Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs”
unfinishedman.com
unfinishedman.com
Blood pressure is a very meticulously regulated process in the body, with countless chemicals, hormones, and other endogenous signals in the mix. It's entirely possible, if uncommon, to overdose when self-administering vasodilating drugs. A lot of vasodilators work by ionically tweaking the fluid retention of the kidneys, which, if thrown out of whack, can lead to all sorts of not-so-fun problems.
In general, be careful when messing with your blood vessels, or with any drugs that change the ionic balance of your bloodstream.
The other thing I'd say is TANSTAAFL. Generally speaking, when you're upregulating one process or chemical in the body, you're downregulating another process or chemical. If you're not sure what's being ramped up, and what's being ramped down -- or, even scarier, if science doesn't quite know yet -- then proceed with a tiny bit of caution.
I don't mean to dump cold water on the idea of nootropics. Some of them seem pretty harmless. Some of them may indeed have a net benefit. Others...perhaps, but the jury's still out. In the meantime, I guess I am hesitant to treat my body like a lab experiment. Especially when there are so many proven, healthy, effective ways to enhance cognition. Such as exercise and study.
If you do this, you're messing with high-order, nonlinear dynamics.
Does anyone really trust themselves to dose that properly? They had better be a trained medicinal chemist with great skill at solving PDEs. I also doubt the average enthusiast is set up to run HPLC to measure and model various critical metabolite concentrations and their change over time.
This is why the first rule of drug use is 'rotate your receptors'. In general, the most important thing to know about longterm use of any psychoactive substance is that you can never win. At best, if you're really well educated, you can break even in a way that's slightly preferable to you. But most people can't even manage that.
Is this how Death By Chocolate works?
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?
Thanks for the effort! I think the article will make aware the people who are truly interested in the topic and get them on the right path, although the dissenters are more vocal and visible here.
I bought Piracetam on Amazon after someone here on HN recommended it, and for the past 2 months have been taking 800 mg per day. I often skip a few days and have not noticed any addiction symptoms.
I doubled my dosage one day, so took 1600 mg that day, and felt sick to my stomach. When I repeated the 1600 mg experiment again 2 weeks later, I threw up. I am 190 lbs 6 ft, YMMV but I can't imagine taking 3 to 5 grams.
Within a few minutes of swallowing a pill (800 mg) I feel more alert and without the jitteriness that caffeine brings. It seems to improve my general focus, writing, including programming, reading and speaking abilities. As with all self reporting you should absorb mine with salt.
Besides Piracetam having become only one in a class of nootropics, you can find the same information in that book.
There used to be a large subculture around nootropics on the Net, but most of the discussions were based on anectdotal evidence. It seems not much have changed since then.
Being an outsider on the topic, I can see how this may come off as sketchy, but the truth is that the Racetams, as well as any drug, have different effects on different people. If you want to get into Nootropics, you will need to do a little experimenting and a lot of research. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all stack or supplement regiment, but when you hit it right, you will notice a difference. You won't be a genius, but you can remove what is called "mental fog," a condition that you rarely known you have until it is gone.
That said, you'd have to be kind of dumb to think that you can improve your brain function by taking the same cocktail of drugs every day. Taking low doses of different stuff on an intermittent basis, maybe, but hammering the same receptors day in and day out and expecting some sort of longterm benefit is extremely naive.
The other answer is that if you're using caffeine from plants then you're getting a different dose each day, and if you're not taking a lot and you're not doing it every day then tolerance will be less of an issue. Also, caffeine breaks down into multiple separate drugs when digested so that may also have some impact on tolerance.
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 mean we'll soon see articles about how the Ivy League and most hacker dens dope more than the Tour de France?
The reason dope is officially cheating in sports is because they are a breach of explicit rules. It is the same as removing an enemy pawn when no one is looking. You could perfectly have sports where the use of dope were permitted (I'm not sure I would endorse it though: it may have unhealthy consequences —oh, wait it did).
