Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
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Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
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Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#2[deleted]
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#3There could be nasty side-effects twenty years down the road, so I'd rather abstain.
It would totally suck to be forced to take those drugs to remain cometitive, so I hope they will keep those drugs in limited circulation until their safety can be proven beyond doubt.
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#4There could be nasty side-effects twenty years down the road, so I'd rather abstain. It would totally suck to be forced to take those drugs to remain cometitive, so I hope they will keep those drugs in limited circulation until their safety can be proven beyond doubt.
You trust the FDA to tell you what is safe and what is not?
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#5I find it disturbing that this is even controversial.
First, the notion that there is an optimal "healthy" state is make-believe. We all get old and die, so in a sense we are all terminally ill. We should have a right to improve our minds and bodies as long as there is room for improvement.
More to the point, brain types fall on a spectrum. ADHD is just one extreme. Equating "median" with "healthy" is a fallacy. Consider this: is synesthesia a disease? It can make life very hard, but it can also make patient extremely creative. Imagine a world where synesthesia is the normal condition -- non-synesthetes would be considered retards!
If there were a drug that could turn you into a synesthete, should the drug be illegal?
Second, we all already take a brain-boosting drug: caffeine, which is both undeniably effective, and has a wide spectrum of side effects. Other drugs like modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison, but they are prescription-only because they don't have a history of social acceptability. "Used historically" = "safe" is an even bigger fallacy.
Third, you can't prevent people from taking brain pills by not funding research (if the research doesn't happen in the U.S, it will happen in other countries.). All that this policy will achieve is encourage a black market and unsafe usage.
The whole thing reminds me strongly of that Kurt Vonnegut piece posted here yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388642.
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#6There could be nasty side-effects twenty years down the road, so I'd rather abstain. It would totally suck to be forced to take those drugs to remain cometitive, so I hope they will keep those drugs in limited circulation until their safety can be proven beyond doubt.
You trust the FDA to tell you what is safe and what is not?
No, where did you get that from???
I hope that FDA keeps those drugs unavailable for next 40 years, and during that time hundreds of organization and individual doctors around the world will be able to test the long-term safety.
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#7At a point, this just goes to the competitive nature of our society. From a moral standpoint, if who we are is a product of our environment and our genetics, then we ourselves aren't anything that isn't predefined. Someone who is lazy is a product of their genes and environment in the same way that someone with a disease is the product of their environment and genes. So, what makes asthma (which I have) something that I'm applauded for overcoming with medicine while obesity is something people are generally frowned upon for overcoming with medicine? Well, the fact that we want to ascribe the later as a choice - the choice to eat.
Einstein didn't believe in free will. However, he said that holding people responsible for their actions was a pragmatic approach for society to take (presumably because such action changes the environment that we are all in).
There are huge struggles because people don't want to accept that they have less free will than they ascribe. As such, the goal is to hold people responsible for faults that you don't have and find excuses that let you off the hook for any faults that you have. There are organizations that create campaigns to get society to accept their fault as something that should be compensated for. Short attention span? That's ok because it's medical. Stupid? Lazy? Those are things that are the fault of the individual.
It's really hard. If you can medicalize your faults, you get legal protection for them. If you can't medicalize them, you're personally responsible for keeping them in control. That creates a huge incentive for medicalization of everything in the human condition. And we're all worried about being left behind in this Red Queen's Race.
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#8I find it disturbing that this is even controversial. First, the notion that there is an optimal "healthy" state is make-believe. We all get old and die, so in a sense we are all terminally ill. We should have a right to improve our minds and bodies as long as there is room for improvement. More to the point, brain types fall on a spectrum. ADHD is just one extreme. Equating "median" with "healthy" is a fallacy. Cons…
A hallmark of conservativism is to recognize that 90 percent of our behavior is much the same as occurred 2000 years ago, but many, many innovations came and went in between (Heroin: Cure for morphine addiction). What happened to them? They were tried, and they were discarded by the credible professions.
Maybe these drugs are good. "Maybe". Most drug tests occur over a matter of months, rather than a lifetime. Caffeine has been tried over centuries, and that fact has value, because within those centuries are lifetimes and generations. Every new drug is roulette, and you know it.
modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison,
See, bullshit
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#9I find it disturbing that this is even controversial. First, the notion that there is an optimal "healthy" state is make-believe. We all get old and die, so in a sense we are all terminally ill. We should have a right to improve our minds and bodies as long as there is room for improvement. More to the point, brain types fall on a spectrum. ADHD is just one extreme. Equating "median" with "healthy" is a fallacy. Cons…
"Other drugs like modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison"
Oh? I'd love to read the study on the safety of long term modafinil usage that you are doubtlessly referring to.
I think it's ridiculous that the government prevents me from taking various substances, but claiming that poorly understood drugs are safe is ridiculous. No one even knows how modafinil works.
Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people
#10I find it disturbing that this is even controversial. First, the notion that there is an optimal "healthy" state is make-believe. We all get old and die, so in a sense we are all terminally ill. We should have a right to improve our minds and bodies as long as there is room for improvement. More to the point, brain types fall on a spectrum. ADHD is just one extreme. Equating "median" with "healthy" is a fallacy. Cons…
A hallmark of conservativism is to recognize that 90 percent of our behavior is much the same as occurred 2000 years ago, but many, many innovations came and went in between (Heroin: Cure for morphine addiction). What happened to them? They were tried, and they were discarded by the credible professions. Maybe these drugs are good. "Maybe". Most drug tests occur over a matter of months, rather than a lifetime. Caffei…
If I understand correctly, that page says that 34% of modafinil takers reported headaches, compared to 23% of non-modafinil takers, 11% reported nausea (vs. 3%), 7% reported nervousness (vs. 3%), and 5% reported insomnia (vs. 1%). What do you think the numbers for caffeine would be? Caffeine withdrawal is a major cause of headaches, and caffeine is a major cause of nervousness, insomnia, tachycardia, hypertension, dizziness, etc.
I'm not saying caffeine is some kind of dangerous drug; I'm just saying that "almost zero side effects in comparison" is at least plausible given the Wikipedia page.