Comment by micromacrofoot
7 days ago
I know this conversation is going in a lot of different directions. But therapy could be prioritized, better funded, trained, and staffed... it's entirely possible. Americans could fund the military 5% less, create a scholarship and employment fund for therapists, and it would provide a massive boon to the industry in less than a decade.
We always give this downtrodden "but we can't change society that quickly" but it's a cop out. We are society. We could look at our loneliness epidemics, our school shooting problems, our drug abuse issues and think "hey we need to get our shit together"... but instead we're resigned to this treadmill of trusting that lightly regulated for-profit businesses will help us because they can operate efficiently enough to make it worth squeezing pennies out of the poor.
Ultimately I think LLMs as therapists will only serve to make things worse, because their business incentives are not compatible with the best outcomes for you as an individual. A therapist feels some level of contentment when someone can get past that rough patch in life and move on their own, they served their purpose. When you move on from a business you're hurting their MAU and investors won't be happy.
Would increasing funding for therapy help any of those issues? Ignoring that very low efficacy of therapy and the arguments if funding it is worthwhile at all. The American people had fewer issues with school shootings and loneliness and drug abuse when we had even fewer therapists and therapy was something for people in mental asylums, that no respectable person would admit going to.
Worst case is that we come out on the other end knowing more about the problem. This doesn't have to be 1:1 therapy, research has never been incredibly well funded and it's being dramatically reduced right now.
Consider that after school shootings, sometimes therapists have to volunteer their time to provide trauma counseling.
Every social worker I've met has at one point volunteered time to help someone because we exist in a system where they're not valued for wanting to help.
"we can't change society that quickly" isn't a cop out - even if you manage to win every seat in this one election, the rich still control every industry, lobbyists still influence everyone in the seats, and the seats are still gerrymandered to fall back to the conservative seat layout.
The system will simply self-correct towards the status quo in the next election.
So we just sit on our hands and accept the shit we're fed until revolution, I suppose