I find the listed side effects don’t happen for me besides occasional flush/blush. Which at my age is more like youthful vigor.
Caffeine is is 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, pentoxyfylline is 3,7-dimethyl-1-(5-oxohexyl)xanthine.
Good effects are: sustained mental clarity, focus and energy with a smoother more stable baseline than caffeine’s bursty performance; good sleep, but strangely you can also stay up, if you prefer; feeling similar to “after exercise”. Half life is listed as under 1 hour, but beneficial effects can be felt for half a day after 400mg (a standard dose). So maybe there’s something like metabolite dynamics occurring here too.
This ends my erowid/hive style “trip/nootropic” report ;)
People who drink caffeine at night may claim to be able to sleep still, but they will find that deep sleep stages are shorter, which is significant because it may be the most important type of sleep.
I did this for a while working nights until I caught on. The nights I didn't have a can were much better.
The claim being made is that due to cascading decay of a secondary metabolite that does a lot of the work producing the clinical effect, caffeine elimination is a much more linear, slow process that only reaches half effect at around 10 hours and 1/4 effect at 17 hours, 1/8 effect at 23 hours.
In your example, a 200 mg caffeine intake in the morning, least to 100mg at noon, 50mg at 5PM, 25mg at 10PM. Yes that means you still have 25mg of caffeine. But it's unlikely to have an outcome you can measure since it's below a minimum threshold.
The literature for AASM protocols suggests 41 hours without caffeine is enough to safely control for those potential effects
But the real question is: does it taste as good as espresso?
I'm not a biologist, but I'm under the impression that your body uses the heuristic of "the more acutely a neurotransmitter is suddenly flooded into our system, the more of a homeostatic counter-response we're going to launch in the form of things like dopamine downregulation (etc, depending upon what neurutransmitter we're talking about)".
I'm not entirely sure this is true, but it seems to be corroborated by other researchers (e.g. Anna Lembke in her book Dopamine Nation, which isn't about caffeine though).
This is why substances like theacrine claim to offer even less tolerance than paraxanthine: it has a super gradual adenosine-blocking curve, with super long half-life (like 12-16 hours, IIRC). So when you take one theacrine, you won't notice it for hours, but its effects will last longer than one day (though I forget what its interaction with sleep is supposed to be?).
You have to consider pharmacodynamics: where is the site of action located, where are the receptors located. And how well do caffein and paraxanthine distribute to this compartment.
Soiler: Most metabolites are more hydrophilic than respective parent compounds (biological sense of metabolism: to increase renal clearance of xenobiotics). Therefore, receptor affinity alone tells you little about the relative contribution of any metabolite for the pharmacological effect observed.
And to complicate things even more: Long-half life metabolites are only ONE potential reason for prolonged biological effects.
Biochemistry is rarely a one-and-done event it would seem.
It looks like pharmacokinetics (ie how long caffeine stays in blood) is what's been studied mostly, and that's where the 5h timeline is coming from. I couldn't find papers on the timeline of pharmacodynamics of caffeine (how long it has effects).
That's an interesting gap this article is underlining!
~5 years ago I stopped drinking the afternoon coffee, and have subjectively noticed improvements in my sleep -- less wakeful in the night. It also fits better with my sleep habits, where when I was younger I commonly worked past midnight whereas now I'm asleep by 10 pm and wake up early.
I still drink the morning coffee and I wouldn't switch to another stimulant because the main reason I drink coffee is because I enjoy drinking coffee :)
Dopamine and Noradrenaline
For dopamine its the competitive for the adenosine part of the dopamine heretodimer....meaning it prevents adenosine from binding and closing the dopamine receptor....
I use the effect on both dopamine and noradrenaline to assist in controlling my ADHD via more herb based means....
But author is yes correct that the metabolism of caffeine in how it breaks down does make the half life of its effects longer than 5 hours...I combine my dose with green tea ECGC which gives me a good focus boost of 12-16 hours...
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is worth a read.
Or a listen: https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56
What does that mean?
It also has neuro-protective effects if you're an older gentleman.
Years later, I replaced my ADHD medication with low-strength nicotine patches and I find it as effective, cheaper, longer-lasting and with less addictive potential than dexamphetamine. The side effects when I forget a patch are much less than not having my morning cup of coffee — just extremely distractable and lower energy.
