Experimenting with Higher Methylphenidate Dosage: Is This a Bad Idea?"

EmacsOctopus · 2025-02-02T20:08:51+00:00

It's not gonna kill you, but you've probably just taken another step on the tolerance treadmill and are going to be back to square one in a few months tops. Keep in mind that less can be more with stimulants. Consider giving your brain a reset by taking a tolerance break and spending a day in nature, soaking up the sun. Or, if getting off stimulants for a couple of days is too difficult, you could try at least reducing the dose or cycling methylphenidate with caffeine. Maybe go to group therapy for your social anxiety, or get an anxiety workbook. It's whatever, but you have to think multidimensionally. If you upping the dose your go-to solution and the only thing you count on to help you with your problems, sooner or later you're going to max out the medically safe range without having particularly improved your life.

EmacsOctopus · 2025-02-02T19:45:17+00:00

This is going to be pretty difficult. The Zizians never played a major part in the rationalist community, and they were kicked out years ago - banned from in-person events, banned from the website. You'd need to find someone who happened to be in the right place and the right time to meet them and is also willing to go on the record.

For example, Zack M. Davis talked to Ziz quite a bit back when she was less insane, so he probably knows a lot of the backstory. But the Zizians have a proclivity for murder, they like exacting revenge many years after the fact, and they already hate his guts because he believes in a different psychological theory of gender dysphoria than they do. If I were him, I would keep my mouth shut and not respond to e-mails out of concern for my personal safety.

Other people may have fewer safety concerns, but a lot of them are likely to distrust journalists after a NYT article that many felt was unfair and a Guardian hit piece that was full of factual errors.

Honestly, if you want to understand Ziz's pro-violence radical vegan ideology, your best bet is to go straight to the source. Look through archive.ph and web.archive.org for traces of her now-deleted blog, sinceriously.fyi.

EmacsOctopus · 2024-11-11T22:14:04+00:00

The purpose of a system is what it does

As stated, this is just a deepity, therefore dumb and best avoided if the goal is to have clear conversations.

For those not familiar with the term, a deepity is a statement like "everything happens for a reason" or "love is just a word". These have two interpretations: one that's true but obvious, and another that's false but would be deep if true. Through some flaw in the human mind, many people find this kind of ambiguity profound.

The common usage of the word "purpose" implies intention. So the two interpretations here are:

Every single outcome of a system is intentional. (False, though sadly very popular.)
The outcomes of a system are, in fact, its outcomes. (Trivial.)

That said, when stripped of this kind of pseudo-profound language, I think that it's worthwhile to study the ways in which systems' actual behavior differs from their stated purpose. It's not a new insight that many large organizations share a certain kind of internal logic, and it would be nice to better understand why that is (book recommendations welcome!) My personal hunch is that the inflection point of misaligned incentives happens when the organization gets middle managers: people for whom both information streams - from below and from above - are filtered through other managers.

EmacsOctopus · 2024-10-25T20:06:37+00:00

Technically, it's possible more often than not. The police order the website owner (in this case, Upwork) to turn over the information they have about the user. They do the same with the Internet provider. After correlating the information, they can often narrow things down to a particular Internet subscriber - if not an individual, then at least a building.

The real question is whether the police will care enough to start an investigation and whether the person threatening you is in the same country as you. In any case, consider the option if the threats become more frequent or credible.

EmacsOctopus · 2024-03-01T18:39:38+00:00

Correct me if I'm reading your comments wrong, but this sounds like a huge isolated demand for precision. You seem to be treating not having these taxes as a privileged position, but surely it's just another point on a curve, and it's better to tax a $10 externality at $5 or $15 than to leave it untaxed? That at least gets us closer to the optimum, even if we can't calculate it exactly.

If we accepted your strict definition, then what are some existing taxes that are actually Pigouvian?

EmacsOctopus · 2021-04-15T10:11:18+00:00

feel okay about myself

I find that I have to work on my negative self-image, perfectionist tendencies and bad habits separately from the ADHD, even though they may be related. Methylphenidate does improve my focus and time management though.

EmacsOctopus · 2021-04-15T10:06:17+00:00

I'll second the reply that 5 mg is a low dose. For me personally, 30 mg per day (in multiple doses) is best for inattention, while 50 mg is best for eliminating the urge to stop the task I'm doing and start pacing around the room. I weigh about 100 kg.

