James Dunlop
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The great enhancement debate
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    Neo-Nootropics: Do You Dope?
    Project: The great enhancement debate
    An interesting article has been presented in Nature, indicating that a portion of the scientific comunity is involved in using medical drugs to enhance cognitive functions.

    Is this a problem? What are the reprecusions of the daily use of these drugs on the body? Is it ethically wrong to gain this sort of "unatural" advantage? Are they putting those that choose not too, or cannot afford these enhancements, at a disadvantage?

    When combined with the information from Wildcat's article on Techno-Doping we see an interesting future emerging. Does this sort of environment widen the gap between Have's and Have-Nots, or does it level the playing field? What is the best method to make these technologies available in order to guarentee an ethically healthy future?

    If the latest prosthetic limb came around, say, in the year 2020, and it functioned better than an average regular limb, and it was relativley cheap compared to the gains it offered, how many people would voluntarily have their arm removed? Remember, this arm is better in many, if not all ways, to a regular limb. Would it be a tough or easy decision? Would you replace both arms? What about your legs? Aside from money, is there a biological or ethical limit to how many natural components of our body can be replaced?



    Wed, Apr 9, 2008  Permanent link
    Categories: Cognitive Enhancement
    Sent to project: The great enhancement debate
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    dmitridb     Thu, Apr 10, 2008  Permanent link
    The article is about people taking ritalin and modafinil as stimulants to gain an edge but your picture seems to be a racetam drug, probably just piracetam mixed with a bunch of other stuff. I'm surprised the link didn't mention amphetamines, though.

    When it comes to the racetam drugs, they're basically good for you, and give you mental clarity without the jitteryness of things such as caffeine, ritalin or speed, which are basically bad for you. Phenylpiracetam is one of these drugs used pretty widely in Russia, but it's on the anti-doping list for olympic sports because it allows resistance to exhaustion. When it comes to sports, I can see where these things become a no-no, because it's all about the condition of winning. However, when it comes to the intellectual world, the goal is not to win a stupid shiny piece of metal for some dumb reason, usually, and competition in the intellectual world is pretty limited in its usefulness to, say, different research teams trying to find a way to do something or know something and coming to different conclusions that shed different shades of light on whatever. This is a good thing. When it comes to academia, though, well... I'm not even in post-secondary, partly because a lot of me thinks it's a giant fucking joke how it's just a big competition to weed out "the best" when really all it does is deters most people from achieving their full potential by making it into a discouraging competition for learning things where you do better for your grades if everyone else does bad. I think that people could learn in much better ways than competitive ones that stress them the fuck out and make them give up or half-ass it, but of course our societies are highly competitive one which do a lot of harm in the end with the competitive spirit. I'll leave anyone reading this to think about the reasons why, but it's not hard to realize that there has to be a better way.
    James Dunlop     Thu, Apr 10, 2008  Permanent link
    Thanks for the info dmitridb. If not already apparent, I will admit that this whole nootropics scene is new to me. I actually find it quite fascinating. Would you, or anyone else for that matter, happen to know of the availability in Canada? Is it a prescription or shelf drug?

    It's my impression that the intellectual world is just as much dog-eat-dog as anything else, albiet at a more intellectual level. With different research teams vying for a peice of funding pie, I'm sure that producing some of the most relevant and groundbreaking research is enough of an incentive to go that extra mile and consume drugs that give you the edge over your competition, viz. rival researchers.

    I would also speculate that the distinction one can earn from making a great discovery is another, more ego-centric reason to persue enhancement, which I suppose is acceptable seeing as all scientific data is valuable.
    dmitridb     Thu, Apr 10, 2008  Permanent link
    Well, if you want the stimulants... Just go to a doctor and say that you have trouble concentrating on your work, and trouble staying awake during the day. Bam, a bottle of dexedrine (Or less powerful drugs like ritalin, concerta, or modafinil if you forget the "staying awake" part in your bullshit to the doc) a month for your "adhd" (Everyone has it!). Not that I do this, if I want speed I can just buy it off friends with scripts (And not that I do that either). I don't want a shitty habit, you know? There's better and way healthier ways to hold your concentration and stay awake, really, if that's all you want, but those pills in the right dose will give you one fucking hell of a lot of creative drive. Good for getting a lot of things done in a short amount of time that you normally would never get done otherwise, like, cleaning your entire house in a day or writing a book in a week. It's amazing how many people are on speed and don't even know what it is beyond their "adhd medication" or those who just keep their use of amphetamine and even methamphetamine secret (Prescription meth apparently has less side effects than dexedrine, eh?)

    I've never seen racetam drugs in Canada, a month ago or so I tried to find some at supplement stores but they never heard of the stuff. I bet the best place to find it is over the internet anyways. I heard phenylpiracetam is the shit from someone who got some a while ago that I was talking to on the internet.
     
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