 So, The New York Times has finally published its piece on Scott Alexander Susskin, the psychiatrist who writes the Slate Star Codex blog. You might remember back in June 22, 2020, that Scott Alexander posted a rather hysterical blog post. Here's the headline. New York Times is threatening my safety by revealing my real name, so I am deleting the blog. Okay, The New York Times is threatening my safety by revealing my real name. His real name was already widely and easily available. So that just seems a tad hyperbolic, right? So people, I went to us to accommodate our wishes and what's kind of amusing in Scott Alexander, he's unironic, right? He never uses irony, right? He's very, very earnest and he thought that if he just gave The New York Times sufficient reasons that they wouldn't post his real name. So why was he so concerned about his real name being revealed? Because that could have some complications for his life and career as a psychiatrist. So he's a working psychiatrist. And I put four relevant links in the video description. So yeah, Madaphnil is the official drug of the rationalist movement because among the frequent topics on Scott Alexander's blog is the topic of newer tropics. So cognitive enhancers and Madaphnil seems to be the widespread favorite of his rationalist community. So what the hell is rationalism in this context? Well, according to The New York Times, the rationalists see themselves as people who apply scientific thought to any topic. This often involves Bayesian reasoning. It's a way of using statistics and probability to inform beliefs. Okay, so as far as The New York Times threatening your safety by revealing your real name, there's no guide given or constitutional right to stay anonymous as a blogger. The more you go into the public square, the more likely it is that people will know your real name. So if you don't want your real name revealed, then don't enter the public square. If you become a public figure, you're going to get death threats. You're going to get people acting towards you in a nasty way. Just as with fame, there are also lots and lots of benefits with fame. Just listening to a podcast about this where the British author said, you make yourself widely known and famous because you increase your chances of getting lucky in some way you can't predict in advance. One point of fame is to simply increase your surface area exposure to lucky accidents. So that's the upside of fame. You increase your surface area exposure to lucky accidents. So every time I would get on TV, a woman would get in contact with me to sleep with me. So I remember one time I appeared on the Canadian version of 60 Minutes, I think it's called the Fit the State, and some woman from Vancouver got in contact with me. And we established a correspondence and I ended up driving up to Vancouver to spend a couple of days with her and other people have gotten in contact with me in Los Angeles. So we go out and have coffee. So by becoming famous, you increase your surface area exposure to lucky accidents, but there's nothing that's just a blessing. All blessings come also with a curse. So when you become famous, you increase your surface area exposure to unlucky accidents. There's no blessing without a curse. But Scott Alexander, he likes the benefits of being public, like almost all the good things that have happened in his life, last few years, have happened due to his blog. And he writes about that. But he doesn't want to pay the price for that, but there's a price to pay, right? Everything comes with a price. If you get married, there's a price. If you don't get married, there's a price. If you work for yourself, there's a price. If you work for someone else, there's a price. So this is what he wrote June 22nd, 2020. Last week I talked to a New York Times technology reporter who was planning to write a story on Slate Star Codex. He told me you'd be a mostly positive piece. Okay, how naive and silly and childish you have to be. I'm sure the reporter didn't say it's going to be a mostly positive piece, but that's what Scott Alexander heard. That when a reporter is pitching you to become the subject of an article, they have incentives for getting your cooperation, for you giving them an interview. So of course they're going to present the piece in ways that you're going to hear as mostly positive about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech. This is like guys are going to tell goals, whatever they think goals want to hear so that they can get them to go to bed with them. All right. Tell me it'd be a mostly positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation and probably would have been a very nice article. How silly and naive is this, all right? Anytime a reporter wants to write a story about you or wants your cooperation with a story and they pitch you, they're going to try to pitch you so as to bring about the maximum of your cooperation. So I'm not going to tell you the truth, whether the piece is going to be positive or negative. All right. They're not going to tell you they're slant on a piece. So I mean, this is just like childlike levels of naivety. Unfortunately, he told me he'd discovered my real name while it was easy to find and would reveal it in the article, i.e. Dox me. OK, this seems like an extreme use of the term dox. So according to Google, dox means to search for and publish private or identifying information about a particular individual on the internet, typically with a malicious intent. So simply noting somebody's name is not doxing. Remember Ben Shapiro complained that Breitbart had doxed him. How would they doxed him? They put a link to his California State Bar profile where Ben Shapiro put his own home address on his California State Bar profile and Ben Shapiro put his own address on there. All right. So Ben Shapiro puts his home address on his California State Bar page and then he complains that Breitbart was doxing him by linking to a page where he controls his own information. So dox is dramatically and graphically overused. So someone noting your real name is not doxing. All right. Don't go into the public square if you don't want people to know your name. And then as far as revealing your name that this would threaten your safety. So I think that there's probably something to that. Maybe Scott Alexander has some dangerous patients and he doesn't want them to know about his block. But one, it's not the job of third parties including journalists to ensure your safety. Two, you couldn't have any reporting. Right. If if if you how it is a standard. Well, if this threatens someone's someone's safety then then we can't publish this. Right. When you publish information that has any sting then some people's safety is going to be threatened and other people's safety is going to be enhanced. So let's say you publish information that I was a serial killer. You would be endangering my safety, but you would be enhancing the safety of people that I'm around. Or if you had information that I was a financial predator and you published that on the New York Times, you would you would enhance the safety of people I might have financial dealings with, but you would threaten my safety. Let's say there was a long piece in the New York Times taking the most embarrassing things I've ever said on on YouTube and focusing on that and focusing on, you know, what a bad crime thinker I am. All right. So that would bring some risk to my safety, but you could well say, look, it's in the public interest that people should know about the crime thought because I'm doing this under my real name. I'm putting my face out there. So why would I expect anonymity? I have lots of reasons for staying pseudonymous. This is like so naive. This is the equivalent of a guy telling a girl at a bar. I have lots of reasons for wanting you to give me a blow job. You know, I have lots of reasons for inserting myself inside of you. You know, I have lots of reasons for taking your clothes off. I have lots of reasons for feeling you up. Okay, so what? All right, guess what? Strangers don't care about our reasons, generally speaking, right? Only people who love and care about you care about your reasons. And even then, people who love and care about you usually don't even care that much about your reasons, all right? Like even your spouse is frequently not going to care about your reasons for wanting XYZ, right? So I have lots of reasons for staying pseudonymous, pseudonymous. First, I'm a psychiatrist and psychiatrists are obsessive about preventing their patients from knowing anything about who they are outside of work. Yeah, that's why psychiatrists publish books and go on TV and talk to the media and get interviewed on radio sessions because they're so obsessed about preventing their patients from knowing anything about who they are outside of work, right? Some psychiatrists may have this obsession, but the world does not have to accommodate your obsessions, right? You can have lots of reasons for lots of different things and they're pretty much always irrelevant to strangers. And they're also usually irrelevant to even to people who love you, right? I have lots of reasons why you should throw down some super chats right now. But you're not morally obliged to throw down super chats, right? If I listed 15 reasons why you should throw down a super chat right