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.
“It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. / It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, nor the sapphire. / The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for vessels of fine gold. / No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.”
Another 477 days are past, so what have I been up to? In roughly topical & chronological order, here are some major additions to
gwern.net:Statistics:
QS:
Black-markets:
Bitcoin:
Tech:
Literature/fiction
Sand, on:
compiled & expanded anthology of my poems
Misc:
Site:
I began A/B testing my site design to try to improve readability:
I began a newsletter/mailing-list; the back-issues are online: