

The use of brain-enhancing drugs in colleges continues to rise - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/10/06/should-students-be-tested-for-brain-enhancing-drugs/

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dpapathanasiou
I like what Michael Mandel had to say on this subject back in 2006:

" _Suppose that a pharmaceutical company was selling a pill that would improve
your memory by 30% or your IQ by 30%, with the same sort of side effects as
steroids. Would you be willing to take them for 3 or 5 critical years in your
career? What if you knew that everyone else was taking them? What if you knew
that the Chinese or the French were taking them? And would you be willing to
give your kids these pills in, say, the junior year of high school, to
increase the odds of getting a good score on the SAT?_ "

[http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/arch...](http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2006/03/steroids_vs_the.html)

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ramanujan
A key difference is that the games played with higher intelligence are _not
zero sum_.

If someone takes Provigil and shortens their life by 5 years (say), yet comes
up with a breakthrough in physics that improves the lives of millions, then
it's not the same as just running a bit faster in the 100m dash by using
steroids. The latter is (arguably[1]) cheating, the former is self-
sacrificing.

As for steroids themselves, they are only considered bad because they have
negative side effects. If they had no side effects, they'd be like taking a
multivitamin.

[1] why arguably? Because things like Phelps' bodysuit are also arguably
cheating.

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arihelgason
If schools start testing, we'll end up with a cat & mouse game similar to the
one in professional sports. The cat's out of the bag.

A recent article serves as a good primer to the ethical issues raised by
cognitive enhancers: [http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/09/the-age-of-
enhance...](http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/09/the-age-of-enhancement/)

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johnnybgoode
This whole thing is nuts. Please see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=857922>

Also, Einstein on exams: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=864539>

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chrischen
I agree the idea of making yourself perform better for a test is ludicrous.
These are performance enhancers for something that doesn't matter. If you are
self-motivated and driven like Einstein, or like a startup founder, you will
have the motivation and focus that Adderal provides. Rather than taking drugs
to make ourselves fit into an unideal model of education, why not just modify
the education system so that students learn what they want? Yea it would be a
major overhaul, but we're going in the wrong direction here.

~~~
pyre
The problem here is that there is a chasm between the students that want to
learn, and the students that see learning as a chore, and just 'want to have
fun' because 'learning/reading is for nerds.'

Just allowing students to learn what they want to, won't necessarily change
the 'poor' culture that discourages learning (e.g. poor, racist blacks that
view learning as a 'white thing' or just poor people that view people that
want to learn or are 'smart' as pretentious).

~~~
chrischen
Personally I think everyone wants to learn something, because we all have some
sort of desire which needs some new knowledge to be had in order to be
achieved. The problem is that our current educational system tells students to
learn something usually at an unoptimal time. What I mean is that if I am I
taught algebra when I realize I want to learn it, and I do it myself, there is
less time wasted in being forced to learn it.

~~~
pyre
While I think that there are definitely problems with the US education system,
I think that if we leave everything up to the children it'll be worse off.
There will be some that are freed to excel to higher heights, but -- taking
from your example -- there will be far fewer people with even a basic
understanding of algebra.

While it might not exactly be Lord of the Flies, children aren't known for
making the best decisions for themselves nor for having a level of resistance
to peer-pressure.

~~~
chrischen
You're right. Most kids would probably know jack squat if it were up to them.
I think I was just thinking a little too much about myself because I felt
jailed in by education.

But on the other hand even though we force those kids to learn algebra who
might not have learned it if it was up to them, how much do they really
understand of it when they are initially taught? Do they only truly learn it
when they rediscover it later on in life (perhaps at a more natural moment
when it becomes practical) only to have the educational system take credit?

I mean even in college some of my friends take the attitude of _pass now_ and
learn the stuff for real when they get their jobs later in life.

I'm thinking we could improve efficiency by somehow bypassing the _pass now_
stage. Of course it's much more complicated to do that than it seems.

Instead of focusing on cramming info to give the illusion of education, we
could teach children why they should learn, and try to get them interested and
self motivated.

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johnnybgoode
You are on the right track, chrischen. Many of us seem to have made the hidden
assumption that we are first supposed to have a two-decade-long "education"
phase, and only then a "real world" phase. I'll bet even the not-so-bright
kids can tell that the tasks they're ordered to complete while in the child
processing system[1] are artificial, arbitrary, inefficient, and often
useless. Quite a few people have admitted that bright kids would probably be
better off outside the system, but I believe this applies even to the less
intelligent kids. You're more likely to encourage yourself to learn if you
enjoy what you're learning and/or you see that it really _matters_ in some
way; i.e., it has some real-world effect beyond some grade on a test.

Things work out better in many, many ways when people of all levels of
intelligence are allowed to learn and work as they wish.

[1] Credit for this term goes to HN poster gruseom; I believe he coined it.

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pie
It amazes me that stimulants continue to be called "cognitive enhancers" or
"brain-enhancing drugs." ...Really?

Focus and persistence do not equate to intelligence. Not by a long shot, and
certainly not at the cost of awareness and creativity.

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hristov
Honestly I do not think any of these drugs really work. Notice how the article
does not cite any studies showing these drugs work on people that are not
suffering any mental disorders.

I remember in college there were some people that thought they could take a
pill to make them smarter but from my perception those people started out dumb
and stayed dumb after they took their pills.

I am sure that if someone has ADD they may benefit from drugs that are
prescribed to treat that but I doubt there would be a benefit otherwise.

So no, they should not be treated like steroids. The main problem with
steroids is that they work.

~~~
silentbicycle
Also, the majority listed (though _not_ the racetams) are stimulants, either
related to amphetamines or e.g. ritalin. Those are generally understood to
have troublesome side effects.

Getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and eating well will have a much
bigger impact.

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Alex3917
These so-called 'smart drugs' are poorly named. They don't actually make you
smarter, they just make it easier to focus on doing work.

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arram
Intelligence has a lot of dimensions. It's not unreasonable to say focus is
one of them.

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chrischen
Supposedly Adderall stunts creativity. In this respect it makes you dumber. So
it is unreasonable to say these drugs make you smarter.

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hristov
That's the problem -- anything that makes you "more focused" will stun your
creativity and may cause you to obsessively repeat mindless tasks and anything
that makes you more creative will prevent you from getting anything done.

So in the end you may as well just use your original god-provided brain.

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greml1n
This is a non-sensical argument. Where did you get this false spectrum of
creative <-> focused from?

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chrischen
I've read it somewhere too. It makes sense if you think about it. In certain
types of ADHD, the hyperactiity is in the thoughts. So the person would have
more thoughts racing through his or her head than normal and this probably
constitutes the creativity since they have more random thoughts to seed a good
idea. The drive for this is thought to be caused by understimulation. In other
words the mind is bored, so we start racing through thoughts to try to make
something more exciting. What Adderall does is stimulate your mind so that
it's no longer bored. Less random thoughts are needed and the person can focus
on one thing better. Of course, the random thoughts, which constituted the
creativity, is traded off. It's actually my theory behind how it works (I have
ADHD).

