I haven't tried microdosing but am all for nootropics to help increase mental acuity and focus.
At the same time I so agree with the author's statement that 'The perspective I’m advancing calls for first exhausting “analog” means to achieve mind-expansion before pursuing either pills or processors or both in combination.' - if your diet is crap, your exercise is nonexistent, you get no sleep, no nootropic concoction is going to make up for that.
As for employer-mandated enhancers - what follows is a very initial stream of thoughts at the idea, not something well thought-through at all. This article made me consider this for the first time. I can see the risk. At the same time there are so many other methods of mental improvement employers could be mandating today. Sure, none may be a "magic pill", but there are things proven to improve or deteriorate our performance at work. Sleep being one of them. Yet not once has an employer attempted to track and mandate a certain number of sleep hours to me. Not once have I had an employer force me to take up exercise. Having said that my employer does subsidize gym memberships so we are encouraged to stay active, so maybe this is a counter-example; maybe if a magical brain pill existed the way an employer would get you on it is by simply sponsoring it for their employees.
> if your diet is crap, your exercise is nonexistent, you get no sleep, no nootropic concoction is going to make up for that.
Are you saying this as a statement of fact or more like an advice?
Because, as a statement of fact, it is very probably false. Anti-ADHD medication will make up (and then some) for crappy diet, no exercise and bad sleep (this one probably only to a certain extent).
Coke will make up for not sleeping, not sure how you'll do in 10 years though. There is absolutely no way to make up for lack of sleep and shitty diet in the long run.
We don't really know about the fine details of diet, such as the importance of meat, the kinds of sugars and fats that are good for you, etc... However, the are some obvious things we know for sure. Eat too little and you starve, eat too much and you become obese, don't get vitamin C and you get scurvy, etc...
Same thing about sleep. No sleep = you die. Starting from there, it is obvious that extreme sleep deprivation is bad for you. It is the details that are less certain.
I believe we do. For example, the book "Why we sleep" goes into the health and performance costs of not enough sleep. And even one hour of lost sleep is already significant.
Even if the author's arguments are true, the book doesn't even try to explain the effects of oversleeping. We know it's associated with higher mortality risk, just like insufficient sleep. But the author conveniently ignores this fact and advises everybody to sleep for at least 8 hours.
>Because, as a statement of fact, it is very probably false. Anti-ADHD medication will make up (and then some) for crappy diet, no exercise and bad sleep (this one probably only to a certain extent).
This is provably false.
Amphetamines reduce the appetite; they in no way "make up" for crappy diet.
Amphetamines increase blood pressure and heart rate; while this keeps one skinny when combined with the above point, it does not strengthen the cardiovascular system. It doesn't "make up" for no exercise.
Finally the comorbidity associated to bad/no sleep is exacerbated by amphetamine usage.
I am impressed at how every point you made is false.
Only impressive thing here is that you managed to miss the context of the thread.
We are talking about using "nootropics to help increase mental acuity and focus". In that sense, amphetamines will make up for lessened mental performance that you may have due to bad diet or lack of exercise.
There are plenty of studies of the effects of amphetamines on sleep-deprived individuals (it does help with alertness and mental acuity, provided the deprivation is not severe, and even then only in the short term).
Can you link articles proving your claims about amphetamines clearing up reduced mental performance specifically due to bad diet or lack of exercise?
>Anti-ADHD medication will make up (and then some) for crappy diet, no exercise and bad sleep (this one probably only to a certain extent).
imo and ime, adhd meds like amphetamine derivatives will NOT make up for these things, but it will allow you to push through not having them them for a limited time. These things will eventually catch up to you in a few weeks.
Tolerance does (empirically) not develop for ritalin/amphetamine used at appropriate dosages for ADHD, nor do users incur "sleep debt" or anything similar.
This model of people "crashing after a few weeks" and similar are mostly driven by people's idea of how a just world should operate, not by actual data--as your use of the morality-laden phrase "catch up" nicely demonstrates. While some drugs exhibit such behaviour (L-DOPA, caffeine), far more do not (insulin, Aspirin). Some even become more potent with regular use (glucocorticoids, unfortunately).
Many are somewhere in-between. Alcohol is a pretty good example to calibrate your intuitions: it's probably at the "yes tolerance!" end of the scale. If you have ever gone to college you will have noticed your alcohol sensitivity decreasing. But this effect has an even more noticeable plateau, and it's a far cry from no longer being able to get drunk.
The ADHD reaction to amphetamines is somewhat atypical anyway: it does not produce agitation as it does for "normal" people or at higher doses, but rather calmness/zen/serenity. IIRC sleep duration and quality tend to increase, for example.
Even amphetamine abuse is unlikely to actually kill you[0], nor will you accumulate <negative mojo x>. Just look at the average life expectancy on Wall Street. It does, however, significant alter behaviour: it provokes a certain OCD-like enjoyment of stressful but repetitive work (fighter pilot, stockbroker, Elton John) while somewhat ruining your ability to function socially or cope with varied tasks.
[0]: Speed will kill you the first or second time you take if you are unlucky enough to have a pre-existing heart condition. Cocaine will kill you with constant probability over time.
Let's be very clear here, this thread is talking about nootropics, not therapy for existing conditions. I in no way made any claim to the effectiveness of these medications for their prescribed use.
Medications for ADHD are literally used as nootropics. That is their mode of operation - they increase mental focus. They do it whether you have normal mental focus or lessened mental focus due to ADHD (in which case they are considered therapy) or whatever lifestyle issues you may have.
> That is their mode of operation - they increase mental focus.
