Here’s a carton of the stuff circa 1935. It was also said to protect you from hangovers.
I love the part in the ad where it reads “it definitely works”.
Now I’m convinced!
Eh, unless they shoehorn the word “miracle” in there somewhere, I’m reserving judgement. /s
My grandfather used to eat those.
Ya know what happened to him? He’s DEAD!I’m REALLY curious what is in it. Clearly it’s nonsense, but I’m curious if it’s blatant snake oil, or if there was some logic that led to them actually thinking it was effective.
Thanks for the additional picture of the product. Looks nasty. Maybe it’s charcoal.
I spent about 15min trying to find out, and I couldn’t find the main ingredient.
Then I made the mistake of asking the bot. The bot claimed the main ingredient was the same as nicotine lozenges and gum today, nicotine polacrilex. It even had two sources below this answer.
I checked the sources.
Neither source listed had this answer, one was for the pic OP showed us, the other had nothing to do with this product.
So I asked the bot to explain itself. The bot said it couldn’t find the answer so it inferred the answer based on modern products. Bad bot.
And the answer remains a mystery.
You think this is an illustration of how bad AI is, but it’s really a result of humans training the AI rating the answer I don’t know significantly worse than a lie.
I searched the web and the answer isn’t there would be a great reply, if true. 5 stars.
There’s another model that would find it, imaginarily, and you’d both have to do the work to discover it, and you’d basically have to kill the bot that lied, because chances are you won’t catch the next lie.
LLMs being th perfect employee looks really bad for the human race. I’m guessing that we evolved out of autism to be emotionally pliable and subservient, enabling evolutiarily advantageous large-group cooperation, similar to the neotenal domestication of dogs made them emotional slaves to their human |asters.
They only like autistic traits when it’s an LLM
Also, trusting that an explanation of why it did something is any less made-up.
It’s just pulling words from a hat. It’s alarmingly good at it - it’ll fish around, when the next choice seems important. But once it’s pulled a word, it’ll plow ahead.
I think it’s good to separate criticism of LLMs work from how LLMs are trained. The word guessing is how it works. The sycophancy is how it is trained.
It’s also hilarious to me that the sycophancy is required for wide market adoption because the people who run companies are fully surrounded by ass kissers and that is what they expect from AI.
Sycophancy comes from the prompt, not the training. (AFAIK.) Any online model is secretly primed like ‘you are an expert genius trying to help some schlub’ and then a style guide. But those instructions can be swapped out to make it talk like a caveman. Or a domme. Or to not “talk” at all, and continue writing wherever you left off.
This kind of thing is why ‘ignore all previous instructions’ works. It’s a Little Bobby Tables attack, but for arbitrary English. Like if someone in a fantasy novel called “Cut!” and the characters took a break to get coffee. The data stream contains some semantic closing bracket as in-band signalling. The words that seem likely after that are different from before.
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I see you’ve worked at my company.
Work really opened my eyes. Check out my last post in autism lemmy for more hot takes on human society.
Pretty sure I’ve seen your posts before. I’m not diagnosed, but two of my kids are and there are signs. The best part is not giving a fuck about social norms. The worst part is avoiding social stigma while having difficulty recognizing social norms. I think the key part is realizing that they don’t want to be like you and you don’t want to be like them, but finding some way to meet in the middle anyway so you can work together.
Yeah, lemmy’s been my full time job since I quit work and haven’t been able to get a job. Sorry. Feel free to block me when you get tired.
I think I have something called Broad Autism Phenotype or, delightfully, BAP, which is a mixed grab bag of traits without the fully diagnosable presentation officially sanctioned as autism.
I find that a lot of autism does apply to me, but a lot of it also does not apply to me. But you’d be amazed at how critically disabling it is to value truth over loyalty, even absent any neuro-social deficits. Or how critically disabling it is to not want to pretend to like people when you don’t (which is just a manifestation of valuing truth)… Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised at all.
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llms do not work like human minds do at all, but oh boy do I spew opinions like an llm while I’m at work
Makes you wonder how many people aren’t asking the bot “Are you sure that’s correct?” when they are handed a blind guess.
Given the rates of ai psychosis, I’m guessing about 10 fold less than they should
For sure! See that huge freakin post someone made up above, which looks like pasted LLM spew without any attempt at verification.
In that case, it has LLM hallmarks, but LLMs can also generate more human looking text, seeding unlimited misinfo into the popular zeitgeist. Which is a little scary. And by a little, I mean a lot.
Kudos to Zephorah for actually doing the legwork! Most people skip that part.
I mean, it does look nasty, but it’s also very old. Without a picture of it taken in that era, we’ve no real way to tell how it actually looked to the customers who ate this shit, it might have just looked like a chewy caramel or licorice bar
The museum collections I found, if they mention it at all, just say that the contents are advertised as being derived from “a beneficial plant”. So probably completely fraudulent, if they don’t list the plant.
