private_messaging comments on Recent updates to gwern.net (2013-2014) - Less Wrong

26 Post author: gwern 08 July 2014 01:44AM

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Comment author: gwern 24 September 2014 03:57:05PM -1 points [-]

If 10% of people use those drugs regularly, and I am talking of 10 top people or so who i know personally and about who I would know if they used those drugs regularly, then I need not know of a single individual, need I? Out of how many high performing people you know (independently of drug use), how many use those drugs regularly?

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.

With no regulations, you'd have some utterly insane cocktail of hormone substitutes delivered by an implant pump, especially for burst-of-activity sports such as short distance running. And it'd be mostly a biochemistry contest.

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?)

Comment author: private_messaging 24 September 2014 06:25:33PM 1 point [-]

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.

Well, what's "widespread" in your book, 10% ?

Comment author: gwern 25 September 2014 03:52:46PM 0 points [-]

For an illegal, expensive, and according to many people immoral, practice, I'd say >10% is widespread, yes.

Comment author: private_messaging 25 September 2014 04:45:30PM 2 points [-]

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?

Comment author: gwern 20 January 2015 03:40:37AM 3 points [-]

Many things are a lot less illegal in some places, you know, without dramatic increases in use.

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.)

Expensive, like, for high performers?

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.

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