This might be a bad idea right now, if it makes John’s interests suddenly more normal in a mostly-unsteered way, eg because much of his motivation was coming from a feeling he didn’t know was oxytocin-deficiency-induced. I’d suggest only doing this if solving this problem is likely to increase productivity or networking success; else, I’d delay until he doesn’t seem like a critical bottleneck. That said, it might also be a very good idea, if depression or social interaction are a major bottleneck, which they are for many many people, so this is not resolved advice, just a warning that this may be a high variance intervention, and since John currently seems to be doing promising work, introducing high variance seems likely to have more downside.
I wouldn’t say this to most people; taking oxytocin isn’t known for being a hugely impactful intervention[citation needed], and on priors, someone who doesn’t have oxytocin signaling happening is missing a lot of normal emotion, and is likely much worse off. Obviously, John, it’s up to you whether this is a good tradeoff. I wouldn’t expect it to completely distort your values or delete your skills. Someone who knows you better, such as yourself, would be much better equipped to predict if there’s significant reason to believe downward variance isn’t present. If you have experience with reward-psychoactive chemicals and yet are currently productive, it’s more likely you already know whether it’s a bad idea.
Seems like that depends on details of the problem. If the receptor has zero function, then yes. If functionality is significantly reduced but nonzero… maybe.
Perhaps Gurkenglas meant this is as a ~confirmatory test that John is actually oxytocin-insensitive because the test results (IIUC) are compatible with only one gene copy being screwed up.
I ordered this one off of amazon. AFAICT it does nothing for me. But that’s a pretty minor update, because even those who use it say the effects are “subtle”, and frankly I think snorting oxytocin is probably bullshit and does nothing beyond placebo even for normal people. I did have a couple other people try the one I bought, and their results indeed sounded like a nothingburder.
<a href="https://One other thing - labs typically filter reportable genome results by the phenotype you give them. I don’t know how this guy did the genome, but if he were to put something like “social deficits”, “emotional dysregulation” or something else about his lack of emotional range, the lab would definitely report the variant plus their research on it and recommendations.">this one</a>
BTW, has anyone on LW tried oxytocin and is willing to report on the experience?
well, what happens when you take oxytocin?
This might be a bad idea right now, if it makes John’s interests suddenly more normal in a mostly-unsteered way, eg because much of his motivation was coming from a feeling he didn’t know was oxytocin-deficiency-induced. I’d suggest only doing this if solving this problem is likely to increase productivity or networking success; else, I’d delay until he doesn’t seem like a critical bottleneck. That said, it might also be a very good idea, if depression or social interaction are a major bottleneck, which they are for many many people, so this is not resolved advice, just a warning that this may be a high variance intervention, and since John currently seems to be doing promising work, introducing high variance seems likely to have more downside.
I wouldn’t say this to most people; taking oxytocin isn’t known for being a hugely impactful intervention[citation needed], and on priors, someone who doesn’t have oxytocin signaling happening is missing a lot of normal emotion, and is likely much worse off. Obviously, John, it’s up to you whether this is a good tradeoff. I wouldn’t expect it to completely distort your values or delete your skills. Someone who knows you better, such as yourself, would be much better equipped to predict if there’s significant reason to believe downward variance isn’t present. If you have experience with reward-psychoactive chemicals and yet are currently productive, it’s more likely you already know whether it’s a bad idea.
Didn’t want to leave it unsaid, though.
if the problem is with the receptor, taking more won’t make a difference
Sounds like a great empirical test!
Seems like that depends on details of the problem. If the receptor has zero function, then yes. If functionality is significantly reduced but nonzero… maybe.
Perhaps Gurkenglas meant this is as a ~confirmatory test that John is actually oxytocin-insensitive because the test results (IIUC) are compatible with only one gene copy being screwed up.
I ordered this one off of amazon. AFAICT it does nothing for me. But that’s a pretty minor update, because even those who use it say the effects are “subtle”, and frankly I think snorting oxytocin is probably bullshit and does nothing beyond placebo even for normal people. I did have a couple other people try the one I bought, and their results indeed sounded like a nothingburder.
Your link is broken. The raw HTML is:
<a href="https://One other thing - labs typically filter reportable genome results by the phenotype you give them. I don’t know how this guy did the genome, but if he were to put something like “social deficits”, “emotional dysregulation” or something else about his lack of emotional range, the lab would definitely report the variant plus their research on it and recommendations.">this one</a>BTW, has anyone on LW tried oxytocin and is willing to report on the experience?
Fixed, thanks.