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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2323 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 23, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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https://pelorus.substack.com/p/priors-for-cognitive-enhancement

Is one of the most interesting pieces of writing I have recently come across. It introduced me to a model that I would roughly describe as

(Net X)[Or Net X complement] = Apparent X - Complement of X

I would strongly suggest reading the entire article before deeming the model too simple and obvious.

It's going to take a while for the model to fully settle in for me, but I already see applications all over the place.

I think one of the features of why so many people described Scott's early work and others from the rationalist sphere as "insight porn" was because of this property. Putting a name and formalizing something that for most people was previously only encoded in gut feelings. And I don't think there are any Academic fields other than perhaps Philosophy that are making general fuzzy models of the world (models that also work with the rules and confines of socially constructed domains).

I think I am very high focus and moderate divergence. Net is somewhat mildly unfocused. This might explain why depending on the task and context, I can vary between being perceived as having ADHD, being autistic, or being scatterbrained.

My ADHD is mild, as in I could convince others (including my parents and tutors) that I was a perfectly normal kid, and as for myself, why would I have reason to assume otherwise?

Then high school hit, and my usual habit of cramming for subjects the last couple nights before an exam ceased to cope. Turns out enormous amounts of stress and caffeine (all the pharmaceutical therapy I had access to then) only goes so far, and it only got worse when I crawled into med school.

I realized I had ADHD, badgered my parents to take me to a psychiatrist, and they refused for ages, mostly because they simply couldn't accept that their darling son could have such a disease, as well as the general stigma/ignorance around it in India. It took a complete nervous breakdown for them to finally take me over, and what did you know, I got diagnosed, got meds, and while hardly perfect, am far more capable of handling professional and academic pressures.

For a long time, I thought it was preposterous that people studied until right before exams. Like, can't you just cram dawg? Turns out that, no, most neurotypical people don't need do or die levels of stress or constant micromanagement to do so, even if some leave it off longer than they ought to.

At any rate, ADHD meds work, both on people with "actual" ADHD, depending on where you draw a line on the curve, and even those with above average executive function or conscientiousness. You can't take a happy person and give them antidepressants to make them super duper happy. I'm not inclined to gatekeep, I'd be utterly fucked without meds, so presuming I ever become an actual psychiatrist, I'm inclined to be far less anal than the ones who the blog author encountered.

And my case is mild. It's not obvious at all in normal conversation, nor did it reflect on my grades till the burden simply become too much to cope. My brother is worse struck, and my little nephew is a flagrant example, and I consider them lucky that my suffering will make my/their parents take the issue more seriously. Once again, I complain about methylphenidate/Ritalin. Shit drug, at least in terms of how it makes you feel. I look forward to trying Adderall when I can, since it's not available here. But given that Ritalin still makes me a functional doctor (academically, I can work just fine without it in an actual job), I can't complain too hard.

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