u/ApprehensiveAnakin

I’ve been carrying this weight for years, and I just need to put it out there because the systemic failure and poor choices I experienced still haunts me. It wasn't just one bad stroke of luck; it was a domino effect of negligence and emotional abandonment that led to me losing my teeth.

Here is exactly how it happened.

The first dentist: When I was 15/16 years old, I went to the dentist because I had two actual cavities. After treating them, he claimed he found another 6 "micro-cavities" that needed urgent treatment. I had a gut feeling something was wrong. I specifically told my father that I suspected this dentist was scamming us and treating perfectly healthy teeth just for profit, but my warning was completely ignored.

It gets worse. While working on those 6 "micro-cavities," he actually lost control of his drill and damaged 2 morecompletely healthy teeth, which he then went ahead and filled. In the end, he treated a total of 10 teeth: 2 that actually had issues, 6 with questionable "micro-cavities," and 2 collateral victims of his slipping drill.

To top it all off, his work was incredibly botched. Many of these "treated" teeth were sealed so poorly that they suffered from bacterial infiltration underneath the fillings. Because of his incompetence, the decay reached so deep that the only options left to fix them were expensive root canals followed by crowns, or outright extraction.

The second dentist: Sometime later, I went to a different dentist to deal with the damage. One of my ruined teeth could have been saved by capping it with a crown. But because of my previous trauma, I was a very anxious patient and needed to take short breaks during the procedure. Instead of showing a shred of empathy, this dentist got annoyed. Because he couldn't be bothered to deal with a patient who needed pauses, he took the easy way out and suggested we just extract the tooth.

My parents: Through all of this, my parents were my biggest letdown. Not only did my dad ignore my initial warnings about the first dentist's scam, but they completely refused to support me in taking legal action against him for malpractice. I was left entirely defenseless. Even worse, when I ultimately had to suffer through getting my teeth pulled, they constantly belittled and invalidated my pain. I was suffering physically and mentally, and they made me feel like I was overreacting.

My final choice (The aftermath): After the sheer negligence of the first dentist, the laziness of the second, and the complete emotional and legal abandonment by my own parents, something inside me broke. I experienced what my therapist calls "learned helplessness." I was so deeply disillusioned that for years, I completely stopped trying to save what was salvageable. I gave up on my dental health because every time I tried to fix it or ask for help, I was harmed or ignored.

Because of that long period of giving up, I eventually lost those teeth entirely, right down to the roots.

I know I made the final choice to stop trying, but it’s so hard to live with the fact that I only gave up after every single adult and professional who was supposed to protect me failed me. I just needed to vent about how incredibly unfair this whole chain of events was.

I don't know how to live with this guilt because if I had been more resilient I would have gone to a third dentist and maybe I would still have all of my teeth and not lose jawbone.

TL;DR: A greedy dentist ruined 10 of my teeth (including slipping with his drill and causing bacterial infections), a lazy second dentist pulled a salvageable tooth instead of crowning it, and my parents refused to support me legally or emotionally. The trauma made me give up on my dental health for years, resulting in me losing my teeth entirely.

I am afraid that a day might come when this weight becomes unbearable and I will kill myself

I’m working on a project where the core execution logic is driven by graph structure. Currently, I'm trying to use an LLM to help generate the initial configuration for this graph, which should works since I have seen tools are now integrating LLMs for initial configuration.

However, I've been experimenting with something much riskier: letting the LLM modify the graph at runtime. The idea is that if the system encounters an unknown scenario or a roadblock, the LLM analyzes the situation, figures out the missing steps, and dynamically adds new nodes or edges to the execution graph on the fly to adapt.

The problem, as you might guess, is the inherent non-determinism of LLMs.

If the LLM hallucinates, misinterprets something, or writes a bad transition, it permanently "poisons" the graph for that run. Suddenly, my deterministic graph is a mutated mess, infinite loops become a real threat, and debugging is a total nightmare because the graph changes under the hood.

So, my questions for the architecture and automation veterans here:

1. Is there a way to achieve a truly "semi-deterministic" approach when mutating graphs at runtime?
2. Or is this fundamentally a doomed approach? Is it impossible to ever truly guarantee that the LLM won't mess up the graph, meaning I should strictly separate the two? (e.g., the graph remains 100% read-only/deterministic at runtime, and the LLM is only used for isolated "one-off" recovery actions that don't modify the graph).

Would love to hear if anyone has successfully implemented runtime logic mutation without it devolving into chaos, or if the consensus is to keep LLMs strictly away from modifying the core graph on the fly.

Lately, a concerning pattern is emerging: developers are struggling to maintain a mental map of their own projects.

We can recall the logic of a project we hand-coded five years ago, yet the one we built with an LLM last week feels like a blur. You aren't losing your edge—your brain is simply reacting to a drastic shift in how you process information.

Here is why relying on LLMs is erasing our mental models:

1. The GPS Effect: before smartphones, you built a spatial map of cities. Today, a GPS gets you there seamlessly—but if the screen turns off, you’re lost. Reading LLM-generated code is a passive activity. It delivers the destination but skips the "route-building" required for long-term memory.
2. The Loss of Micro-Decisions: deep learning requires struggle. When you code line-by-line, you make dozens of micro-decisions: naming variables, choosing loops, catching edge cases. LLMs remove this cognitive friction. Without the frustration and the "eureka!" moments, your brain lacks the "hooks" it needs to store the logic.
3. The Speed Trap: memory needs time to consolidate. When you work at the high velocity of AI, your brain lacks the "cool-down" period to archive logic. Memories of the project overlap, blur, and eventually overwrite each other.

The bottom line: architecture requires Intimacy The narrative that we can "just focus on the big picture" is a trap. Good architecture requires an intimate understanding of the materials. If you externalize all the implementation to AI, your high-level architecture inevitably becomes brittle.

We cannot be "pure architects" if we no longer understand how the bricks are laid.