Have you explored the possibility that the “but the thing they want me to pay attention to was often stupid” perspective is in part self-defensive to help with discomfort around the fact that you couldn’t attend well to X in that moment even if you attempted to?
Hm. I don’t think I ever thought seriously about that. Let me try right now.
I don’t really notice any discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity about not being able to control my attention. I don’t think I did earlier in my life either. Maybe this is somewhat immature, but it’s actually always been something that I smile at and take take pride in.
Maybe when I was really young I was insecure about it? I dunno. I don’t remember that happening and it doesn’t feel like it was the case.
So yeah, I’m struggling to see anything here. If you (or others) see something, even something that seems worth introspecting more about, please let me know.
I’ll bet that at some point, you may have constructed a defense of thinking about “random” stuff, shaped something like “anything is interesting and educational if you just look at it right”.
I am generally of the opinion that anything is interesting if you look at it right, but for the reasons I discuss above, I don’t think that opinion comes from a place of defensiveness.
If you’re on the “I’m cool with at least some of them” or “tried a few and didn’t prefer them but nothing against trying more” side of the fence, absolutely experiment. But if you’re against their use in general, or your use of them in particular (for moral reasons or due to disproportionate risk of addictive behavior), you’d probably do better to frame your experimentation more medically and keep your prescriber more tightly in the loop.
That makes sense. I agree with the general point.
I think my feelings are a little nuanced here though.
I have zero moral objections.
Caffeine I respond pretty well to but also try to be careful with because it’s known to amplify anxiety.
Alcohol I’ve tried.[1] I really don’t like the taste. As for the experience of being buzzed/drunk, for whatever reason, it takes a lot to get me to feel it, and I don’t particularly like the feeling.
Nicotine seems a little risky due to the potential for addiction. Plus, at least in the form of smoking cigarettes, seems very likely to do more harm than good.
Cannabis I’ve tried, have had some good experiences with, but also some traumatic and psychotic ones. I’ve since messed around with micro-dosing, but some of the trauma and psychosis kinda still comes back, so I don’t really think it’s worth experimenting any more with. I also tried nano-dosing shrooms once but didn’t feel anything and generally have the same feelings as my feelings towards cannabis.
There’s a bit of a funny story here. I tried having a few drinks once or twice and felt nothing. Then I did an experiment that went south. I had one/two drinks an hour, planning to get a sense of what my dose-response curve looks like. I think I was on drink 9 or 10 and only felt mild effects.
The friends I was with were getting bored and wanted to go out. So, stupidly, I had four shots of hard liquor and then walked with them over to the bar. As we were walking, it all hit me at once and I collapsed.
Since then I’ve tried having up to a few drinks on various occasions but have never really felt anything. Once exception is when I had about eight drinks with some friends. I felt a little buzzed, but didn’t feel like it was a strong effect, and wasn’t particularly enjoyable.
I don’t really notice any discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity about not being able to control my attention. I don’t think I did earlier in my life either. Maybe this is somewhat immature, but it’s actually always been something that I smile at and take take pride in.
Interesting! I think I made a wrong assumption of discomfort/embarrassment/insecurity in reaction to hearing a “something is wrong/suboptimal in a way that experimentation might improve” tone in your original post. If I had to justify this impression with a single source, I’d choose “there has never been anything wrong with me. There’s something wrong with The System.”. I read that as an explicit “something is wrong in a way that’s affecting me”.
I might be misunderstanding, of course, but it does sound like a “something is wrong enough that I’m tempted to try changing my cognition to get different outcomes” theme. If it’s not discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity… what are you hoping you’d get less or more of?
Back to the theme of the post, I think what I’m actually noticing is an additional caveat to when experiments are useful: they’re best when you know ahead of time what to measure before, during, and after. Maybe you’ve picked out what to measure in a medication experiment and prefer to keep it private (totally understand if that’s the case), but if not, I think the question of what to track/measure is probably worth considering in the general case of experimentation as well as in this particular one.
Interesting! I think I made a wrong assumption of discomfort/embarrassment/insecurity in reaction to hearing a “something is wrong/suboptimal in a way that experimentation might improve” tone in your original post. If I had to justify this impression with a single source, I’d choose “there has never been anything wrong with me. There’s something wrong with The System.”. I read that as an explicit “something is wrong in a way that’s affecting me”.
Gotcha. That is reasonable.
I might be misunderstanding, of course, but it does sound like a “something is wrong enough that I’m tempted to try changing my cognition to get different outcomes” theme. If it’s not discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity… what are you hoping you’d get less or more of?
It’s just that sort of “pulling a tooth” feeling. Like when I’m focused on some code I’m writing and have to stop what I’m doing and make dinner. Or when (like right now) there’s four things that I’m eager to work on, but I of course can only pursue one of them (the fact that I’m not pursuing the other three is pretty uncomfortable).
Back to the theme of the post, I think what I’m actually noticing is an additional caveat to when experiments are useful: they’re best when you know ahead of time what to measure before, during, and after. Maybe you’ve picked out what to measure in a medication experiment and prefer to keep it private (totally understand if that’s the case), but if not, I think the question of what to track/measure is probably worth considering in the general case of experimentation as well as in this particular one.
Hm, I’m not sure whether or not I agree here. I lean towards thinking that most of the time you can have a pretty vague idea of what it is you’re measuring.
For the ADHD medication here (I don’t have any preferences to keep it private) I was thinking of just trying to get a sense of how often the unpleasant “tooth pulling” feelings happen, how my cognitive/intellectual performance is, how happy I am, how others perceive me. Stuff like that. Seems good enough.
Ah. I gloss that one as “discomfort” when describing my own experiences, but I see how it’d also be fine to consider it entirely distinct.
Reminds me of a thing I’m personally encountering quite a bit lately. I’ll notice something about my experience in a way that seems unusual compared to what many others notice. Upon interrogating it, sometimes it turns out that the experiencing is due to my brain being weird, and other times it turns out that it’s a universal experience that brain quirks are causing me to notice or describe differently from how others would.
Stimulants won’t change the underlying fact that there are more excellent things to do in the world than time to do them in, but IMO they can help fine-tune how much of your attention is devoted to that fact while you’re also doing some other task. Sounds almost koanical—“if there are 3 other amazing things I could be doing right now, but I’m not worrying about them, are is it a problem?” =)
Hm, I’m not sure whether or not I agree here. I lean towards thinking that most of the time you can have a pretty vague idea of what it is you’re measuring.
English is kind of a problem for this, because we use the same word for rigorously testing a hypothesis or for changing stuff to see what happens. I attempt the gesture of applying the term “experiment” only to the former, but I ultimately don’t do so with the rigor it would take to make any significant difference in the world around me. I think “experimental” tends to imply the latter over the former, but that implication isn’t robust or global enough to make it ultimately worth caring much about.
Hm. I don’t think I ever thought seriously about that. Let me try right now.
I don’t really notice any discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity about not being able to control my attention. I don’t think I did earlier in my life either. Maybe this is somewhat immature, but it’s actually always been something that I smile at and take take pride in.
Maybe when I was really young I was insecure about it? I dunno. I don’t remember that happening and it doesn’t feel like it was the case.
So yeah, I’m struggling to see anything here. If you (or others) see something, even something that seems worth introspecting more about, please let me know.
I am generally of the opinion that anything is interesting if you look at it right, but for the reasons I discuss above, I don’t think that opinion comes from a place of defensiveness.
That makes sense. I agree with the general point.
I think my feelings are a little nuanced here though.
I have zero moral objections.
Caffeine I respond pretty well to but also try to be careful with because it’s known to amplify anxiety.
Alcohol I’ve tried.[1] I really don’t like the taste. As for the experience of being buzzed/drunk, for whatever reason, it takes a lot to get me to feel it, and I don’t particularly like the feeling.
