Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people • Hacker News Board

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#31

Post by DenisM » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 7:41 AM UTC

thomaspaine wrote: post #25

DenisM wrote: post #3

There 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.

First of all, the effects of these drugs have already been studied for many years. Modafinil was first experimentally used in the treatment of narcolepsy in 1986, so over 20 years ago. Second, what do you mean proven beyond doubt? Testing these drugs is a statistical process, so what kind of confidence interval are you willing to accept? Keep in mind, that becoming more confident in your statistics means more testing…

Long testing period is fine - what sets this particular class of drugs apart from all others is that it will in all likelihood be taken by every single man, woman and child (except the amish maybe) - they will have to take it under the economical pressure. Approving this drug is like putting all eggs in one basket, and so this better be one hell of a good basket.

Now, I do not mind these drugs being distributed under presecritiption well before that, because it will be only a fraction of percent of the total population.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#32

Post by kragen » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 7:54 AM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #14

kragen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, di…

Caffeine has this other advantage: That certain beverages that contain it are culinarily exquisite. Same with ethanol (praise god).

Modafinil is effective in small enough doses that you could put it into just about any beverage you like, just like amphetamine, piracetam, and so on, and unlike ethanol. You may enjoy quaffing toxic organic solvents like ethanol, but I don't particularly fancy the idea myself.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#33

Post by car » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 7:58 AM UTC

mahipal wrote: post #12

natrius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Pharmacology http://www.modafinil.com/ Sure, there's no long-term studies, but we can extrapolate from the receptors that it acts on and its relatively minor side effects that it wouldn't be too bad to take it over a long term. At least for it's main indication, ADHD, it's far better than the alternatives of Ritalin or Adderall.

You are wrong. Modafinil's only indication is narcolepsy.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#34

Post by asdflkj » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 8:57 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #30

asdflkj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there will be opt-out. If drugs double your productivity, then a non-user's salary will be half of a user's salary, and no less than that. That's just basic economics. Which is as it should be. They create double the wealth; they get double the money. Of course this will suck for you, because from your point of view, it will be as if the number of programmers in the world has just vastly increased, creating comp…

I don't think it works that way. If you sell half as much stuff as others sales agents in the store you will get fired rather than get your salary cut in half. But ok, let's suppose it's true. Let's take this to extreme - suppose that there is a ticking bomb in these drugs and after 20 years of intake one becomes a medical ruin, similar to crystal meth addicts. So you can take the drugs and die in 20 years from now,…

If you sell half as much stuff as others, it means you're costing the store customers, because presumably you approached close to the same number of customers as the other sales agents approached, but more of your customers decided to take their business elsewhere. This not an issue in a programming job.

Let's not "take this to the extreme", and instead be realistic. Your "ticking bomb" would be the first in history. Like I said, no drug is tested for 20 years before being released (and approved by FDA), so if there was such a risk, then with the sheer number of new drugs developed, you'd see these disasters left and right. Where are they?

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#35

Post by gaius » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 10:37 AM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #22

Isn't this akin to advocating for the legalization of steroids only here were talking about a thinking muscle instead of a moving one?

I think the mainstream attitude towards steroids is very hypocritical. If you're meant to play with what God gave you then surely athletes shouldn't even wear glasses! Tiger Woods had his vision surgically "corrected" to 20/15 (better than "normal") and no-one bats an eyelid (haha). Athletes regularly use the steroid cortisone to recover from injury, is that not cheating too? All anabolic steroids do is enable an athlete to train harder and recover quicker, they are not magic, you still need to put the work in, you can just choose to burn twice as bright for half as long.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#36

Post by ars » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 10:51 AM UTC

"Steps to keep the benefits from making socio-economic inequalities worse."

Not impressed - they would rather everyone be equally "stupid" rather than some people be smarter than others? These drugs do not take away from anyone, they only add.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#37

Post by bbhoss-synsol » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 10:57 AM UTC

car wrote: post #33

mahipal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Pharmacology http://www.modafinil.com/ Sure, there's no long-term studies, but we can extrapolate from the receptors that it acts on and its relatively minor side effects that it wouldn't be too bad to take it over a long term. At least for it's main indication, ADHD, it's far better than the alternatives of Ritalin or Adderall.

You are wrong. Modafinil's only indication is narcolepsy.

Modafinil (Provigil) is indicated for use treating narcolepsy, which was it's initial indication. Recently, the FDA has approved it for treatment of symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea (which I take it for), and shift work sleep disorder.

http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/news/8525697700573E...

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#38

Post by bbhoss-synsol » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 11:03 AM UTC

I'd like to see an incident where caffeine has caused such severe cutaneous and dermatologic reactions as modafinil has. If such drugs were deregulated, we would certainly see the number of victims of these horrible reactions go up.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#39

Post by wheels » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 11:05 AM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #7

At 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 tha…

As for free will, Einstein was particularly offended by some of the consequences of quantum mechanics which seemed to remove determinism from the most elementary of particle interactions.

If fundamental interactions are in fact deterministic at this point, we haven't learned how to predict their consequences, which has led to the many interpretations of quantum mechanics. Einstein was fond of "hidden variables" since it held out some hope of quantum mechanics at some point being deterministic once again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory

His interpretation is, however, not widely accepted. In other words, "free will" may be an emergent property of quantum interactions.

Re: Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people

#40

Post by dejb » Mon, Dec 08, 2008, 11:44 AM UTC

pmorici wrote: post #22

Isn't this akin to advocating for the legalization of steroids only here were talking about a thinking muscle instead of a moving one?

No because unlike sport, which is artificial competition for entertainment, mental work is real productive work that benefits society. Increasing our mental abilities can make the the world a better place, the same cannot be said of steriods and sporting ability.

Another difference is that steriods at the level taken by athletes use is demonstrably harmfull for their health, this is not necessarily true for mental boosters.