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Ben Casnocha: The Blog

The blog of a 20 year-old entrepreneur and author.

Main Side Effect of Some Drugs: Identity ConfusionYesterday

It's astonishing how effective pharmaceuticals are today with only very minor side effects.

But there's one side effect yet solved and I suspect it's the most potent for some drugs: the identity confusion of whether the you on drugs is really "you."

For drugs that deal with personality issues or depression, I imagine even a successful patient must grapple with whether their newly improved state is artificial. (Artificial in a more serious way than the effect of myriad everyday things like coffee.) Am I really happy or is it just the drug that's tricking me into thinking so?

If the goal is to have people take medication that can help them while also minimizing in their own minds the fact that they're on medication, maybe these drugs could induce temporary amnesia immediately after swallowing the pill? The problem is that you need to know you've actually taken it!

Bottom Line: We've made remarkable progress in eliminating the biological side effects of anti-depressants and other mind-altering drugs, but still have to figure out how to deal with the assorted identity and self-understanding issues that can bedevil medicated patients.

(Note: I have never been on any these drugs so I'm speaking from observation not experience.)

Where Do People Meet Their Spouse?Yesterday

A friend and I were guessing the percentage of people who met their spouse in school (high school, college, grad), work, or in some other social context. I figured a Google search would point the way to a broad study on the question: Where do people meet their spouse? Surprisingly, I came up empty. Anyone know of a study based upon a large data set instead of anecdotes?

My Googling did, however, reveal a few other data points about marriage. This page said the median age for marriage for American men is 27 and for women 25 -- lower than I expected. I suspect higher socio-economic classes / higher educated folks marry later in life. Also learned that 40-50% of marriages end in divorce in the U.S. Again I suspect it's lower among higher educated folks.

The issue that seems to be most hotly contested on marriage data sites is around cohabitation -- whether premarital cohabitation affects the longevity and quality of a marriage. This study suggests that premarital cohabitation "has consistently been found to be associated with increased risk for divorce and marital distress in the United States." Why? The inertia of living together caus

Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers"Yesterday

Just finished Gladwell's latest book Outliers. It was a fun read but not sure I would have bought it on my own (I read the pre-pub galley).

I would say more but I cannot match Tyler Cowen's very interesting review, do go read it.

Here's my delicious tag for Malcolm Gladwell.

Presidential Security Nugget of the DayYesterday

Always fun to read about the day-to-day operations of the White House, including the extraordinary security apparatus around the President. Here's just one of many interesting nuggets:

The President-elect will also have to get used to handing his glass to a Secret Service agent every time he has a drink outside the White House. The agent carries a small bag in which to pop the glass and later he destroys it. The idea is to ensure that no unauthorised person has access to the Presidential DNA, but it is not clear how an enemy would use it.

Conformity, Loyalty, and Group IdentityYesterday

The most interesting four paragraphs I read over the weekend, from Robin Hanson (emphasis my own):

We use belief conformity to show loyalty to particular groups, relative to other groups. We rarely bother to show loyalty to humanity as a whole, because non-humans threaten little. So we rarely bother to try to conform our beliefs with humanity as a whole, which is why herding experiments with random subjects show no general conformity tendencies.

Our conformity efforts instead target smaller in-groups, with more threatening out-groups. And we are most willing to conform our beliefs on abstract ideological topics, like politics or religion, where our opinions have few other personal consequences. Our choices show to which conflicting groups we feel the most allied.

You just can't fight "conformity" by indulging the evil pleasure of enjoying your conformity to a small tight-knit group of "non-conformists." All this does is promote some groups at the expense of other groups, and poisons your mind in the process. It is like fighting "loyalty" by dogged devotion to an anti-loyalty alliance.

Best to clear your mind and emotions of group loyalties and resentments and ask, if this belief gave me no pleasure of rebelling against some folks or identifying with others, if it was just me alone choosing, would my best evidence suggest that this belie