Sad and empty. I love kids. I had fertility treatments for years, but that did not work out. I will start IVF again in a couple of days. Hopefully it will work this time. It is one of my last chances.

I would like to adopt or have foster kids. However, I suffer from PTSD and in my country it is very difficult to adopt or foster if you have a background with mental illness. Even though my psychologist and the people in my environment all say that they think I would be able to do it and my partner does not have any mental illness, my chances are very low.

To be honest, looking any further than the next IVF makes me panic. I do not know how to live with not having kids and how to deal with that. I had a lot of bad stuff happen to me. Having children would be something I believe would have made me very happy. It feels like I failed at life. However, I just turned 40, so I know I need to give up at some point.

Not really. Most of us start learning it in elementary school, so you kind of grow up with it.

( ͡°❥ ͡°)

Ik snap de grap niet

Oh, I did not know that. I have been doing it wrong all these years then. Could have been drinking cocktails on the beach instead of reading all these papers.

I am sorry, but what is wrong with your professor? You were doing exactly what you are supposed to do in a peer review. You should go look for things that are wrong or should be improved and only if the paper can withstand that process, it should be published. Only providing positive comments is really harmful to the scientific process and, in the end, to society.

To be honest, I think I reject more than half of the papers that I review. The rest require major or minor revision. It is not that I have a target or anything for how many I need to reject, it is just that most papers are of such low quality that I cannot do anything else. I think the number of papers I reject is quite normal in my field.

So, not all your comments need to be positive. If there is reason to be positive, you should mention it. And your comments should be constructive and respectful, but definitely not always positive.

In the case you are describing where the authors seem to only have read the titles of the papers, I would definitely reject. This is fraud. You are saying you did a literature study and you did not. So, I would be quite clear about that. I would also be a bit angry that they wasted my time. So, in my opinion, that is how a reviewer should respond in this situation, not with only positive comments.

You can try. At least with ADHD you have creativity and hyperfocus. That might help. :-)

I already had mental illness before I started!

This person has not responded yet and I do not know the situation locally, but they might mean a counselor or someone like that. Usually colleges have therapists available for students. It might not be the case that they have the right expertise for this, but they can help you find someone that is right for this situation as well. So that might be a good starting point. If that does not work, you can just search a therapist online and contact them.

In case of sexual abuse, you could also go to hospital or a doctor there and they should be able to help you as well and treat any physical wounds also. However, I am not sure how that works where you live.

So, I think the first best step is to see whether there is a therapist at your college and contact them. If that does not work, just search online for other therapists. If there is physical harm, go to a doctor or hospital. Does that help?

No problem. I hope it will work out for you and your friend. It might be difficult, but it is possible to heal from almost anything with the right help and a space to feel safe.

I have never been to the US, so I have no idea whether it is good to contact authorities. I hope someone else will answer that question.

I am happy for your friend that they have you to support them. I think the fact that you are there for them and that you listen to them is very important and helpful, especially the listening part. You need to focus on making your friend feel save.

In addition, I think this situation requires also some professional help. It sounds very serious and complex and not something the both of you can just solve by yourselves. I think an important thing you can do for your friend is to get them to a therapist or other professional who can treat them and find a way out of this situation. It is the same as when you break a leg or something like that. In a situation with physical trauma, you need a friend to support you and help you deal with it. But you also need a doctor to fix it. It is the same with psychological trauma. So, please get your friend professional help.

I am sorry you feel like this. I have been through a lot, so I know the feeling of wanting to give up very well. All I can say is that I am really glad I never actually completely gave up. Giving up will not make you feel better.

I am not sure whether you are angry, you sound angry. So, do what you have to do to deal with this feeling. Screaming in my car and punching a pillow works for me. And then think about why things are not working the way you want it and try something new.

That is a really interesting perspective. We are just parts of the ‘system’ (I am using the word system here for lack of a better one). But what if the system is not made up of separate parts, like a car? If you take out a part of the car, maybe a wheel, then it becomes different, it behaves different. The parts are thus individuals. What if the system is more like a liquid, such as the sea? If you take out a water-atom, it is practically still the same. It still behaves the same. So, the parts are not individuals.

