Swimmer963 comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong

113 Post author: Swimmer963 23 January 2012 11:50PM

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Comment author: Swimmer963 23 January 2012 12:49:03PM 3 points [-]

Probably not, but it's possible to go to a much deeper level of detail than we did, i.e. learning about receptors and physiology, to the point that all you have to memorize, pharmacology-specific, is "drug X is an antagonist for receptor Y", and the rest (uses, side effects, etc) flows naturally from that. We did some of this, for agonists/antagonists of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. (Beta blockers, i.e. metaprolol are, let me draw out this memory for a moment...antagonists of the sympathetic nervous system, which is why they lower blood pressure, because increased heart output is something you get when you stimulate the sympathetic nervous system. I would not have remembered this if I'm just had to memorize it offhand.) I'm sure we could have done more learning of this style...it might have taken 2 or 3 semesters instead of just one, though. Also, some drugs do things that medical science doesn't understand, i.e. anti-psychotics, and that would still have to be memorized.