Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs” • Hacker News Board

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#21

Post by icegreentea » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

stephengillie wrote: post #4

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this me…

So what? Sports are essentially about competing , so the playing field being leveled is important. Academics is about the advancement of science. If doping helps a student to find a cure for cancer, I see no reason to object.

Academics is about the advancement of science. Getting into a prestigious school is only half about academics. The other half - as HN commentors are so often happy to point out - is about signalling.

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#22

Post by aelaguiz » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:53 PM UTC

The article is really interesting, but I can't help but be suspicious of the data (opinion) contained within.

The expert used in the article is John Holcomb, who owns a supplement e-commerce site. I can't find anything on his site that talks about his qualifications or any hard facts to back up most of this.

I'm really interested in nootropics and increasing mental efficacy - but there is no shortage of snake-oil vendors out there, some of whom are undoubtedly taking advantage of the boom in interest for these drugs. This makes me very leery about accepting this information.

Particularly the section on Racetams and how there are so many of them that can be tried safely in combination or by themselves.

With this awesome line:

"The one caveat with racetams: from a wealth of anecdotes about a third of the population is non-responsive or only mildly responsive to one or more types, and about a third are high responders that can experience spectacular results. "

Which sounds awesome to me, if I make money by selling these supplements. Basically - you may not experience any effects until you hit the right combination so keep buying them and trying them until you do and eventually you too could be a genius. Is it like some sort of intelligence enhancing slot machine?

I wish I could believe this stuff was effective. Someone please tell me I'm crazy and that he's right and for $20/bottle I can be slightly less dumb?

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#23

Post by whalesalad » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:53 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #4

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this me…

Life is a competition. May the best man win. Remember Darwin? The strongest will survive. I'm not going to proactively try and injure someone else or hold someone else back, but you can bet i'll do whatever I possibly can get get the leg up. It's a dog eat dog world.

High school prepares you for college, and college ultimately, cough somewhat sarcastic, prepares you for the real world.

People are too concerned with playing by the rules in those environments. While we do have rules (read: laws and codes) in the real world, there are also 'no rules'

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#24

Post by DanBC » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:56 PM UTC

Permit wrote: post #19

krisoft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's side-effect free, it could pose an ethical dilemma. Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use?

>Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? Absolutely. Perhaps it's the naivety of youth speaking, but I'd gladly trade 5 of the worst years of my life to improve the rest of them. > What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use? I'd argue the world would be a much bette…

>>Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year?

>Absolutely. Perhaps it's the naivety of youth speaking, but I'd gladly trade 5 of the worst years of my life to improve the rest of them.

Yes. I agree. (I'm 42 - does that make a difference?)

Maybe I'd have to think about it if the deal was genius level prodigy but with severe life-long pain. (Either mental anguish, or physical severe arthritis or whatever.) (I'm reminded of Aronofsky's PI.)

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#25

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:56 PM UTC

Permit wrote: post #19

krisoft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's side-effect free, it could pose an ethical dilemma. Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use?

>Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? Absolutely. Perhaps it's the naivety of youth speaking, but I'd gladly trade 5 of the worst years of my life to improve the rest of them. > What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use? I'd argue the world would be a much bette…

[deleted]

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#26

Post by mtrimpe » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:56 PM UTC

Permit wrote: post #19

krisoft wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's side-effect free, it could pose an ethical dilemma. Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use?

>Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? Absolutely. Perhaps it's the naivety of youth speaking, but I'd gladly trade 5 of the worst years of my life to improve the rest of them. > What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use? I'd argue the world would be a much bette…

> I'd gladly trade 5 of the worst years of my life to improve the rest of them.

There's no guarantee you're trading the 5 worst years of your life; it's far more likely that you'll also trade some perfectly good ones for bad ones.

And as far as the naivety of youth is concerned; the simple answer is yes. The complex one is that you'll end up understanding the trade-offs you made in a way that you couldn't now and that the decision on whether it was right or not well be just as moot as it is hard to make.

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#27

Post by konstruktor » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 1:59 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

stephengillie wrote: post #4

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this me…

So what? Sports are essentially about competing , so the playing field being leveled is important. Academics is about the advancement of science. If doping helps a student to find a cure for cancer, I see no reason to object.

That is valid only if those substances are equally helpful for exams (and their preparation) and actual research. Otherwise, the wrong people may get into great schools and graduate programs. Of course the problem of selection criteria being different from the actual work also exists without smart drugs. However, reading some articles about Provigil, I can't help but feel that the uber-disciplined and concentrated individual would have a disproportionate advantage in studying/exams, compared to the enhancement of them doing original work.

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#28

Post by mikeash » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 2:00 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #12

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Sports are essentially about competing , so the playing field being leveled is important. Academics is about the advancement of science. If doping helps a student to find a cure for cancer, I see no reason to object.

Unless it's side-effect free, it could pose an ethical dilemma. Would you take a pill wich makes you a prodigy but shortens your expected lifetime with 5 year? What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use?

> What would you think about the same decision if the former prodigy level becomes the new average in your field because of the widespread use?

The new average is computer programmers who are all extremely awesome? Sign me up! I'd probably get more than five years of additional free time from such a situation, so it would be well worth the tradeoff.

People seem too focused on relative advantage, when it's not usually important. There are a few areas where increasing everybody's ability equally will change little, but most fields would benefit immensely from raising everyone.

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#29

Post by gubatron » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 2:01 PM UTC

"it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!"

fail. I hope you can code in something else than javascript. We have to DEAL with Javascript on the browser because browser vendors haven't bothered supporting other more superior languages, wouldn't it be nice to have type="text/python", type="text/ruby" as options, have threads, native datatypes, real OO, logical variable scoping, better numeric precision and all the things that javascript was not meant for?

I hope more big time CEOs come out and say that not everything is meant to be written with HTML5. It's like we're raising a generation of moronic programmers with all this HTML5 hype.

Re: Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”

#30

Post by trentlott » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 2:02 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #8

stephengillie wrote: post #4

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information. No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions. Does this me…

So what? Sports are essentially about competing , so the playing field being leveled is important. Academics is about the advancement of science. If doping helps a student to find a cure for cancer, I see no reason to object.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure as hell competing for that grant money.