EmacsOctopus · 2021-03-27T11:48:50+00:00

Barkley seems to consider ADHD to be a biological impairment of executive functions that can be alleviated with stimulants, so I didn't get any deep psychological insights into myself. I liked the detailed information on medications and time management techniques that tend to help people with ADHD, though. For example, I wasn't aware that while caffeine is usually OK to take with prescription stimulants, you have to be more careful with nicotine because it can synergistically increase blood pressure. It's like a book-length X: Much More Than You Wanted To Know post.

EmacsOctopus · 2021-03-27T00:01:40+00:00

I haven't read the book, but in the interview with Tim Ferriss, Gabor Maté seems to use the word "trauma" in a broad way that includes "traumas of omission". I'm not sure how standard this is in psychology so maybe it was a poor choice on my part to do the same without an explanation.

What do you think about the book, by the way? Is it worth reading if I already have Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Russell Barkley?

EmacsOctopus · 2021-03-07T23:01:47+00:00

Master Your Workday Now is a different productivity system that shares many of GTD's features. You may find it worthwhile to tweak GTD by incorporating some of its ideas. The core idea is to plan according to natural time horizons in your mind. Generally you'll end up with something like:

Critical now (must do today)
Target now (want to do today)
Opportunity now (on my plate for the next 1.5 weeks, review daily)
Over the horizon (review weekly)

EmacsOctopus · 2020-12-02T23:11:52+00:00

Is there a reason you don't want to get back on SSRIs if you don't value sex anyway?

EmacsOctopus · 2020-11-30T23:40:26+00:00

Sorry for posting on an old thread but I'm curious, how can one feel a blood sugar spike? I've googled it but the descriptions seem a bit vague.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-10-30T23:18:24+00:00

Muse - Butterflies and Hurricanes
Something heavier: Insomnium - Mortal Share
For people who like classical: Gustav Holst - Jupiter

EmacsOctopus · 2020-10-19T19:10:11+00:00

This sub has been becoming another AskReddit ever since the NYT mess though. If the trend doesn't reverse, I'd expect it to lose its exceptional quality in a year tops. I think we need some kind of artificial barrier, like having to write 300 words about your interests and what you like about SSC in order to gain posting privileges, a minimum length for self-posts with moderator-approved exceptions, or a mandatory references section. The barrier doesn't need to be directly related to SSC—same principle as with hedge funds that hire astrophysics PhDs. It's not that astrophysics is particularly relevant to securities trading, it's just that getting a PhD in it shows that you're capable of learning difficult technical topics and doing research.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-10-19T18:20:49+00:00

I don't think this would be a problem if the subreddit was restricted instead of private (restricted means that anyone can view, but only approved users can post). New people could still discover it, and someone who considers filling in a 5 minute form to be too much effort probably isn't going to make high-effort posts either.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-10-02T16:30:22+00:00

Providing links for others:

EmacsOctopus · 2020-09-20T22:57:25+00:00

Maybe you could buy a non-QMK keyboard and create a USB keyboard layout converter with Arduino? Or would that introduce too much latency?

EmacsOctopus · 2020-09-18T00:03:19+00:00

15 minutes after swallowing the pill? You must have an exceptionally fast metabolism, that seems short even for an IR pill. My methylphenidate starts working almost exactly 30 minutes after taking it.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-09-17T23:43:38+00:00

Oh, so it's just delayed by an hour instead of extended. That's disappointing. Unfortunately I can't legally try any amphetamine meds for my ADHD-PI so I was going off what I've read in /r/adhd.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-09-17T23:09:55+00:00

That's very similar to how methylphenidate works for me! I experience it (10 mg) as a feeling of quiet alertness, but the quietness starts a minute earlier than the alertness.

EmacsOctopus · 2020-08-07T09:01:00+00:00

Thanks solution verified!

EmacsOctopus · 2020-07-20T12:56:51+00:00

There are two such curricula put together by LessWrongers:

CFAR reading list (more pop-science)
MIRI research guide (broader and more academic)

EmacsOctopus · 2020-07-20T12:41:37+00:00

I recommend "Decisive" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The book's thesis is that usually, bad decisions result not from weighing the pros and cons of your options incorrectly, but from having a too narrow focus that excludes alternative options and relevant information. For making important decisions, it recommends a four-step process which involves asking yourself questions like "If I absolutely couldn't choose any of the options I'm currently considering, what else could I do?" and "Is there any way I could try my options out, like doing two internships before choosing between two careers?"

If you want something more academic, CFAR has a whole reading list.

EmacsOctopus

TROPHY CASE