Now college entrance exams are about selecting students smart enough to make it through the curriculum, and make a worthy career afterwards. Ideally, you'd want to select those most likely to succeed. My take is this: any way to deceive that predictor is cheating. Anything else is not. By this analysis, nootropics are cheating only to the extent they deceive the predictor. My bet is that someone willing to take such drugs to go to college will probably continue to do so later (permanently or when needed). In this case, the drug doesn't fool the predictor, it actually helps being a little smarter in the long term. What would be cheating would be to take the drugs for a short term benefit, then never or rarely do that again.
Finally, this really is not a zero-sum game. Even if only an elite 1% take those drugs, even if it does make things even more unfair than they already are, those people may solve problems faster for the rest of us, so we all benefit. And boy do we have problems that need solving.
Starting with Death.[1]
(One last detail: nootroopics also have to work and not have nasty side effects. Personally, I'm still a bit afraid.)
[1] I work from naturalistic assumptions. For those who believe in an afterlife: imagine your soul being destroyed instead of living happily ever after. I don't want that either.
Some people have described their nootropic use giving them perfect narrow focus on whatever they set in front of them, but gradually over time being left with an empty uncreative head. As time wen by, their reservoir of random wide ranging thoughts got depleted, till they got off the drugs.
Another guy used a combination of drugs including racetams to keep a keen edge of concentration and energy.
Others exploded, I think on one forum there are the remains of someone who medicated a bit too much...he sounded manic, and seemed to have had underlying mental complications.
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 better place if this was the case. The real question you might want to ask is what if these drugs become expensive and only the upper class can afford them. It might lead to a sort of catch 22 by which no one was interested in hiring less intelligent or less capable people who couldn't afford such drugs.
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.
Unless government regulations get in the way, I would expect employers to start paying for their employees' drugs.
If they don't produce enough of an effect for that to be worthwhile, I wouldn't expect them to see widespread use. (If they cost $X,000/year but only increase your earning potential by $Y,000/year, with Y<X, how many people are really going to take them? Not zero, but I'd guess not enough to have much impact on the market. And if Y>X, it's a good deal for employers, who might also be able to use economies of scale to get the drugs at a discount.)
Well, every place I've worked at has offered free coffee, which is a well-studied (albeit minor?) nootropic.
>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.)
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.
Academics is also about fighting for the esteem and attention of your peers, winning grants and awards, and getting yourself known. If athletes are willing to risk their health for a few hundredths of a second in a race, I can imagine some academics would be willing to dope their brains for a better shot at a publication in Nature.
Nevermind what a specific college or professional sports organization has to say about this; maybe someday they'll start thinking themselves, perhaps with the help of some substances, and realize that maybe the "college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions" are themselves a bit silly in the context of trying to truly find important ideas.
The majority of people reading these very words are doped up on stimulants, probably from the ubiquitous stimulant machine down the hall.
This is true in general. I haven't noticed these behaviors among the brighter critics and supporters (e.g. many comments here on HN are pretty thoughtful).
http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-test...
What would you bet that ivys have a higher rate than average too? :)
Firstly - "isn't necessarily a competition". A half truth. The rest of the time it is a competiton and is bloody damned important.
In classes graded on a curve? Percentile based rankings?
What about a country like India or Japan or any country where competitive exams determine your chance to gain an extremely competitive seat?
This becomes more pernicious in a country which is trying to build an educated populace.
Who is going to have access to these drugs in a third world country?
Aside from a few outliers, let's agree that that subset of people with the means and knowledge won't be the chap who doesn't get three square meals a day.
it entrenches older families/competitors with money unfairly
Exactly. The academic system has much competition, and some professors teach through competition. Have you ever had a prof who failed the entire class then graded on a curve? So your 32% grade in the class translates to a grade of 3.6?
Who is going to have access to these drugs in a third world country?
Get ready to see articles about the "Nootropic Divide" between the more and less advantaged people of the world. Better, how long until employers start drug-testing for these, to make sure you're getting a sufficient dose to maximize your performance? I could see EA doing that.
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'
I'm a bit of a consciousness-naut and self-experimenter who's obsessed about increasing productivity. I've experimented a lot with Nootropics.
My thoughts?
Modafinil. Stay away from it. The stuff is wickedly addictive and many people have experienced significant long-term side effects, especially if they try to go off it.