now, it's pointless and irrelevant. You have no moral obligation to throw down a super chat. Even if I could list off 15 reasons why I want you to throw down a super chat. Who cares if I want you to super chat? Like big deal 40, like who cares what you want? Like it's not your duty to pay attention to what I want. You can read more about this desire of psychiatrists to be anonymous in the Scientific American article, right? I could give you a Scientific American article about why you should throw down some super chats for me. Who cares? Big deal. Remember that the last psychiatrist blogger to get Docs abandoned his blog too. OK, like who cares? Why would anyone care? I mean, it's a loss if you like the blog, it's a loss. But you can't expect journalists to care that if they publish your name that you might then have consequences whereby you abandon your anonymous blogging. It's not other people's responsibility to ensure that you can keep making YouTube videos or anonymous blogs or whatever outlying aspects of your life that are not compatible with other parts of your life because you have been unable to integrate reality into the way you conduct yourself. I think it's plausible that if I became a national news figure under my real name, my parents, my patients wouldn't be able to engage with me in a normal therapeutic way. OK, so there are prices to pay for all our choices. All right, if I became a national news figure, like my my YouTube friends would not be able to engage with me in a normal way. Big deal. Also worry that my clinic would decide I'm more of a liability than an asset. And let me go. Yes, there are prices for fame. There are advantages and there are disadvantages which would leave hundreds of patients in a dangerous situation as we try to transition their care. I suspect that they're not really going to be left in a dangerous situation. Again, it's not the responsibility of outsiders to look after the mental health care of your patients or even to take that into consideration. Second reason is more per se. Some people want to kill me or ruin my life and I'd prefer not to make it too easy. Yes, we would all prefer not to make that too easy. So if your fears about being killed or ruined and because you've received death threats and that's getting to you, then get out of the public square. Like get out of the kitchen if you can't stand the heat. I've had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients to get me fired. Yeah, there are consequences, right? Free speech doesn't mean that there are no consequences for what you say. Right. Hey, Ricardo. OK, this the show is about to take off. Things are about to get real. We're about to have some emotional honesty in in this show. So I'm going to have to put aside my false front. I'm going to have to put aside my stunted emotional effect. Ricardo, you'll enjoy this. So I was looking up Madaphnil on Scott Scott Alexander Susskin's website, Slate Star Codex, and here's what it had to say. So first of all, there's a link here from Reddit. One blog says, how has Madaphnil negatively affected you? I I'm going to share some stories about Madaphnil and and by doing that, I'm going to answer and see your question. So Madaphnil is a forced multiplier. I love that. That is exactly how it's operated in my life. So to take Madaphnil circa May, June of 2013. And I'd say I probably used it on 90 percent of days since June of 2013. OK, Madaphnil is a forced multiplier that will probably push you over your baseline levels of motivation, focus, mental agility and your subjective well-being. That is exactly my experience. It's a forced multiplier. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. So you probably shouldn't use it as a means to minimize sleep. Correct. So I have not used it as a means to minimize sleep. But when I do have a bad night's sleep, it it helps me to be more effective. Madaphnil is not affected by sex drive. And then another comment, I do find that these substances give its users a sense of omnipotence, which translates for me into confidence. I 100 percent identify with that. So I am able to socialize easier. But it does probably reduce your empathy and it kind of blunts your emotions. So before Madaphnil, on a typical day, my emotions would be my emotions would be like that. They just, you know, like a sine wave, right? I'd get up feeling like this and then something would happen and I'd go here and then I start coming up here and then I'd go like this. Someone would say something or feel someone was looking at me about, you know, in an admiring way. And I start going up here and then someone criticizes me. And so this is how I would feel in my subjective sense of well-being prior to Madaphnil. OK, this is this is 40 prior to Madaphnil in my inner emotional life. I was like, oh, like all through the day, up and down, up and down. OK, and then this is me on Madaphnil. It's so good. It's it's the best. It's the best. OK, next comment. It has utterly changed my life. I started the year in a deep pit of depression, primarily related to procrastination and perfectionism and a cornucopia of adult ADHD. Madaphnil gave me a much needed mood and motivation boost, allowing me to be alert immediately after waking, which I've never previously experienced. It made the imaginary version of doing a chore, a task much less unattractive. Yeah, it's like my task is I look ahead to the day ahead and the things I need to do, they no longer bother me. I'm a philosophy student. I think the drug is bad for philosophical intuition. So, yeah, you definitely take a hit with creativity. With Madaphnil, so it kind of gives you tunnel vision. So your working memory is less capable of including novel or creative abstractions, but you are better capable of grasping tightly related concepts. So, yeah, I completely identify with that. So when it comes to formal logic, comprehension and understanding, that becomes a breeze. So it makes you more confident. So so on the one hand, you would do things while driving that you wouldn't otherwise do. That's the downside. You can engage in a little riskier behavior. On the positive side, you're more alert. So it kind of comes out in a wash. It doesn't doesn't make you a better driver, because on the downside, you'll, you know, you'll take left hand turns in front of on rushing traffic, perhaps a little more frequently than you would otherwise. And on the other hand, you're more alert. So let me go to Riccardo. Let me go to Riccardo's comments. Drug use generally is a cope for dealing with emotional instability. Right. So like insulin is a cope for dealing with insulin instability. Just because something's a cope doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad choice. There's a deep connection between drug use and emotional instability. Yeah, there's a deep connection between like insulin stability and diabetes. Part of quitting Adderall for me was confronting my negative emotions. Yeah. Well, my life be like out mid-affnile. So life without mid-affnile emotionally be like this. So I go back to these, you know, ups and downs, ups and downs, ups and downs. And I'd have probably the equivalent of two hours less a day of available for cognitive work. So I probably stream, probably stream much less. And on the other hand, my streams would be more emotionally honest and more creative when I do stream. Have you learned new strategies for dealing with life that are no longer dependent on consuming it? Yeah, because I've gone off mid-affnile. Like there are times when my supply didn't come through and I'd have, I don't know, two or three weeks without mid-affnile, my life didn't crash. There's no like, there's no crash with mid-affnile. That's why it's kind of, why I think Oxford University and Cambridge University referred to mid-affnile as the first safe smart drug. So there's no crash. So I just returned to normal. So a little more creative, a little more variety in my emotional moods, a little less cognitive processing power. It's like I drop five IQ points. Don't normal people deal with their negative emotional roller coasters without drugs? Yeah, well, people who are diabetic, deal with their diabetes without insulin. That might mean that they have to cut off their feet. There are all sorts of tolls for having unstable blood sugar, right? People deal with not having medication, right? Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just have a restricted life. So people can deal without their medication. Oh, what do you think about smoking high quality tobaccos? So apparently I read one post and obviously we all know I am not an expert on neurotropics. Neutropics refer to cognitive enhances. But apparently the biggest neurotropic is nicotine. Like apparently that has more of a cognitive stimulating effect than medaffinil, caffeine, or any other smart drug. That's just one post that I read. You will never know how the people who can't get those drugs who have lived, looked, ever suck on it. What's that point? If you can't get medaffinil, then you're not looking very hard. It's like really, really easy to get and law enforcement has no interest in preventing people from getting it. So easy-peasy to get medaffinil if you want it. Okay, so here are some other experiences. Yeah, you get kind of tunnel vision with medaffinil. I can't get those drugs. Yes, you can. But what's wrong with you? Look it up online. Stop being a victim. Now, you may not be able to get a prescription. You may not be able to afford it through regular means, but there are plenty of online pharmacies where you can easily and cheaply obtain it for about $2 a pill. I tend to find medaffinil makes me speak my mind more. Yes, I experience that too, which can be a good and a bad thing, agree. I enjoy the mild emotional dampening as someone that can overly empathize and lose a sense of self during social interaction. Yeah, that's true for me. I, prior to medaffinil, I'd often get flooded with way too much empathy for other people and it would, I would kind of lose my sense of self. I've never been a smoker. And another point here, I've been taking medaffinil since 2013. It changed my life for the better, increases motivation and the ability to do tedious tasks and wakefulness. I still take the same dose I started with and haven't experienced any noticeable tolerance. Yes. So this guy and myself, we've both been taking medaffinil since 2013 and I haven't experienced any increase in tolerance. I usually do not take it days I expect to be social. I do relate to emotional stuntedness. I use it two or three days a week when those are focused work days. What does it mean to lose one's self sense of self? I can become so overly empathic that, yeah, I just lose my self. I'm just thinking about you and your issues and how intensely I feel for your situation. And I lose perspective on what should be my primary project usually and that is looking after myself. I shouldn't be getting lost in empathy for your situation particularly when there's nothing I can do about it. But yeah, prior to medaffinil, I would often get like so flooded by empathy for other people that it would be disabling for me. Like it would be painful for me to watch certain movies. Like they'd be too excruciating for me because I would feel so much empathy for the people in the movies that I would be in agony. Yeah, my entire thought process becomes about someone else's predicament or the emotions that I feel just overwhelm me when I consider somebody else's situation. So like my father, you could see the pain on his face when he would take in what was going on for someone else. It would be like, sometimes it'd be like a stab wound. Like, oh, you could just see that the information was just like affecting him as though he was getting stabbed. So I think I kind of inherited that from my father. So over empathizing, okay. Ah, so here is a quote from, yeah, I've often experienced ruinous empathy. Would my father have benefited from using medaffinil? I think so. Oh, would it have negatively affected him in the work he had chosen? Look, everything's a blessing and a curse. There's no such thing as, oh, this is only a blessing, all right. All blessings come with curses. So it would probably be a blessing to him in some ways and a curse to him in other ways. So here's a quote from the Washington Post. And this is an article about newer tropics. And Jennifer Rusted Professor of Experimental Psychology at Sussex University in Britain says, to my knowledge, nicotine is the the most reliable cognitive enhancer that we currently have. The cognitive enhancing effects of nicotine are more robust that you can get with any other agent. With medaffinil, for instance, the evidence for cognitive benefits is nowhere near as strong as it is for nicotine. So yeah, nicotine will give you far more of a cognitive enhancing rush than medaffinil. So Slate Star Codex did a survey on newer tropics and concluded the most effective newer tropics, meaning cognitive enhancers were caffeine and medaffinil, which has been proven to work by countless studies and is a prescription drug much used by the medical establishment. Medaffinil is a prescription medication for sleep issues, which makes users more awake and energetic. And here's another post about medaffinil. I can take it legally. My doctor is willing to prescribe it for a reason unrelated to sleep disorders. Second is the specific reason he's prescribing it. It reduces spasticity in people with cerebral palsy. I view this as a pleasant side effect of what it's really good for, which is helping me concentrate on creative work for long periods of time in which I would ordinarily need to sleep. I hear some thanks to the rationalist community for having tested and certified a good offshore supplier, Sun Pharma, so that I can actually afford to take it. My experience with occasional use of this drug has been extremely positive. I remember I was walking with a graduate student at one of America's greatest universities and he confessed to using a cognitive cancer on occasion and he said it was called medaffinil. I said, medaffinil is the best, bro. I've been taking it almost daily for seven years. Love me some, medaffinil. Another post here, my experience with occasional use of this drug has been extremely positive. You want to be a peak performance and you can block out a long stretch of undistracted time. It is brilliant. Medaffinil is an interesting mystery because most of the other drugs with similar wakefulness effects have nasty side effects and high addictive potential. Nobody expected to find such a benign drug in this rather seedy and dangerous neighborhood. Yeah, so the New York Times. Minerva, why are you addicted to being a victim? You can purchase medaffinil online at a dozen different places, reliably and cheaply, but you would rather be a victim and complain about your problems and actually do anything about it. You were just so wedded, your victim perspective that, oh, in my area, you can't get it. You mean you don't have access to the mail in your area? You can't, there's no mail. You can't order things from overseas in your area because the mullers don't allow it. My God, you are so wedded to your victimhood. I just repeatedly told you how easy it is to obtain online, but you're just wedded. Oh, I can't get it in my area. Oh, I'm a victim, I can't get it. Can't get it, we don't have any mail in my area. I'm a victim, I'm a victim. New York Times, so medaffinil was developed in 1970s, so it's not like this is some new untested drug. And even the FDA says it's benign. So 2003, New York Times, advisory panel endorses more uses for medaffinil because it keeps people awake with fewer side effects than caffeine or amphetamines. Doctors say that medaffinil can keep people awake with less of the jitteriness and risk of addiction of caffeine or amphetamines. It was approved in 1998 to treat sleepiness from narcolepsy, but most prescriptions have been written for other uses like fatigue associated with depression or multiple sclerosis. There is some concern in the medical community that medaffinil could become a lifestyle drug used as a substitute for sleep by those who want to work or play longer. So, am I the only one who believes there is no chemical-free lunch? Yeah, there is no chemical-free lunch. Everything comes with a price. The price of medaffinil is, makes your urine smelly. So, but this idea that things that are natural are good and chemicals are bad is just absurd, right? There are a lot of people who need insulin every day, right, without insulin that their life is at risk. But oh my God, insulin's a chemical. Oh, there must be a price to pay for taking insulin. Yeah, there is a price to pay for taking insulin, but the price that you pay for not taking insulin is definitely greater. So yeah, there is a price to pay for taking chemicals, Elliot Blatt, but frequently the price you pay for not taking chemicals far outweighs the price that you pay for taking certain chemicals. So it's not like, oh, here's a chemical. Oh, there must be a big price to pay. Yes, there's a price to pay, but what's the price to pay for not taking the chemical? All right, so here is New York Times 2003. And FDA visuals said they were not overly concerned with the use of the drug by healthy people. Get that? 2003, New York Times, FDA not concerned about the use of Medaphnail by healthy people. Am I just a hippie loser? You're not a hippie loser. I'm just taking on the argument. I'm not taking on you. That there's no, I'm taking on the argument that it's something that's natural. Oh, that's automatically good, but things that are chemicals, that's automatically bad. I had that type of thinking all the time in my childhood, it's just so silly. And the idea, oh, there's a price to pay for taking chemicals. Guess what? There's a price to pay for taking natural substances. There's a price to pay for drinking water at a certain point. There's a price to pay for exercise. There's a price to pay for reading one book because you don't get to read another book or do something else. Everything comes with a price, not just chemicals. So 2003, New York Times, get this, FDA not concerned with the use of Medaphnail by healthy people because the drug was safe, right? How often do you hear the FDA saying they're not concerned about the use of the drug by healthy people, meaning off-label use, because the drug is safe, right? 