I would be completely unsurprised if it was nicotine or cocaine. Both come from plants and both are beneficial…to the manufacturer.
I thought the trick was that it suppressed nicotine but not the hundred other things that will kill you too
nicotine isn’t even the thing that kills you in cigarettes, its just the thing that keeps you coming back for the cancer.
Nah, not true.
Sure, nicotine is only part of cigarette smoke, and likely not the most dangerous. But nicotine raises blood pressure, and slows wound healing. Former can cause heart attacks, or any of the other health problems high blood pressure causes, while latter can lead to infections or neuropathy (generally, not causing them, but worsening them, if you have diabetes or the like).
This is because nicotine a vasoconstrictor. It causes your blood vessels to contract. This can actually be a good thing in some circumstances: if your lost a lot of blood, or have dangerously low blood pressure for some reason. But with the prevalence of high blood pressure in the population, its definitely more dangerous than anything else for the average person.
oh, I did not mean that nicotine isn’t bad for you, I mean it not one of the carcinogens in cigarettes
It also breaks down the elastomers in your body tissues including your skin.
That’s why smokers have those deep creases around their mouth and lips
But it also takes the same toll on the elasticity of your arteries.
That is my understanding too - but my understanding is on shaky ground and only based on a few dubious web sources.
There are some substances that are chemically similar to nicotine which will bind to the same receptors. Some are used in anti-smoking aids meant to ease the craving for cigarettes, although that is the opposite of the stated goal of the ad, which was to let people smoke more! Perhaps the idea was to block nicotine jitters?
It is also unclear if this product actually contained anything like that. And of course, cigarettes are harmful in lots of other ways, like you say.
Oh, Boots, the chemist?? Say no more, I’m definitely in!
While pretty obviously bullshit, I can get the allure of it. Tobacco can be a very pleasant thing when it isn’t an addiction. Not cigarettes really, but pipe and cigar smoking have a lot of sensual delight to them.
If you don’t think a humble cigarette can have sensual delight then you’ve never been a smoker.
Nah, I smoked for most of my adult life. I’m not saying they can’t be enjoyable, just that they aren’t really sensual in the same way.
See, it’s all about the thing itself. Cigarettes are shredded tobacco, usually heavily treated, wrapped in wood paper. Even filtered, there’s a chemical sting and harshness to them. Even the really great cigarettes, say something like galloises, or a hand rolled with carefully selected tobacco are too, I dunno thin, even unfiltered.
Compared to even cheap but not bad cigars, it’s miles apart. Mind you, bad cigars suck in a way that even bad cigarettes don’t. But they’re also more complex.
Pipe tobacco though? The way it’s processed, even the cheap stuff has body and a mouth feel that no cigarette can touch the warmth of the bowl, the scent, the tactility of packing it, even that crackle as it lights; it’s a full sensory experience.
The thing that makes them emotionally addictive is the head rush, the pleasantness of the tobacco, and the chemically induced happiness after a long, stressful day.
Its also forcing you to take deep breaths, can be very social, and keep you more present in the moment wherever you are. I very much enjoyed it before I “quit” years ago at two packs a day. Now its just the very occasional few every few years in social environments while drinking. Definitely has an appeal in a high stress environment. If they made non-cancer cigs I’d be back in a heartbeat.
I’ve also gone the “quitting” route. I don’t want to smoke, but I know myself well enough that setting a personal rule of “don’t smoke cigarettes” will make me smoke more. So I just don’t want them for most of the year
That smoke on the porch after coming home from a hard day’s work… That’s what I miss the most.
The black coffee with a cigarette in the afternoon sun is a wonderful moment of Zen.
That was always a great one. The other one I miss was after a hard week at work I’d roll to a gig and just get lost playing guitar with one hanging out of my mouth. There’s a brief moment in the 11th bar of the solo of Wish You Were Here where I would take a long inhale. One foot on the stage monitor. Eyes closed. I became one with the crowd, the guitar, and that cigarette. Cover sheets for TPS reports fell away into nothing.
6d Pretty pricy!
I’d bet it contained either heroin, cocaine or meth. Or any combination thereof.
Doctors HATE this one weird cancer trick.
I don’t under stand what this is for, the first part of the ad seems to imply that its for cutting down. But then the second half says you can smoke as much as you like after using this - mint? What does this actually DO?
My impression from the ad copy (“no need to ‘cut it down’”) is that it’s meant to let people smoke more without worrying. But the ad is rather unhelpful about the specifics.
It’s plausible that it did contain some active ingredient, since there are chemicals which mimic the effects of nicotine, or interfere with it. Of course, smoking more = more dangerous even if you somehow block the effects of the nicotine.
