{"sequence":{"id":"optimization-in-practice","slug":"optimization-in-practice","title":"Optimization in Practice","description":"Essays on the use of formal optimization to evaluate personal choices."},"posts":[{"feed":"main","pinned":false,"id":"optimal-number-of-beers","slug":"optimal-number-of-beers","title":"On the Optimal Number of Beers","author":"drinkmaxxer42","excerpt":"Beer consumption is generally treated as a matter of intuition. This seems surprising. The activity is common, repeatable, measurable, and exhibits an obvious diminishing-marginal-returns curve.","tags":["Decision Theory","Self-Experimentation","Alcohol","Applied Hedonics"],"score":398,"displayOrder":390,"thumbnail":"/assets/articles/optimal-number-of-beers-thumb.webp","image":"/assets/articles/optimal-number-of-beers.webp","commentCount":16,"date":"2026-05-28T00:00:00.000Z","updatedAt":"2022-12-03T00:00:00.000Z","revision":13,"status":"published"},{"feed":"main","pinned":false,"id":"game-theoretically-optimal-heroin","slug":"game-theoretically-optimal-heroin","title":"Why It May Be Game Theoretically Optimal to Do Heroin","author":"singularity_enjoyer","excerpt":"Most people evaluate heroin at the object level: overdose risk, legal exposure, deteriorating health, etc. This is incomplete. Under nontrivial probability of transformative AI within our lifetime, the relevant question is whether strategically constraining my future options could increase the probability that I remain economically and psychologically coupled to the arrival of the singularity.","tags":["AI Risk","Decision Theory","Singularity","Self-Experimentation"],"score":529,"displayOrder":110,"thumbnail":"/assets/articles/game-theoretically-optimal-heroin-thumb.webp","image":"/assets/articles/game-theoretically-optimal-heroin.webp","commentCount":17,"date":"2026-06-11T00:00:00.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-09-22T18:57:43.264Z","revision":5,"status":"published"},{"feed":"main","pinned":false,"id":"earning-to-give-drinking-problem","slug":"earning-to-give-drinking-problem","title":"Earning to Give and the Case for My Drinking Problem","author":"mosquito_maxxer","excerpt":"A common objection to my drinking is that coming home blackout drunk imposes obvious costs on my wife, my children, and the household. I agree that these costs are real.","tags":["Effective Altruism","Household Finance","Alcohol","Applied Ethics"],"score":571,"displayOrder":20,"thumbnail":"/assets/articles/earning-to-give-drinking-problem-thumb.webp","image":"/assets/articles/earning-to-give-drinking-problem.webp","commentCount":22,"date":"2026-01-22T00:00:00.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-09-22T18:56:50.578Z","revision":3,"status":"published"}]}