That's a misunderstanding of how ADHD works for most people. Most people with ADHD do not experience a deficiency with focus, but an inability to selectively focus on something. What someone with ADHD needs to do, they might not be able to focus on, and yet they may be able to hyperfocus on a task that they enjoy. Thus it can be seen that they do not lack the ability to focus, but merely the ability to control how they focus on something, and how intensely they focus on something. ADHD medication is focused on not improving focus, but improving their ability to control that focus.
The brain for people with ADHD is very different, and people with ADHD generally do not find that stimulants act in the way that they do for people without ADHD.
At first reading of your comment it doesn't sound like it agrees with what you're saying, at least the part about having different effect on people without ADHD.
It's pretty well demonstrated/documented that the psychopharmacology of people with ADHD is different to that of people without ADHD. Just because Scott Alexander overlooks that information and cherry-picks examples to dismiss based on anecdote (For example, see how he dismisses the one case with "kids are just weird" without even bothering to consider that the psychiatrist in question had more information about the child and what "regular behaviour" for that child in particular, is) doesn't make that less so.
I actually deliberately stay away from SSC because it has "less wrong" brainworms present. Not only is that community regularly participated in by the founders of neoreactionary conservativism (scott is outspoken against it but it hasn't stopped his site and the LW community having large swathes of them), but they deliberately obfuscate their terms and have a distaste for any literature that could disprove their pet theories or how they constantly misapply bayes theorem, and they regularly produce articles based on spurious evidence that can sound convincing to laymen who do not know enough about the subjects in question to understand why their ideas are incorrect, or to rebutt them.
Both an unhealthy diet and irregular sleep are more likely to be symptoms of any given neurological condition rather than causes. Someone willing to take medication and/or seek psychiatric help probably has tried "just sleep 8h per day" a few (dozen) times before.
Even the famous marshmallow experiment didn't claim that people eating the marshmallow right away caused their disappointing career trajectories. (the successful people actually got twice as many marshmallows out of that experiment-go figure)
Is this real? How in hell are you eating a 1500 calorie single meal? Especially with salad and vegetables which must be pretty low in caloric density. I barely manage to eat that across an entire day!
But how are you fitting it in your stomach, or achieving the caloric density that allows you to do that? Unless I ate that meal over the course of about 3 hours I don’t think I could physically manage it. Usually I feel full or over-full from a meal of 400 to 600 calories.
No idea. If I am very hungry, I could eat an entire red baron’s frozen pizza with ranch, that is like 1600 calories right there :) Just add a lot of fat! Energy density is high
Your eating pattern matches up with what Dr. Satchin Panda of the Salk Institute is finding regarding circadian rhythms, which every cell in our body has.
Evidence points to the benefits of eating only within an 8-12 hour window each day. With newer evidence suggesting having that eating window open from breakfast through lunch being the best for health/longevity/etc.
If I snack before bed or eat around 20/21, I can feel more hunger pains the following morning around 10, which is a negative on the cognitive performance :)
I appreciate the author raising the risks of cognitive enhancement in terms of a future where it is economically nonviable to opt-out. This is an interesting framing which I hadn't thought of before.
I think one could argue that similar parallels could be drawn to global trade, with respect to variance in work ethic/productivity across different cultures (as a substitute for variance due to cognitive enhancement).
I've never heard someone persuasively and eloquently express to me, in a non-dopey way, just how (small amounts of) acid can act as cognitive enchantment. Anyone care to take a stab at it?
For instance, is the effect only temporary, in the sense that it unlocks some region of not normally traversed mental state space? (E.g. allowing you to write paragraphs you wouldn't otherwise be able to.) Or is the effect more permanent, in the sense of teaching you something, providing you with a new muscle which can be used later even in a sober state of mind (teaching you to ride a type of brain bike, which then can't be unlearned), or by showing you connections between disparate ideas you hadn't previously had the ability to see next to each other?
As somebody who has microdosed, I'd attribute most "enhancement" to perceived improvement in mood, and an improvement in my ability to look at problems from "outside" the box.
I'm currently leetcoding in preparation for tech interviews, and find it much easier to work out the "trick" to solve problems while microdosing LSD
This is a perfect example of nootropic dystopia: paying for a small advantage in a mostly meaningless unproductive task with possibly maladaptive permanent changes to the brain.
Of course this is not new. Ritalin has been used as a study drug for meaningless academic tests for decades.
But it really goes beyond drugs. The experiences created by media and games today, even social app feedback loops, are far more powerful than any real-world experience. Go to bed every night with a show or a game or a social app, and you will lose your edge very quickly. (I’m currently embroiled in a muted partner dispute of several years over this.)
And yet I have considered exactly the same, because the last few years has filled my head with so much crap that I never wanted to think about; perhaps microdosing would allow a more intentional reset, and leetcode may be the closest thing normal folks have to productive mental engagement. Certainly not most jobs, even in tech, which is sad.
Children are more receptive to novel ways of thinking because you need to invest in that kind of thing for a while to achieve effective cognition. Once you're closer to death, it's more productive to use what you've got than to invest in further creative problem-solving skills.
Recently, life expectancies have increased radically. Evolution optimized us to mature into cognitive equilibrium fast enough to reproduce. Evolution has yet to adapt to these new conditions, in which it's optimal to keep shaking up your brain for longer than it used to be.
> I've never heard someone persuasively and eloquently express to me, in a non-dopey way, just how (small amounts of) acid can act as cognitive enchantment. Anyone care to take a stab at it?
I feel highly certain that outcomes are ~all derived from the effect of psychedelics on the default mode network of the brain, and the corresponding downstream effects of those changes on thinking, perception, emotions, etc.
Google: "microdose" "default mode network" and you will get tons of reading material - I would recommend reading a mixture of clinical studies and anecdotal narratives. Take everything with a grain of salt of course, but also keep an open mind. This is new territory, we know very little about it.
