Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio.
This is: Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush, published by dynomight on the LessWrong.
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Say you're an evil scientist. One day at work you discover a protein that crosses the blood-brain barrier and causes crippling migraine headaches if someone's attention drifts while driving. Despite being evil, you're a loving parent with a kid learning to drive. Like everyone else, your kid is completely addicted to their phone, and keep refreshing their feeds while driving. Your suggestions that the latest squirrel memes be enjoyed later at home are repeatedly rejected.
Then you realize: You could just sneak into your kid's room at night, anesthetize them, and bring them to your lair! One of your goons could then extract their bone marrow and use CRISPR to recode the stem-cells for an enzyme to make the migraine protein. Sure, the headache itself might distract them, but they'll probably just stop using their phone while driving. Wouldn't you be at least tempted?
This is an analogy for something about alcoholism, East Asians, Odysseus, evolution, tension between different kinds of freedoms, and an idea I thought was good but apparently isn't.
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