Piracetam. Does a lot to reduce ADD and has strong anti-anxiety properties. That said, I found the benefits (minimally increased focus and less anxiety) to be far outweighed by the fact that you have to keep taking the stuff obsessively lest you go into withdrawal (coming off the stuff is horrible once you've been on it for a couple weeks).
If you want to increase productivity and focus there are a ton of other things you can do, starting with the basics of exercise, proper nutrition, and meditation.
I have known quite a number of people who have taken modafinil, and none of them experienced more than minor side effects. I have several friends who stopped using it for long periods because they built a tolerance (tolerance != addiction), but none experienced withdrawal symptoms.
I used adrafinil for a while because it has the advantage of being unscheduled in the US, and I noticed weak tolerance building, but the only side effects I had were insomnia (while it was in effect) and mild headaches which went away with aspirin. The only reason I stopped taking it was that they revoked its approval in France, and none of the generics from other countries that I've found seem to work.
And you are basing this on what? When I went looking for studies, even the ones on patient populations like cocaine addicts, didn't report addiction: http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#tolerance
... and what do you do when all of that's already taken care of?
Let's learn from how an indisputably smart person (LISP hacker and genuine NASA rocket scientist Peter Norvig, now Google's director of research) approaches claims of a new wonder drug. He writes of "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
in a free online article that is also a wall of text, but which any Hacker News reader could read and apply to become more smart in day-by-day life. We can learn together by comparing the popular article kindly submitted here to the checklist of warning signs provided by Peter Norvig.
Warning Sign D1: Lack of a Randomized Controlled Trial
The article about "smart drugs" submitted here doesn't cite any scientific literature from any country and makes no reference to results from randomized, controlled trials. As another participant here has already pointed out in a smart comment,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4516111
the author of the article's main text is in the business of selling smart drugs. He is not a neutral, objective source of information on the subject. He doesn't seem willing to share his evidence base for his claims, perhaps because he has none.
Warning Sign D2: Lack of Double-Blind Studies
The author refers to people taking various drugs while being aware of what they are taking, which skews their recollection of their performance and very likely results in invalid recollections. Most SCIENTIFIC studies of mental performance interventions are careful to be "double blind" and to have neither the subject nor the experimenter aware of which subject received the studied intervention and which received a sham intervention. And such studies have careful tests of mental performance (working memory, IQ, or the like). The article here is mere advertising puffery by comparison.
Warning Sign D3: Too Few Subjects
The author advertising smart drugs doesn't describe any careful studies, so of course he doesn't mention the number of subjects in any studies. Most so-called studies of smart drugs have been far too small to have any statistical power.
Warning Sign D4: The Wrong Subjects
People voluntarily self-administering smart drugs are VERY likely not a representative sample of the general population. If some people self-report that they became smarter after using the drugs (do their friends and relatives agree?), that by no means shows that most people will be better off if they take the drugs. Random assignment to the treatment condition from among a representative sample is necessary to show that the drugs have any general or consistent benefit.
Warning Sign D5: The Wrong Questions
Most of the supposed tests of smart drugs appear to use mere user self-reports rather than standardized measures of mental performance that show up in the scientific literature on psychology. Simply put, no high-quality treatise on human intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...
has ever reported that smart drugs are good for anything.
Warning Sign D6: The Wrong Statistics
Again, most statements about smart drugs found online have no statistics at all. In any event, what studies there have been about smart drugs that use the language of statistical analysis have mostly been very amateurish in their statistical approach.
Warning Sign D7: Lack of a Specific Hypothesis, or Overzealous Data Mining
Before the user begins taking a smart drug, is the expected effect "creativity," or "memory" or cognition, or what? The article, by its incoherence in grouping drugs by their supposed effects, shows that most of the time people who have sunk money into smart drugs are expected to imagine their own benefits, and will, to avoid embarrassment at being snookered.
Warning Sign D8: Lack of a Theory
The human brain is a very complicated biological system, with many feedback loops, and so far there is no mainstream theory of neurophysiology (a topic with MANY investigators all over the world) that suggests simple chemical interventions to produce long-term improvement in any aspect of mental performance.
