gwern comments on Testing my cognition - Less Wrong

6 Post author: RyanCarey 19 February 2014 10:30PM

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Comment author: NoSuchPlace 19 February 2014 11:13:12PM *  6 points [-]

It may be worth looking at gwern's essays on nootropics first, since they has done similar self experiments.

One thing in particular you could consider is looking if you can find something which looks/tastes similar enough to creatine that you can use it as a placebo to blind your self. For example you could get a friend to put the creatine and placebo in different containers, but not tell you which. Then take substance 1 for 2 weeks, then take substance 2 for 2 weeks. Then get your friend to tell you which box contained the creatin (or better yet have them write it down somewhere and then don't look at it.)

Comment author: gwern 21 February 2014 05:36:33PM 0 points [-]

Creatine is sufficiently bulky that blinding would be a pain in the ass (you'd need something like 10 OO gel caps a day, although at least creatine is tasteless in my experience), and it's also very cheap; so I'm not sure blinding is entirely justified on a cost-benefit basis. It may be better to just randomize blocks of 2/3 weeks: it won't eliminate the expectancy or other placebo effects, but it does eliminate most of the potential problems. And just randomizing is a heck of a lot easier.