Smoking is terrible, but I wish people learned that the effects of smoking are much more intense from the effects of pure nicotine.
That very much depends on the medium. It's virtually impossible for a nicotine naive individual to get addicted to losenges or gum.
If I'm on vacation I don't even think about having a gum. It's only when I'm working, notice I'm dragging, and remember the option.
Coffee is an acquired taste, I think. People conditions themselves to like the bitter taste of coffee over time. I remember hating the taste of coffee (or beer, for example) in childhood.
Billions all over the world managed to acquire it just fine.
If that's an acquired taste, I doubt 99% of drinks that aren't an acquired taste would do much better, assuming there's anything doing better than coffee to begin with.
Not even Cola and tea come close.
I wouldn't be surprised if all tastes are essentially "acquired".
I agree with your main point, though. I hated coffee most of my life. Even the smell made me feel ill. At some point, I flipped. I've always liked tea, fwiw.
I guess I don't hate beer as much as I used to. Still don't like it, though. Maybe another few decades?
I don’t know where you live, but in Italy it’s extremely difficult to find a good espresso; you must go in "specialty coffee" places to taste real coffee, as all the bars use cheap coffee that tastes burnt. Ironically, it’s a country that takes pride in its coffee "tradition" but doesn’t know what coffee tastes like. The experience is the same in France, without the "tradition" thing.
I found the need I really needed satisfied was a warm cup of something to curl my hands around in the morning, and they all worked after I let them. ymmv.
Great book.
In the new model, it's still smooth decay, but it's a compound exponential decay which is spread out over a longer time period, and close to linear for a while after that, before going on a longer exponential decline.
Aha: "identity". You nailed the misgivings I couldn't articulate. Thank you.
Douglas Adams nailed the quality of tea from a vending machine, "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea", and that era of coffee machines weren't much better at coffee.
(And even if that source were true, that wouldn't make the genetic effect an absolute; it would depend on individual genetics and the variable expression of those genes. And probably on the individual's experience, either as a child or as an adult.)
Still decaf only. Has been a pretty positive change for me. Kicked the soda habit completely. Sleep is better. I find I’m even all day. I generally only get tired when I’m bored.
Maybe preground OK for non-espresso too?
It's all a matter of how long it takes to reach peak concentration in your blood stream. Smoking takes seconds, lozenges take minutes, a patch takes 2 to 3 hours.
Is that a warning or an endorsement?
And like, I'm not a writing snob. I read fanfic by amateur authors. But HPMOR just doesn't do much of anything interesting.
I think interesting is more a subjective thing than objective, also.
Matcha is virtually entirely water. Multiple sources say that matcha has about 270 mg of amino acids per serving. Even if matcha powder were 100% amino acids (which would taste vile), a 2g serving would still be 2g.
Milk has about 4.5 grams of amino acid content per 100g (less than half a cup).
I've not gotten that kind of profile out of anything but fairly-expensive beans roasted within the last couple of weeks, though. I've never seen it out of even mid-priced beans, nor anything nationally distributed. It's practically a totally different drink from what you get if you ask for a coffee in most contexts.
Iced coffee and cold brew are also fairly different. I find middling beans can make a much milder and more pleasant cold brew coffee than hot. Tiny (like, a teaspoon) splash of cream or milk and it takes the bitter edge all but completely off, to my taste anyway.
Good beans will last more than 2 weeks, but yes—just as you wouldn't judge all sushi based on gas station sushi, we shouldn't judge coffee based on months-old pre-ground grocery store roasts.
Next you'll be claiming that we shouldn't judge sushi based on months-old grocery store sushi.
Matcha may be tasty. It’s not a good source of aminos.
or, if you don't buy into the "they're all the same" arguments, at least beware of the arguments against utilitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
>Writing in Asterisk, a magazine related to effective altruism, Ozy Brennan criticized Gebru's and Torres's grouping of different philosophies as if they were a "monolithic" movement. Brennan argues Torres has misunderstood these different philosophies, and has taken philosophical thought experiments out of context.[21] Similarly, Oliver Habryka of LessWrong has criticized the concept, saying: "I've never in my life met a cosmist; apparently I'm great friends with them. Apparently, I'm like in cahoots [with them]."