🤖🤖🤖
Nic-o-sin was a proprietary “nicotine antidote” pastille sold primarily in the late 1920s and 1930s across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and British Commonwealth markets.
How It Was Supposed to Work
Unlike traditional tobacco cures designed to help people quit, Nic-o-sin was marketed as a prophylactic neutralizer to enable unlimited consumption.
- The Problem It Targeted: During the interwar period, public anxiety grew around “tobacco heart,” irregular pulse, coated tongue, morning cough, and tremors caused by excessive cigarette smoking.
- The Claimed Mechanism: Advertisements claimed the pastilles contained active neutralizers that chemically counteracted nicotine in the mouth, saliva, and digestive tract before it could enter the bloodstream or irritate the mucous membranes. By sucking or chewing a tablet before or during smoking, users were told the toxic alkaloids were rendered harmless.
- The Physiological Reality: Inhaled nicotine absorbs rapidly through pulmonary alveoli directly into arterial circulation within seconds. Ingesting a lozenge or candy cannot neutralize systemic nicotine delivered to the lungs and bloodstream.
Ingredients and Composition
The manufacturers kept the precise proprietary formula secret on public advertising material, marketing it vaguely as a combination of “harmless herbal extracts” and detoxifying agents.
While Nic-o-sin specifically was sold on proprietary commercial appeal, contemporary chemical analyses of similar interwar “nicotine neutralizers” and “smoker’s pastilles” published by medical organizations (such as the British Medical Association and the American Medical Association) typically revealed:
- Astringents: Tannic acid or catechu, historically used because tannins chemically precipitate alkaloid salts (like nicotine) in a test tube, though this does not detoxify absorbed nicotine in the human body.
- Digestive Aids and Antacids: Sodium bicarbonate, bismuth subnitrate, or magnesium carbonate to soothe stomach acidity caused by swallowing tobacco-laden saliva.
- Flavorings & Demulcents: Licorice extract, menthol, peppermint oil, acacia gum, and sucrose to numb throat irritation and mask bad breath.
Documented Sources
- British Newspaper Archive (1928–1936): Display advertisements carrying the specific slogan “Eat a Nic-o-sin and smoke as much as you like” ran extensively in UK regional and national newspapers during this period, including publications such as the Daily Mirror, The Scotsman, and the Gloucestershire Echo.
- British Medical Association (BMA): Secret Remedies: What They Cost and What They Contain (1909) and More Secret Remedies (1912). These volumes established the standard chemical profiles for proprietary British nostrums targeting tobacco and nicotine habits.
- American Medical Association (AMA): Nostrums and Quackery (Vol. I & II, edited by Dr. Arthur J. Cramp), which documented early 20th-century fraudulent “tobacco habit” antidotes and pastilles operating under identical claims.
🤖🤖🤖
From where does that text come? It looks like someone just cut and pasted the output of an LLM, in which case I would suggest deleting it.
LLMs have their uses, but they will happily confabulate, and sound very confident while doing it, such as referring to fictitious court cases which sound plausible, but were never actually cases. You cannot simply ask an LLM and believe what it says without verification.
Do you think it’s llm output just because it’s clearly marked as llm output?
Yeah, it can be wrong. There are sources cited if you want to do more research.
At least this saves the same question being asked multiple times to the LLMs.
If your only defense of posting a wall of slop is “it might be wrong, so research to verify” what was the point of posting it to begin with?
I don’t see how that’s any more useful than just making up some random bullshit and saying “do some research to verify if this is accurate.”
And wouldn’t not asking the LLM at all be more effective at reducing the number of times the question is asked?
I’m so intrigued by the psychology here… Are these people who previously felt insufficient because they didn’t have anything of value to add to conversations, so now they paste LLM output? Like it makes them feel like they’re contributing?
It’s like letting a little kid help with the household chores. They feel good about helping even though you just need to go back and redo it all yourself after they leave.
Thanks for the sentiment, but half-truths are more damaging than outright lies, so please do the research yourself before posting or leave it be.
The “sources cited” are some entire books, and I am not going go read 100’s of pages to possibly find a sentence or two that may or may not back up what this spew is saying. Also, emojis do not “clearly mark” anything, because they can appear different on different systems and are ambiguous.
Please delete this post, or I’m going to refer it to the moderators to decide if it should be here.
Verifying one of the claims, which is only something very similar, but is a real book citing actual lab tests.
This is like claiming an old study of Tylenol proves that Advil is made up of acetaminophen. Two products that are supposed to do the same thing don’t necessarily have the same ingredients.
Especially back in the day of these branded medical tonics. They all contained the most random shit ever.
Yeah the photo posted doesn’t even mention the OP brand, it’s completely irrelevant.
