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Morendil comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong
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Comments (119)
"Drug X improves performance measure Y" will in general be an incomplete description of the effects of drug X.
To be a rationalist is to be the kind of person who mentally adds "among other as yet undiscovered effects" to every single bullet point above.
Upvoted for naming what was bothering me.
Of course I imagine some drugs are rather well understood by now. But Lukeprog's post doesn't seem to touch on the safety and potential downsides of taking this stuff, which would be useful.
(Also, creepy pill-man is creepy.)
And effects that lukeprog didn't bother to state.
Those count as "undiscovered" too - undiscovered by at least me. :)
This article cited by Luke has more nuanced appreciations of drugs like Donepezil, and generally a more balanced take on the subject. For instance, they report that
The same article goes on to suggest that perhaps 14 days is too short a timeframe for the beneficial effects to be felt. However one can also find studies like this one (not cited by Luke) which show detrimental effects on cognition in healthy subjects over four weeks of treatment.
Neither Luke nor de Jongh et al. report on the frequent side-effects, which (Wikipedia says) include bradycardia, nausea, diarrhea, anorexia, abdominal pain, and vivid dreams.
What makes that mental addition a "rationalist" thing to do, rather than simply a good thing to do?
It's specifically about having a more accurate model of the universe. It's not the same sort of thing as brushing your teeth, even though that's also a good thing to do.
General principle: definitions put a thing into a category, and then explain how that thing is different from other things in the same category.
I don't think definitions are how people generally use words-- prototype theory seems more accurate. Prototype theory says that people have best examples of concepts, and then rank actual things according to how close they are to the prototype.
It would be nice to have a theory about how to decide when to use definitional thinking and when to use prototypes, but I don't.
It's a five-second skill - you have to train yourself to do it.