Did you come across any studies of low doses of cocaine? In the Andes, mate de coca is a popular beverage made from coca leaves. The active ingredient is cocaine, but at a much lower dose than the recreational drug of the refined form. Anecdotally, I could see it having a nootropic effect.
Except they have downsides. People overestimate the addiction aspect but it is an anorexic and all cognitive benefits go away if you can't eat.
Let's assume that you managed that, you can develop a fever and a mild heatstroke will erase any benefits from cognition. ,
Stimulants raise psychosis risk dramatically.
Papers and scientific research wildly underestimate side effects in people (except for addiction risk imo). This proves the no free lunch people right. This is no low hanging fruit.
Interesting. Perhaps the most important consequences are not at the individual level but at the societal level. Shifting a person's IQ a few points might not matter all that much, but shifting the average of a population by a few points could greatly increase the number of people past a certain IQ threshold at the highest ends of the bell curve. I wonder whether the introduction of coffee, tea, and tobacco into Europe played a role in the acceleration of the scientific and economic acceleration that followed.
"The only downsides of a higher IQ are autism, autoimmune disorders, and allergies. Maybe unconventional sexual behaviour too — low fertility and bisexuality in particular; that depends on your values. None of the effects here are large."
Well, that explains my exes.
Seriously: nice job! I'm afraid to mess around with this stuff too much but it's notable the top few drugs are widely used already...
Why do you think nicotine patches aren't more widely used? Most of the risk comes form burning the cigarette from what I can tell.
Did you come across any studies of low doses of cocaine? In the Andes, mate de coca is a popular beverage made from coca leaves. The active ingredient is cocaine, but at a much lower dose than the recreational drug of the refined form. Anecdotally, I could see it having a nootropic effect.
Pharmacokinetically, it's similar to adderall, so I'd expect the same effect, controlling for dose and method of administration.
Except they have downsides. People overestimate the addiction aspect but it is an anorexic and all cognitive benefits go away if you can't eat.
Let's assume that you managed that, you can develop a fever and a mild heatstroke will erase any benefits from cognition. ,
Stimulants raise psychosis risk dramatically.
Papers and scientific research wildly underestimate side effects in people (except for addiction risk imo). This proves the no free lunch people right. This is no low hanging fruit.
Bacopa has pretty compelling evidence
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23772955/
Interesting. Perhaps the most important consequences are not at the individual level but at the societal level. Shifting a person's IQ a few points might not matter all that much, but shifting the average of a population by a few points could greatly increase the number of people past a certain IQ threshold at the highest ends of the bell curve. I wonder whether the introduction of coffee, tea, and tobacco into Europe played a role in the acceleration of the scientific and economic acceleration that followed.
What spurred the sudden flurry of posts? It's great reading.
"The only downsides of a higher IQ are autism, autoimmune disorders, and allergies. Maybe unconventional sexual behaviour too — low fertility and bisexuality in particular; that depends on your values. None of the effects here are large."
Well, that explains my exes.
Seriously: nice job! I'm afraid to mess around with this stuff too much but it's notable the top few drugs are widely used already...
Why do you think nicotine patches aren't more widely used? Most of the risk comes form burning the cigarette from what I can tell.