If you take a human away, their immediate environment will be changed a lot. However, the universe, the system as a whole does not function differently from before. So, in that sense, individuality is an illusion when you look at it from a very high level perspective. This is different from a more local perspective, of course. When I lost someone in my environment, my personal universe changed completely.

I hope I make sense. I just really liked the thought you expressed. :-)

Well, I am not even sure whether humans have free will. I mean, the world might be a deterministic place, meaning that everything is cause and effect. In that case, there is no such thing as true free will.

I think in the article they probably it use different definition. But any initiative taken by the AI would still be a reaction to something. Just like is the case for humans probably/maybe.

I think the ability to deal with situations that are currently not in the training data could be improved by adding symbolic AI to the models. This might help create a more explicit understanding of how the world works. It is more similar to the way humans think consciously. However, symbolic AI has been quite negiected in favour of machine learning. It would be nice to see more attention to that part of the field again and to see what happens.

I have a mother who used to act like she hated me a significant amount of time until a few years ago. I have a father who does not think I am that important. I used to think both of my parents hate me, or did not love me at least. I now have a more nuanced view of that. They are just people who are very damaged and almost handicapped in certain aspects. In any case, I think I might be able to understand your situation at least a little bit.

For me the most difficult part was not deciding whether to keep in touch with them or not. I mean, that is a very difficult decision and if your father is still hurting you, you should protect yourself. However, for me the most difficult thing is dealing with the damage.

I am not sure if this damaged you in the same way it damaged me. But if it did, I want to tell you that it is not your fault. Your father acting like he hates you is not because of anything you did and certainly not because of who you are. It is because of who he is.

A lot of children who are not loved or who are even hated by their parents think it is their fault. They think something is wrong with them and they deserve it. I mean, that makes sense, right? If it is your fault, then at least the world still is a fair place. And if something happens to a bad person you do not need to be compassionate, so you do not have to deal with any pain you are too little to be able to deal with. Also, you depend on your parents, so you cannot get too mad at them or leave. From the logic of a child, this makes sense.

And it works, it helps you survive. But once you get older, you keep thinking in the same way. You have a very low opinion of yourself and feel like there is something wrong with you or as if you are worthless. And to keep living in this way is familiar, you know you can survive that. You do not know whether you can survive the pain you suppressed all those years. Or it might still be so suppressed that you cannot even feel it. Until one day, it becomes too much and you start thinking that you might want a different life. You might not just want to survive, but actually live.

You do not discuss your mother. If you have a mother that was able to show you love, that might have had a protective effect. I hope so. But if you recognise this story in any way at all. I think it is import for you to know that it is not about accepting that your father hates you. It is about accepting that you are someone that did not deserve this. And that is very painful, but going through the pain of it, is the only way not to feel that anymore. It will free you from it and enable you to live more than survive.

It is a very difficult thing to do. I myself have not yet been able to go through the pain fully. It often feels too overwhelming, too much. However, after each small step I make, I already feel a little bit more free. I really think this is the way to cope with it. At least for me. It might help you as well maybe if you have similar feelings.

Edit to say that therapy can help a lot with this process. Others have said this as well, but I agree with them.

I have this and I have CPTSD. However, I am sure that there can be other causes as well.

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I can understand that it feels that this is the maximum you can cope with. But as long as you keep breathing, you still exist and you can cope. I can promise you that if you go through it instead of around it, it will get better. I cannot promise you exactly when or how high the peaks will be, but I can promise you that as long as you keep breathing you can cope.

My little sister died from anorexia, I had a miscarriage, my parents emotionally neglected and emotionally abused me as a child and several other traumatising stuff happened. I know pain. I do not underestimate yours. But this is how I dealt with it and I think it will help you too.

I sincerely feel for you. But the pain has a function. You need it to process and you need to feel it to eventually be able to make a new and happy life for yourself. Just keep breathing and go through the waves. I know you can do it.

Don’t drink. Cry. It sounds stupid, bit crying out all the pain might help. Do not run from it. Go through it and cry again if you need to. If you can do so safely, drive and scream in the car. Or break some stuff that you do not need anymore (like plates or something).

I have been through some traumatising stuff and the only thing that helps is not to run, but to go through it. I promise you, there will be a peak in pain and then it will reduce and the next peak will be less severe. This will go on and the pain will become less and less. As long as you keep breathing, you can handle it.

Me too.