TrudosKudos

Karma: 16

TrudosKudos 5 Sep 2025 19:15 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: David Gross’s comment on: In Defense of Alcohol
I replied in a different comment with a similar view. I think the issues are more substance-specific with other alternatives being available to consider.

GHB is fantastic in terms of it’s very limited negative health effects but it’s dosing can cause some issues as you mentioned. Those mentioned risks make it ideal for high-trust, safe situations but less ideal for broad replacement of the usage contexts of alcohol. I think there are other options that can and should be explored though.

TrudosKudos 5 Sep 2025 19:09 UTC
2 points
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on: In Defense of Alcohol
In my opinion, there are far more effective psychotropic alternatives that have less negatives and even more pronounced anxiolytic and pro-social effects.^[1]

My personal experiences with these alternatives have led me to agree that there are very real societal benefits from cultural acceptance and norms regarding substance usage and that humans have had a relationship with psychotropic compounds for a very, very long time. I think that we have not been evaluating societal norms dictating which substances we can engage with. Alcohol, Tobacco (Nicotine), and Caffeine have maintained the largest acceptance area within the “Substance Use Overton Window [SU-OW]”^[2] for hundreds if not thousands of years. This dominance within our cultural norms have made it difficult to adopt potentially better alternatives due to them residing outside the SU-OW.

Some options that I have hundreds of experiences with that have all been better or more effective than alcohol:

- Gabapentin
- Lyrica
- Phenibut/F-Phenibut
- L-Theanine
- GHB/BDO
- Kava
- Kratom
- Tianeptine

Some of the above options are also GABAergics, like alcohol, which avoid the toxic effects of alcohol. Not all of them are created equally and they each have their own matrices of considerations/dangers but I find them all to be better than alcohol.

I think there are many good reasons for us to evaluate our relationship with Alcohol but I am unique in that I am in favor of ethical, intelligent, moderate substance use where others combine the health impact of alcohol with a broader philosophical decision of engaging with substances at all. There are REAL health impacts of alcohol but my values lead me to think we should be evaluating other replacement candidates rather than promoting full sobriety.
1. ^
  I must caveat this by saying that concept of critical, moderate, intelligent substance usage is a very complicated idea with real consequences to consider. It’s not an activity that everyone can or should engage in, but I’ve been able to manage moderated substance usage for 15 years now and I have experimented with 100+ Research Chemicals, Nootropics, Peptides, Supplements and other chemical compounds with psychotropic effects.
2. ^
  I’ve just made this up but I may need to write a post about how there is a specific Overton Window regarding accepted substance abuse with unique features and dynamics affecting it.

TrudosKudos 19 Aug 2025 22:17 UTC
3 points
2
on: Monthly Roundup #33: August 2025
One of my favorite time’s of the month! Thank you for producing as much great content as you do!

TrudosKudos 21 Jan 2025 22:02 UTC
1 point
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on: Monthly Roundup #26: January 2025
Also I am considering renaming the tiers from 1-5 to S/A/B/C/F as per custom
Can I ask for a short overview of the attributes for each Tier and your overall grading process? If you have discussed it elsewhere, a link would be very appreciated.

Thank you for the great content, as always.

TrudosKudos 8 Jan 2025 8:45 UTC
5 points
4
on: Tips On Empirical Research Slides
This was incredibly informative. I really appreciate you all taking the time to share. I’m going to be using a lot of the information here immediately! I’d love to read any additional insights on slide design or thoughts you all have on other communication styles as well.

TrudosKudos 5 Dec 2024 20:34 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: Social events with plausible deniability
Fair question—I guess that a certain discussion doesn’t necessarily have to be “heavy” but I believe that humans are far less skilled at communication, especially in social settings, for the majority of these interactions to not flare up some level of insecurity, human bias, or offend someone’s held beliefs.

I personally would say that I’m quite good at navigating a social context while also being able to broach traditionally taboo’d topics, but I do not think this I represent the norm. The general heuristic of avoiding potentially controversial topics has served me well in most social settings like this, where I believe the purpose is for social connection on a lighter, surface level.
As I replied to a previous comment, I think I’d append my original comment that if OP was advocating for banning normal parties in favor of this format, I’d be against that. I suppose the idea I’m trying to communicate is that it’s important to know your setting and the social context before engaging in these types of behaviors, and that this habit will serve you far better in facilitating social connection.

TrudosKudos 5 Dec 2024 20:29 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Maxwell Peterson’s comment on: Social events with plausible deniability
Fair point. I think I agree with this distinction!

TrudosKudos 18 Nov 2024 20:41 UTC
2 points
−7
on: Social events with plausible deniability
It’s a creative idea and would be an interesting experiment. That being said, I can’t help but wonder why the focus is on sharing such heavy opinions. I’ll be honest in that it’s not been a major challenge for me in my life to not avoid talking about things that could likely spell discomfort. It’s not even been intentional, because to me, it’s a party and I want to be talking about things that are fun for myself and for others.

If you are deliberately getting into heavy discussions about a potential socially dangerous topic, I’d ask why you feel the need to talk about it in that setting anyway. Is a party really the place where the requirements for good outcomes to the discussion are going to be present? Sure, mention something in passing but leave the actual discussion for other settings/atmospheres.

I’m not going to tell you how to party though—I just think it’s odd that when others are coming together to have a good time, voicing heavy opinions and fielding heavy discussions are where these attendees minds go to.

TrudosKudos 30 Oct 2024 20:09 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Am I ethically obligated to extend the life of my dog with life-extension treatments about to hit the market?
Just returning to this—Thank you for your comment. I think I need to do a bit more epistemological legwork before I can truly give you a response. Suffice it to say for now that I’m not really torn up about the issue and asked more out of boredom/general curiosity, but I see now that my question was asked lazily.

Perhaps one day soon I’ll comment on this with the relevant context/information.

TrudosKudos 14 Mar 2024 1:20 UTC
5 points
18
on: Highlights from Lex Fridman’s interview of Yann LeCun
His view on AI alignment risk is infuriating simplistic. To just call certain doomsday scenarios objectively “false” is a level of epistemic arrogance that borders on obscene.

I feel like he could at least acknowledge the existence of possible scenarios and express a need to invest in avoiding those scenarios instead of just negating an entire argument.

TrudosKudos 27 Sep 2022 21:51 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Is a PhD necessary to contribute meaningfully to a field?
I will review these. Thank you for your input!

TrudosKudos 28 Jul 2022 18:04 UTC
3 points
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on: For Better Commenting, Stop Out Loud
Really fantastic conflict mitigation advice. Many people do not often stop to think about why they are communicating and with this lack of organized direction, it is easy to fall into more emotional patterns of communicating. People’s desires to appeal to others come out more and constructive discourse is no longer possible. Stopping Out Loud does a great job of recognizing these types of things and organizing it into words in a way that really halts what otherwise often becomes a runaway train.

One point I would add that is I feel that when it comes to online trolling or criticism, more often than not someone is not interested in constructive dialog in the first place and is typically reacting to their own personal ideas being challenged. This type of intention usually leads to people responding negatively to SOL and they will attempt to re-frame your attempt at to de-escalate as you “running away” or refusing to voice your opinions in front of others because you realize how “weak” your arguments are. While I am not sure there is a way to avoid this, it is helpful to be prepared for this type of response when you do go into SOL.