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175 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
175 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Walpurgiskater
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date: 2013-05-01
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techne: :done
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episteme: :log
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---
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> but it’s too late, my friend\
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> too late\
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> but never mind
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>
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> all my trials, lord\
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> will soon be over
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>
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> – all my trials (excerpt)
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As a simple safety precaution, and even though I don’t have a history of
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escalating addictions[^addict], I’m set up a [Beeminder
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goal](https://www.beeminder.com/muflax/goals/smoking) to limit my
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cigarette use. I mean, the financial budget already keeps it at a
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manageable level, but that’s what they all say, isn’t it?
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Nonetheless, I did a simple cost comparisons[^patch] for a
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certain (fairly representative) Rich European Nation with its
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enlightened “heavily tax those who cost you less and who need the stuff
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to self-regulate” drug policy:
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- decent cigarettes: \~0.25 Euro / 1mg nicotine
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- roll your own cigarettes: \~0.10 Euro / 1mg nicotine (all other
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tobacco products are somewhere between those two)
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- lozenges: \~0.06 Euro / 1mg nicotine (that’s for 4mg lozenges, which
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are easy to split in half, but if you want to actually dose 1mg,
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you’ll probably have to pay double)
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- e-cigarette: well… ok, I’m confused by how much usable nicotine they
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really contain, and what realistic costs are (including hardware),
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but my best estimate is something like \~0.10 Euro /
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1mg[^source] (especially as prices are expected to go up
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thanks to upcoming regulations), which surprises me as I thought
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they were a lot cheaper. Am I missing something?
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I currently don’t have any reasonable way to circumvent those taxes
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(Eastern European border, I miss ya), so it seems like I’m not actually
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spending a whole lot of premium on cigarettes. Assuming a 4mg/day
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maximum (which is a pretty hig upper bound of my current use), I’d have
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to pay up to \~7 Eurons/month for the cognitive benefits through
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lozenges (which also ignores that I skip days irregularly because I
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forget about the stuff, which at least helps keep tolerance down).
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If I add, say, 10 cigarettes/week (which is a similarly high long-term
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estimate of my current use) and use lozenges otherwise for the same
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4mg/day, I’d pay \~9 Eurons/months, not a lot more. (And I love tobacco
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smoke and discolorations anyway, so this is a reasonable cost just for
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the pleasant experience, but I’m weird that way. Always loved having
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smoker friends for their smell, even though I only got interested in the
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stuff itself a few years ago.) So once my current supplies run out,
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that’s exactly what I intend to switch to.
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But why stick with 4mg? Maybe that’s too much, maybe not enough? I need
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a better way to quantify what benefits I get from nicotine (in terms of
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cognitive enhancement, reduction of *ugh*, regulation of schizotypal
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symptoms). So I thought about existing options to get data from:
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- I can’t use sleep data because my sleep patterns are very irregular
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and my Zeo data is basically worthless. Back when I tracked it
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regularly for a few months, I virtually *never* dropped below a ZQ
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of 90 and saw many anomalies (catastrophic night with a ZQ \> 120
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etc.), and now Zeo’s dead anyway (pbut).
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- Comparing “time spent on useful projects” is tricky because there’s
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a lot of noise, but it might be workable if I do it for a
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sufficiently long period of time and I’m tracking this anyway.
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- Anki seems too noisy to evaluate. What would I even measure? Answer
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time? Correctness percentage is (on average) held constant by the
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scheduling algorithm and it’s tricky to control for difficulty.
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None of those sound too promising, so I’ve looked into useful short
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tests I can run once every day. I want the total test suite to be short
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(\<10min) so I don’t get bored, so I’ll stick with these 3 tests for 2
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minutes each:
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1. [n-back](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ) accuracy score
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I remember vaguely from gwern-sensei’s FAQ that it’s currently
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unknown if there’s a significant difference between single and dual
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n-back, and because I’m lazy I’ll start with single n-back. I’ll add
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sound when I get a [round tuit](http://blog.beeminder.com/tuit/).
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2. Answer time on simple arithmetic problems (“3+2=?”)
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This is [Seth Roberts](http://blog.sethroberts.net/)’ favorite. Many
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data points per day, plausible mechanism, useful skill. What’s not
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to like?
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3. [Stroop task](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect) answer
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time
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There have been several studies that have shown that schizophrenics
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have significantly increased Stroop latencies, so it seems like a
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useful proxy test for schizotypy. The traditional positive/negative
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symptom tests (besides applying to most people in a philosophy
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department) are way too imprecise, so this will have to do.
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I’ve [hacked together a quick
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script](https://github.com/muflax/cogatrice) that takes care of the
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assignments and tests, added a [simple Beeminder
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goal](https://www.beeminder.com/muflax/goals/cogtest) to ensure daily
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measurements and I’ll figure out how to analyze the data once I have
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some. (It’ll take a bit for them to plateau anyway, so I can still work
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out problems in the protocol as they come up.)
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There’s of course still the issue of randomization and blinding.
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E-cigarettes are relatively easy to blind, but everything else seems
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hard (use herbal / low-nicotine tobacco that tastes similar?) to
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impossible (find similar mint lozenges?). So I can’t properly control
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for placebo, but I can still learn some information about dosage. Next
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time I buy new lozenges, I’ll also buy weaker ones because they all look
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and taste the same and so I can blind *strength*. Until then and in
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addition, I can randomize *scheduling* - I simply randomly do the tests
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first and then take the nicotine or the other way around. That still
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provides a baseline to compare the intervention with. Lastly, I’ve also
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re-instituted my detailed drug log (which I only needed to avoid some
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nasty interactions, mostly with MAOIs, which I haven’t taken in some
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time) so I can spot potential patterns.
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Empiricism!
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---
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So it seems I’m getting back into statistics and how to read scientific
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papers, and hey, I have some old notes but how much can I’ve really
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forgotten? Let’s review some simple stuff. What was a p-value again,
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Wiki-sama?
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> In statistical significance testing the p-value is the probability of
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> obtaining a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was
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> actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true. One
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> often “rejects the null hypothesis” when the p-value is less than the
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> predetermined significance level which is often 0.05 or 0.01,
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> indicating that the observed result would be highly unlikely under the
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> null hypothesis. Many common statistical tests, such as chi-squared
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> tests or Student’s t-test, produce test statistics which can be
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> interpreted using p-values.
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Oh for fuck’s sake.
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[^addict]:
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I mean, look at that graph. If being very inconsistent in everything
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I do is a superpower, drug use is probably the only area where it
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pays off.
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[^patch]:
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Ignoring patches, which I found really hard to dose, and gum, which
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everyone I know who tried to use it had issues with. I also find it
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difficult to take absorption rates into account, but the “1mg”
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number is my best guess of effective nicotine, taking the numbers on
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cigarette boxes at face-value.
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It’s also funny how the nicotine content for each product does *not*
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generally affect it’s price much (if at all).
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[^source]:
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Raw nicotine content in the liquid isn’t informative as such because
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it ignores the absorption rate (for which I couldn’t find a good
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source), other components besides nicotine, and so on. I ultimately
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went with the quantity of liquid former smokers typically end up
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using, which seems like a more useful proxy. However, even there
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good correlations are rarely present and estimates vary a lot. My
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(not particularly informed) best guess, based on that one study with
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self-medicating schizophrenics and various forums with smokers, is
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that one medium-to-high-strength cartridge equals \~6-10 cigarettes.
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I did find decent estimates for lozenges (and they fit my personal
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experience), so those costs are more reliable.
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