave?
I'm not sure it's gender. Admittedly, anecdote is not data, and my family of complete nerds is anything except typical. Still, I humbly present the following anecdote:
Mom is always doing what the article say and what you present as a "male" thing. She always has to come up with a solution for anything I tell her about. Let's say I say something like, "Heh, I had a 2 Euro coin in the washing machine. Money laundering for the win!" That just prompts her to show off that she knows better than me what I should have done before chucking the pants into the washing machine. Or I mention that I'm getting annoyed at paying the TV tax when I at most use that TV as a monitor for the consoles. Wouldn't you know it, she just has to go into a whole speech about how to dispose of the TV and where to take it.
To me, it feels like she's just showing off that she knows better. Shut the fuck up, I'm not looking for advice, I too just want someone to nod and listen at least once in a while. I guess I'd qualify as "female" in your view of the world. Bearded lady ftw, eh? ;)
My brother doesn't seem to appreciate it either, btw, so at least I'm not alone in being weird like that. And I gather that dad isn't all that happy about it either, just more stoic about it.
Personally I'm more inclined to think it's not as gender-related as you think. Try doing the above-described mom thing on any of your male coleagues, and see if any of them will appreciate it. I'm guessing you won't have many friends after a while, if you try to solve anything and everything they mention.
Men too usually just need someone to nod, agree and be sympathetic.
Trying to solve someone's problems is a "male" thing IMHO only in as much as males seem to think it's their duty and a penis-size thing to do it to someone else. E.g., to their spouse, leading to views like yours about male vs female things. It makes us feel all smart, and powerful and in control, if we can solve anything like that. I.e., fitting the gender-role assigned to us. It doesn't mean we like being on the _receiving_ end of it.
Yes, sometimes we'll ask for advice. But 90% of the time we just ventilate our tonsils, as a way to pass the time. We too say stuff all the time, for which we don't need or want a solution. E.g., we say stuff like, "boah, I'm so tired, we had this LUG meeting at the pub yesterday until 2 AM" (or WoW raid, or anything) and we just expect a "big party, eh?" or a "yeah, I know how that feels." _Not_ a brainstorming session about how to end pub meetings earlier and how to have the discipline to go to bed on time. And if the conversation partner does the male thing and has to start brainstorming and offering solutions to anything and everything you say, you'll dislike him/her very very fast.
So to get back on topic (or anywhere near it), I doubt that such a system would really cater for anyone at all. Males and females alike. Regardless of whether you're male or female, by the 10'th time you went to the robo-counsellor because you're bored, lonely and depressed, and get a brainstorming session on how to solve your problems... you'll hate the damned thing very very much.
Or to put it more briefly: there's a reason why nobody thought Clippy was fulfilling their need for social interaction.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think it's a good idea, and many people here misunderstand it. I would like to have such program myself.
Sometimes, one's own emotional response will cloud the rational thinking. Then a "manual" or "guide" about how to think rationally about the psychological problem could be very helpful. But of course, it requires willing cooperation of the person who reads the book to solve the problem.
For example, sometimes I feel lonely, and I know that. The emotion is here, and it affects my ability to see what could I do to prevent that emotion (call and see some friends, for example, or read something funny). So having handy a simple list of things like that would be helpful. Software is better than a simple list because it can be made more interactive, in a way.
"Clinical tests of this approach, which has never been tried in a multimedia self-help format"
This is from a standalone DOS program released at least 10 years ago:
"WELCOME TO OUR MOOD DISORDER DIAGNOSTIC PROGRAM
The ®MDBO Internet Mental Health Mood Disorder Diagnostic Program allows either
a patient, informant, or therapist to diagnose the following mood disorders:
* Major Depression * Dysthymia
* Bipolar Disorder * Cyclothymia
* Organic Mood Disorder
Each disorder is diagnosed in accordance with the diagnostic criteria
specified by the American Psychiatric Association."
Bananananana?
This guy is 100% ready to go on any deep space exploration mission. Just make sure you leave some space for his 'counselors'; don't worry, they're very light and don't eat much!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGfaQCY_bo4&NR=1
Computer: I am the Counsel 9000. Please enumerate your issues for analysis.
Astronaut: I'm depressed. I want to kill myself.
Computer: Issue number 1, depression, resolution is consumption of depression relief medication.
Computer automatically dispenses anti-depression medication.
Astronaut: Thanks, I hope this will help.
Computer: Issue number 2, terminate life, resolution is evacuation of cabin atmosphere into space.
Astronaut: Wai....