The people that coined TESCREAL seem to not really be related to rationalists, and seem to have coined a term for "those vaguely related ideas from people that do some stuff we consider wrong and we consider bad". "Evil people from San Francisco" could work just as well I think.
And wait, shouldn't I beware arguments for utilitarianism rather than against? If that's what you meant yeah I agree, especially pushed to the extreme it leads you in very weird places.
You should beware of bad utilitarian arguments though, which is where you often get the real "gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette" kind of arguments that justify all manners of atrocity in service of some narrow hypothetical future good.
Like when Marc Andreessen says we should consider anyone who would do something to slow down or regulate AI advancement murderers of future humans. Bad utilitarianism right there.
Proper utilitarians are concerned with the net difference between all positive and negative consequences of actions.
I meant that one should acquaint oneself with the criticisms of utilitarianism, if one wants to understand what it is people react to in rationalism and related communities.
Like any group of humans, there are power structures and edge cases that can lead to horrific outcomes. Giving the person that posted the warning the benefit of the doubt, I think what they are saying is that "Rationalist does not necessarily mean positive for humanity, nor even no harm for humanity". This holds for all religions and religion-like movements, of which Rationalism, in this sense, is one.
Edit: though I don't want to diminish that this specific group is a cult with classical cult techniques like sleep deprivation and with the disastrous consequences often associated with cults.
> They claim to practice unihemispheric sleep (UHS), a form of sleep deprivation intended to "jailbreak" the mind, which they believe can enhance their commitment to their cause.[
Because it uses the language and thinking patterns of the Rationalists, it serves as a strong indoctrination tool. The site itself isn't bad but, as someone who flirted with those communities as a result of the site, I think the warning is deserved.
Like, sure, sometimes you get popular nonsense like recovered memories or accidental fires can't be as hot as intentional fires or shaken-baby syndrome or bite-mark analysis. But a lot of times, everyone isn't wrong and you've just overlooked something critical or misdefined the problem.
Imagine dressing Pascal's Wager up in blinking lights and considering yourself a rationalist.
Yudkowsky banned discussion of it for 5 years because he considered it a threat
The older I get, the more I find that everyone is wrong. It's fucking astounding how much stuff either was never actually checked, or is true only under very select circumstances with those caveats being widely ignored. For example at work right now we have been using a test for 40 years that was developed around the idea that our product absorbed air - chemical variation would lead to extreme differences in results and you can't retest an item for at least 24 hours because it will still be affected. Turns out that none of that was true, all the error we were getting was from temperature change, the items can be retested after 45 seconds. 40 years and no one took 30 minutes to verify this claim which costs us millions of dollars per year. And this is just the example from this past week. I've probably seen several hundred such cases of completely unjustified claims being treated as gospel truth.
I can't speak for the countless things I've never tested, but if nearly everything I do test is wrong, across numerous fields full of very intelligent people, it doesn't give me much confidence about everything else. We live in a world that values simplicity and confidence, not nuance and rigorous verification. I've gotten to the point where I don't trust anything without verification, not even my own past work.
Gestures at the current state of the world
Not that adopting rationalist modes of thinking will fix the problem, of course. Teach rationalist principles to an idiot and you will have a slightly more rational idiot, who will reason himself into absurdity. Teach them to a manipulative, amoral psychopath and you will have a more skillful manipulator.
Rationalist principles and methods provide superior tools for thinking through some complex problems, but they say nothing about foundational ethics (other than pointing out possible sources for the many different systems of ethical beliefs). And they cannot be wielded effectively by people who lack the ability to decouple, to think abstractly, or to create extended “chains” of thoughts and keep them in working memory.
One should be suspicious of anyone who claims that rationalism is a panacea, or alternatively that it is somehow a problem per se. It’s a neutral set of tools, a community who wants to improve those tools, and a small group hanging off the edge who have unrealistic and/or harmful views of how those tools should be applied. Unfortunately this third minority is presented by anti-rationalists as the core of rationalism. In reality, they are easily avoided unless you hold the same core values.
(I say this as a long time observer who appreciates their work but does not consider myself a part of the “rationalist” community.)
A few things wrong with that. First is there is no net happiness formula which utilitarians are proposing. Peter Singer has said more than once that he weights suffering far, far higher than happiness.
Second is that every ethical system has screw cases which make the system look messed up. "Do unto others..." it terrible if you are talking about masochists.