I think it's important to have a completely objective measurement of the effectiveness, like whether your chess rating goes up or down. (otherwise wireheading will probably end up #1)
If there were any low-hanging fruit for improving the brain, evolution would probably have already done it, EXCEPT vis a vis energy tradeoffs. Evolution w…
I think it's important to have a completely objective measurement of the effectiveness, like whether your chess rating goes up or down. (otherwise wireheading will probably end up #1)
If there were any low-hanging fruit for improving the brain, evolution would probably have already done it, EXCEPT vis a vis energy tradeoffs. Evolution wanted to conserve calories, but we don't care about wasting calories anymore. That's probably why stimulants like modafinil and caffeine score so high. They would reduce the brain's bias towards conserving energy. (it's also probably a part of the reason why there's a north-south cline in IQ, even within turkey or within italy or within japan. The colder it is, the higher your basal metabolic rate needs to be, the more calories the brain will evolve to burn. The opportunity cost of burning more calories in the brain is zero when you need to burn those calories anyway just to not freeze.)
That's a good idea. Chess accuracy scores are probably lower variance than the actual outcomes, but they can still be biased up or down a lot depending on the circumstances of the game, so you'd still need a sample size of many games. Open games and complex endgames tend to result in lower accuracy. Closed games and book endgames tend to result in higher accuracy.
I understand that some level of non-tradeoff bad mutations stay in the gene pool in spite of evolution, and different people will have different failures that can be remedied by different drugs. So there can be non-tradeoff low-hanging fruit to fix at the level of individual variation, which was not what I said in the OP.
What I should have said is we shouldn't expect the same nootropic to work well for most people most of the time unless it has something to do with a tradeoff where the present circumstances are very different from the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (e.g., abundant calories or the rarity of predators). I notice that the high ranking nootropics are all stimulants (which reduce our evolved bias to conserve calories) and anxiolitics (which reduce our evolved bias to be scared of hidden tigers):
Modafinil: stimulant
Caffeine: stimulant
psilocybin microdose: both?
phenibut: anxiolytic
bromantane: both
LSD microdose: both?
Phenylpiracetam: both
Dynamax: stimulant
Is there any good nootropic that is neither stimulant nor anxiolytic? I tried Sulbutiamine a few times and noticed a significant effect that couldn't really be classified along either of those dimensions, but it doesn't rank highly in the surveys so it's probably an individual quirk. Biochemically it probably ought to be filed with the stimulants under "things that increase energy output", but subjectively it didn't seem like much of a stimulant.
Psychedelics in general are far more anxiogenic than anxiolytic. I've tried microdosing 1P-LSD for studying purposes, and it often gave me horrible anxiety.
"it's also probably a part of the reason why there's a north-south cline in IQ" Haven't these populations interbred like a ton since these evolutions supposedly occurred? This just-so story would make a lot more sense for completely separate populations, which they obviously have not been for at least 200+ years
It is wrong to assume mixing thoroughly enough to produce regional homogeneity even across a distance of a few hundred miles.
Before the industrial revolution most people never travelled more than 15 miles from their place of birth. Until relatively recently, Italy and Germany were divided into tiny duchies and city-states.
Even in the present day, all the factors that cause people to migrate have different effect sizes on different people. Lots of smart people get recruited by big tech companies to go work in silicon valley, for example. Whites in west virginia experience a brain drain, and become genetically less intelligent than whites in places like silicon valley and washington DC.
Also, in the real world, nobody mates at random. There's a very high degree of assortative mating, which is good because it produces a wider variance in ability levels, and the returns on ability are basically exponential rather than linear. Both income and the probability to become an inventor are exponentially related to IQ.
In the rainforest, animals form distinct subspecies across distances of only a few hundred meters. Just so stories about how they're probably mixing enough to produce homogeneity definitely prove too much in that case.
I think it's important to have a completely objective measurement of the effectiveness, like whether your chess rating goes up or down. (otherwise wireheading will probably end up #1)
If there were any low-hanging fruit for improving the brain, evolution would probably have already done it, EXCEPT vis a vis energy tradeoffs. Evolution wanted to conserve calories, but we don't care about wasting calories anymore. That's probably why stimulants like modafinil and caffeine score so high. They would reduce the brain's bias towards conserving energy. (it's also probably a part of the reason why there's a north-south cline in IQ, even within turkey or within italy or within japan. The colder it is, the higher your basal metabolic rate needs to be, the more calories the brain will evolve to burn. The opportunity cost of burning more calories in the brain is zero when you need to burn those calories anyway just to not freeze.)
That's a good idea. Chess accuracy scores are probably lower variance than the actual outcomes, but they can still be biased up or down a lot depending on the circumstances of the game, so you'd still need a sample size of many games. Open games and complex endgames tend to result in lower accuracy. Closed games and book endgames tend to result in higher accuracy.
and by higher accuracy i mean lower average centipawn loss
I appreciate the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it's entirely right - see eg https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ontology-of-psychiatric-conditions-653 and https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/towards-a-bayesian-theory-of-willpower
I understand that some level of non-tradeoff bad mutations stay in the gene pool in spite of evolution, and different people will have different failures that can be remedied by different drugs. So there can be non-tradeoff low-hanging fruit to fix at the level of individual variation, which was not what I said in the OP.
What I should have said is we shouldn't expect the same nootropic to work well for most people most of the time unless it has something to do with a tradeoff where the present circumstances are very different from the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (e.g., abundant calories or the rarity of predators). I notice that the high ranking nootropics are all stimulants (which reduce our evolved bias to conserve calories) and anxiolitics (which reduce our evolved bias to be scared of hidden tigers):
Modafinil: stimulant
Caffeine: stimulant
psilocybin microdose: both?
phenibut: anxiolytic
bromantane: both
LSD microdose: both?
Phenylpiracetam: both
Dynamax: stimulant
Is there any good nootropic that is neither stimulant nor anxiolytic? I tried Sulbutiamine a few times and noticed a significant effect that couldn't really be classified along either of those dimensions, but it doesn't rank highly in the surveys so it's probably an individual quirk. Biochemically it probably ought to be filed with the stimulants under "things that increase energy output", but subjectively it didn't seem like much of a stimulant.
Psychedelics in general are far more anxiogenic than anxiolytic. I've tried microdosing 1P-LSD for studying purposes, and it often gave me horrible anxiety.
"it's also probably a part of the reason why there's a north-south cline in IQ" Haven't these populations interbred like a ton since these evolutions supposedly occurred? This just-so story would make a lot more sense for completely separate populations, which they obviously have not been for at least 200+ years
It is wrong to assume mixing thoroughly enough to produce regional homogeneity even across a distance of a few hundred miles.
Before the industrial revolution most people never travelled more than 15 miles from their place of birth. Until relatively recently, Italy and Germany were divided into tiny duchies and city-states.
Even in the present day, all the factors that cause people to migrate have different effect sizes on different people. Lots of smart people get recruited by big tech companies to go work in silicon valley, for example. Whites in west virginia experience a brain drain, and become genetically less intelligent than whites in places like silicon valley and washington DC.
Also, in the real world, nobody mates at random. There's a very high degree of assortative mating, which is good because it produces a wider variance in ability levels, and the returns on ability are basically exponential rather than linear. Both income and the probability to become an inventor are exponentially related to IQ.
In the rainforest, animals form distinct subspecies across distances of only a few hundred meters. Just so stories about how they're probably mixing enough to produce homogeneity definitely prove too much in that case.