Ha! Should we ban coffee?!?
New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
31–40 of 141 posts
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#32Why is it surprising that nootropics exist? Half the good people in tech are on them. And there's nothing fucking wrong with that. "My body, my choice", as the slogan goes.
ah, such a typical answer from an "up in there" person.
Been there, done that, including the 15 h days constantly, the fixing everybody's shit at 5 am, you name it. Was the period I was the most insufferable person around. Try getting off them and then we see how good you are. Your attention span will be reduced way below what you used to have before (unless you actually had ADHD before this) and your motivation will ..not exist. Because, while you are on Adderall, everything is so fucking awesome! And you start working on what nobody else wants. You are the king of the world, the saviour, and the only competent person around!
As a result, you will probably fuck up your heart.. good luck trying to get your blood pressure down after that. Did I mention addiction?
But, it's a free world and you are responding to market demands by betting your future as a normal functioning person, in order to gain now, that you are fresh and young , and all that. I can understand that. Hope it pays off.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#33Does this study actually provide strong evidence for performance enhancement? Folks who took the drugs took longer to play their moves. They lost more games on time, but ignoring those games, their play was better and they consequently won more games. But imagine an alternate study where players were given the instructions to take more time on their moves. In this study, they would have lost more games on time, but w…
Strong evidence? No. But the authors do not claim it as strong evidence. From near the end:
Dr. Lieb said that there are two caveats to the results. One is that they must be replicated by additional studies before it would be possible to say with some degree of certainty that the drugs enhance performance.
The second was that the study contained a flaw: the games were too quick, creating the problem of time-forfeits in some games. Additional studies would need to have the subjects play longer games.
The author's explanation is also not quite "their brains got better":
The study’s conclusion addressed the additional thinking time as a critical component of the effect of the stimulants. The authors wrote, “This suggests that neuroenhancers do not enhance the quality of thinking and decision-making per time unit but improve the players’ ability or willingness to spend more time on a decision and hence to perform more thorough calculations.”
Your explanation would, however, make an interesting control. If people can't effectively will themselves to spend more time, and further studies are able to repeat the effect when there is no time limit, then that would be stronger evidence.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#34I've been taking 400mg of Magnesium Glycinate two times a day along with 200mg of Theanine (also twice a day) with my usual two cups of coffee. I feel fantastically focused without the jittery edge that accompanies caffeine alone.
Do you worry about becoming dependent on that?
The only addictive thing there is the caffeine from coffee.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#35The study was done with rapid games, against computers, where they discarded human losses on time. Not very confident in those results. But hopefully the researcher gets the chance to try and reproduce and use classical time controls, and human vs. human opponents.
Discarding losses on time could plausibly be the bulk of the effect. I can improve my chess rating in short time controls by a good 50+ points just by reminding myself to move quickly.
True. Also, people tend to take more time when in losing positions, so it is likely that more of the discarded games than the not-discarded games would have been lost.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#36Anecdotally, Modafinil improved the functioning of the right hemisphere of my brain. I noticed this type of enhancement with Phenibut as well, my "emotional intelligence" was increased by one or two orders of magnitude.
On the other hand, Adderall increased my raw intelligence by several orders of magnitude. I strongly believe that amphetamines should be decriminalized and unscheduled, as they are the only class of pharmaceuticals that are proven to increase cognition with a fairly limited side effect profile.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other than amphetamines and caffiene, what would these 'half of tech'be on?
L-theanine is popular, I take it in a pill but Soylent added it to their coffee product. (Edit: NOS energy drinks also include L-theanine.) Others I've seen around include Bacopa monnieri, choline, Rhodiola rosea. More examples here https://nootrobox.com/full-stack
Some of us consume our l-theanine in tea, which also contains caffeine (and some other friendly phytochemicals).
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where they discarded human losses on time. This stinks of p-value hunting. I can only imagine the study went like this. They did all these tests and then found that there were no statistically significant improvements after using these drugs. So they said to themselves, how can we tweak the parameters so as to get something publishable? Sure, let's eliminate an entire class of games where our control group does bet…
Moreover, this is a classic side effect of stimulants, at least anecdotally (not sure what the literature says). You can get hyper-focused on one task or sub-task and lose track of your overall priorities. Although I imagine regular stimulant users learn to compensate for this.
Not just a side effect; isn't this why stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall are used as treatment for hyperactivity and attention deficit?
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#39The title is somewhat misleading - I assumed they discovered a new type of drug that was enhancing performance. Actually, it's just the first study to actually bear out the (not particularly shocking) conclusion that drugs that enhance cognitive performance help in a game that depends on cognitive performance.
Re: New Study Finds Performance-Enhancing Drugs for Chess
#40Hah. Oddly enough this tallies with my experience - about 5 years ago I ended up buying a box of modafinil and took them periodically before work. Someone asked me about what I thought of them and I reflected that I wasn't sure if it helped my work or not but that it meant I could beat my phone Chess app on a harder difficult setting than usual when I played on the way to work.
You may be an under-responder. With modafinil there seem to be large populations that are over/under-sensitive.
I bought a box about 4 years ago as well to see if it helped at work. I turned out to be sensitive to it and later investigated studies linking my genotype with sensitivity (specifically a pleiotropic SNP in the COMT gene rs4680/Val158Met). Most sequencing includes this well-studied SNP in the panel if you're curious.
Starting with a "normal" 200mg dose was a disaster. Anxiety, shaking, racing thoughts, nausea, and arrhythmia all struck on the ride to work and lasted 10 hours.
With 50mg taken right after breakfast, I was able to achieve some notable effects and feelings of extra productivity but even a small amount of caffeine or alcohol within 18 hours would make me sick. It proved to not be worthwhile and I quit after a month.
Study on modafinil and Val158Met polymorphism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19037200?dopt=Abstract
More observations on Val158Met expression with links to studies: https://neuroamer.com/2012/06/29/card-sorting-pot-smoking-ha...