Comment by tedsanders | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedsanders | Hacker News Reader

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Does 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 when they didn't lose on time, their play would have been stronger and they consequently would have won more games.

In such an alternate study, I wouldn't say their brains got better. They just made a different choice to play at a different point on their efficient time-quality frontier.

I wonder - how much did these drugs push the frontier outward, rather than just trading off to move along it?

Nonetheless, it's interesting that this study tried to answer why/how these nootropics work (maybe they make you more reflective) and also understand in what circumstances such drugs won't help (in situations where you're under time pressure).

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.

That's interesting, my experience (and my friend's) with Modafinil has been that it helps you stay with a task for longer, in other words leaving things unfinished bothers you more than it usually does.

For myself, I usually find that at some point (sometimes quite early) I find no gain in moving along the time-quality frontier.

Specifically, I find that an extra unit of time would seem to provide no change in quality. I think this might imply that I've "maxed out" and any need to move along the frontier would need to be met with a requisite increase in ability.

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