> For instance, is the effect only temporary, in the sense that it unlocks some region of not normally traversed mental state space? (E.g. allowing you to write paragraphs you wouldn't otherwise be able to.) Or is the effect more permanent, in the sense of teaching you something, providing you with a new muscle which can be used later even in a sober state of mind (teaching you to ride a type of brain bike, which then can't be unlearned), or by showing you connections between disparate ideas you hadn't previously had the ability to see next to each other?
I would say, speculatively: all of the above, potentially, depending on the person. The "correct" answer to such questions is currently not known, but this seems very difficult for many to realize, which is quite ironic.
I do think that trying a psychedelic drugs might be a positive thing for many people. The problem is that not all people can are suitable for it, not everyone is ready to experience certain feelings.
I would love to hear entrepreneurs who find it useful (I talk mainly about micros dosing now)
Related articles I read not long ago, about this subject:
Almost everyone that I meet who has done considerable, or even moderate, amounts of psychedelics has clear and obvious personality changes. Personality is a poor word to use, but something like their disposition, "hippy" attitude is extremely common. So much so that I think these drugs cause long term physical damage to peoples cognitive faculties. This is completely anecdotal, but I have seen it so many times in my life that I wouldn't touch a psychedelic with a ten foot pole. And yes, I have tripped on acid, but only once, and do believe that while in some ways it was earth shattering, in many ways I would take it back if I could.
The most productive and successful people I meet almost always have been mostly sober their whole life, exhibiting balance and clear headedness. If psychedelics are doing any good, it is because those who are taking them are already so broken, any kind of change could be construed as positive.
I can see that being the case, being intoxicated (no matter by what) for an extended period of time is going to shape the way you see the world (like any other experience in life).
Anyway for me personally the one time I tried acid it was more like: hey cool experience, it feels like I am experiencing things for the first time, kind of like a child. While the trip itself did not really change me a whole lot it made me reexamine things in my life and consider how I approach things and made me more aware of how my emotions and my brain in general can have an effect on my perspective. In that it was a teachable experience and any change in my personality after that experience was due to me having experienced the world in a different way even though it only was once.
I am not planning on taking it again anytime soon though. I can also see how it might affect others differntly, anyway they are mind altering (even if temporary and the changes can be permanent, like a holiday or a car crash and with my limited experience I can not speak to how it could exactly go wrong but I suggest anyone in here respects their mental health and reads up on all this before considering to try it)
Success and productivity are slippery terms, and even more relevant you don't really now the history of psycho-active chemical consumption of your acquaintances.
Growing up I was friends with a large group of people deep into psychedelics, I watched them transform from who they were before the drugs to who they were after. These are people took the drugs seriously, the dosages, their "set and setting". Society tells us that anecdotal evidence is false, but thats brainwashing. I can see with my own two my eyes what drugs do. Most likely certain areas of people brains are dampened or flattened by these drugs, and so if youre and anxious person, maybe you experience "relief", but that comes at a cost.
Despite the downvotes from the insecure "muh meds" types, that's pretty much exactly what everyone notices about users of psychedelics. Despite meeting hundreds or thousands of people who trip, I've never seen a single example of an overtly positive change in people's lives, and seen hundreds of examples of obvious negative changes in people's lives being associated with their psychedelic use and the mush-headed hedonist lifestyle it seems to engender.
I've also seen dozens of people who had life altering psychotic breaks from taking LSD and Mushrooms. By contrast I've only known two people who have lost their marbles the old fashioned way.
As for microdosing: zero of the people I know who have done it, including myself, envinced any obvious performance improvement.
What cost?! If all you have is anecdata, then here's mine: Psychedelics have been the catalyst to some of the most profoundly positive experiences in my life, and any changes that I've experienced afterwards were wholly positive. Same with my group of friends who did the same. There.
You won't take my anecdotes seriously, just as I won't take your anecdotes seriously, so I hope you see now why this kind of hyperbole is worth nothing if not backed up by peer-reviewed science.
Are you seriously suggesting I'm brainwashed because I asked for sources? Jesus man, you're very far gone.
Not suggesting brainwashed, just that its very common for people on hacker news and elsewhere on the internet to argue against being able to extrapolate truth from subjective experiences. It's common that we are told that what we see have seen cannot be the full truth because we "don't have enough data". "But thats a topic for another time
The thing is that it maybe true that your definition of "positive experience" fits my definition of what I have seen as the before and after. Many of these people who have become more hippy like would also describe that as a positive thing.
But like I was saying, what I have seen has been that psychedelic effects on peoples brains are often deterministic, many people who have taken too many end up with very similar psychological profiles and dispositions. Clearly there is something going on there.
In some ways, part of the angst in my post arises from all of these different news articles popping up that talk about the positives of psychedelics, when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.
Well, the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is unreliable and often subject to bias. It is just not very useful to a reader because they are missing both the context of the experience and the political predisposition of the writer.
If you already have a certain mindset you are going to dismiss evidence to the contrary, too. You may just be confirming your opinion by only acknowledging positive samples. For example, you may not even know about the subset about psychedelic users who are perfectly normal and "un-hippy" because they do not tell you about their drug use. Likely, if you observe habitual and open drug-use you may also encounter a specific personality type.
>when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.
I also would dispute that, drug use in the US is not that uncommon, especially under millenials and university graduates. So it is quite likely that both readers and authors are familiar with psychedelics.