Nicotine seems a little risky due to the potential for addiction. Plus, at least in the form of smoking cigarettes, seems very likely to do more harm than good.
Cannabis I’ve tried, have had some good experiences with, but also some traumatic and psychotic ones. I’ve since messed around with micro-dosing, but some of the trauma and psychosis kinda still comes back, so I don’t really think it’s worth experimenting any more with. I also tried nano-dosing shrooms once but didn’t feel anything and generally have the same feelings as my feelings towards cannabis.
CBD is something I’ve been meaning to try.
There’s a bit of a funny story here. I tried having a few drinks once or twice and felt nothing. Then I did an experiment that went south. I had one/two drinks an hour, planning to get a sense of what my dose-response curve looks like. I think I was on drink 9 or 10 and only felt mild effects.
The friends I was with were getting bored and wanted to go out. So, stupidly, I had four shots of hard liquor and then walked with them over to the bar. As we were walking, it all hit me at once and I collapsed.
Since then I’ve tried having up to a few drinks on various occasions but have never really felt anything. Once exception is when I had about eight drinks with some friends. I felt a little buzzed, but didn’t feel like it was a strong effect, and wasn’t particularly enjoyable.
Interesting! I think I made a wrong assumption of discomfort/embarrassment/insecurity in reaction to hearing a “something is wrong/suboptimal in a way that experimentation might improve” tone in your original post. If I had to justify this impression with a single source, I’d choose “there has never been anything wrong with me. There’s something wrong with The System.”. I read that as an explicit “something is wrong in a way that’s affecting me”.
I might be misunderstanding, of course, but it does sound like a “something is wrong enough that I’m tempted to try changing my cognition to get different outcomes” theme. If it’s not discomfort, embarrassment, or insecurity… what are you hoping you’d get less or more of?
Back to the theme of the post, I think what I’m actually noticing is an additional caveat to when experiments are useful: they’re best when you know ahead of time what to measure before, during, and after. Maybe you’ve picked out what to measure in a medication experiment and prefer to keep it private (totally understand if that’s the case), but if not, I think the question of what to track/measure is probably worth considering in the general case of experimentation as well as in this particular one.
Gotcha. That is reasonable.
It’s just that sort of “pulling a tooth” feeling. Like when I’m focused on some code I’m writing and have to stop what I’m doing and make dinner. Or when (like right now) there’s four things that I’m eager to work on, but I of course can only pursue one of them (the fact that I’m not pursuing the other three is pretty uncomfortable).
Hm, I’m not sure whether or not I agree here. I lean towards thinking that most of the time you can have a pretty vague idea of what it is you’re measuring.
For the ADHD medication here (I don’t have any preferences to keep it private) I was thinking of just trying to get a sense of how often the unpleasant “tooth pulling” feelings happen, how my cognitive/intellectual performance is, how happy I am, how others perceive me. Stuff like that. Seems good enough.
Thank you for explaining!
Ah. I gloss that one as “discomfort” when describing my own experiences, but I see how it’d also be fine to consider it entirely distinct.
Reminds me of a thing I’m personally encountering quite a bit lately. I’ll notice something about my experience in a way that seems unusual compared to what many others notice. Upon interrogating it, sometimes it turns out that the experiencing is due to my brain being weird, and other times it turns out that it’s a universal experience that brain quirks are causing me to notice or describe differently from how others would.
Stimulants won’t change the underlying fact that there are more excellent things to do in the world than time to do them in, but IMO they can help fine-tune how much of your attention is devoted to that fact while you’re also doing some other task. Sounds almost koanical—“if there are 3 other amazing things I could be doing right now, but I’m not worrying about them, are is it a problem?” =)
English is kind of a problem for this, because we use the same word for rigorously testing a hypothesis or for changing stuff to see what happens. I attempt the gesture of applying the term “experiment” only to the former, but I ultimately don’t do so with the rigor it would take to make any significant difference in the world around me. I think “experimental” tends to imply the latter over the former, but that implication isn’t robust or global enough to make it ultimately worth caring much about.