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Nootropics

gwern.net

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191–200 of 404 posts

Re: Nootropics

#191

Post by samdoidge »

mettamage wrote: post #94
HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

The best nootropic is getting a good nights sleep. It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here. And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.

It's hard for me to fall asleep. I haven't cracked it yet how to do it perfectly. What helps: view the problem as improving your likelihood to sleep. Before I viewed the problem as falling asleep 100% of the time, which is a really defeating view to have when I can't fall asleep. Sleep tips that help me: 1. meditation: still experimenting with body-scan vs. breath meditation, they both help but have different effects…

I didn't see 'exercise' listed here - this is probably the most important for me.

Re: Nootropics

#192

Post by pbhjpbhj »

notapirate wrote: post #64

Reading gwern for hours is mind numbingly amazing in and of itself. Bonus points to anyone who knows his real name, fan club located in #gwern on freenode especially after the darknet markets research. Is this an alternate reality where HN is actually Slashdot circa 2008, I can't tell right now.

I'll look that up on my Beowulf cluster of Natalie Portman's hot grits. /\/.

Re: Nootropics

#193

Post by ovi256 »

dkns wrote: post #190
ctack wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing Stronglifts 5x5 for the last couple of weeks. You do 3 sessions of 30 minute duration a week.

30 minutes? How come? You take a at least 1.5 minute break between every set. So for 5 sets of first exercise that's 7.5 minutes assuming you don't take longer breaks and that you didn't do any warmup and just went straight for proper weights. Now add exercise itself and it's easily 9 minutes. Times three (again, assuming you don't take longer breaks which is really hard to do when you start hitting heavier weights)…

I think six sets of warmup (for your 11 sets) are a bit too many. Three should be enough, and you don't need a real break between warmup sets. That should help cut down. Mehdi even recommends skipping breaks when switching exercises. Indeed, with 1.4 BW it will be tough. But that's what deweighs are for, and at that level, you'll be going into 3x5 soon.

Stronglifts is amazingly high impact for the time it takes.

Re: Nootropics

#194

Post by blubb-fish »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

The best nootropic is getting a good nights sleep. It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here. And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.

> But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here.

Well - nobody mentioned weed yet. Give that a try - slows down your mind, relaxes your body - you'll sleep in no time.

Re: Nootropics

#195

Post by pbhjpbhj »

panzagl wrote: post #12
psyc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is very long run-on sentences, with parentheticals, and awkward word omissions.

Seems like he's trying for that overly formal 18th/19th century style of scientific writing.

I find my natural style tends towards such affectations. Perhaps he's just not trying to apply a writing style after the fashion of "I could have written less but I didn't have enough time".

Re: Nootropics

#196

Post by bemmu »

gary_bernhardt wrote: post #134
bemmu wrote: post #109

I remember there was a blog post where they polled hundreds of people about nootropics they tried and then it had a list of the ones which had the highest self-reported subjective impact. I've been trying to find it but can't, anyone got a link?

You're probably thinking of Scott Alexander's nootropics survey. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/01/2016-nootropics-survey-...

That's the one, thank you.

Re: Nootropics

#197

Post by fmueller »

mettamage wrote: post #94
HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

The best nootropic is getting a good nights sleep. It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here. And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.

It's hard for me to fall asleep. I haven't cracked it yet how to do it perfectly. What helps: view the problem as improving your likelihood to sleep. Before I viewed the problem as falling asleep 100% of the time, which is a really defeating view to have when I can't fall asleep. Sleep tips that help me: 1. meditation: still experimenting with body-scan vs. breath meditation, they both help but have different effects…

I wasn't able to sleep in the past. Now I can because of two simple tricks (may not work for everyone):

1) I lie on the side and cover both ears, one with the cushion and one with the blanket.

2) I imagine a story I made up once and go trough it in my mind. It's always the same story, only a little different each time.

Then I fall asleep.

Re: Nootropics

#198

Post by fao_ »

afarrell wrote: post #141
HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

The best nootropic is getting a good nights sleep. It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here. And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.

One thing to help with sleep that is https://freedom.to/ , which you can use to make a list of websites to hard-block and then schedule them to be blocked either 1) now through 8hours from now 2) every SMTWRarsday from 11:30pm-8:30am

Or have cron jobs that swap out /etc/hosts with pre-prepared replacements

Re: Nootropics

#199

Post by PeterisP »

afarrell wrote: post #141
HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

The best nootropic is getting a good nights sleep. It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here. And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.

One thing to help with sleep that is https://freedom.to/ , which you can use to make a list of websites to hard-block and then schedule them to be blocked either 1) now through 8hours from now 2) every SMTWRarsday from 11:30pm-8:30am

I have a problem with all these website-blocking tools that I want them to behave differently than they do, perhaps you can suggest something?

The issue is that I want to block only the main, 'browsing' pages while allowing deep links to that same site. For example, I want to block reddit, when googling some question turns out an answer that's on a niche subreddit I've never seen, I need to be able to read it. However, the site blockers I've tried require me to unblock the whole site or turn them off, and thus become pointless.

Re: Nootropics

#200

Post by fao_ »

wolfgoatcabbage wrote: post #157
jonathankoren wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the write up? Many people, including myself, find exercise to be mind numbingly boring, and intellectually insulting. (Pick up a weight and put it down? That is quantitatively zero work, buddy. No thanks.) Never underestimate the motivation to find a quick fix.

On the other hand, sitting in a chair all day could be construed as physically insulting. Two counters: 1) There's no reason exercise by nature has to be boring or free of intellect. Physics greatly applies to freestyle snowboarding, for instance, and the adrenaline is top-shelf. Not to mention the scenery and vitamin D! Gymnastic and weightlifting activities in general encourage a practical understanding of leverage…

> Not to mention the scenery and vitamin D!

As far as I can tell, typical snowboarding gear consists of a thick jacket, long trousers (or somesuch), with goggles and a snow hat. To produce Vitamin D the light has to actually come in contact with the skin.

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