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25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

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Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#51

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

Such fatalism is not really useful for yourself or for society. Either stop caring or start fixing.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#52

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

> has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help.

I take armodafinil. When I won't have to work for money in a few years, I'll still take it, because it allows me to do things I care about.

I think this is a lot like the whole debate around depression: unless you've been affected, you won't understand or know what you're talking about.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#53
post #43

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

Nobody planned this. It’s the result of emergent behavior in complex systems and feedback loops. We are still absolutely at the mercy of such forces. They rule us. We sort of understand them (game theory, complexity, evolutionary dynamics) but have yet to come up with any reliable way of controlling them. Totalitarian government force is the best we can do, and it comes with equally large downsides and is itself subj…

Like ants? All for the colony. We would already be on Mars if we behaved like ants but what kind of life is that.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#54
post #44

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

>... and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. What?

Is joke. Mandarin oranges. Obviously that's not really where the canned fruit came from.

Kind of an oblique reference to the exam system and the system of bureaucratic appointments.

If I'd wanted to be serious I'd have said something about "involution".

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#56
If this is actually true, it does seem to be worth asking whether we're doing a good job with how we're structuring secondary education.

If someone isn't in a position where they have a medical reason to take this stuff, but they still feel like they need to -- there are a lot of reasons that might be happening, but it also could indicate something may be wrong with the environment they're in, and that should probably be a part of the conversation.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#57
post #8

This figure provided is wholly anecdotal and pretty much worthless if not to bring the topic in question. However, it sure is concerning that many consider abusing prescription drugs with possibly severe, long lasting side effects to attempt to improve studying effectiveness (or because of self diagnosed ADHD and the likes..). It may become another drug epidemic, if it's not too late already. Misinformation and dubio…

> This figure provided is wholly anecdotal and pretty much worthless How else would you propose answering the question, besides asking people? Election polling is also "anecdotal".

This is like saying that HTTPS is just security by obscurity because you have to keep the private key secret.

The distinction between anecdotes and data is whether you gather the information in a structured and reliable way.

I would, in all seriousness, recommend a high school statistics textbook if this is new to you. There's a whole bunch of interesting stuff, including how you don't need a very large sample size to be able to draw conclusions from the data, but you do need to ask your questions in a rigorous way.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#58
post #51

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

Such fatalism is not really useful for yourself or for society. Either stop caring or start fixing.

The former works wonders for overall personal happiness.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#60
post #51

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

Such fatalism is not really useful for yourself or for society. Either stop caring or start fixing.

Fixing anything is impossible without properly identifying what is currently wrong with the way things are.
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