And occasionally it’s about doing less. It’s surprising how often people trying things like melatonin or other psychoactive drugs, who respond too strongly, don’t consider a lower dosage—and continuing to lower the dosage until they either get no effect or the desired effect.
With melatonin, it’s not anywhere as simple as “too strong” an effect. Melatonin is typically sold at high doses that don’t really have the proper effect at all, which results in people deciding to increase the dose even more until they get a hard knockout effect which looks like the desired thing if you’re desperate and squinting, but… no.
I like this generalization/extension a lot. It expands the principle that if you have tools that have the potential to get the job done, optimizing the use of those tools, and maximizing the net benefits, is often remarkably low-hanging fruit that most people never think to do. One could take it a step further to cases like the classic joke of “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do that!” “Don’t do that.”
And occasionally it’s about doing less. It’s surprising how often people trying things like melatonin or other psychoactive drugs, who respond too strongly, don’t consider a lower dosage—and continuing to lower the dosage until they either get no effect or the desired effect.
With melatonin, it’s not anywhere as simple as “too strong” an effect. Melatonin is typically sold at high doses that don’t really have the proper effect at all, which results in people deciding to increase the dose even more until they get a hard knockout effect which looks like the desired thing if you’re desperate and squinting, but… no.
I like this generalization/extension a lot. It expands the principle that if you have tools that have the potential to get the job done, optimizing the use of those tools, and maximizing the net benefits, is often remarkably low-hanging fruit that most people never think to do. One could take it a step further to cases like the classic joke of “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do that!” “Don’t do that.”