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> So you're telling me you alter your biochemistry to become more productive without a care for how it affects your overall (mostly mental) health?

Uh? Did you read Gwern? This is literally the opposite of what he does. He is ALL ABOUT weighing risks to overall health. Did you miss the fact that half of his articles detail the potential bad effects of the drugs he's trying?

>Hell, I started smoking cigarettes at 16, which I rank near the top of my worst decisions ever, despite the fact that it helped me hack my brain chemistry

He has an article on non-tobacco nicotine (nicotine gum, patches). His conclusions are, IIRC, 'kinda useful, but has some risks'. He doesn't have a page on cigarettes. You know why? Because cigarettes are THE WORSE. Everyone knows this. It's silly to write off all performance enhancing drugs on the grounds that you once made the bad decision to use possibly the very worse one, from a risk/benefit perspective."

I grant you that brain chemistry hacking may be one step towards em-world, which is as Moloch as it gets, but if you're working on important problems it the edge may be worth it.

Fair point. My point wasn't "hur hur cigs are bad ergo caffeine is bad" - rather that there are costs and benefits to everything (adderall, cigs, coffee, probably this modafinil shit) and that I don't think the benefits to being able to work around the close really exceed the costs, especially on a personal level. Like I said, becoming a diarrhea-ridden coffee maniac isn't a great fate either, especially when a good night of sleep solves the same problem.

It sounds like we agree there.

To me, the entire idea of performance-enhancing chemicals is the essence of Moloch

Moloch specifically refers to zero-sum games. Intelligence enhancement is not that; if everyone in the world gained 10 IQ points we would almost certainly be far better off.

To what ends?

Curing cancer and Alzheimer's, getting self-driving cars on the road by 2025 instead of 2030, colonizing Mars, figuring out how to fix our diets without requiring infinite willpower, etc, etc.

you need only a bit of willpower to fix your own diet, nothing more. many people are unwilling to get into any form of unpleasant state (ie abstaining from sweet stuff, workouts etc), they are 'too soft' and avoid hardships. that's all.

and none of what you mentioned could be magically achieved by one person popping a pill to gain some short term effect, and probably lose something in longer run. feel free to experiment on yourself, just please don't force anyhow this pitiful activity on others.

The vast majority of diets fail in the long run. Fat people forced to lose weight develop the symptoms of starving people and obsess about food, and always quickly return to their previous weights after release. During diets their metabolisms slow down to keep them at the same body weight despite the decreased calories.

that's because people are 'lazy' - they don't want to do the hard work, rather they spend significant amount of time, energy and cash to chase pure dietary solutions. they expect that some 30-day dietary course will change their life, especially when right after they go back to their old eating habits. obviously, it doesn't work, ever. so they try another diet and so on...

I believe massive changes in life can be done just by permanently altering diet, but best, fastest and most durable results are in combination of diet and exercise. proper workout stimulates metabolism, makes people more happy and the feeling of strength and endurance coming from your own body is just priceless. oh and it prolongs life too on top of adding massive quality to it.

did I laid out a massive change in somebody's life? yes. so what? great rewards come after great hardships, naturally. but many people will keep throwing money at their problems, refusing to change, instead of pouring sweat for free and keep wondering why it doesn't work.

People don't have infinite willpower. There is no magical distinction between minds and bodies. We are just animals and we are genetically programmed to strongly desire to eat food. The vast majority of people who attempt to diet fail.

When diets work, they require pushing the body to the point of starvation and keeping it there, which is just not sustainable. The body goes into starvation mode and tells the brain to do everything it can to sustain food. No amount of willpower can overcome that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.html?pagewant...

> fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

>The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.

>Eventually, more than 50 people lived at the hospital and lost weight, and every one had physical and psychological signs of starvation. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation.

I pointed this out in another comment - most work actually carries negative externalities and side effects that you're not accounting for. Disagree on Moloch, I defer to the fish pond example. It's not zero-sum, it's negative sum (everyone ends up worse off).

Ever met someone who has burned out? It's not pretty. Did you know that work-related-stress is amongst the largest threats to (particularly men's) health? Have you seen workaholism, stress-induced alcoholism, general-burnt-out-ness ruin relationships? What makes you think nootropics won't cause these problems as well? After all, ex nihilo nihil fit.

Ever think about how much gas you burn getting to work, how much plastic trash you create at lunch or coffee, how much coal it takes to keep the lights and the AC on for you to do what you do? Ever think about how many people died of weird lung diseases to produce that coal? Again, nothing comes from nothing.

Unless your work really is curing cancer, de-acidifying the oceans, or colonizing Mars, it's likely that your work is actually a negative sum game. You're worse off for it, and so is everyone else.

> So you're telling me you alter your biochemistry to become more productive without a care for how it affects your overall (mostly mental) health?

This is quite disingenuous, he specifically searches for nootropics with few side effects

> that many people (men, in particular) say their greatest regret was working so hard

i think many people also regret not working harder.

Also, "working hard" is pretty meaningless without context, especially if we're going to talk about regretting it.

For example, carving out some time at night for your side projects that might pay your rent one day vs. staying longer at work to get a leg up on imminent deadlines that were too aggressive vs. working hard to be Employee of the Month vs. working hard to learn programming.

It's great you think that, but the data I've seen nearly always says the opposite.

> Eventually this kind of thing ends up costing you $50 a month and keeping you on par with everyone else in the office (who also happen to brain-chemistry-hack)

If it makes the entire office more productive, wouldn't that be positive-sum, not zero-sum?

No, your own health, sanity and money are costs in the equation.

And let's be honest: it's highly improbable that your work is doing anything for the good of humanity. In fact, it's actually very likely that your work (or some constituent part of it) carries negative environmental externalities, e.g. it's bad to do, even worse to do more of. My work certainly isn't essential to the arc of history. So what good is my productivity, especially at these costs?

>incessant Adderall use in a futile attempt to either "keep up" or "get ahead". To what ends?

So you can get to Wall Street or Silicon Valley and take even more Adderall to "get ahead", obviously.

It's a trade-off between risk vs. reward.

Whatever constitutes risk and reward is with respect to one's own morality.

Very well said, this should be at the top of the thread!! ;-)