I would rephrase your statement "the problem with anecdotal evidence..." to "a common problem with anecdotal evidence...". As I see it, and increasingly see it, people are told that their anecdotal experience carries little value. I think that in reality an intelligent individual can extract huge swaths of truth from anecdotal evidence. The backlash against that kind of thinking is really a form of thought suppression and brainwashing. We are told that speaking in generalities, stereotypes, etc is dangerous and flawed. This type of thinking falls under, in some ways, a political effort to people stop from coming to their own conclusions about why people act the way they do. Its along the same line of forcing politically correct speech.
The caveat here is that real hard science needs real hard data, not anecdotal evidence.
But you can come to your own conclusions about virtually anything including conspiracy theories if you are relying on subjective observations and your own interpretations. You should be free to do so but it should come with a strong disclaimer so others don’t take it as truth. That’s the value of cited research. It lets you assume some credibility and objectivity in the claim.
People on the internet probably have a better background in statistics than you since you're suggesting your hypothesis using one qualitative sample based entirely on your memory with no variance or power calculations can be used to infer anything about the general population. You're just stating an opinion which leads to pointless rebuttals.
Psychadellics allow you to revalue things, if you use that opportunity to group think with a subculture instead of finding your own better values then that is more of an issue with the user than the psychadellics effects in general.
I work as a machine learning engineer, and have a masters degree in applied math, I know statistics. Thanks for the subtle you must not be smart cheap shot though
I think the dosage is important. Ask someone in a psych ward in a hospital how often they get patients with psychosis from weed alone. Yes, there are more deadly drugs, but it is naive to believe there aren't any significant risks and repercussions.
Here is what I found through searching. [0] Another author did also warn against the assumption that increased THC smoking -> increased psychosis chance. [1] It needs to be studied more, but so far we have found some possible links.
Anecdotal evidence just tells you you can't translate individual cases to larger distributions, or at least, that should be the case. Especially when it comes to psychedelics for some reason, this is just dismissed as 'oh well, bad stuff happens sometimes'.
I've seen the same as you, in myself and others. It might not be true for all people, but at least a significant, noticeable subset of the people who use psychedelics do fall into that 'category'. Like minds unraveling themselves, almost becoming ghosts in their vague perceptions of themselves and others.
And I think your perspective is justified, just by listening to the stories people tell about the experience itself, not by doing statistical analysis per se. Users tend to speak about feeling one with their surroundings. In group settings, boundaries disappearing between people. People becoming more sensitive to ideas and 'vibes'. Do it often enough, and you'll become more and more biased towards the things you surround yourself with while under the influence.
But here's the thing.. that stuff will pull you under if you're not careful.
I believe there are some flaws in your thinking, or at least the way you have articulated it in your comments. Hopefully this is received less as criticism, but more so as fine tuning or improvement of your ideas...
> Almost everyone that I meet who has done considerable, or even moderate, amounts of psychedelics has clear and obvious personality changes. Personality is a poor word to use, but something like their disposition, "hippy" attitude is extremely common.
How many samples have you based your conclusion on? Did all/most members belong to one common group of people (your subsequent comment suggests yes). Is it safe to assume all individuals will adopt this style of thinking, and to a similar degree that you've experienced?
> So much so that I think these drugs cause long term physical damage to peoples cognitive faculties.
May cause (I suspect you know this, but just making note of it).
> The most productive and successful people I meet almost always have been mostly sober their whole life, exhibiting balance and clear headedness.
How do you know they have been mostly sober their whole life?
> If psychedelics are doing any good, it is because those who are taking them are already so broken, any kind of change could be construed as positive.
This is a theory, with little if any supporting evidence (I suspect you know this, but just making note of it). My point is, stating theories as facts can alter the mental models of those who read your comments (which is likely the sort of thing going on with the group of friends you observed)
> Society tells us that anecdotal evidence is false, but that's brainwashing.
Here I very much agree.
> I can see with my own two my eyes what drugs do.
What drugs can do, as you've interpreted, in a very small set.
> Most likely certain areas of people brains are dampened or flattened by these drugs, and so if youre and anxious person, maybe you experience "relief", but that comes at a cost.
It comes at a cost sometimes. How frequent this is, and to what degree, is unknown. (I suspect you may know this, but here I am less confident).
> its very common for people on hacker news and elsewhere on the internet to argue against being able to extrapolate truth from subjective experiences.
Very much agree, and this thinking is so clearly incorrect that is frustrates me to encounter it so frequently among rational people.
> But like I was saying, what I have seen has been that psychedelic effects on peoples brains are often deterministic, many people who have taken too many end up with very similar psychological profiles and dispositions. Clearly there is something going on there. In some ways, part of the angst in my post arises from all of these different news articles popping up that talk about the positives of psychedelics, when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.
I agree. These are powerful substances, are often taken far more lightly than they deserve, and opinions expressed on forums often lack epistemic humility.
The question is also how the cost compares to other potentially damaging activities and circumstances - including work stress as an employee, work stress as a founder, someone who is bankrupted by the health system, someone who abuses more common and popular drugs like cocaine and alcohol, and so on.
These are all at least as likely to lead to "deterministic" behavioural and emotional changes, not to mention direct physical health issues.
In a broader context, your implication that psychedelics are somehow uniquely dangerous because you disapprove of how they have affected a sample of people you know personally really doesn't stand up to wider scrutiny.
Your argument here largely boils down to, "you are biased because anecdotal evidence." If you knew nothing about heroin, and then watched a bunch of people get addicted, you wouldn't say, "Well were they rich or poor? Could have been a biased sample set."
Kind of. I'd say it's more than you are making an assertion of fact (conclusive truth) based on anecdotes that consider an insufficient number of variables and samples.
If you were instead expressing an opinion I'd have no complaint. Perhaps I've misinterpreted you?
I think there's good reason people are downvoting you, but a valuable nugget implicit in what you say is that we do not have, and may never have, a correctly representative sample of the general population (in terms of psychological profiles) taking these drugs on order to get accurate data on psychedelics.
