Cognitive Enhancement
The struggle to find a drug that makes you so fast that you save more time by taking it than you lost by researching it
August 6, 2017 — March 10, 2024
Medication for brain performance enhancement. Anecdotally common in my highly competitive field, and amongst dotcom types. Tweaking brains with ‘smart drugs’ to get ahead in Silicon Valley is notorious. Also, my brief contact with finance types leads me to believe it is common there. I am sure it is in many industries besides.
My advice on this isn’t worth much since I know nothing about pharmacology etc. But even if I did, I wouldn’t endorse taking performance-enhancing drugs without professional medical and legal advice about the impacts on your health and compliance with local government regulations.
1 Assessing effectiveness of
Hmm.
DIY? “Neurohacker toolbox”.
Aella’s article, Are you just pushing the “insight” button?, explores taking LSD for the (feeling of?) insight.
2 Mechanisms
Scott Alexander speculates on Cognitive enhancers: mechanisms and tradeoffs, which relates to Gwern’s Drug Heuristics.
3 Hallucinogens
4 Modafinil
In practice, many nerds seem to take modafinil plus some other things. Reports are generally positive, though I’ve heard of side effects like suddenly liking house music.
A profusion of sites with names like Nootropics Depot, modafinil.org, modafinilxl.com, and buymodafinilonline.com suggest that taking Modafinil without a prescription is pretty common. It seems it’s a kind of ‘Viagra for the brain’ market niche filled by these suppliers. I’m uncertain about the legality, safety, or effectiveness of this drug.
See also:
5 ISRIB
Is ISRIB any good?
6 Zembrin
7 Creatine
8 Caffeine
9 Choline stuff
I know little about cholinergic systems. Alpha-GPC seems popular.
- Klaire Labs’ Alpha-GPC Overview
- Alpha-GPC
- Examine.com, Alpha-GPC Supplement — Health Benefits, Dosage, Side Effects
10 Meta
Review of Examine.com write-ups
My (Elizabeth’s) tentative conclusion is that it would take tens of hours to beat an Examine general write-up, but they are not complete in either their list of topics nor their investigation into individual topics. If a particular effect is important to you, you will still need to do your own research.
Sam Atis, in More notes on ADHD, connects ADHD medication to nootropics and finds no meaningful differentiation between medicalization of a disease and cognitive enhancement.
Trying to eat something that tastes gross? Amino Acid Flavourings Powder Australia is a generic flavouring with essentially no nutrients, so it will minimally interfere with any dietary regime.
11 Incoming
- The Algernon Argument posits that really good nootropics won’t exist or nature would have already exploited them.
- A rebuttal by George: Increasing IQ is trivial - by George
- Alpha-GPC benefits, dosage, and side effects Not mentioned: Stroke risk (Lee et al. 2021)
- N-Phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester benefits, dosage, and side effects
- Why are the nootropic experiments such a grab-bag? “We administer a combination of Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Acetyl-l-carnitine, R. Rosea, and Alpha-lipoic acid (called Ceretrophin) vs placebo” (Stough et al. 2011)