2003, right? This is 18 years ago, New York Times, FDA official. Robert Temple said, it was not completely obvious that use of the drug just to keep healthy people alert would be a bad thing because sleepy people could endanger others. If they're driving next to me, I don't think I'd prefer they be on it, he said. Okay, so let me just retranslate. He says essentially there's no reason that healthy people taking Medaphnail for off-label uses should be of concern because more alert people are more likely to be better drivers. How often do you hear the FDA say that they're not concerned about healthy people taking a drug for off-label reasons because the drug is considered safe? And this is 18 years ago, right? Have we discovered things in the last 18 years that makes Medaphnail this incredible danger? No. Okay, so I'll put the link here to the New York Times article in the chat and in the video description. So it's New York Times from 2003. FDA says, not concerned about the use of Medaphnail by healthy people because it's considered safe. Okay, here are some more comments on Sleetstar Codex about Medaphnail. I love this. Medaphnail is, oh, Medaphnail side effects can include. Yes, they can include, right? They can. It's just that almost nobody experiences them to any significant degree. I prefer to live one notch above bottom. That's great. Good for you, Elliot. That's a very common saying in 12-step programs. Live your life one notch above bottom. But Medaphnail is interesting because almost all other drugs with its qualities have nasty side effects and high addictive potential. And you don't have either of those with Medaphnail. Nobody expected to find such a benign drug in this seedy and dangerous neighborhood. So not everybody in a dangerous neighborhood is dangerous. Not everybody in a seedy neighborhood is seedy. Next comment on Sleetstar Codex. What you experienced on Medaphnail as emotional blunting. I experienced as taking me to a calm cerebral place where I like to be. Yes, some people experience Medaphnail as emotional blunting. I experienced it as taking me to a calm cerebral place where I like to be. I became aware that it was dampening out minor mood swings but I found the effect positive. Yes, so prior to Medaphnail, my emotions would go like this during the day. Okay, so this is happiness. Okay, let's say this is happiness and below this is increasing levels of sadness. So prior to Medaphnail, my life would be like this in my inner subjective state. On Medaphnail, my life is like this. So I'm happy 95% of the time. Okay, question in the chat. What's more important to your contentment or productivity? It depends, it depends on what I'm producing and it depends on what I'm contributing and depends on where I am in my life. Yeah, Medaphnail can lead to resorting to stronger stimulants by the case loads such as crystal light, classic orange. Yeah, let's all take a simultaneous sip of our crystal light, classic orange. While I'm on Medaphnail, says a comment. I still love my wife and I like our cat a lot. I'm just maybe less expressive about it. One part of emotional range is not at all suppressed by Medaphnail, my sense of humor. I think I may be slightly more amusing and more easily amused when I'm on it. Yeah, I think I can, I think I can. Luke, you are confirming the medical aspects to behavior, therapy being nothing compared to biology and neurotransmitters. I'm not confirming anything. It depends on the circumstances and the person. Okay, I don't know what's going on with you but you're a bit of a downer. Have I been on Medaphnail while at a 12 step meeting? Well, as I've been on Medaphnail probably 90% of days since 2013, yeah. Did Medaphnail affect your speech? Not that I'm aware of. Getting all hopped up on offers makes the people around you hard to relate to. Yeah, well, Medaphnail is not a stimulant. It's not an upper. So there's a lot of sloppy talk that Medaphnail is a stimulant, it's not a stimulant. It just makes you a little more alert. Drugs like Medaphnail and Adderall and Caffeine and Nicotine are all used by academics, fighter jet pilots and pro gamers to temporarily improve performance. And then here's another comment on Sleetstar Codex. At some point I started looking at my life and realized something wasn't quite right with me. I went and saw a psychiatrist to determine that I was borderline for ADHD. So I think it's a shawnda that people can't get prescriptions. Like why should we be dependent upon some doctor writing us a prescription or not? Why shouldn't people have the option to choose what prescription drugs that they wanna try? Given the circumstances, the easiest way to get a definitive diagnosis was to write me a script for Medaphnail. He said, one of two things would happen. One, would have a significant reduction in symptoms providing solid evidence of some ADHD condition. Two, I'd be up on the roof of my house shooting at news helicopters at which point I shouldn't mention his name. The first day I took it, I cried. I was able to go outside and just be with the wind and the birds flying and be content. No more constant distraction by everything that I didn't realize didn't need to be there. It was awesome. Is that a beautiful story? So he got Medaphnail, first day he took it, he cried. He was able to go outside and just be with the wind and the birds flying around and he was content. Forty, did you say you had narcissism before? Narcissism isn't like cancer. Narcissism is a state that we go in and out of. If I'm doing a live stream, that there's gonna be some narcissistic element, okay? Narcissism means that you want recognition, right? You don't produce a live stream. You don't produce books or plays or art if you don't want recognition. So it's just to what extent do you have the narcissism? Do you have it at a 10 out of 10 level where you're very likely to get arrested or are you able to keep it at like say a five or a six where you would like some recognition but you're not gonna lose sleep if you don't get it? Overseas pharmacies like Medaphnail Cat and Canadian shipping, no, Medaphnail is nothing like that at all. And Canadian shipping pharmacies are illegal but they are tolerated because elderly people who want cheap drugs have good lobbyists and nobody wants a government arrest area grandmother with cancer story on the front page. And Scott Alexander Susskin, the author of Slate Star Codex writes, the Medaphnail you get from sketchy internet sites works pretty well. And I've heard zero recorded cases of serious side effects. Okay, this is Scott Alexander writing here. The Medaphnail you get from sketchy. Okay, Minerva, why are you here? You're a jerk. You want to be a part of this community but you can't help acting like a jerk and so I say bye bye. So Scott Alexander writes, the Medaphnail you get from sketchy internet sites works pretty well. I've heard zero recorded cases of serious side effects. The newer tropics sold by the newer tropics community tend to be pure and safe. There are a few cases where some people got bad batches of newer tropics, sent them off for analysis, found they were indeed bad, posted about it. Everyone heard those companies went out of business. Companies that the Cluton people buy from now are legit. And next comment, sort of people who buy a Medaphnail are exactly the rare sort of people who would go through the process of sending a drug they weren't sure about for analysis. So the level to which regulations about these drugs pretty flexible. So Medaphnail is technically illegal but no one's been prosecuted for possessing it. Next post I've taken Medaphnail only twice in my life. Each time I had a major reduction in anxiety. I'd get more of Medaphnail but first I'd have to remove my aversion to watering things online. And next post I personally found that Ammo-Daphnail, so that's a different version of Medaphnail. It's like Medaphnail but you can get it over the counter. Is importing illegal drugs a life that works? Well, it's driving 56 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, a life that works. Yes, it is. So if you drive down the freeway and the posted speed limit is 55, yet every car around you is going a minimum of 75 miles an hour. Okay, you can drive 55 and be an asshole, put your life at risk and put the lives of other people at risk. Laws are not just what's written on the books. Okay, so is hoarding. Okay, let's say you're an offensive lineman playing in the NFL and if you win the game you will get an extra $200,000 and be immortalized in history. And you notice that the refs aren't calling hoarding calls but there's no change to the laws on the box and they haven't officially notified you that they're much more reluctant to call hoarding. Okay, hoarding calls this past season in the NFL were two thirds of what they were the previous year but there's no official notification. So, oh my God, if we hold at normal levels is that a life that works? You're not always gonna be notified in life by which rules are gonna be enforced and to which degree. So you have to use common sense, right? If every car around you is driving 70 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, don't be a dick and drive 55, right? If officials are not calling hoarding then hey, officials aren't calling hoarding but I wanna obey the rules. So I'm not gonna hold, I'm gonna allow my quarterback to get hit. I'm gonna allow my quarterback to get knocked out of the game. I'm gonna allow my team to lose. I'm gonna forego the fame, the fortune, the great feelings and the money that comes from winning but hey, at least I played by the rules, right? You're not always gonna be notified