So Scott Alexander's post at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/01/2016-nootropics-survey-results/ shows that the most "effective" "nootropics" have still been the ones that have existed for a long time. What do these results really mean, though? Is it possible that people are just worse at noticing the subtler effects of the other drugs, or are just much worse at disciplining themselves enough to correctly use the racetams or noopept (as in, with choline)?
How much potential is there in innovation in nootropics? What is holding this innovation back, if anything? It feels like there hasn't been any real progress over the last 15 years (other than massively increased awareness), but could targeted drug discovery (along with people willing to be super-liberal with their experimentation) finally lead to some real breakthroughs?
I think that there is several answers:
There are some interesting new stuff, like NGF drops, but only a few people have tested them and results are not shown in the survey. We just don't have enough user experiences and existing ones are more anecdotic. http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/72272-ngf-spray/
Also we now have very large and easily available base of knowledge and vendors for any nootropic, which make search and personal testing much easy, and provide better personal results with existing nootropics. Combining, cycling and personal targeting of nootropics provide much better personal results from my experiences.
There are several promising compounds in testing phase, like different AMPAkines.
Also I think that there were some sampling problems with the survey as it puts racetams so low.
Ah yes. The Ampakines are the nootropics of the future - and always will be. I've been hearing since what must be the early '00s about how amazing the ampakines are. But aside from the -racetams...