21–30 of 46 posts
The blog post gives the example of how more distractable old people can outperform less distractable young people on a specially contrived mental test. Similarly, if you put a bunch of junk for someone to trip over on the way to the bathroom, it would be the old person who tripped over it all that would remember it on his return. But in what real-world mental challenges do old people have the advantage over the young…
There, ftfy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's one thing to use psychoactive drugs on occasion if you're eating healthfully, exercising, getting enough sleep, in good mental health, and using only one drug at a time. I can't even imagine what mixing weed and amphetamines on a daily basis would do to a person. That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea. As soon as drug use becomes banal you are really asking for trouble.
I tend to agree. On the other hand, people seem quite happy taking caffeine and alcohol and daily or near-daily basis. Even mixing the two. So I guess your statement doesn't hold in general?
Second, you can't really cheat your biology in the long run, because your brain will always compensate for any psychoactive drug you consume. Take dopamine for example. If you take a drug that increases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then your brain will decrease its density of dopamine receptors to compensate. If you take a drug that decreases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then the density of your dopamine receptors will increase. If you take a drug that decreases the uptake ability of your dopamine receptors, the amount of dopamine your brain produces will increase. And if you increase the ability of your receptors to bind to dopamine, the amount of dopamine in your brain will decrease. The production/reception system for every psychoactive drug works the same way.
Most people who drink coffee or alcohol on a daily basis are only staving off the low level depression caused by using the substance. (Because if you take a drug that increases the amount of the a neurotransmitter, then your receptor density will for that neurotransmitter will decease. Then once you stop taking that drug then you get all sorts of problems because suddenly there isn't enough of that neurotransmitter in your brain because of your low level of receptors.)
Now I'm not trying to suggest drugs are bad. Just the opposite; we're literally made out of drugs. Everything we do from the moment we get out of bed until we go to sleep is designed to get us high in some way or another. It's literally how we survive and reproduce, and because we're essentially the latest iteration in a 500 million year old line of psychopathic paint huffers our brains are extraordinarily well evolved to prevent us from fucking with them.
The only reason why big pharma is even allowed to release their drugs is because the FDA only makes them show they are safe and effective for six weeks. Virtually every longterm study on every pharma drug shows that you are worse off in the long run than if you'd never taken it at all, but the government and pharma industry go to extraordinary lengths to hide that information from both doctors and consumers.
No matter what you do, in the long run you can't win. You can't even break even. And the worst part of the low level depression induced by something like caffeine or alcohol is that you can't even notice it. Gradually colors will be less bright, jokes will be less funny, emotions will be duller, etc. But you'll never even realize it because it's so gradual and subtle when you're just using daily at these low levels.
Especially with alcohol, because not only do you have the normal receptor adaption, but the alcohol itself also causes the bacteria in your gut to produce inflammatory compounds. If you Google for both alcohol + inflammation, and also cytokine theory of depression, it should be pretty obvious why even small amounts of daily alcohol are really bad news for your mental health. (Although good for your heart and a few other things, so it's a trade off as usual.)
Short version of this blog entry: I heard someone say somewhere once that it seemed to lower their creativity and it totally makes sense doesn't it!!!!
The wikipedia nootropic article has almost everything you would want to know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic
Yea, people crush Ritalin to get high, because it speeds absorption. Also, 'his friends' did this? Is he really that gutless that he can't own up to taking a few pills in college?
I can say that I have taken Ritalin with a prescription, and at appropriate doses I didn't have any such loss of creativity. Ritalin causes a release of dopamine, which makes things more interesting (it also acts as a more general stimulant). You feel wide awake and things seem interesting, that was my entire experience. When Ritalin wears off you basically feel crappy, as you do with any old school stimulant.
Provigil, of course, is not Ritalin, they act in almost completely different ways and are basically not comparable. Provigil is not very effective at preventing distractions, it has a tiny effect on dopamine. Provigil wakes you up so that you don't feel sleepy, which is about the extent of it. Usually feeling wide awake puts you in a generally good mood. It is hard to get work done when you are fighting sleepyness. So in that sense, you do accomplish more while taking it, since you are feeling refreshed and able to tackle things. The downside is that it is easy to forget that you still need to rest the same amount, and the effects of lack of sleep are not changed at all (if you stay up a long time on provigil, you don't feel tired, but you are still impaired by the lack of sleep just the same).
Short version of this blog entry: I heard someone say somewhere once that it seemed to lower their creativity and it totally makes sense doesn't it!!!!
Regardless of his lack of scientific method, I would agree that most stimulants do decrease creativity to some degree. However, some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam. My problem with the article is mis-titling it "smart drugs" if it is only about Provigil. The wikipedia nootropic article has almost everything you would want to know: http…
Seriously, let us have some and see for ourselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of his lack of scientific method, I would agree that most stimulants do decrease creativity to some degree. However, some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam. My problem with the article is mis-titling it "smart drugs" if it is only about Provigil. The wikipedia nootropic article has almost everything you would want to know: http…
So you would like to complain that the article is unscientific, but counter with snake oil?
* though my stance on this is that you're better off actually getting enough sleep, eating well, taking it easy on caffeine and alcohol, and then seeing if you're still fixated on smart drugs. Piracetam is probably the most benign, though.
See also: (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1211959)
Short version of this blog entry: I heard someone say somewhere once that it seemed to lower their creativity and it totally makes sense doesn't it!!!!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you would like to complain that the article is unscientific, but counter with snake oil?
His complaint (and one I share) is that most blog posts about nootropics are actually about stimulants, while there are actually several nootropics that are well-studied, reasonably safe, and probably effective * , but since they don't get you wired, they're apparently too boring to mention. * though my stance on this is that you're better off actually getting enough sleep, eating well, taking it easy on caffeine and…
I would love to see a link to a reputable scientific journal which demonstrated that "some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam".
If you can't come up with one, would you like to explain the whole 'probably effective'?