in life by how the rules are being enforced. So yeah, you don't always just go by the rules on the books. You pay attention to circumstance and how the rules are being enforced. What if the officials are undercalling hoarding on one team? Well, what can you do about that? Nothing. So you pay attention to what they are calling with regard to you and your position. You pay attention to circumstances. You don't only pay attention to, oh, what's the rule on the book? Oh, will we give an official notification of an increased reluctance to called hoarding? Okay, I'm driving down the freeway at 55 miles an hour. Everyone is speeding past me going a minimum of 75 miles an hour but because the California Highway Patrol and the California DMV have not officially notified me that they're not gonna enforce the speed limit below 75 miles an hour, I'm just gonna keep here being a jerk, endangering my life and the lives around me by driving the speed limit at 55 miles an hour because following the law is a life that works. All right, there are nuance. You have to consider the context. Law isn't just the law on the books. What's far more important than the law on the books? You start a job, right? What's far more important than like the employee handbook you may get is what's enforced and what's not enforced. When you start a job and you're a normal person, you talk to other people, you find out what rules are enforced, what expectations are enforced and it's not gonna be what's on the book. It's not gonna be what's in the official welcoming seminar. All right, so the most valuable things you will learn at workplace is through gossip. But you can be, oh, I don't listen to gossip. When people gossip, I just walk away. Gossip is bad, gossip is wrong, gossip is dirty, the Bible invades against gossip. I'm not gonna listen to gossip. Therefore, I'm not gonna know how to operate in my workplace. I'm gonna be a jerk. How is driving 56 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone, how is that different from storming the Capitol? Oh, I guess what, go try it. Go, if you don't understand the difference between driving 56 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone and storming Capitol Hill, then go engage in both activities and see if you can then detect that there might be a difference. Like, why would you even ask that question? Like, is that not obvious? So, let's say you import Medaphnell, you buy it overseas. So, the odds are about 5% that customs will confiscate your shipment. But how many people then get prosecuted? Zero. How many people have gotten prosecuted for storming Capitol Hill? Over 200 at this point. Oh, what's the difference though? I can't see any difference. In one crime, it never gets prosecuted. In the other crime, it gets severely prosecuted. But gosh, that's just too bewildering. I mean, because technically, they're both breaking the law. Like, I just don't see the difference, okay? Storming Capitol Hill, hundreds of people are getting arrested and charged and their lives are being ruined and they're being fired. And there are all these nasty articles being written about them. And then, on the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of people who illegally buy prescription medicine overseas and virtually none of them get prosecuted. Oh, I just don't see the difference though, because after all, they're both violating the law. I mean, what's the difference between driving 56 miles an hour in a 55 zone and going out and murdering 57 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas? After all, they're both lawbreakers. What's the difference? So confusing. Let me have a look at the chat. The rules don't apply to me. Well, there are rules that are on the book. There are rules that are on the handout. And then there are rules as they are enforced or not enforced in reality. But to detect the difference between rules as they are enforced or not enforced in reality, as opposed to the rules on the book, requires a modicum of common sense, requires a teeny weeny bit of situational awareness. It requires like listening to other people, noticing circumstances, right? So after the LA riots, a friend of mine, he needed to go to the grocery store. And two or three days after the LA riots, and he had a LAPD friend who told him when you go to the grocery store, carry a gun. We're not gonna bust any citizens who are carrying guns in this dangerous time. So if you wanna be the literalist, it's like, oh, you can't carry a gun. No, I'm gonna go to the grocery store. I'm not gonna carry a gun. And I'm gonna put my life at risk and the well-being of my family at risk because I don't wanna violate the law after all. I could be sent away to prison for five years and find $200,000. Okay, LAPD officer tells you, if you go out during this dangerous time, carry a gun. The LAPD is not gonna bother ordinary citizens who are carrying a gun. So my friend went to the grocery store and at one point in the parking lots a very sketchy character started coming after him. He reached for his gun and they went away. So if you don't understand the difference between law as it's written on the books and law as it is enforced in reality, then you need to watch more of my live streams because I am here to help, right? You may very well get into a dangerous situation. You may have an earthquake, a hurricane, widespread looting. And while it may be illegal to go out with a gun, if you're a law-abiding citizen in certain circumstances, the police are not gonna give you a hard time for carrying a gun in extraordinary circumstances. Is medaffinil safe to mix with alcohol? I don't know, you'd have to Google it. I am not a doctor, I'm not a psychiatrist, and I prescribe. Next comment here on Scott Alexander's blog, I've been taking amodaffinil for a couple of years because of a sleep disorder. If I'm not actively working on something, I can literally fall asleep. Customs and laws differ tremendously from country to country. So there are laws, there are customs. Laws are on the books. Customs aren't always written down for you. So a pack of medaffinil might cost you $3 in an Indian pharmacy. Say a pack of 25 medaffinil tablets may well cost you $3 in an Indian pharmacy and cost you $80 if you're ordering it by mail from the United States on the gray market. Yes, this is not financial advice. This is not medical advice. Doesn't living in a Mohi cultural society make it more difficult to decipher the written versus the common law? Or common law does living in a Mohi cultural society, I think what you really mean is living in a Mohi cultural society, make it more difficult to discern the difference between the law and the books and the law as it is enforced. Maybe sometimes yes, perhaps and much of the time no. Mohi culturalism has nothing to do with understanding that you're driving down the freeway and everyone around you is going a minimum of 75 miles an hour and the posted speed limit is 55 miles an hour and you've been driving like this for an hour, right? Mohi culturalism has nothing to do with it. So plenty of times, Mohi culturalism has absolutely nothing to do with deciphering the difference between the law on the books and the law as it is enforced. Okay, there's a website one.net which is just as exhaustive information about Madafinelle. So I'll throw that down here. Okay, so guern.net says Madafinelle is a weakfulness stimulant drug developed in the 1980s. It is prescribed for narcolepsy but is widely used off-label for its stimulating effects and to deal with sleep deficits. It helps cognitive performance and productivity. It's advantages over other common stimulants. Madafinelle is more powerful, less addictive. It's easier to tolerate than caffeine or cat, much longer lasting than nicotine, less likely to auto-mood or produce tweaking behavior than Adderall or V-vance. It's more legal and with almost no side effects compared to meth and fadamine or cocaine or Ritalin or ADHD drugs. On any specific aspect, there may well be a stimulant superior to Madafinelle but few stimulants come even close to Madafinelle's overall package of being a long lasting, safe, effective, non-mood altering quasi-legal stimulant and that is why it has become so popular. So yeah, I'm thinking about buying prescription drugs via the mail, which is grey market or illegal. So plenty of senior citizens or other people in the prescription medication, right? They could buy prescription drugs through conventional means and be out say $1,000 a month or they could buy the same medicines illegally through the mail and spend $40 a month. But I'm telling you, it's much better to spend that $1,000 a month, right? So that you can fund our pharmacology companies than to buy the same medicine for $40 a month through the mail because that's illegal, right? So please, please spend over $1,000 a month. And Elliot is the contrarian tonight. Yes, my name is Luke. I can't sleep. I take a drug that promotes insomnia. Guess what? Madafinelle does not promote insomnia except in rare instances. If you take it 12 hours before your bedtime at least as many hours, 15 hours. So I take mine at about 5.30 a.m. I go to bed about 9 p.m. So by that time, 70% of the drug, 80% of the drugs out of my system. So Madafinelle's made no difference in my ability to sleep. I had trouble sleeping before Madafinelle. Had trouble