jimrandomh comments on Intelligence Amplification Open Thread - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Will_Newsome 15 September 2010 08:39AM

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Comment author: jacob_cannell 15 September 2010 04:00:58PM 1 point [-]

How long have you been on piracetam and sulbutiamine? Have you been collecting data on your does over time and any subjective evaluations (a diary/log or whatever)? Individual experiements such as that can be quite useful for others.

Have an idea which works better? After reading about your sulbutiamine experiment I went and got a B-vitamin complex which I now take, and I'm curious about actually trying sulbutiamine next.

Comment author: jimrandomh 15 September 2010 05:25:16PM 1 point [-]

About 3 weeks on sulbutiamine, 5 on piracetam. I haven't gotten any quantitative data. Before I started, I thought I ought to get in the habit of using dual N-back and Anki and some other tests so I'd have a baseline, but didn't really have the energy and motivation to set those up and do them. Once I realized that was stopping me from trying nootropics at all, I dropped that idea and settled for subjective impressions, collected informally. I have some subjective feeling data recorded in my private diary, but it pretty much just duplicates what I posted in comments.

Piracetam and sulbutiamine have pretty much orthogonal effects. If you're already taking a supplement with lots of thiamine, then sulbutiamine will have a smaller effect than it would otherwise since they are analogues of the same molecule, but I think there's a limit to how much thiamine can cross the blood-brain barrier which doesn't apply to sulbutiamine so you may still get some effect.