I've come to the conclusion, and so have many around me, that the stereotypical "hippy" attitude is in many cases a deterministic result of taking psychedelics. Its impossible for me to point to a number and say, look it changed by x amount in that part of the brain. In my own experience, I could describe what is known as the "afterglow" of psychedelics as a calming anti anxious, anti "negative emotion" feeling. But the feeling is accompanied by an odd feeling that somewhere in your brain is just not firing like it used to.
Thanks for sharing. I felt amused and I think that is silly. I am still wanting to hear from the person I asked, because I want to understand what he or she specifically thinks a hippy attitude is. His or her idea might be different from yours or mine.
Such beliefs are obviously silly, but they may also be true (placebo effect, power of positive thinking, etc). We lack sufficient data to form a very strong conclusion one way or the other, but we certainly have some.
I think nicotine has been found to be the only substance that measurably increases performance.
Of course it is often countered by negative effects on respiration. Cannot find the study anymore, but it was very interesting.
I don't think you know about drug use of successful people because they know how to hide such consumption. But it is pretty clear that there is an enormous demand in the higher echelons of society.
A lot of the journals about positive effects on nicotine was sourced by tobacco companies in order to sell tobacco and has iffy science that hasn’t been reproduced.
Do you wish you could take it back because you are assuming that the negative traits you see in others are manifest in you, or do you perceive those traits directly? Or was it more a poor experience that makes you want to take it back?
> The problem is that not all people can are suitable for it.
It is the big problem with psychedelics. Too random. And it is not just from one person to another. The same person can have very different experiences depending on the situation. "Set and setting" as experienced users call it, but even with that knowledge, bad trips happen.
And for the studies you linked, none of them seem to be controlled (no placebo group), and from my limited experience, the placebo effect is very real. I've seen people feel high on blotters with nothing on it, at least before they realize they have been scammed.
Not saying that psychedelics can't do yourself some good. But I tend to be skeptical of studies suggesting a reliably positive effect.
They're really helpful for healing psychological trauma, but not necessary. If you plan to use them for economic domination, you're gonna embarass yourself pretty hard and maybe even die. It's just not what they're for.
He's been known for his penchant to take certain substances and hang out at Burning Man—and it certainly hasn't hampered his coffers or brainpower. Not to say it contributed anything, either.
He's also gotten in trouble for saying (e.g. on Twitter) things he maybe should have kept to himself -- which effect of drug use (if it is) would be consistent with what I've seen in myself and friends.
Quite possible, yeah. But my only point was that he's a counterpoint to psychedelic drug use being an inhibitor of fiscal success. Nothing more. And like I said, I've got no skin in this game. I'm a whisky man.
Maybe if Elon Musk had published a diary detailing his experiences we could talk about how psychadelics have affected him, however in the absence of such a record, I don't think anyone else other than his close friends or family could really light up the dark of that relationship.
Wait. Wikipedia says Elon Musk skipped out on his mandatory South African military service. Is he still allowed back in South Africa? Does he still have their citizenship?
I wasn't saying anything beyond his usage hasn't inhibited him economically. He wasn't born with an electric car company, a rocket company, and a tunnel-boring company so he has amassed those things at the very least in spite of his usage.
There are also many people who trip semi-frequently yet still lead lives of relatively little consequence (relative to Elon Musk). A few of those people are personal friends of mine. I understand that you only wanted to tell us that Elon Musk trips sometimes.
Maybe Mr. Musk will chime in on this thread. I bet he lurks here.
nitpicking here, but Cogito Ergo Sum (“I think, therefore I am”) has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. in modern vernacular you might translate it as "i percieve/witness therefore i exist"
You might take it that way, but are you sure that's correct. The derivation/etymology of cogito appears to imply active thought, as does penser (I've always assumed Descartes conceived it in French, and translated, but I confess I don't know which natural language - if any - his mind was using). As opposed to merely passively regarding the World. The epigram's context is "application of reason", at least.
I'm pretty sure when Decartes said that, he meant that that's the only thing we know for sure to be true, since everything else could be a hallucination. He wasn't making an argument for cognitive enhancement... was he?
Whether it be drugs, cybernetic enhancements, mental discipline and training, and changes in diet, I’d eschew all of them (maybe except for diet improvement) and instead advocate for this: engineers should stop taking work so seriously.
I don’t really care if I’m working to 100% of my potential. My employer won’t pay me more for that optimization anyway.
I think there’s something of a toxic attitude in Silicon Valley that we should all be honing ourselves into this amazing constantly-tinkering engineer who runs a really cool blog. There’s also a general toxic mentality in America that we can all work our way to becoming billionaires - in reality, none of us can optimize our way into having family connections to the elites in our society. In reality, that engineer doing all that cool stuff in the Bay Area in their shared studio apartment probably doesn’t have a better retirement plan than the community college sysadmin with a paid-off single family home in upstate New York.
For me, I just work to put food on the table. I want to be average enough to he employable. Anything beyond that isn’t worth the diminishing return on investment, or a reduction in family time.
I can’t optimize my way to being genetically gifted enough to match the output of the 10x engineers who do get promoted, and I certainly can’t match their 24/7 dedication to work. Employers generally promote people for making the right person happy at the right time, not for producing the most technically competent work.
I know, right? I'm constantly telling everyone they need to slow down. So many folks seem to forget that there's no point in climbing the ladder quickly, because ultimately, it doesn't actually go anywhere. It's just a ladder.
> I don’t really care if I’m working to 100% of my potential. My employer won’t pay me more for that optimization anyway.
Those who are self-employed may feel differently.
If you value a certain kind of balance in life, I agree with everything you said.
