Vaniver comments on Rationality Drugs - Less Wrong

26 Post author: lukeprog 01 October 2011 11:20AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 01 October 2011 07:01:05PM 6 points [-]

Creatine improves cognitive performance.

Isn't this primarily true for vegetarians? I was under the impression that most people have all the creatine their brains can make use of.

Comment author: gwern 01 October 2011 07:53:47PM *  1 point [-]

Not just vegetarians; if you had clicked through to my page, you'd see my summary:

however, Rae 2003 was only in vegetarians, who are known to be creatine deficient (much like B vitamins, creatine is usually gotten in one’s diet from meat), and the other studies are likewise of subpopulations. Rawson 2008 (PDF) studied young omnivores who are not sleep-deprived, and found no mental benefits. However, vegetarians (Rae 2003), the sleep-deprived, and old people may benefit from creatine supplementation.

Comment author: Vaniver 01 October 2011 08:01:19PM 4 points [-]

I did click through to your page; I decided not to quote it directly, which was a mistake. My impression is that of LWers, vegetarians are the most common group (though perhaps there are lots of sleep-deprived people).

Overall, I was disappointed with taking a qualified statement ("creatine deficiency causes intelligence problems; make sure you have enough") and turning it into an unqualified statement ("creatine improves cognitive performance").

Comment author: gwern 01 October 2011 09:08:57PM 0 points [-]

My impression is that of LWers, vegetarians are the most common group (though perhaps there are lots of sleep-deprived people).

But still not very common. Vegetarian LWers would be, what, 10% maybe? (Not sure any surveys have covered it, but I don't see it discussed very often).

Overall, I was disappointed with taking a qualified statement

/shrug

That's Luke's description, not mine. I've edited the page to include specific citations for each group and some PDF links, incidentally.

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