site banner
self_made_human  Grippy socks, grippy box  1mo ago (open.substack.com)   1589 thread views

Escaping the Jungles of Norwood: A Rationalist’s Guide to Male Pattern Baldness

open.substack.com

Out of enlightened self-interest, I did a deep dive into the topic of male pattern baldness, and after freshening up on my rather rusty Bayes', I decided that I'd gone to enough effort to justify a proper blog post. Here you go.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A British friend of mine takes Finasteride and swears by it. I asked my (urologist) doctor about it once in the dark days when I was fannying about worried about my hairline, and he looked at me and said "You will develop man-boobs." (Urologist due to BPH, but they can also prescribe it--though he said he was unwilling to).

Anyway since then I've both calmed down and lost much interest in Finasteride. I believe you mentioned minoxidil, which is basically Rogaine right? But has no hormonal component that I know of. (I write all this before reading your deepdive but I will from now.)

Minoxidil alone will not do much. You'll keep losing hair, fin is the most important intervention, pretty safe. Some people do experience heart issues when they ingest minoxidil orally. Topical use is safe.

At times, I am dismayed by other doctors' ignorance regarding base rates, relative risks, and their attitude towards pontification without additional qualifiers towards their patients. Of course, we're only human, fallible, and working with a patient population that isn't necessarily sophisticated enough to follow such caveats. I'm guilty of this myself, even though I strive to be better.

As far as I'm aware, there's no reason to think that finasteride must cause BPH and man boobs in your case. It increases the risk, but that's a quantifiable increase in probability and far from a certainty.

AFAIK, Rogaine is just a formulation of basic bitch minoxidil. It's inoffensive, doesn't have very strong effects, but when applied topically, doesn't have significant drawbacks either. We don't know for a fact how minoxidil even works, but the prevailing hypothesis is that it improves blood flow to the local tissues near where it's administered. This ?somehow increases hair growth.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats