TechTakes

This sneer sponsored by me getting surgery last Friday and being extremely sore

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bkr9BozFuh7ytiwbK/my-hour-of-memoryless-lucidity

Surgery is the perfect opportunity to test one's "Am I in the matrix?" mental sigils and other fun rationalist mind games!

Several years ago, I was thinking about worthwhile precautions to take against strange scenarios and wanted a way to defend against erasure of my short-term memory, e.g. by the CIA or alien abductions.

Of course someone made a follow up post encouraging readers to experiment with dangerously large drug dosages for giggles.

This is presumably the sort of thing which is tough to get past an institutional review board these days, but easy to do yourself over the weekend with a friend or two.

Little mention that this might be a terrible idea, but at least someone pointed it out in the comments

Important notice: benzodiazepines are serious business: benzo withdrawals are amongst the worst experiences a human can go through, and combinations of benzos with alcohol, barbiturates, opioids or tricyclic antidepressants are very dangerous: benzos played a role in 31% of the estimated 22,767 deaths from prescription drug overdose in the United States.

Lesswrong and drug abuse. A match made in heaven.