sleeping after Madafinelle. Madafinelle's made no difference in my ability or in other people's ability to sleep with rare exceptions. Now, once you take it, you're not gonna be able to sleep generally speaking for 15 hours. Alexander Technique, I guess it's probably helped some people with sleep. Was America always a multicultural society? America was always multicultural compared to more homogeneous societies such as Germany, Japan, England, or Australia. I take no drugs and sleep deeply. Good for you, Elliot. Do you want a prize? Do you want a button? I mean, what do you seek? Good on you, mate. I'm so glad. Let's compete. Let's compete here over the quality of our lives. So tell me about how awesome you are. Luke is mad. Well, if this is mad, then I wish this date of mad on everyone. Because if you don't say anything you regret, if you don't do anything you regret, then mad doesn't come with a price. So Madaf Nile stems from Adraff Nile. So that's a wakefulness drug developed back in the late 1970s. So it's been around a long time. The elimination half-life is 12 to 15 hours. Do I fall asleep listening to music or podcasts or ASMR? I used to fall asleep listening to music, sometimes just silence, sometimes certain audio books. So Wolf Hall, I've been allowing that to play at night for the past few weeks. The elimination half-life is approximately 12 to 15 hours. So if I take Madaf Nile at 5.30 a.m., I will usually be pretty sleepy by about 8.30 p.m. So Madaf, here's another comment. Yeah, this is from guern.net. It is overall a better stimulant than caffeine or amphetamines and it targets different brain receptors than amphetamines. The picture is good enough with Madaf Nile that some bioethicists are daring enough to go off their usual script and abandon the precautionary principle and suggest that maybe healthy people using Madaf Nile might be a good thing. And I quoted you FDA officials saying that. Besides compensating for sleep-related mental deficits combined with short naps, it may make you smarter even if you're healthy. As she says, I feel like I have greater insights during the half-awake dream-like state in between waking and sleep. Yeah, same here. Madaf Nile improves function in several cognitive domains including working memory and episodic memory and other processes dependent on prefrontal cortex and cognitive control. These effects are observed in rodents, healthy adults and across several psychiatric disorders. And the FDA in general takes pretty optimistic view about any side effects or long-term issues. Okay, so is there anything else you've tried that's made a bigger difference in your life beside Madaf Nile? Yeah, I'd say 12 step programs probably made a bigger difference in my life than Madaf Nile and the Fisher Wallace device. So this Fisher Wallace device, I'd say I became about 25% happier. Like I just, people notice me smiling all the time just becoming a much happier person after using this Fisher Wallace device. So it's FDA approved, just wet the syringes and I just take this when I go to bed. And it's called the Fisher Wallace, big fan of the Fisher Wallace device. So that made pretty big improvement in my life. It helps with depression and it helps with sleep. If you almost never smile, try the Fisher Wallace stimulator and you will start smiling again. Elliot Blatt says, I win, you lose. That's how hard everything works. Okay, now this is my Jim McMahon look. People got so mad that the Chicago Bears and because their defense was so big and tough they couldn't take it out on the defense. So they took it out on the quarterback and just like beat the heck out of Jim McMahon. Okay, what else do we have here? Here's another comment on Slate Star Codex. I found my daft nails one of the few things I've taken that is a noticeable cognitive enhancement effect. One seems to be able to thread one's way through complex thoughts or actions in a calm laser-like fashion. That's my experience too. So anyway, the Slate Star Codex article came out in the New York Times and Steve Saylor has really worked up about it because he says that the New York Times was doxing Scott Alexander by revealing his real name, Scott Alexander Susskin. So revealing someone's name that is already widely known and easily available online is hardly a dox. So let's have a look at this New York Times story. So right, so here's the main point that if you have a lot of reasons for why you want people to do things for you, that's gonna be irrelevant to most people. So Scott Alexander was blogging about how all the reasons that he wanted to stay anonymous, but why would you expect strangers to care? Have I tried drinking chamomile tea? Yeah, that's helped. So we have reasons for why we want other people to do things for us to throw down super chats, right? That doesn't mean that you need to accommodate my wishes or anyone else's wishes. Like our reasons for things are usually gonna be irrelevant to other people, even irrelevant to people who love us, okay? Think about your life. Do you live your life accommodating the enumerated desires of strangers if these desires interfere with what you want? So I'm usually amused when people who are peripheral to my life go to great lengths and tell me why they want what they want from me. Relying on the kindness of strangers is not a life that works. So if we wanna follow Scott Alexander's principle, the people acting in the public square should not be named if they don't want to be named. Well, that would end reporting because any story with a sting will inevitably threaten somebody's safety while simultaneously enhancing other people's safety while making them better informed. There's no constitutional or moral right to privacy. If you're acting in the public square, if you are performing in the public square, whether you're performing pornography or blogging, there's no inherent right that people don't find out who you are. People confuse freedom of speech with the fantasy that there should be no negative consequences for anything I say or do. So Steve Saylor writes, The New York Times has finally published their notorious article Doxing Scott Alexander. The pseudonymous psychiatrists are at the Slate Star Codex blog, which is now revived as Astral Codex 10 on Substack. Your author prudently shut down his blog because his patients, which include numerous crazy people, might lash out violently if informed by The New York Times of his writing. Yeah, really, how many psychiatrists have suffered grievous bodily harm because of their blog posts? I'm not aware of any. You know, anything you do publicly increases the odds, the good and bad things will happen to you. As a British author, Rory Sutherland, who said on a recent podcast, you make yourself widely known and famous because you increase your chances of getting lucky in some way you can't predict in advance. One point of fame is to simply increase your surface area exposure to lucky accidents. Same time that you increase your surface area exposure to lucky accidents, you increase your surface area exposure to unlucky accidents. Fame, like everything else in life, is a blessing and a curse. You can't handle your fears about the consequences that might come from vlogging or blogging. Stop blogging and blogging and delete your blogs and blogs. It's not the job of third parties to cater to your fears. Also, what you say and how you say it will have a major role in how other people react to you. It pays to encourage the better angels of human nature rather than demons. Okay, so Scott Alexander wrote in his June 22nd, 2020 blog post, after considering my options, I decided if there's no blog, there's no story. So he thought that if he deleted his blog, there'd be no New York Times story. Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of the New York Times as strategy of doxing random bloggers for clicks I mean, how bizarrely out of touch with reality is this psychiatrist deleting your blog just adds to the story. And the New York Times article was not part of a nonexistent New York Times strategy of doxing random bloggers for clicks. Scott Alexander is not a random blogger. There's no such New York Times strategy except in Scott Alexander's delusional thinking. Scott Alexander wrote about the prospective New York Times article. This was just going to be a nice piece saying I got some things about coronavirus early on. I mean, how deluded is this guy? Grow up, man. The New York Times did not mention coronavirus in the article. Scott Alexander wrote June 22nd, in my ideal world, the New York Times realizes they screwed up, promises not to use my real name in the article and promises to rethink their strategy of doxing random bloggers for clicks. Grow up, man. Okay, so Scott Alexander came back January 21, 2021 on Substack. Apparently he got something like $250,000 to write for Substack. And he wrote a long post. No, seriously, it was awful. I deleted my blog of 1,557 posts. I wanted to protect my privacy. Yeah, like porn stars want to protect their privacy. They want to suck and fuck on camera, but they want to protect their privacy. He wanted to develop an enormous online following, but he wants to protect his privacy. But I ended up with articles about me in New Yorker, Reason and the Daily Beast. I wanted to protect my anonymity, but I stricent affected myself. Yeah, he brought on much more