there’s so much to sneer at here, but the style is so long and rambling it’s almost like someone with a meth problem wrote it
But you might draw the line of “not good drugs” at psychedelics and think other class-equals are wrong. If so, fair. But where this becomes obviously organized by class is in the regard of MDMA. Note that prior to Scott Alexander’s articles on Desoxyn, virtually no one talked about microdosing methamphetamine as a substitute for Adderall, which is more accurately phrased “therapeutically dosing” as the aim was to imitate a Desoxyn prescription. I know this because I was one of the few to do it, and you were absolutely thought of as a scary person doing the Wrong Kind Of Drug. MDMA, however, is meth; it’s literally its name: thre-four-methylene-deoxy-methamphetamine. Not only is it more cardiotoxic than vanilla meth, it’s significantly more metabolically demanding.
Alexander Shulgin has never quite stopped spinning in his grave, but the RPMs have noticeably increased
chemistry is when you ignore most of the structure of a molecule and its properties and decide it’s close enough to another drug you’re thinking of (and, come to mention, you can’t stop thinking of)
So you might as I do find it palpably weird that a demographic of people ostensibly concerned with rationality and longevity and biohacking and all manner of experimentation will accept MDMA because it is “mind expanding”, and be scared of drugs like cocaine because, um, uh,
—and since we’ve asspulled the idea that all substituted amphetamines are equivalent to meth in spite of all pharmacological research, that means there’s no reason you shouldn’t be biohacking by snorting coke. you know, I think the author of this rant might be severely underestimating how much biohacking was really just coke the whole time
You may have seen Carl Hart’s admission to smoking heroin. You may have also seen his presentation at the 51st Nobel conference. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dzjKlfHChU). The combination of these two things is jarring because heroin is a Big Kid drug, not a prestige drug, and how, of course, could a neuroscientist smoke heroin? His talk answers this question indirectly: the risk profile of drugs, as any pharmacologically literate person knows, is a matter of dosage and dose frequency and route of administration. This is not the framework the educated, lesswrong rationalist crowd is using, which is despite all pretensions much more qualitative and sociological. His status as a neuroscientist ensures that people less educated on the topic won’t rebuke him for fear of looking stupid, but were he not so esteemed we know what the result would be: implicitly patronizing DMs like “are you okay?” and “I’m just here if you need anything.”
how dare the people in my life patronize me with their concern and support when I tell them I’m doing fucking meth
I’m not gonna watch Carl’s video cause it sounds boring as shit, but I am gonna point out the fucking obvious: no, you aren’t qualified to freely control the dosage, frequency, and route of administration of your own heroin, regardless of your academic credentials. managing the dependency and tolerance profile for high-risk and (let’s be real) low reward shit like meth and coke yourself is extremely difficult in ways that education doesn’t fix, and what in the fuck is even the point of it? you’re just biohacking yourself into becoming the kind of asshole who acts like he’s on coke all the time
MDMA, however, is meth; it’s literally its name: thre-four-methylene-deoxy-methamphetamine
Rust, however, is iron; it’s literally in the name iron oxide
You thought water was great, but have you tried H2O2?
H2SO4 gives even more kick
You should try what these folk are selling.
MDMA, however, is meth; it’s literally its name: thre-four-methylene-deoxy-methamphetamine. Not only is it more cardiotoxic than vanilla meth, it’s significantly more metabolically demanding
chemistry is when you ignore most of the structure of a molecule and its properties and decide it’s close enough to another drug you’re thinking of (and, come to mention, you can’t stop thinking of)
I learned my (extremely elementary) organic chemistry through chill afternoons in bars sipping beer and reading about ochem, and I know better than these clowns. brb establishing new school, Drunken Monkey Ochem
severely underestimating how much biohacking was really just coke the whole time
probably starting their own journey now to test it out! I look forward to their Incredible Journey post
Do you think they will manage to issue a coherent Incredible Journey post before their mugshot turns up in their local newspaper?
