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Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

economist.com

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Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#31

Post by jrflowers »

rootw0rm wrote: post #6
lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

It seems like a fairly reasonable study to me. I don't see how the study participants' possible lack of familiarity with the drugs diminishes the value of the data. From the article: "Star performers during the placebo session fell to the bottom of the pack when they had taken the drugs." That directly refutes your assertion they were doing a novel task for the first time.

I would suggest taking Ritalin every day for two weeks and then reporting back on the difference between day 1 and day 14.

You’ll have plenty of words to share! Probably a TON the first day, especially.

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#32

Post by plewd »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #18
lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

>I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." How do you propose then to isolate what may be the effect of the drug then vs the participant subconsciously try…

Don't think there's a very good way to carry out these studies, this is just a catch-22. Either the participants are aware, and their bias could affect the results, or they're unaware, and they don't use the drug as real people do.

I don't really see the point in this being a lab experiment, just test the results from actual people who use study drugs (not saying naturalistic experiments aren't biased in many ways too, but seems like a better option).

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#33

Post by bloak »

lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

> Maybe one day we will get a drug that enhances mental function, that works effectively and has no real downsides.

What's the closest we have today to an effective drug with "no real downsides", assuming that nutritional supplements don't count?

If such a drug exists, I want to know why the body hasn't evolved either to produce it by itself or to obtain the same effect in another way. (Possible answers include: it's something that would be very hard to synthesise in the body; the drug is only useful to humans in recent times; it was already present in people's diet until recently - but then I'd call it a "nutritional supplement" rather than a "drug"; it's only useful to people who have passed reproductive age - though such people may still have played a useful role in ancient societies.)

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#36

Post by spondylosaurus »

junofan wrote: post #21

*in drug-naive participants taking high clinical doses. Study participants were high. Slanted reporting by the Economist, not even linking to the paper.

Yeah, I can't imagine being asked to take a huge dose of a new stimulant and then do anything under pressure like that. A common ADHD tip is that if your meds aren't quite doing it for you, try a lower dose before you try a higher dose. And that's among people who take these drugs regularly and are wired to respond well to them.

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#37

Post by karmakurtisaani »

vjk800 wrote: post #24
DiscourseFan wrote: post #5

I think this is something well-known among high-achievers at school, but I knew some people at school who would just spend 36 hours straight doing all their assignments and still get bad marks. It was always this way for me: work for a few hours, take a break, (maybe a walk, chat with friends/roommates), make some (healthy) food, then get back to it. Staying up never helps, because you have to sleep anyway, and getti…

I've always been a sort of lazy high achiever and very puzzled about this. I was always a near-top (but not top) student in schools, got a PhD and am now working in a high paying job in a bank. Besides one or two years during my university years, I've always been extremely lazy. On the other hand, in all of these institutions there have been many people who have been very serious hard workers and perhaps even at the…

My story is fairly similar to yours. I felt that I always had limited energy to really focus on the "important" things that turned somewhat boring after a while, and my peers who were able to keep going went further in academia. I got easily distracted by more "fun" problem solving and looking around rather than going really really deep in a given topic.

If only I had had that energy to go the extra mile, I could now be in temporary academic position in some city with worse quality of life making one third of the money they pay for coding. Oh well, sometimes you just have to take what life gives you I suppose.

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#38

Post by dathinab »

lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

AFIK the "main" use of study drugs is to be able to study longer not better.

General more studying isn't better the more you do it. You need to do it right and that involves having enough brakes to let your brain digest. In turn many situations where study drugs are used are such where the user already doesn't expect high efficiency.

I would argue that any situation where it's not uncommon for pre-university students to take study drugs are a fundamental failure of the education system/society. Often by a mixture of not properly teaching how to learn and also by forcing stupid forms of "homework" or "skill evaluation" which encourage bad learning practices and kill of any efficiency.

For university students the same should hold, the problem is that we have some areas where you will have problems getting around bad learning practices due to their nature. I believe with todays technology we could solve many of such problems (not even considering the new AI stuff) but in practice we have not. Anyway non of this applies to pre-university content.

EDIT: I disagree wrt. the caffein, it does hurt and has negative side effect on learning but as long as you don't compare quite long time periods without _any_ coffeine with coffein usage it's hard to notice.

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#39

Post by spondylosaurus »

bloak wrote: post #33
lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

> Maybe one day we will get a drug that enhances mental function, that works effectively and has no real downsides. What's the closest we have today to an effective drug with "no real downsides", assuming that nutritional supplements don't count? If such a drug exists, I want to know why the body hasn't evolved either to produce it by itself or to obtain the same effect in another way. (Possible answers include: it's…

Not a mental drug. but simethicone has virtually no side effects. It relieves gas by lowering the surface tension of the bubbles in your gut (so you can burp them out easier). But I don't think there's enough evolutionary pressure for Good At Burping to become a favored human trait.

Re: Study drugs make people worse at problem solving, not better

#40

Post by adastra22 »

lacker wrote: post #2

I want to preface this by saying that I am not a supporter of study drugs, except for caffeine. I don't find these studies to be convincing. You give people a pill, they don't know what it is. These people don't know what to expect, they've never taken study drugs before. They're solving some random logic puzzle they've never seen before. "Participants had to work out which items to put into a bag." Compare to how th…

> Maybe one day we will get a drug that enhances mental function, that works effectively and has no real downsides. I think that could be a great boon to society. I don't think it exists yet though, or that we are even really making any progress.

Adderall (correctly dosed) is precisely this.

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