Warning Sign D9: Lack of controls
It's not clear in the smart drug promotional literature even what should be controlled if there were a controlled trial of smart drugs. The smart drug promoters are not making enough effort to contrast taking smart drugs with other interventions (say, learning to read more challenging reading material by practice) that likely have better impact on long-term mental performance.
Warning Sign I1: Lacking Repeatability and Reproducibility
The author basically acknowledges that many smart drugs have results that are not reproducible reliably.
Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias
Because smart drug trials are not announced in advance in publicly readable databases, every person selling smart drugs gets to announce unverifiable anecdotes while hiding in the file drawer all the cases in which smart drugs failed.
Warning Sign I3: Ignoring Other Sources of Bias
The smart drug promoters make no effort to subject smart drug claims to the statistical tests that in recent years have revealed many incorrect claims in published scientific literature on other subjects. Because the smart drug claim is an extraordinary claim, smart drug promoters should produce extraordinary evidence to back up the claim.
I'll skip Norvig's next warning sign, as the following one
Warning Sign I5: Taking p too Seriously
is more relevant for the claims here. There is NO indication that smart drugs have any real-world significance (in other words, that people actually live smarter lives after taking them) as contrasted with claimed (but unreported here) instances of the drugs having "statistically significant" effects.
The last few checklist items on Norvig's checklist
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
are also worth looking at in connection with claims about smart drugs.
To sum up, I am willing to do a mental test (memory, or IQ, as the smart drug promoter chooses) duel with anyone who claims that smart drugs have helped him become smarter. I don't believe it, because I don't think there is sufficient evidence to back up that extraordinary claim. If anyone wants to set up the duel, we should each choose "seconds" to negotiate the terms of the mental test duel. I would, of course, insist on a series of STANDARDIZED mental tests administered by a psychologist with a lot of clinical experience. I don't expect any user of smart drugs to win such a duel.
AFTER EDIT: Responding to the first two replies received, there are standard methods in statistics for estimating adequate sample sizes based on expected effect size of the intervention. There isn't any one best sample size that fits all experimental studies, but a careful experimenter will calculate what sample size is large enough to maximize likelihood of meaningful results (statistical power) while minimizing the expense of gathering lots of subjects for the experiment. My proposal for a duel is, of course, a sample size of 1 plus the number of smart drug users who come forth to take the duel, and has other problems as a data-gathering measure, but I offer the duel to illustrate that I think that anyone can improve in smarts, for any real-world purpose, in a lot of ways that are better than taking poorly understood drugs pushed by smart drug hucksters.
What conclusion could you draw from your proposed duel? If someone can't beat you in a standardized IQ test after ingesting 20mg of amphetamine? Or a cup of coffee? Or 5g of a racetam? Seems to me your conclusion would be "I perform better than you even when you're mentally stimulated". Okay, you're smart and awesome.
I'd wager that most people taking nootropics are looking for personal results in our ubiquitous struggle to ward off lethargy while spurring motivation and concentration, not to win some mental duel with their peers.
But there are tricks to it. It has something of a threshold for me: after a certain level, higher dosages don't seem to help any more (other than the first day or two right after the switch), as my body builds some tolerance. The just make the side effects worse. And the side effects are unpleasant at best, even at the relatively low dosage my doctor and I have gotten myself down to. I would absolutely not take it regularly if I felt like I could get stuff done at a sufficient level without it. Some people need their coffee, I need something a bit stronger. Sucks, but I'm stuck with it for now.
>To sum up, I am willing to do a mental test (memory, or IQ, as the smart drug promoter chooses) duel with anyone who claims that smart drugs have helped him become smarter.
Wait, what? He spent 1000 words explaining to us all of the ways in which research around nootropics is lacking and then closes by proposing a ridiculous test fraught with a glaringly obvious confounding factor (the test subject's baseline intelligences). Baffling.
His efforts to double-blind himself and using Dual N-Back for testing effectiveness indicate he takes this topic seriously, and is trying to be very scientific about it. (I say "trying to" because I'm absolutely clueless in this area; it looks to me like he's being pretty rigorous, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to make that claim confidently.)