Apparently newspapers are starting to get rid of mugshot galleries, so he might be lucky.
they might not have the chance if they cause some particularly interesting fire along the way
The combination of these two things is jarring because heroin is a Big Kid drug, not a prestige drug, and how, of course, could a neuroscientist smoke heroin?
Unlike this guy, I have no problem understanding that smart people sometimes like to do stupid things. There are a lot of doctors who smoke. This is not because they know tobacco is secretly good for you.
MDMA, however, is meth;
i want to Cave In this man’s Face with borrowed Parr Shaker
this might be considerably easy if he switched from microdosing to megadosing
You may have seen Carl Hart’s admission to smoking heroin
This is not the framework the educated, lesswrong rationalist crowd is using
fortunately for the rest of us, most of neuroscientists don’t frequent lw forums
you’re just biohacking yourself into becoming the kind of asshole who acts like he’s on coke all the time
whoa there, it’s the CEO Mindset™
Of course I ignore your warnings and proceed to read this shit from the beginning.
And before you say, as many people I’m sure will, that language changes or evolves and so forth: shall I presume many of you have no objection to being called ‘nazis’ in the standard twitter-left definition? Shall I treat all drunk sex as ‘rape’ because kidnapper-rape and frat-sex have the commonality of reduced consent? Shall I treat your remarks about this-or-that group as ‘hate speech’, or ‘violence’, in the form of speech? Clearly, we have some sense by which concept creep exists; by which definitions can be stretched dishonestly. That is what you’re doing, and you know what you’re doing.
Cool. Cool. This is fun.
I REALLY don’t wanna rank rapes, but isn’t frat rape an archetypal rape? It’s unambiguously terrible to the point that the only defense the perpetrators can mount is that it didn’t happen. This is like decrying the expansion of murder to include defenstration along side the more traditional bludgeoning and stabbing.
I REALLY don’t wanna rank rapes
However, rationalists do! paella recently did. She got over 5000 responses. https://aella.substack.com/p/the-rape-spectrum-survey-results (tw: rape obviously, paella, idk prolly other stuff i just looked at the graphic) (not fixing this autocorrect)
there’s no way you can make me click on that
I already wasn’t going to read this screed, but now I’m definitely not going to read it. Sheesh.
shall I presume many of you have no objection to being called ‘nazis’ in the standard twitter-left definition
I didn’t know there was a standardised definition, or that it was somehow political-side-specific. If I were to steelman this then this could be about a pedantic distinction between a fascist and a nazi?
Hey, you know what you can do if you feel bad about being called a nazi? STOP BEING A FUCKING NAZI.
Shall I treat all drunk sex as ‘rape’ because kidnapper-rape and frat-sex have the commonality of reduced consent
Yes. Yes you should. Hey, see, you understand this! Also consent either is or isn’t, there’s no “reduced consent”.
Shall I treat your remarks about this-or-that group as ‘hate speech’, or ‘violence’, in the form of speech?
Emm, depends on the remarks? If they’re hate remarks then ye dude, that’s what the word means?
Clearly, we have some sense by which concept creep exists; by which definitions can be stretched dishonestly.
Ye, like how you would define “censorship” I’m sure
How does this person manage to be such a fucking asshole in his own story? Also, you are going to use the definition of fucking rape as an example of a definition that has been stretched too far? What are these people on?
Oh, right. Meth.
As an adhd enjoyer, the idea of someone using our prescription stimulant medications of justify raw dogging gas station meth is fucking wild. Stimulant meds have been around since the 50s, but they are waaaaaaay better now, mostly because of novel delivery systems that carefully control the release rate of the active compound. I’ve learned the hard way that while generic allegra-d is fine, you can’t fuck around with your adhd meds this way, because the difference between generics varies wildly, and unless you request particular manufacturers – any or all of which may be in short supply when you request it – you’re playing russian roulette with your executive functioning for the next month.
Getting generic adderall xr is like buying a plane ticket, but not knowing until you board whether it’s an Airbus, a Boeing, or an Ork Wagon with a thousand pounds of fireworks glued onto the roof.
