4 ms·

>The reason I decided to opt-out of caffeine is that I thought was abusing it to force myself to do work I didn’t actually want to do. I also had the hypothesis

>The reason I decided to opt-out of caffeine is that I thought was abusing it to force myself to do work I didn’t actually want to do. I also had the hypothesis that the human body should be fine without it, as we’ve had most of our biological evolution without it. A wolf doesn’t drink an espresso before chasing a deer, after all. This excerpt made me stop taking this seriously. Using caffeine or any other stimulant for the purposes of doing work one isn't comfortable with doing is a character flaw (or an act of desperation, however mild), not a fault of the substance one chooses to lean on. Justifying abstinence from such substances on grounds that the substance isn't intrinsic to human biochemistry is both a naturalistic fallacy and a bizarre rejection of human social history of tool use (substances are just another tool).

netizen-936824 5y ago
What's even more interesting is if the author had ventured into mu-opioid agonists, those substances will make you happy to do work you didn't want to do before. Modification of task based dopamine response by mu-opioid agonists is a fascinating topic. Modulating different signaling systems can vastly change our perspectives, whether good or bad is a different question. One that may not have objective answers.
- anchpop 5y ago
  Is there anywhere I can read more about this? I don't want to try it myself but self-modification is a topic I'm very interested in
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Absolutely! Most of these focus on social motivation in particular. https://www.nature.com/articles/mp20141 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp20141 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721417735531 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09637214177355... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958027/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958027/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482114/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482114/

netizen-936824 5y ago

What's even more interesting is if the author had ventured into mu-opioid agonists, those substances will make you happy to do work you didn't want to do before. Modification of task based dopamine response by mu-opioid agonists is a fascinating topic. Modulating different signaling systems can vastly change our perspectives, whether good or bad is a different question. One that may not have objective answers.

anchpop 5y ago
Is there anywhere I can read more about this? I don't want to try it myself but self-modification is a topic I'm very interested in
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Absolutely! Most of these focus on social motivation in particular. https://www.nature.com/articles/mp20141 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp20141 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721417735531 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09637214177355... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958027/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4958027/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482114/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4482114/