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics
In particular I liked reading about his experiments with Adderall (which I am using currently), modafinil, and especially the choline/racetam combinations.
Part of the problem may be the pitching of certain drugs as "smart drugs" when instead they are "effectiveness drugs". Adderall doesn't make me any smarter; it corrects a chemical imbalance in my brain, and in doing so makes me more effective.
(Well, honestly, it doesn't "correct" anything; it's like putting your thumb over the end of a garden hose and spraying water at a guy who's thirsty. Solves the problem, just not without a lot of mess. And with dopamine instead of water.)
I personally view n-back as any other repetitive task, only it is mostly in the mind; the more you whittle, the better you will be at whittling.
If you look at the wikipedia page [1] you will see that there have been papers both for and against n-back improving cognitive ability.
The way I propose to test effectiveness would be to have a bunch of subjects all try to learn a difficult task that is unfamiliar to them. Those with the placebo supposedly would not be able to learn it as quickly or understand it as well. The large sample size would account for statistical inaccuracies and differences among people's abilities.
I personally took nootropics this last winter for three months. My theory is that people who claim improvement are looking for improvement, and notice more just how good they are at tasks... I took piracetam, choline, aniracetam, and oxiracetam (and a tiny sample of pramiracetam, the supposed best, for free), and noticed nothing the entire time. Originally I thought I noticed improvement, but only realized I was looking for improvement in every task I did, which made me notice everything I did. After this realization I didn't notice anything at all, for the rest of my supplies. I learned more than just their ineffectiveness during this self experiment...
EDIT: I will revise my statement to add that I do not think that *racetams are completely ineffective. I do believe that they are relatively useless on healthy individuals without any disorders, though. Most of the studies in the wikipedia page are on people with disorders, and I do remember reading before that their benefits on people without problems is disputed.
So?
> I personally view n-back as any other repetitive task, only it is mostly in the mind; the more you whittle, the better you will be at whittling.
Progress in n-back is very slow. I'm up to 2400 rounds and still am only at 30-50% on D5B; a difference of 10% is perfectly noticeable.
> If you look at the wikipedia page [1] you will see that there have been papers both for and against n-back improving cognitive ability.
The Wikipedia page is completely useless compared to my FAQ, but yes. That's not relevant to whether it is a useful way to measure variations in mental ability.
Also, holy crap, D5B. I still get crushed on D3B.
Yeah, I struggled on D3B, like I did on D2B, D4B, D5B... It's really impressive how each level is a sudden massive jump in difficulty.
For instance, if you do Dual 3-Back for 3 weeks with an identical supplement regimen, you can graph the progressive improvement over time. That'll give you a semi-baseline, and if all you change (in your life) is a supplement from that point, you can attribute the alterations in your typical N-Back to something supplement related.
I know, placebo effect, etc. It's not causation, just correlation. Just because correlation gets pimped out on the street corner by people with agendas doesn't mean we should ignore him. We should just be careful when we utilize his services.
Paul Erdős famously claimed that amphetamines helped him in mathematics:
> After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[34] Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s
Erdos was also apparently more prolific after starting amphetamines, perhaps because he started sleeping significantly less.[1]
[1]: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Paul Hoffman, http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Loved-Only-Numbers/dp/07868840...
It is true that the prevalence of 12 person tests which barely correct for confounders, misunderstood p-values and outright making up results to get more positive outcomes is a very bad state affairs for medicine. Explaining in part why results are constantly contradicting each other. But even if it weren't so - without understanding a particular drug's sensitivity to genetics and the particular individuals respective haplotype, large numbers and good methodology will simply not not be good enough.
Not until sensing technology becomes more prevalent will it be possible to say anything about the effects of drugs with confidence. We already for example know that time of day, food content and acidity of stomach, how the drug is taken, consistency, metabolism and genetics can affect toxicity and or efficacy. You cannot have any kind of conversation on drugs without knowing what pathways it interacts with, how it saturates, how and if any haplotypes respond differently, where and how it is metabolized, state of vitals when taken and so on.
