2 replies to this topic

[jroseland]

The Intelligence Squared Youtube channel is one of the few places that transcends the internet echo chamber by pitting teams of elite experts against each other for well over an hour to explore the nuances and challenge our preconceptions of decisive issues. This week they debated smart drug usage on campus, which I watched with keen interest..

I've personally used over 60 smart drugs, I've also spent about 10 hours a week for the past 4 years on Pubmed studying the human clinical trials. This is a rabbit hole that goes deep and I've explored it thoroughly, so I watched this debate with much interest.

Some snarky remarks and insights of mine at different time-stamps of the debate...

14:40 Smart Drugs don't exist. FALSE. This guy obviously hasn't tried them. See these meta analysis papers and studies
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/26085043
http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/22779312
http://www.ncbi.nlm....v/pubmed/826948
http://onlinelibrary...020506/abstract
22:55 Smart Drug addiction. NOT a thing. I've cycled on and off smart drugs multiple times and never experienced any withdrawal symptoms. Actually the that's not entirely true, the week I went off coffee was pretty rough. I've also dialogued with hundreds of other Biohackers and have come across virtually no cases of self destructive addiction to these drugs.
27:00   Life isn't fair and smart drugs do give one an unfair advantage. To paraphrase the moderator; while smart drugs are potent weapons in the cognitive arms race in our increasingly competitive intellectual economy there are actually lot of other cognitive enhancement options that can be used to level the playing field.. Dual N-Back brain training, mindfulness meditation, healthy diet and lifestyle can be equally effective performance enhancers as dropping Modafinil or Racetams.
41:00 "Smart drugs are an epiphenomenon of our competitive environment"
42:00 I think she is actually referring to Ayn Rand's short science fiction story about a completely equal society, Anthem, worth a read 
50:00 She nailed it! Our economy is desperately in need of invention and hard work. Competition is the primary enabler of progress. Let's enable competition!
52:00 The aussie confirms she really is Karl Marx reincarnated! For those who share her concerns the good news is that Smart Drugs are a tremendous gift to the downtrodden proletariat (tweeting courageously about the oppression of the 1% on their iPhones!). Since virtually any student can afford them, they are a tremendous enabler of equality.
1:00:00 They kept drawing a comparison between sports doping and Smart Drugs. This is pretty crappy comparison. Sports are comprised of arbitrary rules to make them fun games for the athletes and spectators. The (mostly) free market that students are competing in is (mostly) a pure meritocracy of ability.
1:05:00 The Coffee question completely exposed the irrationality of the opposition's arguments.
1:16:00 Rita made a really good point that smart drugs are enablers of volition. When you really want to work hard, they enable you to do so, when you want to relax different smart drugs help you to really relax. Smart Drugs if anything drastically improve quality of life
Overall it's kind of a silly motion, since students are using smart drugs and they are going to continue to do so. All the students who use Smart Drugs are wishing that smart drugs would be outlawed since it would just potentiate the unfair advantage they have.

IQSquared consistently books the top experts in the world pro and con the motion being debated. So it says a lot that the best objections the opposition could come up with was that smart drugs might make you a workaholic (which I've agreed with elsewhere!) I'm satisfied that the motion was carried and the skeptics in the audience were swayed by the philosophical rationality and scientific arguments of the pro smart drug team.

[Multivitz]

Lambs to the slaughter?

Well it all depends on the process the 'drugs' were produced. Some so called ' drugs ' are good constructs of natural biological compounds, and as such, can be used short term with adequate care(like some demonised street drugs). Some of them are drugs, a synthetic biological antagonist, and as such should be avoided at all cost.
To glamourise drugs is highly irresponsible, in my opinion and many others. To glamourise and generalise the drugs that effect the brain is not a very clever thing to do. Brain function is characterised through it's natural chemistry, dietary improvements are often enough to get smart, and have an improved capacity of emotion (this is a key to trophic improvement).
To generalise, the brain is an organ of photons and peptides(polypeptides/protien hormones). Scientifically the knowledge in these areas is not as main stream as it could be. One reason why this knowledge is not given press is that the underlying attitudes needed to understand them is in conflict with greedy industrial intrests. In the video above, all I see is a group of impressionable immature people that have little impetus to their higher selves, and are just coerced by the group mentality into believing drugs will be a safe option. Its sick and highly irresponsible for anyone to promote drugs.
To use a drug to learn a subject, past an exam, manage workload, and to feel better is like lying. It really is. After your brain normalises, things go back to how they were, but with the benefit of the experience and some changes to neural pathways. Saying to someone that you accomplished something on drugs is fine, your future abilities would not match the ones you had whilst on drugs. You could see it as an improvement, but in most cases the user has made access to the 'true higher self' more difficult. ' So what ', is the usual answer, but in reality, the 'higher self' is far more intelligent than a none believer could understand. Only a fool rushes in, or in this case, a confident engaging individual thinking it's all cut n dry.
If something is true, it will be remembered. If the brain chemistry is true, it will make communication with the higher self. Some dreams are more significant that others, I undersand mine and seldom need them. True means naturally correct, it matters in more ways than a drug pamphlet could ever show.
Using the Trivium method is fine, the Quadrivium is better. To mix them is true art, I can't see how drug scared nerve tissue could cope. Ones mind would simply be stunted spiritual. Something one has to notice to see when it goes!

Edited by Multivitz, 13 January 2016 - 08:26 PM.

[Multivitz]

The top experts had to mix their words in order to allow the audience to get a rough grasp of thier points. I don't feel the con side was agressive enough, but they did talk in absolutes, where as the pro side neither challenged, or agreed with the oppositions finer points. Worlds best dummed down I'd say.