The Psychopharmacology of the FTX Crash
astralcodexten.substack.com
astralcodexten.substack.com
I imagine/guess/hope it's less common, but who knows!
Why? Because you can't shake off the meth=bad association?
Desoxyn is roughly as good as Adderall with similar side effect profile and mostly prescribed when Adderall doesn't work as well anyway.
I don't want to pathologize people who are actually accessing beneficial treatments. I knew kids who needed and benefitted greatly from Adderall, and I knew kids who popped one now and then for a weekend or work session. The latter is the problem.
Abuse of amphetamines is bad. I imagine/guess that abuse of meth is worse, which is why I hope it's less common.
Do people regularly abuse desoxyn, the pill form of methamphetamine?
(The conclusion is that it's possibly a more effective treatment at clinical doses while still being pretty safe, and the main difference is that recreational users (a)smoke it and (b)take a lot of it)
The group would openly declare, sometimes in the form of exchange-run "leader boards", the way they were making a great deal of money very quickly by successfully leverage trading.
My point is that Alameda has long had an underground (if not outright) reputation as one of the biggest players in crypto's highest risk zones. While pharmacology undoubtedly plays a role, in some ways the pattern we see in the downfall here is also as old as the tale of Icarus.
The worst risks come when you starting taking large delta risk (i.e. being long/short) on leverage, so when the market moves against you, you're just out some huge amount.
Alameda admitted publicly they'd starting 'making lots of money' from taking large long positions in ~2020 I think. This has great returns in a bull market when everything is going up, and wrecks you when everything goes down like crypto did...
HFT market making in basically all reasonable forms doesn’t have large delta exposure, I.e. you aren’t taking position risk.
In early and bull (crypto) markets, being an mm tends to be much easier as flow is much less toxic. Less hft competition since it’s early and more speculators during a bull run.
It’s somewhat opposite to traditional markets, which tend to be boring for an mm when it’s up, and very interesting when it’s down (high volatility, higher trading activity from non-hft firms)
I think one of the risks is the initial euphoric effect is what people associate with it “working”, but that’s really just a side effect.
I don't know how to absorb that many of my colleagues and even supervisors are taking speed. Like, what percentage?
Honest question: are you all on Adderall?
If someone produces amphetamine, what other byproduct amphetamines would it contain? I'm not sure I understand your statement on the different types/ratios of amphetamines
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine_type_stimulant
Caffeine still REALLY works for me, I cannot take it in the evenings unless I want to stay up.
Theanine helps with focus and is also calming, it's what's in green tea.
Multivitamin with all vitamins and magnesium etc. Magnesium esp helps with cramps.
When I started working again in Germany ca 2015 I would say usage was negligible. Today it is… around 5%. I’m pretty worried I’m watching history repeat itself.
this goes way beyond adderall.
and though a sample size of 1, my own circle largely consists of research academics in the social sciences, of whom at least half have openly acknowledged their use of adderall, concerta and the like for (or more fairly, sometime over) the past 10, 20 years or longer, most starting in grad school. i suspect the real number is close to 75% but not everyone is candid about it.
Working in fang, Adderall speed bunnies are not that popular. The best engineers are prioritizing their clear thoughts. Taking speed is really not helping.
There is no free lunch, biggest features for optimal performance are still: sleep, exercise, good food, social contact.
It sure is fun tho, but it makes it easier to lie to yourself. Too bad it's too much fun for me to use recreationally.
There have been periods, sometimes extended times, when I have had a hard time focusing on my job. Other extended periods of time when I literally want to do nothing else.
Over the years, these extremes in variation have largely gone away on its own and I like to have a nice work-life balance.
But I'm doing nothing close to ambitiously creating a cryptocurrency exchange nor making scads with Jane Street, either, and now I must confess to FOMO.
I trained myself to concentrate the old fashioned way, practice.
It is speed.
And it creates the illusion that you are doing good work.
Anyone who argues in favor of adderall is in the denial stage of their own dependency. I used to do this.
This is unfortunate because we have many immensely talented people on speed convincing themselves they need it and trying to explain to others that it’s not actually speed.