But there is good news. The effects of genetics on drugs is one of the easiest success stories one can point to for genomics. Sensors are getting better so that one day we can not just share testimonials but sequences, recorded metabolites, change in vitals, oxygenation, hormones etc. to finally be able to form proper correlations. It is true that tests can very much also include this type of data but at that point I don't think the lab experiments would even be necessary. A person could simply randomly place sugar capsules, do the battery of tests and then measure for absorption themselves.
It is for this reason I believe that personalized crowdsourced testimonials backed with hard real data will someday outpace the current lab based/phase 4 method of testing effectiveness.
Reading the Wikipedia entry for Piracetam exposed this double blind placebo controlled study.
You might want to filter by time to get more recent studies, but there's a vast body of knowledge built over decades.
Neither yourself, nor Peter Norvig suggested an appropriate number of subjects for tests like these. So I'm curious, what would be an appropriate number of subjects?
Say you are measuring IQ before and after taking omega 3. Say your hypthesis is "omega 3 immedieately increases IQ". Assume this is true, even if it probably isn't. After testing this on 20 people you might be able to say "the hypthesis appears to be true, but there is a 46% percent chance these results are due to chance". However after testing 1000 people, you might be able to say "the hypthesis appears to be true, and there is a 0.5% percent chance these results are due to chance". Then you are 99.5% confident in your result. Standards for confidence varies from field to field, but typically 99% confidence or more is called a significant result. Given some assumptions, you can also calculate the number of samples needed to generate a result with confidence >X% with probability Y. According to Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow, most researchers don't take the time to do this, and are consistently surprised when their experiments turn out to not give significant results.
This depends on the experiment. Some of the things to account for are the number of variables, the confidence you are looking for and the amount of interdependence. Consult a statistician, particularly one expert in experimental trials, for an evaluation.
There are also exact formulas for simple tests.
Problem is that I don't believe intelligence always works this way, e.g., if having less of Y causes lower than average IQ, it doesn't imply that having more of Y will raise IQ in subjects with average/above-average IQ.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bNfuX26mSsAC&pg=PA151&#...
Note, however, that an IQ below 75 falls in the bottom 5% of cognitive ability. I highly doubt that it's possible to infer impact of these drugs on individuals in the upper 5% of cognitive ability (exactly the folks that are the most interest in boosting their intelligence to stay competitive -- software engineers, medical/graduate students, etc...) from these studies.
Finally there could be other benefits to Piracetam use (reduced anxiety, better memory, better focus, etc..) even if there's no "boost" to performance IQ.
I just don't (yet?) see conclusive evidence of this.
That people doing smart things aren't busy talking about smart drugs (if true) does not imply that some smart drugs aren't helpful.
I've heard plenty about caffeine and modafinil use from people who do good work. I use caffeine and I do good work.
And since it hasn't why should we assume we are ready for it now?
Obviously, we immediately cull anything that is available from a normal diet, and ask the questions of the others. As such, your <b>entire</b> argument is ignorant, as it fails to ask the simple question: <i>in what cases do these drugs work</i>?
They're designed for a purpose. They must be efficacious for that purpose. They <i>might</i> have other beneficial side effects. They <i>might</i> have negative side effects.
Your comment is ignorant as hell, and it's depressing that you're the top comment.
Hint: drugs such as modafinil, caffeine, nicotine are part of daily life <b>because they have a demonstrable effect</b>.
This is a white-wash, and a pathetic piece of propaganda. Major pharma companies, and entire caffeine / nicotine based economies of industrialised <> developing world countries and the multi-billion $ profits involved state you're full of shit.
/HN, what a crock.
HINT: Military forces have been STUFFING a whole slew of drugs into their people since they were discovered. Where do you think heroin came from? Where do you think amphetamines came from? Where do you think most of the research (hello LSD) was focused towards in the last 40 years? Where do you think the newest batch of stuff came from?
Here's a "duel" for you: find a serving member of combat (esp. Airforce) and then ask them if they can fly <i>without</i> taking their pills. They. Are. Not. Allowed. To.
