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Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

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101–110 of 151 posts

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#101
It's an open secret in the military that psychedelic use is fairly widespread. Unlike cocaine and weed, you can't really test for it. Kind of sad to see something like this published by the Marines though; basically content free "muh microdosing." I mean, does this even mean anything?

"Microdoses cause cortical functions to be more fluid, leading researchers to believe that psychedelics may help certain brain areas work in increas- ingly flexible and expansive ways."

If ever there was a meme elixir designed to punch holes in your pre-frontal cortex, microdosing is it. There's basically zero evidence such substances enhance anything. In my experience, and in my observations of others, it makes you feel like you're enhancing your noggin, but real world performance definitely, sometimes dramatically suffers.

Modafinil and amphetamines probably enhance performance on grinding tasks. Nature, concentration and lack of sleep definitely enhance performance on creative tasks. Caffeine works too, and nicotine and the racetams for keeping the cobwebs out and the acetylcholine high. Microdoses, yeah, nerd "muh microdoses" articles ain't gonna cut it for me: I've seen the effects and will stick with coffee and snus. Hell, simply looking at scientific or technological output pre and post civilizational psychedelic use: you can see it hasn't had any obvious benefit. People did more amazing things back when day drinking was common.

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#102
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your post resonates with me. Can you clarify what you mean by “actually me”?

I've come to realize that "I" am just a small part of the brain. A virtual machine running on top of the primitive host. Every single second is a struggle over the who gets control of the hardware, and most of the time the host wins. What "I" want and what the primitive host brain/OS wants are 2 completely different things. Food, shelter, reproduction. That's all it needs. Needless to say, "I" want so much more. Of c…

Amazing description! HN paid off for today :)

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#103
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, meth will do that to you. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and while I definitely felt the “high” from Adderall (and was convinced I was more productive) it was hard to say I actually was. I did find it easier to stay up later than I should; but that loan always comes with interest, the drugs just give you a bigger line of credit. Ditto other stimulants. The only stimulant I still use is caffeine, an…

How do you deal with the dozen thoughts present in your head every waking second? How do you recover when you get distracted in the middle of work and can't get right back to it? How do you even do the planning itself when that task is just one of the ten or so that your brain thinks should be done right now?

I have never had ADHD, but I used to have a lot of problems to concentrate on class and while studying. My (perhaps naive) idea about my problem these days is that we just train our brain to be distracted. I have tried to fix it by applying deep work techniques (get rid of distractions, plan what I'm going to do, plan the breaks, make sure to eat/drink, etc). Basically I try to train myself (in a very Pavlovnian way) to enjoy concentration and hate mind wandering.

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#105

When I was a child and teen I was a hyperactive, unstimulated, bored, D- student. Ritalin drastically changed that and I was getting A's and teachers described me as a whole different person. I would too: it made me antisocial and jittery and basically robbed me of my humanity. Since then I've found drug-free strategies to manage my intellectual/social Jekyll and Hyde. The idea of performance enhancing drugs making t…

That ritalin and other stimulant medicines is available for kids will go down in the history books as an episode of insanity.

There is absolutely no good that comes out of it and future peers will just be glad they didn't have to go through it.

That said it is such a vast different substance from a psychoactive substance that the problems that arise will all be different.

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#106
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of performance enhancing drugs making their way into the workplace arena scares me a lot. You say that as if it hasn't already happened, Adderall has been ubiquitous for years. At my last office job we had an intern from out of state miss work abruptly because she couldn't get her Adderall prescription filled, and, I shit you not, skipped work to fly to Nevada to fill her out of state 'script because CA ph…

I've been on adderall since I was 17. I'm 32 now. Almost more of my life has been spent on it than off it. I've been productive in a variety of ways. Some examples are listed on my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shawwn but I feel silly bragging about comparatively minor accomplishments in ML. But I know for a fact that without adderall, I wouldn't have done a damn thing. I've tried for a few months. Shrugged and we…

But I know for a fact that without adderall, I wouldn't have done a damn thing. I've tried for a few months. Shrugged and went back.