There are many of us who have an internal drive to do “impossible” things; it’s a valuable and inseparable part of our identity.
It’s OK that not everyone has this, the world would probably be worse if everyone did. And it should never feel like an externally-imposed expectation, that would definitely be unhealthy.
> Anything beyond that isn’t worth the diminishing return on investment, or a reduction in family time
But in order to negotiate good work life balances, family time, free weekends etc. programmers would have to negotiate as a group. Yet for some reason they seem to think that doing that -- forming unions -- is somehow horrible. Thus you alone don't have enough leverage.
I can't speak to other industries, but in the gaming industry speaking of unionization will actively get you terminated. Not "directly", as that would be illegal, but it will happen for some "unrelated" reason. It's pretty well known.
IT and Programming have a booming job market and salaries are, on the high end, virtually unrivaled by other industries, save for things like Doctors or high-end Lawyers. And unlike Lw and Medicine, a B.S. from a decent school (plus some hustle) is enough to get in to a FAANG.
Eventually the industry is going to cool, but for now Tech really is the closest thing to that Steinbeck quote about temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Maybe in the countries where unions are unregulated. Not in my country, where union would get me way lower pay, longer weeks, inability for various work hours adjustments that I normally do, etc. IT sector is very fortunate to not be regulated.
> In reality, that engineer doing all that cool stuff in the Bay Area in their shared studio apartment probably doesn’t have a better retirement plan than the community college sysadmin with a paid-off single family home in upstate New York.
I don't think this is accurate, the net worth of the former is probably a multiple of the latter accounting for age.
> There’s also a general toxic mentality in America that we can all work our way to becoming billionaires - in reality, none of us can optimize our way into having family connections to the elites in our society.
please don't strawman. I never said rags-to-riches. I said upper middle class (25th percentile). Elite universities take great students from upper middle class, and many of those billionaires did not graduate from elite universities.
Eh...you probably can't get into an elite university without already being elite unless you're a recruited athlete or have another "hook". Normal, middle class kids don't win ISEF or math olympiads unless their parents are professors or something.
Even still, the chances are vanishingly small. Substituting "millionaire" for "billionaire" brings it a bit closer to something to realistically strive for, I think (especially for us software/entrepreneur types).
Cutting out processed carbs, staying active, and fasting has had the greatest impact on my cognition. The best part is it’s sustainable! I can keep going day after day. Caffeine and nicotine give minor boosts but quickly become liabilities rather than enhancers.
And a good night of sleep. How many people reading this thread have to wake up to an alarm clock?
Edit:
Also, the benefit to cognition that you mention is sort of like a secret because I never seen anyone mention it. When I first started on a "keto" type of diet I woke up one day with a feeling which was like being wired on coffee but without the jittery side effects. Except, it didn't go away. I would have thought I broke something if it wasn't such a positive. It's amazing to think that's how we should be feeling and that nearly everyone is working below this level.
Personally, I got distracted, had a bunch of changes at home and failed out of it. I'll be climbing back on after the holidays.
I still like to drink coffee in this state, though I limited my intake to one cup every couple of days. Nicotine seemed to be neither a negative or a positive. It didn't cause more or less problems for me. I could also drink beer with no problems.
I didn't think about proccesed carbs until now, but just coincidencially yesterday I had a hamburger combo for lunch and heavy processed bread at night, and I woke up feeling like sh1t today.
Now that I read these comments and looked up some info, I feel like I found a mistery and that things got clearer, just like sorting out the "secret" as you say.
Already got the benefits of excercising regularily and last week jumped into the IF wagon (still having mood issues, hope it subsides soon), will for sure try out reducing processed carbs and hope to get feeling even better everyday.
Good luck and I'm rooting for you! It's worth working through the mood issues. Keep it going. Think of it like detoxing from cigarettes or alcohol. You'll have those mood issues but it's worth it.
The clarity in my head overpowered everything. If I didn't get enough sleep, I still felt it. Again, it was a lot like being wired on coffee but without the uncomfortable side effects. I could feel the fatigue like I should sleep but while still having that clear head. Kind of like when you drink a bunch of coffee to wake up. ;)
Again, everything went out the window with some major life changes at home. And I'll be looking at getting back on after the holidays. But when I was sleeping well during this same period I was amazed at how I was able to settle into a route of being dead tired and jumping out of bed at the same during at night and in the morning respectively. This is probably another normal life thing which I had never discovered because I had never thought to set a normal sleep schedule. Everyone looks at sleep as something to be managed and scheduled rather than listening to the body.
It's interesting that you mention your kids are your alarm clock. Kids generally need more sleep than adults. And of course adults look forward to putting the kids to bed to get some quiet time. Maybe try timing your sleep so that you sleep right after the kids and wake up on your own before they wake up? Hopefully that would be a viable experiment in your household. ;)
Thanks for comments - sounds worth looking into. I love the wired coffee feeling but not the adverse effects :) - wish there was an easy way to sample the diet without committing too much time and effort!
Normal scheduled sleep has its benefits for sure; Newborns through those plans out the window though.
There seems to be a debate on beer containing carbs. I haven't found a definitive answer, though I haven't looked hard. One side says there are carbs because of what goes into the beer. The other side says that all of that goes away during the process of making the beer and there's very little carbs.
To be honest, I followed a keto diet but I never did the keto testing. However, the changes I experienced were real and powerful. The mental clarity couldn't have been placebo because I didn't know that it would be a side effect. It was shocking, unexpected.
For years I started getting this fluid buildup in my ears. At best, I felt occasionally dizzy. At worst, it felt like my brain was in constant "I feel like I have a cold and I'm so slow to think".