Enhancing drugs work ~ go investigate the fucking Tour-de-France, you idiot. And if you need data on the mental realm, then nicotine & caffeine have <b>full documented papers on their effects</b>. This isn't even the prescription / FDA / illegal stuff out there.
You really are a shill.
Gaaahh... Muppets.
p.s. "On Muppets". Why the hell doesn't standard HTML tags work around here? Retro-chique? Kinda... odd for this type of forum.
>|They're designed for a purpose. They must be efficacious for that purpose.
Why? That is fallacious. They aren't designed for the purpose they are touted for, and as you correctly point out later, the article that these comments all relate to primarily refer to supplements rather than drugs per se .
>| Where do you think heroin came from?
What are you talking about? The military had nothing to do with Heroin.
Now, I use caffeine, nicotine and modafinil regularly. But that does not legitimise all drugs/supplements that have had the label 'nootropic' added to them by passionate advocates for human mental advancement and improvement, and the comment that is currently the first post in this thread I believe correctly points out what is required in order to establish evidence around the efficacy of these drugs.
We should not be too rapid in our praise of miracle cures and treatments, history shows that most of them are a load of shit.
ps. try asterisks for italics
The original story talks about racetams as opposed to stimulants. I don't think the fact that stimulants... stimulate is controversial: it's just side effects of stimulants are also well known. Of course, some stimulants are more socially accepted than others: no one calls me a junky and an addict, even though I run to the coffee machine every morning lest I experience (non-trivial) withdrawal syndroms (headache, excessive sleepiness).
Racetams appeal as they (seem to) have no known side effects -- which is that part that sounds too good to be true. As far as I understand the mechanism is such: poor absorption of choline (either due to lack of choline in diet or issues with choline receptors) creates cognitive impairment; racetams and choline "fix" this impairment. That isn't controversial.
However, what I don't know (and what tokenadult doesn't know) is what affect racetams and choline have on healthy individuals. In other words, is the money spent on months' supply of choline and *racetam simply better spent on French press, a good grinder, dark roasted beans, and a gym membership?
I don't know and I'm curious to see some studies. Note: I am not saying that folks shouldn't experiment with racetams, it's just they can't know a-priori it will have the advertised effect. OTOH if you are not short on money, there's nothing wrong with experimentation: the Placebo effect alone could be worth it. It's just you have to draw the line between "someone on the Internet reported did X and experienced Y" and "X implies Y is a scientific valid conclusion".
Of course the worst scam is energy drinks: a cup of coffee costs less and tastes better than five hour energy -- and I am at a loss at how a five hour energy could do something that coffee can not.
Do you really not have access to common papers? This might be a question of me assuming common access to information where there is none.
Or, think of it this way ~ unless you're living in a pristine environment (which most of you aren't), then they'll help you. Most humans are swimming in a whole sea of chemicals [airborne, ingested] and bacterial processes that you're not aware of. Heck, every human being's weight is 1Kg (ish) of non-human DNA and complex ecosystems.
Yep, that's right: you're a huge ecosystem of your own, revel in it. So take off 1kg off the scale, that's other beasties at play.
Ye Gods, most of you are firing off megadeath levels of antibacterials, chromosome damaging chemicals, metal-based-nasties and so forth just by getting ready in the morning.[1] Your brain chemistry is a whole lot more complex ~ and although we're getting there on understanding it, we've a while to go.
But, the Racetams have so far proven <b>entirely</b> benign, and helpful. They should be given to everyone by deafult, if we're in the realms of fluoridating water supplies.
[1] No, I like science. I love science. We all love it. Still doesn't change the fact that processes like decaffeinated coffee production had stupidly large amounts of cancer producing drugs in them until recently. Or DDT.
As stated: the greater the impairment, the greater the effect. Now, you might not want to spend $x on a mere 5% improvement, but we do it all the time in reality ~ tinfoil hats off, but why do we fluoridate water supplies or make sure children have nutritious meals? [in the old model of society that seems to have fallen away].
Note: I advise strongly against over-dosing or using the stronger types without some knowledge of what's going on in your brain. Although, most people fuck around with their brain chemistry happily enough on pleasure receptors anyhow, so it's better than even the legal abuses you can get up to [pain killers, alcohol, nicotine-purely-to-lungs].
