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gwern comments on Recent updates to gwern.net (2013-2014) - Less Wrong
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My crowd is very different from most people's, so I prefer not to generalize from it and instead focus on surveys when I want to know whether stimulant use is widespread particularly among high-performers.
I don't believe every sport has an effective anti-doping regime, and we have not seen any of that... (Which is better, a biochemistry contest, or what we have now, a genetics and luck contest?)
The genetics-and-luck contest is better in Yvain's Moloch sense -- it provides comparatively less incentives to sacrifice long-term utility for short-term advantage.
Worse in the positive externalities sense, though.
You mean you get volunteer guinea pigs to run research on?
Well, presumably you'd want to be doing your actual research on something other than the athletes you're working with; pro-level athletes are neither common nor cheap. But getting better at sports biochemistry sounds like it'd do more outside its domain of application than getting better at, say, water polo coaching.
Under the let-the-better-potion-win system what makes you pro-level is that you work with a good lab which makes effective potions. The incentives for second and lower-tier athletes are to get to the bleeding edge and push -- that's the only way for them to get to top tier. I doubt there will be a lack of willing test subjects.
It's probably still better to just ban the doping from human sports and allow them in, say, pig races.
Well, what's "widespread" in your book, 10% ?
For an illegal, expensive, and according to many people immoral, practice, I'd say >10% is widespread, yes.
Dunno if legality even has much an impact. Many things are a lot less illegal in some places, you know, without dramatic increases in use. Expensive, like, for high performers? Are we talking again of the college students, hung over and sleep deprived due to partying all night, taking stimulants?
Those other things are in different circumstances and are other things. In general, making something illegal is... probably going to reduce how many people do it. Odd, I know. (If modafinil had been invented 200 years ago and had never been regulated, its usage in the general population would probably be similar to caffeine and nicotine, which is a much higher figure than its actual current usage.)
Prescription modafinil is something like $300 a month or $3.6k a year. It's worth it, especially for high performers in the highest-wage countries in the world like the USA, but it's still a nontrivial financial expense on top of the reputational problems, unease with the concept, and worries about the legal risk and unknown unknowns.