attention. And a bunch of trolls went around posting my real name everywhere they could find. Yeah, if you communicate to the world, this is my greatest fear. People will, many people will enjoy you know, bringing about your greatest fear. People just pick up on your fears and then if they want to torment you, they just press on that very sensitive point. Yeah, yeah. And you don't get to control them and their choices. What you do get to control is your own ability for developing emotional resilience. Is Madaphnil the best $60 a month that I spend? Maybe. How is my best dollar spent? I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything's better than Madaphnil for $60 a month. I mean, I get a lot of use out of my LA Times subscription. That's $4 a month. I think I pay $4 a month for the New York Times. I think I pay $1 a month for the Wall Street Journal. I pay about $5 a month for the Athletic. I pay what, $6 a month for ESPN Plus. $9 a month for Netflix. $140 a month for Amazon Prime. I feel like those are all good deals. I wanted to avoid losing my day job, Scott Alexander Purse, but I ended up quitting it so they wouldn't be affected by the fallout. Oh yeah, so this reminds me of this woman I know who just hates Donald Trump with a passion. So she needed this extensive medical treatment for apparently some fairly serious health problems, but she decided to quit her treatment like partway through in the summer of 2016 because she was convinced that when Donald Trump, if Donald Trump became president, he would change America's healthcare system and a treatment would no longer get covered by insurance. Like, how self-defeating is that? Before Trump was even elected, she quit her needed healthcare treatment. And I mean, she just carries this enormous hatred of Trump around on her shoulder because he must represent some other man who's done her wrong. She quit needed medical treatment because she thought if Trump became president, it won't get covered by my insurance. And Trump was in office for four years. It didn't affect her health insurance in any way. And when I asked her what freedoms have you lost under Donald Trump, she could not name one, but just still has this very emotional hatred. Adam Townsend, as I've lost respect for him the past few weeks, like he was producing such excellent content and I didn't know what's happened to him. Like, if he's following Darren Beatty too closely, but I didn't know what's happened to Adam Townsend is to really enjoy his tweets. So Scott Alexander, right? I wanted to avoid losing my day job, but I ended up quitting it, so they wouldn't be affected by the fallout. This is just like my friend, who like quit her needed medical treatment because she thought if Donald Trump becomes president, then my insurance will no longer cover it. Like crazy self-defeating behavior. Like, oh, I'm quitting my day job, so my employer won't be affected by the fallout. Darren Beatty streaming with Adam in a bathroom proved to me Darren is not doing well. He looks like he hasn't slept. Did I change my views on Ben Shapiro? No, I didn't change my views on Ben Shapiro. Darren Beatty spends too much time on Twitter getting high and like, yeah, Darren Beatty is, like has some interesting things to say and a lot of insane things to say. Now, I haven't changed my views on Ben Shapiro. I mean, I don't think about Ben Shapiro. He has a gig where he speaks very rapidly presenting the most conservative views possible within the acceptable Overton window. I don't think about Ben Shapiro. I mean, I don't think about almost any pundit. They're all pointless from my perspective. I lost a five-digit sum in advertising and Patreon fees. Okay, you did it to yourself. I accidentally sent about 300 emails to each of 5,000 people in the process of trying to put my blog back up. Yeah, so he had awful reactions to reality. Luke needs to help his fellow Jew, Darren Beatty, and convince him to get on the midfinal. Scott Alexander says a Slate Star Codex reader admitted to telling a New York Times reporter the Slate Star Codex was interesting. You should write a blog about it, the reporter pursued the story on his recommendation. So it wasn't an attempt by the Times to crush a competitor. It wasn't retaliation for my having written some critical things about the news business. It wasn't a political attempt to cancel me. So I just told a reporter I would make a cool story and the reporter went with it. Yeah, so if you don't want attention, don't publish even on a blog. It's like women who wear really short skirts and then when you sit opposite them, they spend the whole time trying to pull their short skirts down to try to cover up their thighs. Like if you don't want men looking at your thighs, don't wear short skirts. Scott Alexander wrote in January, so three weeks ago. So the New York Times mistakes, I think they just didn't expect me to care about anonymity as much as I did. Why would you expect the New York Times to care about your feelings in the first place? It's not on the Times to care about your feelings. It's your job to care about your feelings. It's not the New York Times's job to care about your feelings. Scott Alexander wrote back in the early 2010s, I blogged under my real name and I interviewed for my dream job in psychiatry. The interviewer had Googled me, he'd found my blog and asked me some pointed questions about whether having a blog meant I was irresponsible and unprofessional. Yeah, a lot of people have gotten into trouble for having a blog. A lot of people have gotten into trouble for having a girlfriend. A lot of people have gotten into trouble for having a rabbi or a priest or a minister or a church or a particular workout routine. There's nothing, a lot of people have gotten into trouble for drinking 20 glasses of water a day. A lot of people have gotten into trouble going for a run. A lot of people have gotten into trouble going for a swim. A lot of people have gotten into trouble going to take a shower. A lot of people have gotten into trouble when a bookshelf has fallen on them. There's nothing you can do that doesn't have a potential downside. There are consequences to every single action you take. Ricardo says, I got in trouble for attending Luke's online synagogue. He's a rebel rabbi, right? So often our desires are incompatible. On the one hand, we want to be married. On the other hand, we want to screw around. Will I speak to Eric Stryker again? Maybe. I didn't have any strong opinion one way or another. Can you get into the downs? Oh, I thought I listed them. So the downsides of the daphnil is that it'll make your pee smelly. It gives you increased confidence. So increased confidence for some people will put them in danger. Like some people don't need increased confidence. Some people will make some bad decisions with increased confidence. And there's an emotional bluntedness, right? You don't have like the normal level of emotional ups and downs. Instead, you just kind of fly around at a pretty happy level, reduce creativity, less ability to think out of the box. Hey, Megan, how are you? Long time no talk. You and the people close to you staying healthy. So those are the main downsides of the daphnil. Smelly pee. Increased confidence, which for some people can be dangerous. So some people with increased confidence no, my daphnil is not speed. So if some people increase confidence, couldn't lead to them making risky driving choices or risky verbal choices. Great, glad to hear, Megan, that you're good. Your son's living with you and you're all doing well. And then you have less creativity and less ability to think outside the box. And you may have slightly diminished or moderately diminished empathy. You're less likely to be overwhelmed by your empathy for other people. And those are the downsides of which I'm aware. Oh, you don't want to be in Vegas. Like a lot of bright lights can be disturbing if you're on the daphnil, because with the daphnil, you tend to see patterns. Yeah, I know some, look, everything you can find a downside. So you can find some people who can talk about, oh, I had a bad experience with my daphnil. I got like skin rashes. And this guy wrote, my smart drugs nightmare. Okay, so remember when you read the news, they're looking for attention, they're looking for eyeballs. What's going to get attention? My smart drugs nightmare. And you think, oh my God, what was his nightmare? He got, he had to go to the ER. Did he like lose permanent brain function? Like, what's his nightmare? His nightmare was he had a rash and he felt jittery. He felt distracted. He found himself focusing on the wrong things. He developed a bad headache. He lost his appetite and he needed to pee more frequently. And he had difficult sleeping and he got an itchy lump on the back of my leg. And that's the nightmare. He got a headache and a little trouble sleeping, a little jittery and that's the nightmare. That's not a nightmare. That's like a normal day. And I became more dehydrated. Okay, so why didn't you drink water? Right, you can always find someone who is bummed out by something. It doesn't have pretty bad side effects except for a tiny number of people who may or may not be inventing them in their head. So overall, it's the smart, it's the safe smart drug. That's the overwhelming consensus. But guess what? Some people will look to have