My experience is that they (at least copilot) are at least on par, if not better, than self help books. I assume they will get better over time.
Just my few cents
I believe that 'help or not' is a question impossible to answer, objectively at least. My subjective answer is that psychologic help in general is effective, whether it is provided orally, via books or as recently, via automation.
25 years ago internet was as good as everywhere at work and schools in the civilized world and was starting to ramp up in homes. CDs or DVDs were indeed still used for large sets of software and documentation, like stacks of MSDN discs. We even had distibuted source code version control, though it was often only synchronized accross the ocean (e.g. using SERI) overnight.
Personally i like the fact that there are interruptions at work. Working is often a social business and activities like rubber ducking, whiteboarding or live code explanation with living people works wonders for me. It should happen even more.
The people who were coding 8 hours a day, very often were writing yet another framework that they personally came up with to solve a problem, but without duscussing its requirements. More often than not they were making the wrong thing, making too clever things or over engineering.
For anyone else who, like me a moment ago, doesn't know the meaning of ** but is curious: it's how many (but not all) programming languages express "to the power of", aka 2**1000 = 2^1000
BCD, actually, given that Fortran dates from the mid-1950s. EBCDIC only appeared more or less around Fortran IV, in the early 1960s. Many printers in those days had a 48-character chain/train. After upper-case letters, digits, and a few essential punctuation marks (like . and ,), you weren't left with many options. The 60-character set of PL/I was a luxury back then, let alone lower case.
Oh, I interpreted "a function for exponentiation" as being part of a list of things C uses ^ for. It didn't even occur to me that the sentence had an alternative parsing where it was part of a list of things C uses. C does indeed use a function for exponentiation. And time flies like an arrow!
Python 3.11.13 (main, Jun 3 2025, 18:38:25) [GCC 14.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 2**1000
10715086071862673209484250490600018105614048117055336074437503883703510511249361224931983788156958581275946729175531468251871452856923140435984577574698574803934567774824230985421074605062371141877954182153046474983581941267398767559165543946077062914571196477686542167660429831652624386837205668069376
>>> _/2**999
2.0
>... that my presence is being used for some sort of sexual experience unbeknownst to me.
To me this sounds like you are afraid of that? Can you elaborate where that worry is rooted from? What is the problem of sexual experiences happening (automatically, it is literally in our DNA) inside their thoughts?
My physio therapist is very nice and caring, genuinely interested in conversation and helping with my and other people's physical and sometimes even psychological problems. While she was moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional while doing her work physically and giving psychological support as a bonus. I'm sure she will notice at times that some people get intimate feelings but she seems to be okay with that, knowing she is helping patients while such things can happen as a side effect.
All to say that feelings are only natural and they can induce thoughts. Why apologize.
> moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional
This highlights something that I've been chewing on a lot lately. I'm not sure what you specifically meant by the word "intimate" when you said that, but I do think it's really interesting to distinguish between "intimate" and "sexual", even though they often coincide.
As an example, years ago I was staying with some out-of-town friends after a break-up and they wanted to introduce me to a couple of lovely single women they knew. I hadn't really been taking great care of myself in the fallout of the breakup, so I went and shaved and got cleaned up. While doing my hair, I realized that my eyebrows were pretty unruly and somewhat sheepishly asked my friend's wife if she'd be comfortable taking some tweezers to them and helping me get them cleaned up. It wasn't, even a little bit, a sexual moment but it ended up being incredibly and unexpectedly intimate. We were both pretty surprised by it and ended up getting closer (as friends) afterwards.
What a nice story! Cleaning up eyebrows shows nicely the discrepancy between intimacy (feeling love and care) and erotica (feeling lust?).
The hair grooming in the article probably felt similar.
Thinking about the physio therapy, her upper body felt very warm and soft but it was probably a rather standard technique for firmly moving the joints and ligaments in legs and hips.
What it made most intimate was not just the softness of her body but also the care she took for the movements, knowing that it would help.
So my limbic system went into oxytocin producing mode, which the aware mind easily picks up with warm thoughts. I think that's where the bridge between intimacy and sexual thoughts can happen, but there my thinking was not firmly going into that direction, it just felt warm and comfortable, even a bit emotional.
In your case the feelings apperently came from both directions, it was not a professional/client context after all.
> What it made most intimate was not just the softness of her body but also the care she took for the movements, knowing that it would help.
100% that was a big part of it too for me. It was the care and attention that was going into it, plus the element of trust that goes into giving someone consent to inflict sharp but short-lived pain.
I’d actually be really curious on the physiotherapy side of it whether there is actually a combination of intimacy and professionalism happening on the other side of it. I’ve done physio with people who did not give me warm and fuzzies at all, and with people who, like for you, left me with that nice oxytocin sense of satisfaction. I wonder if the people who left me with that feeling are good at what they do because they have some added degree of empathy or mirror neurons or whatever that makes them feel good when they treat their patients softly and intentionally.
