4 ms·

Prima facie this seems an unlikely causal direction. After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to some

by Jedd 5y ago

Prima facie this seems an unlikely causal direction. After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all. You're effectively just maintaining a new baseline, but have developed a regular expenditure / tactile ceremony. The 'make themselves more productive' claim would need some citations to back that up, as I suspect most is self-reporting anecdata.

anyfoo 5y ago
> After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all. Is that really true? I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but then that's a very strong statement with non-obvious validity to me. I know that substance tolerance exists (at least it's a very common idea), but is it so generic that it applies to a) all effects and each of those effects in its entirety, and b) to all effective substances that make up coffee? And as a more specific example, I don't think I've ever taken something like "heroin addicts need to take heroin just to feel normal again, and more to feel a high" so literally that I thought they would function "normally" as in exactly like a non-heroin user would when taking an exact dosage to counteract their tolerance.
- Jedd 5y ago
  > Is that really true? Good question. There was a spectacular long-form article, I'm sure I read via HN, about 7 years ago, that included a delightfully lurid dive into the chemical and biological effects of caffeine, on humans, over a period of a few weeks, and that fond but slightly hazy memory is where I'm getting that figure from. Regrettably I've not been able to find that particular article again. I did find this, however: https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-quit-caffeine-in-one-week-e041892698ec https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-quit-caffeine-in-one-week-e0... .. and in the Addictive Potential section they cite this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762662/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762662/ .. which, if I'm reading that precis right, blows it out to 4 weeks (but it sounds like they were testing the presence of the dependency / tolerance / baseline effect, not trying to determine minimum timeframe to achieve). The list of Similar Articles at the bottom of that second link suggests there's some body of research out there to back these styles of claims up. The considered wisdom, as far as I can intuit, is to use caffeine strategically rather than frequently, if you want to enjoy the advertised 'energy' and 'focus' benefits. Of course, if you just like the flavour or the ceremony, knock yourself out.
nonameiguess 5y ago
It doesn't have to work. The simple fact that they care and try is already a correlate of higher conscientiousness. As in, some person always trying the latest productivity hack may be more productive than a normal person even if all the hacks do nothing, simply because they're the kind of person who tries to be maximally productive. Another example is caffeine is widely used as a pre-workout supplement. In high doses, without tolerance, it actually does demonstrably improve top-level strength. But the way most people use it results in tolerance and doesn't actually help. Nonetheless, the sheer fact that they're working out all the time already results in better heart health, even if the caffeine isn't doing anything on top of that.

by Jedd 5y ago

anyfoo 5y ago

> After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all. Is that really true? I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but then that's a very strong statement with non-obvious validity to me. I know that substance tolerance exists (at least it's a very common idea), but is it so generic that it applies to a) all effects and each of those effects in its entirety, and b) to all effective substances that make up coffee? And as a more specific example, I don't think I've ever taken something like "heroin addicts need to take heroin just to feel normal again, and more to feel a high" so literally that I thought they would function "normally" as in exactly like a non-heroin user would when taking an exact dosage to counteract their tolerance.

Jedd 5y ago
> Is that really true? Good question. There was a spectacular long-form article, I'm sure I read via HN, about 7 years ago, that included a delightfully lurid dive into the chemical and biological effects of caffeine, on humans, over a period of a few weeks, and that fond but slightly hazy memory is where I'm getting that figure from. Regrettably I've not been able to find that particular article again. I did find this, however: https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-quit-caffeine-in-one-week-e041892698ec https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-quit-caffeine-in-one-week-e0... .. and in the Addictive Potential section they cite this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762662/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762662/ .. which, if I'm reading that precis right, blows it out to 4 weeks (but it sounds like they were testing the presence of the dependency / tolerance / baseline effect, not trying to determine minimum timeframe to achieve). The list of Similar Articles at the bottom of that second link suggests there's some body of research out there to back these styles of claims up. The considered wisdom, as far as I can intuit, is to use caffeine strategically rather than frequently, if you want to enjoy the advertised 'energy' and 'focus' benefits. Of course, if you just like the flavour or the ceremony, knock yourself out.

nonameiguess 5y ago

It doesn't have to work. The simple fact that they care and try is already a correlate of higher conscientiousness. As in, some person always trying the latest productivity hack may be more productive than a normal person even if all the hacks do nothing, simply because they're the kind of person who tries to be maximally productive. Another example is caffeine is widely used as a pre-workout supplement. In high doses, without tolerance, it actually does demonstrably improve top-level strength. But the way most people use it results in tolerance and doesn't actually help. Nonetheless, the sheer fact that they're working out all the time already results in better heart health, even if the caffeine isn't doing anything on top of that.