bad experiences. Like you try to help some people and say, oh no, you know, I'm getting an itch and I'm getting a headache and I'm feeling a little jittery, right? Unless you can publish an article saying, you know, my smart drug nightmare. What's your smart drug nightmare? You got a headache. You got dehydrated because he wasn't drinking enough water and he peed a lot and he had some insomnia. Oh my God. Oh, and he got a bit of a rash or an itch. Wow, what a nightmare. The poor guy had to deal with an itch. He had to deal with a headache. He had to deal with going to the bathroom to pee frequently. Oh, he had a bit of trouble sleeping. Wow, what a nightmare. This guy's been through hell. Yeah. Every single substance on earth, you can find someone who has a bad experience with it. Someone could drink crystal light classic orange and come up with some bad experience. Somebody could pick up the Bible and have a bad experience. Somebody could turn on the telly and have a bad experience. Some guy can, you can go for a walk, right? And you can get mugged. You can have a bad experience. You can go for a walk and trip and fall and break your leg. You can take a shower, fall in the shower and die, right? Everything can be a bad experience. But for this guy, he got a bit of an itch and he had to go pee and it turned into my smart drugs nightmare. Oh, by Benjamin Zand. What a pussy. And so Scott Alexander says, when I didn't get the job or several others, I thought I was a shoe in for, I thought I'd have to give up my medical career and that my life was over. Okay, so if you feel like your life is over because you don't get hired in a particular job, you're a pussy and you need to grow up. Scott Alexander writes in January, 2021. In the New York Times worldview, they start with the right to dox me. Well, guess what? They do have a right to say your name, right? You don't have miracle omnipotent powers to prevent other people from saying your name. So Scott Alexander starts with the supposition that he has the right to prevent other people from saying his name if he doesn't want them to say his name. Our reputations don't belong to us. My reputation resides in your head and in the heads of other people and I don't control other people's heads. My reputation does not belong to me. My name does not belong to me. You're free to use it. In the New York Times worldview, they start with the right to dox me. Remember by dox here, I'm so sick of people using this hyperbolic dramatic language. Like it's doxing if they use my name. And I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I'm the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. Yeah, everybody has the right to say your name, right? You don't have any rights to compel people not to say your name. Alexander wrote in January for the first 10, 20 years of its history, the internet had a robust norm against doxing. Okay, so there's likely a better class of people online in the early days. Scott Alexander writes in January, if me setting myself on fire got the New York Times to rethink some of its policies and accidentally helped some of these people to win their own fights, it was totally worth it. I mean, this is just completely delusional. Now I get that everybody wants to see himself as a hero, particularly when they've publicly acted like a complete blithering idiot and brought about the very things that they feared most. Now this is a good bit in Scott Alexander's blog post in January, 2021. Almost everything good in my life I've gotten because of blogging. I've met most of my friends through blogging. I met my housemates. So he lives with like 10 people. So I don't know if he's polyamorous. I met my housemates who are my family right now through blogging. I'd introduced to my girlfriend through blogging. My parents are doing better than, my patients are doing better than they could be. Some of them vastly better because of the things I learned through blogging. That's the intellectual progress I've made over the past 10 years. There's been following up on leads. People sent me because of my blogging. Yeah. Well, every rose has its thorn. It's not like you can do something and there's gonna be absolute guaranteed, no downside. I mean, look, we both lie here silently still in the dead of the night. Although we both lie close together, we feel miles apart inside. Was it something I said or something I did? Did the words not come out right? Though I tried not to hurt you. Though I tried, but I guess that's what they say. Every rose has its thorn. Just like every night has its dawn. Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn. Right? That's my reaction to Scott Alexander. He just said that basically all the great things in his life are because of blogging. But he expects this to come with no downside. It's like you get married and your life is wonderful. But it comes with the downside that you can't screw around anymore. Look, every rose has its thorn. Just like every night has its dawn. Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn. All of us can sing a sad, sad song. We all have a sad, sad song. I listened to our favorite song playing on the radio. Here the DJ say loves a game of easy come and easy go. But I wonder, does he know? Has he ever felt like this? I know that you'd be right here now if I could have let you know somehow. Every rose has its thorn. Just like every night has its thorn. Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song. Every rose has its thorn. Every blog has its thorn. Every vlog has its thorn. Every YouTube video has its thorn. Every cold, refreshing, delicious glass of crystal light, classic orange has its thorn. Every chocolate ice cream has its thorn. Every Sheila has its thorn. Every bloke has its thorn. You know, even a wonderful, upstanding, patriotic, amazing American like Ricardo Williams, even Ricardo Williams has its thorn. Like Ricardo Williams just been a massive blessing to my life. You know, Ricardo just like immediately enhances the quality of this show. Elliot Blatt, massive benefit to my life and to this show over the past year. Ricardo's been in my life for almost three years. But guess what, Ricardo has a thorn. Even Elliot Blatt has its thorn. 40 has a thorn. There's nothing that doesn't have a thorn. Every good thing has its thorn. You want to belong to Orthodox Judaism? It has its thorn. You want to belong to a church? It has its thorn. Yeah, Twitter DMs, like Ricardo and I became a little too forthright. So some people, you don't want to have like too forthright a daily interaction. Just like a little bit of distance and everything's peachy. But everyone has its thorn. And so you want to sniff that beautiful rose. You want to hold that beautiful rose. There are going to be thorns on it. Now, oh, thank you, Ricardo, that's very kind. I'm not as emotionally honest as you. So I can't really, I can't really deal with what you say because I'm a Daphnel and I'm emotionally blunted and I don't have as much empathy. So yes, Ricardo and I have fallen out on several occasions. Oh, maybe one or two occasions. And well, okay, I'm emotionally blunted. I don't have Ricardo's emotional honesty. I can't do it. I can't do it. Yeah, every metropolis has its inner city urban decay. I love that. Babs and Luke fell out last week. Oh yeah, yeah, Babs and I, we were going back and forth pretty intensely last Saturday night. Yeah, maybe it's just part of my relationship cycle with Ricardo. Okay. So Scott Alexander wrote about two weeks ago, I've taken the steps I need to feel comfortable revealing my real name online. I talked to an aggressively unhelpful police officer about my personal security. I got advice from people who are more famous than I am who have laid some fears and offered some suggestions. Some of the steps they take seem extreme. The internet is a scarier place than I thought. That's the key phrase. Not only is the internet a scarier place than most of us think about, life in general is a far scarier place. Reality, the real world, inside, outside, at work, at play, at worship is a scarier place than you consciously realize because we can't handle how scary reality is. So we deny it and ignore it. Yes, internet's a scarier place than most people think. Walking down the street is a scarier experience than most people think. Going to church, going for a run, going to work, driving down the street, everything is more dangerous than what you consciously think most of the time. Every chat has its high T. So I've taken somewhat, they said to a heart, rejected the rest in a calculated way and realized realistically, I was never that protected anyhow. Yes, there's no perfect protection. The world, other people, everybody is fundamentally dangerous, everybody. There's nobody who does not contain a significant element of danger. The internet is dangerous, the world's dangerous. Everything is dangerous. Everything that is human is dangerous. The human being is fundamentally dangerous. Scott Alexander says, I wondered if I'd enjoy the break from blogging. I didn't particularly. It felt at least as much like trying to resist an addiction as it did feel like resting from a difficult task. Yeah, he stopped blogging for six months and it was painful. John says, I'm not dangerous, bro. If you think you're not dangerous, then you are deluded. That's it for now, bye-bye.