Therefore, the choice isn't "brain damage vs 10 points on a test." It's more like "performing like a normal human being vs failing at life."
Because I'm talking about the first case, and you seem to be talking about the second. The article, to me, was geared toward the first scenario. If you'd like to talk about the second scenario, that's fair game, but not what I was talking about at all.
At least that's how I read it.
When it comes to taking tests, 99% of the population seems to me like they have serious brain problems. They perform far below my level, which I arbitrarily designate as normal. The kinds of "real brain problems that need some intervention" that we're talking about here are defined pretty empirically; we mostly aren't talking about things that show up on an MRI, we're talking about things that are "diagnosed" by people scoring 1½σ below the mean on an IQ test.
To take a concrete and fairly extreme example, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with people that they can see a word spelled correctly dozens or hundreds of times and still not know how to spell it. But that seems to be the case for 99% of the population.
The function of correct spelling in modern society seems to me to be essentially the same as the function of good penmanship a century ago: to demonstrate to the reader that the writer is properly educated, i.e. approximately that their parents were rich enough that they didn't have to pull them out of school in 1950 when they were 10 to work on the farm. Fundamentally, this is harmful to the social fabric. Either prejudice distracts from the quality of the writing — there are any number of Nobel-winning writers with terrible spelling and penmanship.
(I was expelled from eighth grade for picking a particularly inopportune time to explain this point of view, somewhat less articulately: coming in second in the regional spelling bee, if I remember correctly.)
It's fortunate that this particular neurological deficit doesn't happen to cause any harm, and unfortunate that we choose to stigmatize the 99% of the population who's dramatically worse at it than I am. But given that there's a relatively safe drug that allows many people to escape that stigma, it seems reasonable to let them have it until such time as we can expiate the stigma.
Since I observed that there are smart people who can't spell, I've revised spelling ability down to "weak indicator" of stupidity or poor education. I.e., if someone spells poorly and has a few other things going against them, then the spelling will help decide the matter. But I would not make any rapid judgements on someone's intelligence based purely on their spelling/grammar.
I'd like to see some medical references for the statement "amphetamines don't cause brain damage," because study of long-term neurotoxicity or neuroprotective effects of most medicines is still in very early stages. What medical journal references can you cite on that point for amphetamines?
A family friend just died from a random brain bleed, well before his time. Guess how many herbs he took? There is a strong correlation between random brain bleeds and herb use, it just isn't substantiated well enough to pull them from the market yet. I hear about them all the time. Which is a damn shame. Herbs kill.
So do yourself a favor: go get a Ritalin or Adderall prescription and cut the vitamin overdoses and herbs. You'll probably live longer ;)
I think there is an implied dichotomy that I did not mean to make: I'm perfectly happy with people hacking their brains. I'm perfectly happy with the natural state of mankind being some sort of intoxication, whether it's spoiled fruits, running, nicotine, or whatever.
I'm just amused at the rationales being used, which seem to me to have all sort of inner contradictions.
Ritalin was synthesized in 1954. In use clinically for 50 years.
How's that for data? Pretty good, I'd say. It is well known that these chemicals at high levels eat people's souls, but do not do much physical damage. At clinical doses they're harmless. Some caution in kids for heart shenanigans. They're very well characterized.
I expressed some of the same concerns you did to my doctor when he first prescribed me amphetamine. He told me about his speed freak patients, and how they returned to normal after coming off.
I would like to talk just for a moment about my problems with concentration. ADD is a very real problem for me. I don't mean this in a learned helplessness, "trust me I've been diagnosed" sort of way. I mean it in a "Everything in my entire life points to this diagnosis, 100% -- and I would challenge anyone to try and explain it in an alternative fashion."
I won't go into the details and don't really care to discuss my symptoms and issues much further. However I will say that there are many people out there who are correctly diagnosed as ADD, and whom would probably have never finish high school, let alone college, without the aid of adderall, ritalin, etc. I can tell you this with a certain level of confidence because I am one of them.
I never abused them, and avoided taking them because they make me feel like a zombie, no sense of humor, lack of appetite, irritable, etc. However, for many people out there, they're not just a brain hack, they're the only ticket they have to competing with brains that have a normal level of attention.
Stimulants feel good, regardless of their other effects. People will always want to rationalize continuing to do something that feels good. Again, regardless of the other effects both positive and negative.
The difference here is that this rationale is culturally acceptable. It's become good to use these drugs for this reason. The PR submarine[1] is out in full force[2], building positive associations (Take these drugs and you'll get into Harvard!) and diminishing negatives ones ("Progress often carries risk.") That, to me, is what makes this tend unsettling, far more than the drugs themselves.
[1]:http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2]:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mindenhancing-drug...
It is very important, if you do use psychoactive drugs, to have some sort of external metric. When I was undergoing various ADD treatments, I had my boss evaluate me every week. I found that what I was doing before (that is, using unusually large amounts of caffeine) was not better than baseline me.
As a vitamin junkie, I truly believe that certain "hacks" allow me to do better on interviews: caffeine, ginko, SAMe, glutamine, etc. Maybe by a few percentage points. Nothing to write home about, but worth the investment for the job interview.
But these kids aren't going for job interviews. And they're not talking about run-of-the-mill OTC brain hacking. They're talking about using high-performance brain-targeted stimulants as part of a maximization strategy for some test in school. As if anybody gives a rat's ass about what you made on calculus finals six months from now.
Let's see: brain damage versus 10 points less on a test you're never going to talk about (unless you fail). I think this risk analysis is a no-brainer here, to use a pun.
I'm concerned that what's really going on is that some people are just wired to go screw around with their bodies using chemicals. This whole take-to-maximize-study rationale is just another in a long line of rationales going back many decades. There was drug use to combat the drudgery of life. Drug use to protest the system. Drug use to find inner peace. Drug use for religious exploration. Drug use for sports enhancement. Drug use to prolong life. Now we have drug use for educational enhancement.
I'm not saying this is wrong -- whatever that means. Perhaps there is an evolutionary competitive advantage to hacking your brain with chemicals and, if so, we're seeing a new branch of the human family tree. Or perhaps we're still four hundred years away from true brain hacking and this is just another in a long line of reasons to screw around with reality.
Timothy Leary may be dead, but he's far from gone.