I have no desire to absolve our overall broken society. If cutting benefits to disabled people can be termed social murder, I think something like "social attempted suicide" describes this event. Where the person nearly killed themselves, but in a just and rational society, he never would have been in a position to internalize the stupid ideas that nearly led him to his own death. If every news outlet didn't constantly talk about how amazingly intelligent AI chatbots are, maybe this guy wouldn't have taken this ones comment at face value.

But at the same time, he did decide to change his diet based on a single unverified source. He decided to forgo any other research. He decided, despite all the knowledge available to him, to take actions that nearly resulted in his death. All he had to do was open a new tab and type " is it safe to eat Sodium Bromide". This isn't a matter of poverty, forcing someone to eat a diet of processed foods that results in cancer. This wasn't a man who was failed by our education system and dropped out of school in 8th grade, he had a college education.

And, ultimately, he lived.

I think that shame, mockery, pointing to the person who nearly killed themselves because they dunning-krugered themselves into eating poison for weeks, are important social tools that we should not give up so easily. Yes, there is a lot of blame that rests on society. But this isn't colloidal silver, raw milk or anti vax, sodium bromide does not have millions of dollars of advertising behind it. This was one guy, who thought he knew better than everyone else, based on a trumped up Markov bots hallucinations. Society isn't blameless, but especially because he survived, we SHOULD point and laugh and the dipshit boomer. If only to impress upon the next arrogant 60 year old that ChatGPT is not a doctor.

of course, but the current crop needs a decade of full-time remedial education and who knows how long undoing the indoctrination.