Bottom line: it ain't going to kill you like other stuff, and there's no evidence it can actually damage you either [barring affective behaviours which will subside as the drug is removed[1]]. Try it, be sensible, and then whatever.
The entire theatre of this thread, set by the idiot who made the 1st post is ridiculous. Learn some science, maybe?
[1]You might get some slight mania etc depending on your base chemistry, but it's not going to be permanent.
Additionally, please see tokenadult's posts: tokenadult is anything _but_ an idiot and has contributed much valuable insight to this community (often times with concrete citations). It's important to learn to disagree respectfully.
The thread I responded to is still lacking in quality, esp. references ~ but I learnt down-thread s/he's a known poster, so I guess the rules don't apply.
Charming. ZZzzz.
[Edit: I'm having trouble finding the paper on this, for reference below, it's from a Welsh University ~ it might have been removed and/or hijacked for use for something else]
People who have been on the site a long time (note: not me) can downvote you, which is what happened to your posts, rather than them being flagged. If you are flagged it just goes to the admins and they delete it if it's counterproductive. Also, you don't seem to know how to use the formatting here, and you don't care enough to figure it out and fix your old posts, which some could take to be as disrespectful to a new community.
What the hell would that prove?
Yeah, right. Probably in some other internet. You can't find a site today where there they weren't discussed at least once.
Personally I won't take them without prescription from a doctor. Yes, downsides are pretty obscure and rare but the same are benefits. Based on reviews they are not some magic pills like in Limitless. Closer to placebo actually.
I literally LOL'd at that. You can't throw a stick without hitting a bunch of college students obsessing about this stuff. Is this guy even on the internet?
However, you should also know, that it is much easier to get a lot of effects just by using things that are easily accesible to us:
* exercise or even walk (like 45 mins)
* coffee (obviously, unfortunately doesn't work for me)
* tea, green tea, yerba mate, others (amazing and powerful effects)
* music - trance or classical work really well
* binaural beats - also work exceptionally well, for focus and for creativity, idea generation
* meditation (goes with the one above)
So what I am trying to say, there are a lot of ways how we can boost our intellects. Let's not forget really enjoyable ones like green tea for example.
Dunno why, might even be placebo effect, but I noticed the effect before I made the connection to the cause.
Added: Now it's made the top post.
I'll be trying Neurozan (http://www.vitabiotics.com/Neurozan/) in the next few weeks.
The "American Ideology" being that anyone can do anything they just have to try. If you can cognitively enhance yourself and become more successful then that proves that there's some things some people can't do because they are just not smart enough and that realization is enough to activate full blown cognitive dissonance. People think, "this must be cheating!", "this must be dangerous!", "this must be addictive!", "why isn't everybody else doing it?".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/my-experiment-with...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Hari#Journalistic_contro...
(For Americans - Hari is like the British Jayson Blair).
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/20/science/sci-braindop...
http://groanblog.livejournal.com/865.html
I've read elsewhere that it can be addictive.
Also, the LA Time article discusses Inderal, a beta-blocker which could be considered a smart drug since it eases nerves by reducing adrenaline rushes (no more shaky hands or pounding heart). Might be helpful to the hacker community if you're stricken by nerves working on a tight deadline.
It's a lovely little thing though, very nice clean focused sensation coupled with a lack of tiredness.
It's probably not addictive, but what if you become addicted to the lifestyle it makes possible?
Steroids are considered psychologically addictive for this reason.
The downside is it interacts with stimulants. Too much coffee and you'll be running to the bathroom. Just something to keep in mind.
Does anyone have citations for that claim? (Any non-anecdotal evidence.)
Stimulant psychosis is unrelated to long-term permanent cognitive impairment; it's temporary, for example.
I was hoping to find out more about the medical basis for the "permanent gradual decline of mental abilities" assertion, because it seems hard to believe that our current knowledge of the human brain is sufficient to make such a broad claim with any degree of accuracy.
And there are other statements suggesting that people that have suffered from acute psychosis are prone to relapses (if a chronic user has more problems than a dabbler, that at least suggests accumulated damage).
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.