Then these guys are just going to do meth that they got from a guy?
Jesus.
Edit: do you reckon that meth > GMO mouth bacteria?
At the very least, the supply chain of meth is likely to be more robust than the supply chain for GMO mouth bacteria.
(it’s a very long boring rambling essay where a horrible person talks about his fellow horrible people, for the bit about meth just ctrl-F for "meth " and marvel at what fucking galaxy brainlets the rationalists are)
How do you find these things? How do you read these things? I’m starting to worry about your health David; such a continuous stream of highly concentrated horseshit can’t be good for you.
welcome to the abyss! here’s your hazmat suit with a leak! it sucks here!
speaking in general: the tpot crowd are rabid about posting about their own shit, and will get alllll frazzled up the moment anything like this happens. and they have just-enough overlap with quite a few circles that if you happen to be connected to x/y/z it will readily cross your radar
but one can also keep an eye on them directly to see what they’re up to. and there is value in that too, despite the mental downpayment it requires
Twitter these days is just The Void Staring Back-as-a-Service.
i’ve just realized - the endless prose is drug-fuelled. blog post part vii == i am doing drugs and cannot stop typing
“endless drug-fueled prose about drugs” is an entire, unfortunate subgenre of Rationalist authorship. it takes them a surprisingly long time (usually a couple years or so) to spiral out and stop posting, but the posts usually get even less coherent as they approach burnout
The story goes that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the second draft of “Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde” in less than a week while buzzing on cocaine. The Rationalists just write obnoxious blog posts.
The famous story about a man using a drug that sets free the a-hole version of himself?
Oh, that was the drug! It was cocaine all along!
that’s because they don’t have coke, they have adderall and their own farts
yeah dude the reason people think MDMA isn’t worse than meth is that it isn’t their heart rate they’re worried about with habit-forming meth consumption
Just the very starkest most ratiocinationary combination of a contrarian red herring and a false dilemma
@dgerard Why is it that all these rationalist screeds read like deeply stupid versions of Naked Lunch?
This is 10000 words to promote being a garbage person, what the fuck.
When the average rationalist screed looks like this, I assume the reason they’re so absolutist for freedom of speech is because they never actually read each other’s speech.
I never wondered what a microdosed meth-fueled article would look like. Thank you for this.
I was honestly curious until “someone’s wife who used to have feelings for me” made me check out.
Incel vibes are strong here.
We are, of course, assuming that the author continues to "micro"dose.
“I’m microdosing faster”
some rat-on-rat friendly fire
There’s intense arrogance to insisting that your existence is too fragile to be shown to the world, while also believing that you are what needs to be injected into the human vat of lifestream, while looking like the byproduct of a 12 year old who snuck into his dad’s liquor cabinet and fucked around with the Skyrim character creator. Doubly so when you have the mental discipline of a literally sophomoric dilettante, or when it’s unclear that your personality genetics would translate to someone the rest of the world would want to talk to for more than a few hours.
in what i assume is part where he talks about why no one wants to fuck rationalists (i’m just skimming this shit)
that’s a broadly applicable burn, but is also clearly about an individual he hates
that’s about EY?
he’s also an anti-privacy/pro-surveillance advocate, i guess he just wants to doxx his personal enemies (everyone) (there’s definitely nothing to do with meth, no sire)
how much of a piece of shit can you physically fit in a single person?
I’d call it about 25 blivets*.
*A blivet is 10 pounds of shit stuffed into a five pound sack.
<I ain’t reading all that.jpg>
These kids really think if they pick up some trailer park rock candy they can become Paul Erdos. Hate to say it lads, he was simply built different.
they think they can become Sam Bankman-Fried, and in several regards they’re correct
I can only assume the vibes were rancid
Is there another Scoot that isn’t Scott Henson (RIP my sweet tiger)?
Scott Alexander (Siskind) of SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen
Aha, thank you!
I thought the same, friend.
Absolutely legendary sense of humor, that beautiful man. The only time a person I didn’t personally know has died and I was legitimately crushed.