Short story: I've drastically reduced carb intake (letting myself cheat a little on Sat.) and definitely no alcohol. The effect has been amazing. I feel 10-15 years younger. My brain is back. Fluid's gone. So many other body things have improved: no joint pain, no weird rashes. I used to get these awful colds, but if I've had a cold this year, I can't even remember, it must have have been tiny.
It's wild how many folks now who I talk to who have similar symptoms and never try to simply cut out the damn carbs and watch as they eat tons of sugar and alcohol. It's really worth a try giving those up for a week and see how you feel.
When I was younger (up until I was around 35) I could eat all the junk food I wanted with no ill effects. I could drink alcohol and rarely felt bad the next day. Now (I'm 49) even small amounts of alcohol make me feel bad later on. If I eat a bunch of junk food I feel like I'm hungover.
I still drink occasionally but it has to be a pretty special occasion for me to have a second cocktail. I still love junk food but I've cut way, way back on it because the sugar hangover isn't worth it.
Other than pretty much constant tinnitus and occasional bouts of cedar fever (I'm in Central Texas), I feel pretty good most of the time. I know I need to get more exercise and I'm working on that by doing bodyweight exercises and rowing. I'm not really getting any stronger, but I feel like I'm at least maintaining where I'm at.
Tried IMF for two weeks recently, and my mood was so bad in the mornings I had to stop it; my wife thanked me afterwards. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get "over the hump" which reportedly lasts 3-4 weeks, and then mood is supposed to stabilize.
Anything relatable in this sentence, and any tips to help "get over the hump" you might have?
Some things that help for me are (1) a cup or two of green tea on mornings I don't exercise (can get me "over the hump" of the end of a fast), or preferably (2) exercising as early as possible in the morning. It took me about 30 days to get into a good rhythm.
I got into long distance running during this morning-not-eating period. Totally distracting to any hunger thoughts. Also, you start to find it's actually a huge benefit not to have a stomach full of food while you're trying to run a long distance.
Also, my wife had success starting with putting Coconut/MCT oil in her coffee. The Bullet Proof coffee folks swear by this and I think most would say they're still "fasting" and getting the same benefits but now they have a TBSP of oil in their stomach helping. Might be a step to going full "nothing but coffee" for 16 hours or whatever you're trying.
Here is my recommendation. Start by eliminating any liquid sugars (soda, juice etc) from your diet for two weeks. Then fast completely drinking only water for 24 or 36 hours. This will “reset” your hunger/cravings. Then proceed with regular imf.
I had exactly the same issue, I just had to power through. Tried to view it as a way to exercise my willpower muscle... multiple failures later my bad moods just went away.
I had little problem recruiting the willpower to fast, but willing myself to a good mood was something I wasn't really able to act on. Something to keep in mind for next time!
Is there some secret of intermittent fasting I haven't understand yet? According to the guidelines I've been doing that naturally for the last 10 years probably, eat once at 2pm and once at 6pm that's it every day
But I don't feel better than the days I eat whenever I want and how much I want, apart of feeling less hungry in the morning
Here's something from my experience, it's not based on any research or someone's book, it's literally entirely subjective so who knows if it's even helpful: for me, intermittent fasting had effect when it was entirely irregular.
If my body didn't get a chance to notice the pattern, that's what made it behave different. Same goes for exercise, if I do regularly one type of exercise - body quickly gets used to it and it's harder to achieve gains by doing the same movement.
What I do is irregular fasting. Sometimes I won't eat for 30 hours. Sometimes I'll eat 6x a day. Sometimes it'll be eating at 11:00 and next meal is 12 hours after. These are not guidelines, just examples of irregular intervals.
I noticed results, it could have been placebo, who knows, I have no means to measure except subjective feeling. If you're capable of enduring hunger, you could try it. It might be dangerous so don't listen to random advice from a nobody online :) anyone reading this and trying what I wrote out: it's not my fault if something happens to you, I'm not a medical doctor.
It’s great if this is your baseline! It certainly isn’t for most people so they’ll likely feel a significant difference when changing up their timings, as I did.
Intermittent (between 16/8 and 20/4), with 36 hour fasts if I feel the need; get a nice buzz at the end. I try not to do anything too demanding during longer fasts.
Learn Rust. You'll think clearer, make fewer errors, and be more productive. You'll find yourself thinking about programming problems in new, better, ways.
Rust requires you to program well. At the same time, it doesn’t expect you to know everything before starting. When something is not going to work in a program, the compiler will not only tell you what is wrong but suggest fixes to the code.
It would be interesting to identify the differences in genomes, epigenomes and microbiomes between geniuses, average and impaired/neuro-atypical persons. Maybe then, some un/ethical gene editing/silencing would be possible.
> I figure that most engineers will reject collectivism and be comfortable with a libertarian framing.
I realize this is a bit besides the point, but why are the two often presented as mutually exclusive? Why can't something be done both in a collective and a libertarian fashion?
"In my view, the best methods to heighten creativity and increase your “out of the box” thinking are traditional, analog, and noninvasive. These methods can be found in John Dewey’s classic “How to Think” primer, first published in 1910 or even earlier from Rene’ Descartes’s Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Science."
The opening few paragraphs are just setting the stage. Showing you what crazy people get up to. A juicy dystopic vision to capture reader attention.
Yep, all the days I abstain from drinking coffee I am constantly worried about getting piss-tested, finding out I don't have enough caffeine in my system, and being fired on the spot.
But that's not the premise. It's your interpretation. I get the whole hate vs employer and capitalism, but then again - if you're after biohacking yourself for whatever reason - overclocking machines always comes with a cost, even if it's human body. Its equilibrium exists for a reason, disrupting the equilibrium in order to "overclock" a part of it (cognition) must come with backlash of some sort.
I think this is a reasonable baseline for expectations:
>Its equilibrium exists for a reason, disrupting the equilibrium in order to "overclock" a part of it (cognition) must come with backlash of some sort.
But, maybe the reason was the limited caloric landscape of our ancestors. If I could turn a cup of olive oil into productive mental work my income and social group would approve.
Where does sexual selection still favor physical strength exclusively? Doesn't income dominate among developed countries?
"The potential for employer-mandated enhancers should force us to reflect deeply about the importance of work, the relative value of enhancers, and illusion of choice."
you can be an entrepreneur to follow a passion as well as for pure capitalist greed. For example, sometimes I can't focus very well so I take modafinil. It's a short-stop fix for something I'm working to improve long-term. I do this in order to work on something I find intrinsically rewarding.
Though I feel like you're not really complaining about cognitive enhancement, but more about capitalism. In which case, sure, capitalism is pretty flawed.
some people enjoy being productive. Some people try to be productive in order to be more successful at their job. The fact that capitalism is exploitative doesn't render either of these desires invalid - we still have to exist in the system, and some people like to succeed at their chosen role.
As an analogy suppose that you are a professional cyclist. You are very good and train hard but your competition is doping. Your trainer offers you drugs that will make you faster but come with a significant risk of heart failure. If you decline you will be fired. Would you like to be more productive?
yeah there's an obvious issue with that. I'm not in that situation and I'm happy to take supplements that help me be productive voluntarily but reel at the idea of having them forced on me, especially if they came with health risks.
Well it's actually a bad thing because it means I can't recommend a medicine that's actually made to treat the other poster's symptoms. Hey, beaconstudios, did you get a scrip for those schedule IV drugs? Did an actual licensed medical doctor perscribe those to you to treat your distractions?
no, in my case it's a personal issue that I'm working on over the long term. In the meantime, sometimes I just need to be able to focus. I don't think of modafinil as being the solution in my case, but more of a stop-gap as I said.
Is the work you're doing really so important if you won't focus on it without modafinil? What else is it you'd rather be doing right before you take modafinil?
I know what you're thinking - that I'm using modafinil to force myself to work on something I don't really want to. That isn't the case for me, and not something I'd do anyway as I value passionate pursuits much more highly than economic ones.
I have issues with anxiety, which causes my mind to get jumpy and distracted. Meditation and mindset techniques usually help, but that's because I've gotten much better at managing my life and stressors. Even still, sometimes these techniques don't work but I still want to maintain my habits and work on my projects so that I don't regress. So yes, it's important both on the level that these are the things I love doing and want to do, and also that I know from experience that if I fall off the wagon for too long then I'll end up regressing on a personal level.
Thanks for sharing. I understand now that you use modafinil when meditation and mindset techniques don't help you focus. I feel sad to hear you're having such strong anxious feelings that you're getting distracted when you're needing to do important things. I hope you can find a way to get the clarity you need in those moments without modafinil, mostly because I still feel a little uneasy about it and worry that it's making it difficult for you to heal from whatever trauma has brought about your anxiety. I'm mostly ignorant about modanifil, so I'm also open to the idea that it can help you.
Nonviolent communication is rather weird and robotic - you can just talk normally, I like to think I'm quite a good communicator in terms of both listening and explaining.
I wouldn't worry about me - it doesn't make it difficult to heal, and my therapist is already well aware of it (and obviously the fact that I have a therapist means I'm pursuing conventional means of working on my anxiety, if you were worried I was trying to "hack" mental health).
If you're mostly ignorant about modafinil, what reason do you have to be worried? Are you assuming I haven't done my research, or that perhaps I'm willing to take risks with my health to pursue productivity while not directly dealing with my anxiety? Because that isn't the case - modafinil is extremely safe, and I am pursuing long-term improvements while using it to fill the gap.
If you're interested in nonviolent communication then I would assume you are wanting to empathise better with others, and communicate more equitably. I would suggest that rather than working from your initial judgement, you could use Socratic questioning to better understand the other person's perspective and decision-making before jumping to conclusions. I use this technique all the time to navigate such situations.
For example: your initial judgement of "I still feel a little uneasy about it and worry that it's making it difficult for you to heal from whatever trauma has brought about your anxiety" hinges on presumptions that:
1. Modafinil impedes my ability to make longer-term progress
2. I am using modafinil instead of a longer-term approach, as opposed to supplementing a longer-term approach with a short-term stopgap
Rather than assuming these presumptions are true, you can probe using questions like "are you not concerned that modafinil might make focusing more difficult in the long term?" or "have you considered seeking more traditional help with focus, such as a doctor or therapist?". This usually leads to either learning on your part, or at least a direction in the conversation where you can identify where the disconnect between your thinking and mine is.
At the same time I so agree with the author's statement that 'The perspective I’m advancing calls for first exhausting “analog” means to achieve mind-expansion before pursuing either pills or processors or both in combination.' - if your diet is crap, your exercise is nonexistent, you get no sleep, no nootropic concoction is going to make up for that.
As for employer-mandated enhancers - what follows is a very initial stream of thoughts at the idea, not something well thought-through at all. This article made me consider this for the first time. I can see the risk. At the same time there are so many other methods of mental improvement employers could be mandating today. Sure, none may be a "magic pill", but there are things proven to improve or deteriorate our performance at work. Sleep being one of them. Yet not once has an employer attempted to track and mandate a certain number of sleep hours to me. Not once have I had an employer force me to take up exercise. Having said that my employer does subsidize gym memberships so we are encouraged to stay active, so maybe this is a counter-example; maybe if a magical brain pill existed the way an employer would get you on it is by simply sponsoring it for their employees.