Why I’m Simulating Neurochemistry Instead of Reaching for It
A lot of founders and operators quietly rely on actual chemicals to hit their creative and executional extremes. ARCS takes a different bet: what if we can get 80% of the upside of LSD, Adderall, and MDMA—divergence, focus, and empathy—through *structured simulation* instead.
That means:
- Explicitly separating exploration, convergence, and alignment sessions.
- Using derivative-based kinematics to know when to slow down, lock, or push.
- Capturing every “trip” as a decision receipt so the stack gets smarter over time.
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ARCS on LSD:
When Strategy Sees Around Corners
Most teams only see the straight line from A to B; they miss the weird, adjacent paths where the real breakthroughs hide. “ARCS on LSD” is my nickname for a simulated hyper-associative mode: you feed ARCS a problem, and it deliberately stretches across disciplines, analogies, and time horizons to surface non-obvious options.
In this mode, the system biases toward:
- Wide search over deep optimization.
- Metaphors, pattern collisions, and “what if we stole this from another domain?”
- Long-wave implications instead of next-quarter KPIs.
Think of it as a lab-safe psychedelic: you get the creative derailment, without actually derailing the business. The output is not “the answer”; it is the frontier map your more conservative self can then refine and stress test.
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“ARCS on Adderall”:
Coherence Under Pressure
If “ARCS on LSD” explodes the possibility space, “ARCS on Adderall” compresses it. This mode is tuned for deadlines, constraints, and shipping something real by Friday.
The engine does three things very aggressively:
- Collapses ambiguity into a single recommended path (“subtractive drift”).
- Ranks options by survivability against time, money, and energy constraints.
- Translates abstract goals into concrete sequences (“do these three things today”).
Where the psychedelic mode is for exploration, the stimulant mode is for execution: fewer tabs open, one canonical plan, and a clean, auditable trail of why this decision beat its alternatives. It’s the simulation you run when “focus” is the highest-value drug on earth.
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“ARCS on MDMA”:
High-Trust Strategy With Receipts
Most decision tools optimize numbers and ignore nervous systems. “ARCS on MDMA” is my shorthand for a simulation mode that treats psychological safety and relational trust as first-class constraints, not afterthoughts.
This mode prioritizes:
- Language that matches each stakeholder’s “energy signature” and archetype.
- Narratives that preserve dignity while still telling the hard truth.
- Paths where alignment, not brute force, does most of the work.
You still get the math: trade-offs, risks, and counterfactuals are explicit. But every scenario is also scored for how likely it is to keep the team intact, motivated, and proud of the story they’re living inside. It’s a strategy simulator that remembers you’re working with humans, not just variables. One Problem, Three Trips: How the Same Brief Feels on LSD, Adderall, and MDMA.
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Take a single prompt: “We need to design a 90-day pilot for an AI knowledge engine inside a consulting firm.” Run it through three ARCS modes, and the experience is radically different.
On LSD: The system explores wild shapes for the pilot: internal “brains,” institutional memory futures, regulatory arbitrage, even new pricing categories you could spin out later.
On Adderall: It snaps to a 3-tier menu, kill-gate metrics, and a minimum viable artifact stack you can sell this month.
On MDMA: It rewrites the same plan in the client’s native language, mapping wins for each stakeholder and avoiding “cool demo, no buy-in” failure modes.
Same data, same constraints—three different cognitive chemistries. The point isn’t choosing your favorite; it’s learning when your team needs each mode, and being able to switch deliberately instead of pharmacologically.