Indeed i think it is a win win between caregiver and patient, which has little to do with financials. One of the feats of the limbic system is promoting emotional resonance which can happen in both directions and does not to have to imply romance.
>While she was moving my legs using her upper body, it felt quite intimate and I admired her for being so professional while doing her work physically and giving psychological support as a bonus.
Have you considered that from her pov, there was nothing intimate about it? I wasn't there to watch it, but in my experience, these situations are only "intimate" or awkward AFTER you start talking about how intimate and awkward there are. For people who have to touch bodies regularly at work (eg. me when I was a gymnastic coach), there is nothing intimate about it. The only ones who think it's sexual/intimate/awkward/weird/etc. are those who have no experience with it.
It's the same thing when you get a medical procedure done. Believe it or not, the nurses and the surgeon do not give a single fuck about seeing your dick. Its not intimate or sexual for them.
For her it probably did not feel intimate indeed. Still giving care can give a sense of emotional connection, with or without physical contact. Like I wrote, what made it most satisfying was the combination of the physio with empathetic conversations.
The apology in that case is more a polite society way of expressing "I appreciate your work, this isn't me taking it as something else".
I somewhat agree you don't need to apologize in that particular case you've outlined; medical professionals, of which that person effectively is, have usually seen it all. But there is a reasonable justification for why someone might choose to throw out an apology there all the same.
Even if the women could read the desire from her face, there was nothing to apologize for. She felt attraction a feeling induced by non-reasoning parts of her brain. She didn't give in to it by for example hugging them without consent.
Who moved every interaction in daily life to the internet? Most conversations we have are private, even if they are digital. Most of my ms teams interactions are with a single person. I trust them to not make sceenshots to share those. I don't see much difference with oral conversations, where I also trust they do not gossip about them.
30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing. Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to be labeled 'not done'.
Some time ago I said to a coworker who I consider as a friend : 'I enjoy your company'. Another (younger, italian) coworker told me to be careful after I said to him 'she has such a soft voice'.
I really did not expect that reaction. To my feeling, no line got crossed and the fact that we are still friends and at times even share our thoughts about love and relationships in general, proves that we trust and respect each other.
>30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing. Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to be labeled 'not done'.
I was in the workforce 30 years ago and, no, it was absolutely not normal.
It was what we called an "HR violation" and a "Career limiting move."
Not sure where you were 30 years ago, but except in bordellos and strip clubs that wasn't "normal." Not even close.
> 30 years ago it was rather normal that a manager would touch the behind of a coworker, which is clearly a bad thing. Nowadays looking in their direction a bit too long seems to be labeled 'not done'.
That was a huge no-no 30 years ago, at least in the US. In fact, it was a major no-no at my first job in 1979 and would get you fired.
Safest thing to do is just leave no possible room for doubt. This means you can’t be friends with your coworkers, which is disappointing, but the tail risk of accidentally saying something that crosses the line is too severe when it comes to professional consequences.
Fear is a bad advisor! I take the risk because i know that most people around me know me and trust that i say such things in good faith, without patronizing or overly flirting with people of the opposite sex. If it should have any profesional consequences, then maybe i would have the wrong employer.
You seem to be to afraid to be friends with your coworkers because of potential consequences? If that is so, i'm sorry, you are missing out a great deal in life.
I think this is right. Continue to connect with humans and try to evaluate their actions in good faith. Don’t be a creep but don’t skip life either.
Unfortunately if someone chooses to interpret your words or actions in an uncharitable way there’s not much you can do other than move on. It’s their burden to carry, not yours (except when there are real world consequences but I do think that’s a rare circumstance)
Not making friends at work because you have fulfilled social life already, and not making friends at work to avoid any danger to your career are two very different things.
Not making friends at work, because it's not a good place to make friends, might push you towards ensuring having fulfilled social life outside of work.
I say this without rancor: unless I miss my mark, you don't live or work in the United States. You don't understand the stakes. I envy your life brother; I hope you appreciate it.
I live and work in Europe but I used to travel a lot for work to the US. Friendship or making friends indeed seems to work differently there, which was hard to grasp from my cultural pov. That said, I made a good friend there.
"neurochemistry issue debunked" is a very weak argument about the (in)effectiveness of proper drugs for treatment of mental illness. It's not exactly known how they work but I am 100 percent sure SSRIs often have a very positive, even life changing effect. Moreover, every approved drug is tested 'double blind' exactly because the placebo effect has such a big biasing effect on subjectively appreciated outcomes. Only when ruling out pure placebo effect, a drug can be approved.
> Moreover, every approved drug is tested 'double blind' exactly because the placebo effect has such a big biasing effect on subjectively appreciated outcomes. Only when ruling out pure placebo effect, a drug can be approved.
Pretty weird the article we're commenting on about Prozac being no better than placebo for children is just now coming out when it was already approved for use in children, then.