There's an underlying assumption here: that the medication either makes things better, or makes things worse. It may have different effects on different axes, but it has those effects while it is active, and they go away once the drug is metabolized.

This way of looking at things makes the logic of using many psychoactive medications inescapable from a school and career perspective (Maybe less so from a social point of view). But it's not the only way to look at things.

What if, for the sake of argument, we posited that that the drug has not one, but two kinds of effects:

1. Constant effects, like we are assuming right now, and

2. Derivative effects. Effects that change not how good you are at work today, but how good you are tomorrow. This could be either an adaptation to the medication, or a suppressive effect the medication has on learning.

If that is so, then we would expect type 2 effects to dominate in the long run, but type 1 effects to dominate in the short run. At any given two week window taking the medication is a huge win (because of type 1 effects), but on a longer time horizon of perhaps two or three years the prognosis could be better off the medication (because of type 2 effects).

The devil is in the details, ofc: do type 2 effects exist? How large are they? Is there a crossover point? Is it two years, twenty years, or two hundred years?

My personal experience with stimulant medications is that type 2 effects do exist, and that the crossover is something like two years. That means that getting off them requires one to put up with two years of being worse off than one was on the medication.

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#107
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of performance enhancing drugs making their way into the workplace arena scares me a lot. You say that as if it hasn't already happened, Adderall has been ubiquitous for years. At my last office job we had an intern from out of state miss work abruptly because she couldn't get her Adderall prescription filled, and, I shit you not, skipped work to fly to Nevada to fill her out of state 'script because CA ph…

Yeah, meth will do that to you. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and while I definitely felt the “high” from Adderall (and was convinced I was more productive) it was hard to say I actually was. I did find it easier to stay up later than I should; but that loan always comes with interest, the drugs just give you a bigger line of credit. Ditto other stimulants. The only stimulant I still use is caffeine, an…

How did you get off the medication? Did you experience any withdrawal symptoms?

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#108
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, meth will do that to you. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD, and while I definitely felt the “high” from Adderall (and was convinced I was more productive) it was hard to say I actually was. I did find it easier to stay up later than I should; but that loan always comes with interest, the drugs just give you a bigger line of credit. Ditto other stimulants. The only stimulant I still use is caffeine, an…

I use stimulants to cope with my ADHD. The problem is that without it my mind - a bright one - goes absolutely blank. It actively refuses to cooperate unless what I want to do is extremely interesting. Without the stimulants I feel like a train cart being taken to a different direction by the rail tracks, pushed or pulled against its will by the train. I was unable to go clean my teeth, eat, or clean my flat; and I d…

> and made me actually me.

I've been an addict and dude you sound like an addict

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#109

When I was a child and teen I was a hyperactive, unstimulated, bored, D- student. Ritalin drastically changed that and I was getting A's and teachers described me as a whole different person. I would too: it made me antisocial and jittery and basically robbed me of my humanity. Since then I've found drug-free strategies to manage my intellectual/social Jekyll and Hyde. The idea of performance enhancing drugs making t…

Counter point: ADHD, especially when undiagnosed or untreated, is a killer. https://www.ajmc.com/view/psychologist-barkley-says-life-exp...

Re: Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]

#110
post #46
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all on caffeine already and no one is clutching pearls over it. How is taking harder drugs any different other than in effectiveness?

Whenever threads mention caffeine I am compelled to share that caffeine has no effect whatsoever on me. To my sadness, it feels like I'm excluded from a common universal community and performance advantage

The only time I’ve felt effects of caffeine is horrible jet lag combined with 900mL of cold brew (about 1400mcg of caffeine). I was lifted from the dead and felt the highest relative improvement in mood and wellbeing in my life.

I once tried to improve my math exam scores by drinking 4 espressos but didn’t feel a thing. I can easily fall asleep after 2 cups of coffee.

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